Trotter stepped into the breach. “You do agree at least to listen, don’t you, Kirk?” he asked.
McGarvey nodded. They had gotten him this far, he might as well stay for the main attraction.
“No obligations, McGarvey. I want you to understand that right up front,” Day said. He stopped his fidgeting and peered more closely at McGarvey, who got the impression that the man needed glasses but was too vain to wear them. “You do, don’t you … understand?”
“No, I don’t,” McGarvey said pointedly. “I don’t understand at all. But I’m here. I’ll listen to whatever it is you’re about to tell me, afterward we’ll discuss whatever it is you want to discuss, and then I’ll be back in Lausanne in time for dinner.” He turned to Trotter. “That was the deal, wasn’t it, John?”
“Absolutely.”
They stood just inside the doorway. The room seemed peaceful, as if it didn’t belong here, as if it belonged to another, less complicated time.
“Why don’t we just have a seat,” Day said, motioning toward the couches, “while John fetches our other guest.”
“Yes, sir,” Trotter said. “Care for some coffee, Kirk?”
“Cognac would be better, I think, with the head I’ve got.” He was starting to feel mean again.
Day sniffed his disapproval but said nothing. Trotter left the room. McGarvey could hear him going up the main stairs. He had absolutely no idea what to expect. But they had gone through a great deal of trouble to get him here, Trotter seemed on edge, and a high-ranking U.S. Justice Department bureaucrat had come along, presumably to lend his weight to the proceedings. That worried McGarvey the most. What was Trotter up to that he needed to legitimize his efforts?
“I understand you have lived here in Switzerland for five years now,” Day said conversationally as they sat down, McGarvey in an easy chair beneath one of the windows.
“Since ’82.”
“Family back in the States?”
“An ex-wife in D.C., and a sister and a couple of nephews in Utah.”
Day seemed distracted. He was watching the entryway. Upstairs they heard a door close, and seconds later someone was coming downstairs. There were two of them. Day sat straighter and looked at McGarvey.
“This will be hard for you to believe.”
McGarvey managed a slight smile. “Do you believe it?”
Day started to shrug, but then he nodded. “Yes. Yes, I do, God help me.”
Trotter appeared in the doorway with another man. Day jumped to his feet. “The staff is occupied?” he said.
“They’ll leave us alone,” Trotter said, coming the rest of the way into the room.
The other man was half a head shorter than Trotter and very slender. His complexion was olive, his hair jet black and shiny with hair lotion. He wore a long, thin mustache, and when he grinned McGarvey saw that two of his teeth were gold. McGarvey guessed him to be in his late forties, although he was dressed youthfully in baggy trousers with pleats in the front, a gaudy sport shirt open to the navel, and some sort of nearly collarless sportcoat, the sleeves of which had been pushed up to just below his elbows. His shoes were narrow and extremely pointed. He was a Latino. There was no mistaking it.
“You don’t know each other?” Day asked McGarvey. “I’d like to establish that right off the bat.”
“Never seen him before in my life.”
“Good,” Day said. “Francisco Artimé Basulto, most recently a guest of the Dade County Jail in Miami, before that a resident of Havana, and before that an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
The Cuban grinned, his gold teeth flashing as he came jauntily around the couch, sticking out his hand. His fingernails were long and well manicured. He smelled of bay rum and whatever lotion was on his greasy hair.
McGarvey didn’t bother to stand, nor did he shake Basulto’s hand. He had seen this type before. He could almost hear the story the little man was going to tell. It was going to be some sort of a shakedown, no doubt. McGarvey was surprised Trotter had fallen for it.
“I don’t give a shit if you shake my hand, see?” Basulto spat, his accent heavy. “You think I care? As long as you came to help, why give a shit?” He swiveled on Trotter, who had taken on a suddenly hard expression.
“Sit down,” Trotter snapped.
Basulto stepped back, wounded, but then he sat down with a flourish, crossed his legs, and lit a very long, thin cigar.
“I’ll get the cognac,” Trotter said, and he left. Day took his seat and Basulto stared defiantly across at McGarvey.
It was a time for remembering. Twenty-five, thirty years ago, at the end of Batista’s Cuba. Trotter brought them back and McGarvey had to wonder what was so important about those days. Since then we’d lived through the riots of the sixties, the Vietnam War, the horror of assassinations, Watergate.
Roger Harris, a CIA case officer working out of the embassy in Havana as a third secretary for economic affairs, was beating the bushes for recruits when he came across Basulto, an angry young man looking for a savior. Castro’s name was on everyone’s lips, and had Harris come three months later Basulto almost certainly would have taken to the hills.
He was brought to Havana, and before he could get himself into any trouble, he was flown up to Miami where he spent two weeks in a southside safe house learning the entire wealth of what the agency had got from its OSS heritage and quite a few new things it had invented on its own. Weapons, hand-to-hand combat, radio communications, secret writing, letter drops, tails — anything that would help keep him alive and useful when he was returned.
Basulto was a natural back in Havana, running with the high rollers down from the States. With his flash and gift of gab, the agency training he had received, and with Roger Harris running the plays in for him, he was a hit. He became the lapdog of the rich and famous who haunted such places as the Copa, the Lido, and the Paris Revu.
Through his rich American connections, Basulto was invited to the kind of parties attended by Batista’s cabinet ministers and other high-ranking government and military leaders … along with their wives and girlfriends. For a couple of years, until Batista’s fall, Basulto’s product was said to have been the best they had ever seen.
At the end of 1958, when the government finally collapsed, Batista left the country, and Castro came triumphantly down from the hills, Basulto took off his glad rags and went home to the farm. The U.S. embassy was closed and sealed, our concerns in Cuba being looked after by the scanty American Affairs Interest Section in the Swiss embassy, and our agency operations severely curtailed.
“Our friend here would have been burned in any event, had the end not come when it did,” Trotter said.
Basulto said nothing. He seemed to be waiting.
The wife of a certain colonel in Batista’s defense planning establishment apparently lost her heart to Basulto. The colonel understood what was going on, but he actually encouraged it because Basulto was ostensibly supplying the Cubans with intelligence he supposedly gathered from his American contacts.
“And for all we know, he probably did give them hard intelligence,” Trotter snapped.
Basulto sat forward, an angry glint in his eyes. “I never told those bastards anything except what Roger told me to tell them. I love the U.S.A., I swear to Christ!” He crossed himself and raised his right hand. There was a heavy gold chain on his wrist, a gold-cased Rolex on the other.
From what Trotter could gather, Harris did not leave when the other Americans left. He hung around for a time, laying very low of course, until things became too difficult, and he had to pull out. He was forced into it.
But an odd thing happened. Harris brought Basulto out of Cuba and pointed him in the direction of Mexico City. It was a definite no-no because Harris apparently was working on his own.