“Don’t try and cheat me,” Belac said.
The cocky bastard, thought Rivera. He said, “I’ve never tried to cheat you. It’s been a misunderstanding.”
“I don’t want any more misunderstandings,” Belac said.
Rivera summoned the DGI chief the moment he disconnected from the Belgian’s call. Carlos Mendez listened intently to Rivera’s edited account of the conversation and said, “We’ll need to leave tomorrow, early. I’ll make the travel arrangements. And speak to Havana.”
Rivera frowned. “Belac isn’t expecting me for another three days.”
Mendez gave a palm-up gesture. “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, Excellency,” he said. “But this has to be my way. All of it.”
Rivera’s frown deepened. Presumption was precisely the attitude of the other man. He had to let it pass without correction for the moment, but he made a mental note not to let it continue.
Rivera left the embassy early, wanting as much time as possible with Jorge. He got to the Hampstead house just after the boy’s bath. Jorge came down the stairs still warm, smelling clean. And smelling of something else. It was the soap Estelle had used, Rivera realized at once. Had Jorge used it accidentally, picking up a piece that had been overlooked after Estelle’s death? Or had he intentionally ransacked some bathroom cabinet, searching it out?
They went through the established ritual of such evenings, Rivera sitting with a drink while Jorge recounted the events of the day, and then Rivera talking of anything that had happened at the embassy that he thought might interest the boy, which was not very much.
Rivera announced the following day’s departure, without saying where he was going, and apologized for the suddenness of the trip. Jorge, already warned of the Madrid conference, accepted the news quite contentedly. He asked his father when he would be returning and Rivera said definitely the day the conference ended, the sixteenth.
“Three days before school lets out,” Jorge said brightly.
Rivera knew of the extended, August-into-autumn holiday, of course, but he’d forgotten the precise dates. “We’ll really make it a vacation!” he promised. “You choose the place.”
Jorge was briefly silent with the seriousness of a twelve-year-old. Then he said, “Why not Paris, where we’re going to live?”
It made perfect sense, Rivera thought. They might even look at likely property, although house hunting was a fairly boring activity for a boy of Jorge’s age. “Paris it is,” he agreed. “I’ll have the arrangements made while I am away.”
“Did you talk to Mama about our going to live there?” asked Jorge.
The introduction of Estelle almost off-balanced Rivera. Aware that to show any surprise would be a mistake, he said at once, “No. I hadn’t decided about it.”
“I think she would have liked it, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Rivera said, with difficulty. “Yes, I think she would. She was fond of Paris.”
“Will you take me to the places you went to with Mama? I’d like to see them; know that she’d seen them, too.”
“Yes,” Rivera promised. “We’ll go to every one.”
“I loved Mama,” the child declared.
“I loved her, too,” Rivera said, for Jorge’s benefit.
THIRTY-ONE
NOTHING WAS as Rivera expected. He’d anticipated flying direct to Amsterdam, but they didn’t. They went—just he and Mendez—by train and cross-Channel ferry, and again not directly. From Calais, on a journey that required two changes, they traveled through France, going into Luxembourg at Namur and into Germany at Aachen. It was late into the evening before they reached Hannover.
The hotel was very small and dirty, halfway along the Davenshedterstrasse. They went out to eat, choosing a restaurant at random. It was bad. Rivera started to feel vaguely unclean; his skin itched, particularly on his arms, and he went twice to the toilet to wash his hands.
“Has all this really been necessary?” he demanded. Throughout the day he’d had to follow Mendez’s lead and he hadn’t enjoyed that, either. Mendez clearly had, every minute of it.
“If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have insisted upon it,” said Mendez, almost insolently. “There are far more checks at airports than at train border crossings and you’ve no reason, official or unofficial, to be in Holland anyway. Isn’t it better for your presence to remain completely unknown?”
“I suppose so,” Rivera said begrudgingly. “I expected more than just yourself.”
“I’m not alone,” Mendez said. “There are to be others in Amsterdam.”
“From London?”
Mendez pushed away his largely uneaten meal. “Cuba itself. It’s safer that way.”
Rivera felt the first flicker of apprehension. There might be a mistake and he, José Gaviria Rivera, might get caught up in an apparently squalid incident. Which wouldn’t remain squalid at all, once the investigation started.
“You mean they’re special…?” Rivera’s voice ebbed away, in his search of the word.
“Yes,” Mendez said helpfully. “What about protection? Belac, I mean. Does he have a lot of people around him?”
Rivera considered the question, recognizing its implication. “Never,” he said, surprised now that he thought about it. “We’ve only ever met alone, just the two of us. And according to what he told me, he’s staying away from Brussels, where he might have some protectors, because of the American investigation. That’s why we’re meeting in Amsterdam.”
Mendez gave a teeth-baring smile. “That’s good,” he said. “We’ll have to make sure, of course. But that sounds good.”
The hotel sheets, white in a long distant past, were gray, and the narrow bath was stained and actually dusty from lack of use. Rivera slept remarkably well, the pillow covered with a clean shirt and the one towel between himself and where he lay. When he showered the following morning, the water created an instant grime scum around his feet from the dirt in the bath.
The hotel in Amsterdam was much better. It was a pension on Wolvenstratt run by a Dutch doll of a woman, white-aproned, big-busted, and with a polished-apple face permanently creased by smiles. She allocated them adjoining rooms and hoped they found everything they wanted in Amsterdam. Rivera said he hoped so, too.
It was a day of pale, near-autumn sunshine and warm breezes, perfect for a country of gardeners and flower growers. Rivera and Mendez found a pavement cafe between the canals, but the intelligence man insisted upon their sitting inside and at a table at the back.
“Belac’s somewhere in Amsterdam,” Mendez said. “You’re not due to be here yet. Coincidence really does occur, sometimes. I don’t want to risk your being accidentally seen by the man.”
Irritating though it was to be subordinate to Mendez, the man did appear to be consummately professional, Rivera admitted to himself. The diplomat nodded understanding and said, “So we’re here. What now?”
“For you, very little until the meeting with Belac,” said Mendez. “I have to locate the others already here, although there’s little preparation we can make until you speak with Belac and make your arrangements.”
“Shall I be involved in the planning?” Rivera tried to make the question natural enough, but he was anxious for the answer. What if the professionals from Cuba seized Belac, instead of what he expected them to do! The truth about the withheld money would emerge in minutes. How could he have been so stupid as to have tried to manipulate it as he had!
“I’d prefer it if you weren’t, but it’s necessary,” Mendez said “They have to follow your lead; they’ve got to know you.”