‘You know,’ Captain Segura said, ‘there was a time when I thought you didn’t like me.’
‘There are other motives for playing draughts than liking a man.’
‘Yes, for me too,’ Captain Segura said. ‘Look! I make a king.’
‘And I huff you three times.’
‘You think I did not see that, but you will find the move is in my favour. There, now I take your only king. Why did you go to Santiago, Santa Clara and Ciefuegos two weeks ago?’
‘I always go about this time to see the retailers.’
‘It really looked as though that was your reason. You stayed in the new hotel at Ciefuegos. You had dinner alone in a restaurant on the waterfront. You went to a cinema and you went home. Next morning…’ ‘Do you really believe I’m a secret agent?’
‘I’m beginning to doubt it. I think our friends have made a mistake.’
‘Who are our friends?’
‘Oh, let’s say the friends of Dr Hasselbacher.’
‘And who are they?’
‘It’s my job to know what goes on in Havana,’ said Captain Segura, ‘not to take sides or to give information.’ He was moving his king unchecked up the board.
‘Is there anything in Cuba important enough to interest a Secret Service?’
‘Of course we are only a small country, but we lie very close to the American coast. And we point at your own Jamaica base. If a country is surrounded, as Russia is, it will try to punch a hole through from inside.’ ‘What use would I be or Dr Hasselbacher in global strategy? A man who sells vacuum cleaners. A retired doctor.’
‘There are unimportant pieces in any game,’ said Captain Segura. ‘Like this one here. I take it and you don’t mind losing it. Dr 1-Ilasselbacher, of course, is very good at crosswords.’
‘What have crosswords to do with it?’
‘A man like that makes a good cryptographer. Somebody once showed me a cable of yours with its interpretation, or rather they let me discover it. Perhaps they thought I would run you out of Cuba.’ He laughed. ‘Milly’s father.
They little knew.’
‘What was it about?’
‘You claimed to have recruited Engineer Cifuentes. Of course that was absurd. I know him well. Perhaps they shot at him to make the cable sound more convincing. Perhaps they wrote it because they wanted to get rid of you. Or perhaps they are more credulous than I am.’
‘What an extraordinary story.’ He moved a piece. ‘How are you so certain that Cifuentes is not my agent?’
‘By the way you play checkers, Mr Wormold, and because I interrogated Cifuentes.’
‘Did you torture him?’
Captain Segura laughed. ‘No. He doesn’t belong to the torturable class.’
‘I didn’t know there were class-distinctions in torture.’ ‘Dear Mr Wormold, surely you realize there are people who expect to be tortured and others who would be outraged by the idea. One never tortures except by a kind of mutual agreement.’
‘There’s torture and torture. When they broke up Dr Hasselbacher’s laboratory they were torturing…?’
‘One can never tell what amateurs may do. The police had no concern in that. Dr Hasselbacher does not belong to the torturable class.’ ‘Who does?’
‘The poor in my own country, in any Latin American country. The poor of Central Europe and the Orient. Of course in your welfare states you have no poor, so you are untorturable. In Cuba the police can deal as harshly as they like with emigres from Latin America and the Baltic States, but not with visitors from your country or Scandinavia. It is an instinctive matter on both sides. Catholics are more torturable than Protestants, just as they are more criminal. You see, I was right to make that king, and now I shall huff you for the last time.’
‘You always win, don’t you? That’s an interesting theory of yours.’ ‘One reason why the West hates the great Communist states is that they don’t recognize class-distinctions. Sometimes they torture the wrong people. So too of course did Hitler and shocked the world. Nobody cares what goes on in our prisons, or the prisons of Lisbon or Caracas, but Hitler., was too promiscuous. It was rather as though in your country a chauffeur had slept with a peeress.’
‘We’re not shocked by that any longer.’
‘It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.’ They had another free daiquiri each, frozen so stiffly that it had to be drunk in tiny drops to avoid a sinus-pain. ‘And how is Milly?’ Captain Segura asked.
‘Well.’
‘I’m very fond of the child. She has been properly brought up.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’
‘That is another reason why I would not wish you to get into any trouble, Mr Wormold, which might mean the loss of your residence permit. Havana would be poorer without your daughter.’
‘I don’t suppose you really believe me, Captain, but Cifuentes was no agent of mine.’
‘I do believe you. I think perhaps someone wanted to use you as a stalking-horse, or perhaps as one of those painted ducks which attract the real wild ducks to settle.’ He finished his daiquiri. ‘That of course suits my book. I too like to watch the wild duck come in, from Russia, America, England, even Germany once again. They despise the poor local dago marksman, but one day, when they are all settled, what a shoot I will have.’
‘It’s a complicated world. I find it easier to sell vacuum cleaners.’
‘The business prospers, I hope?’
‘Oh yes, yes.’
‘I was interested that you had enlarged Your staff. The charming secretary with the siphon and the coat that wouldn’t close. And the young man.’ ‘I need someone to superintend accounts. Lopez is not reliable.’ ‘Ah, Lopez. Another of your agents.’ Captain Segura laughed. ‘Or so it was reported to me.’
‘Yes. He supplies me with secret information about the police-department.’
‘Be careful, Mr Wormold. He is one of the torturable.’ They both laughed, drinking daiquiri’s. It is easy to laugh at the idea of torture on a sunny day. ‘I must be going, Mr Wormold.’
‘I suppose the cells are full of my spies.’
‘We can always make room for another by having a few executions.’
‘One day, Captain, I am going to beat you at draughts.’
‘I doubt it, Mr Wormold.’
From the window he watched Captain Segura pass the grey pumice-like figure of Columbus on the way to his office. Then he had another free daiquiri. The Havana Club and Captain Segura seemed to have taken the place of the Wonder Bar and Dr Hasselbacher -it was like a change of life and he had to make the best of it. There was no turning time back. Dr Hasselbacher had been humiliated in front of him, and friendship cannot stand humiliation. File had not seen Dr Hasselbacher again. In the club he felt himself, as in the Wonder Bar, a citizen of Havana; the elegant young man who brought him a drink made no attempt to sell him one of the assorted bottles of rum arranged on his table. A man with a grey beard read his morning paper as always at this hour; as usual a postman had interrupted his daily round for his free drink: all of them were citizens too. Four tourists left the bar carrying woven baskets, containing bottles of rum; they were flushed and cheerful and harboured the illusion that their drinks had cost them nothing. He thought, They are the foreigners, and of course untorturable.
Wormold drank his daiquiri too fast and left the Havana Club with his eyes aching. The tourists leant over the seventeenth-century well; they had flung into it enough coins to have paid for their drinks twice over: they were ensuring a happy return. A woman’s voice called him and he saw Beatrice standing between the pillars of the colonnade among the gourds and rattles and negro-dolls of the curio shop.