Tempest Page 20

  Ramalhete and Hook had acquitted themselves well. They had travelled to Havana on the same American flight and had been able to observe MIRANDA as she and de Gea made their way through immigration. They had been unable to follow the taxi that they had taken, but it did not matter. The beacon that they had hidden inside the lining of MIRANDA’s suitcase had operated flawlessly, and Mazzetti had been able to follow it as the taxi had made its way to the Saratoga. Navarro had the benefit of the full team on the ground; de Gea might have been a professional, but so were they, and it was almost impossible to pick up a tail when there were seven agents who could swap in and out to keep things fresh, and especially so when those agents were able to rely on a GPS signal when they needed to fall back.

  Navarro was impatient. His instinct was to go in and take MIRANDA now, but he knew, when he played it out, that they stood to gain more by waiting. She was the reason PROSPERO had fled his hideout in Hong Kong.

  He was here, somewhere in the city, and his daughter would lead them right to him.

  73

  Beatrix and Danny spent the rest of the day at the house. Beatrix remembered Havana as a beautiful city, and it would have been easy to while away the hours visiting the sights, but they were not here for their enjoyment. This was business. She had no interest in risking the attention of the secret police; far better that they remained where they were, hidden and secure.

  Alfredo called just after nine to say that he had information, and that—if it was convenient—he would visit them to discuss it in person. Beatrix said that he would be very welcome, and ten minutes later, they heard a knock at the door.

  Alfredo went into the sitting room and sat down.

  “Mr. Logan landed in Havana this morning,” he said. “He is staying at the Meliá Cohiba.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Near the American embassy. He has a suite there.”

  “Was he on his own?”

  “He was. He arrived on a charter flight and was met at the airport by a car registered to the United States government. You will find a selection of pictures in the envelope.”

  Alfredo had dropped a manila envelope onto the table. She picked it up, slid her finger into the open end and took out a selection of prints. There were a number of photos of Logan, some looking as though they had been taken with phone cameras, but there was a series that had clearly been shot with a telephoto lens. He looked just the same as he had when Beatrix had last seen him in Hong Kong: unkempt, a little harried, impatient.

  She put those photos down and reached into the envelope again for a second set.

  Alfredo noticed. “The woman,” he said. “She arrived early this afternoon.”

  Danny sat up a little straighter. “You got photos?”

  “Of course,” Alfredo said.

  Beatrix flicked through the shots. Melissa was in her early to mid forties, with a head of dark hair and a warm smile. She sorted through them quickly, kept one and then handed the rest to Danny. He spread them on his lap, selected one where Melissa was almost looking into the camera, and picked it up.

  “She is your daughter?” Alfredo said.

  “Yes,” Danny replied. “That’s right. How was she? Did she look okay?”

  “Perhaps a little confused,” Alfredo said. “Havana is like that, though, especially if one is visiting for the first time.”

  Beatrix put the photograph down. The same man was pictured in most of them: fiftyish, tanned, handsome. “Who is this?”

  “It appears that they were travelling together,” Alfredo said.

  Beatrix regarded him more carefully.

  An agent, she thought. She knew the look.

  “What happened?” Danny asked.

  “They got into a taxi and were taken into the city.”

  “Where?” Beatrix asked.

  “The Saratoga on Paseo del Prado, in Esquina.”

  Beatrix collected the photographs together, slid them back into the envelope and gave them to Danny.

  “Thank you, Alfredo,” she said. “You’ve been very thorough.”

  He nodded his head. “And the equipment?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “I am pleased. If you need anything else, please call.”

  Alfredo said goodbye and made his way out of the house.

  Danny waited until the door was closed and then laid his finger on the picture of the man who was with his daughter.

  “Who’s that?”

  “It’s most likely that he works with Logan. He’s the chaperone; he would’ve got her out of the States, and now he’s making sure that she’s looked after now she’s here.”

  “So he’s on our side?”

  “As much as Logan is on our side.”

  “When are we going to meet them?”

  “Let’s find out,” she said, taking out her phone.

  Beatrix went up to the roof to make the call. She took out the card that Logan had given her on the ferry and dialled the number. The phone rang three times before the call was picked up.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “Are you in Havana?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t ask silly questions.”

  “What about Nakamura?”

  “He’s here.”

  “No problems?”

  “None at all.”

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  Beatrix had already decided upon that. “The cathedral.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow morning. There’s a café—El Patio—on Calle San Ignacio. Seven o’clock.”

  “I’ll be there. Bring Nak—”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t get to see him yet. We need to work out how this is going to play out; then maybe you get to see him. I’ll see you at seven. You can buy me breakfast.”

  74

  Beatrix woke at four the next morning and made her preparations. She changed into a pair of black jeans and a plain black tee, both of which had been left by Alfredo, put the Makarov into her go-bag and zipped it up. She took out the wig that she used for Caprice and fixed it securely onto her head with the pins. She added the dark make-up and took a moment to look at her reflection in the mirror. She was satisfied with how she looked.

  Danny had agreed to stay in the house while she was away and, as Beatrix left her room, she could hear the sound of his heavy snoring coming from across the corridor. She went down the stairs to the door, opened it and stepped out onto the street.

  She checked her watch: it was five in the morning. She was ready to work.

  The house that Alfredo had provided for them was in Vedado, and the Plaza de la Catedral was three miles to the east. Beatrix was happy to walk; it would give her the opportunity to get a better sense of the locale and to acclimatise to its rhythms and cadences. Just as important, she could follow a circuitous and illogical route that would allow her the opportunity to flush out anyone who might be following her.

  As far as she knew, only Alfredo knew where they were staying, but that did not mean that she was prepared to relax. She had never met him before yesterday and couldn’t possibly trust him. She couldn’t assume that their arrival had gone unnoticed, either, even given the fact that they had arrived at Varadero instead of José Martí International. The Cuban secret police were a serious operation, well-funded and numerous, and she knew that the arrival of a private jet would have been noted by agents who were emplaced at the airport; she couldn’t predict whether they would have been able to get a team on them fast enough to follow them into the city—and she hadn’t seen anything suspicious, despite looking carefully—but, again, that wasn’t something that she was prepared to risk. Beatrix had survived as a Group Fifteen agent because of her natural suspicion, and, even though she had been excommunicated, that quality was not something that she would allow to atrophy.

  The most sensible route would have been to walk north to the US embassy and then follow the Malecón to the cathedr
al, but Beatrix did not want to be predictable. She headed east, following a zigzagging route as she navigated the numbered roads that ran east to west and the lettered roads that went north to south. She broke onto Avenida de los Presidentes and, seeing an approaching bus, flagged it down and climbed aboard. She watched carefully for any sign of activity on the sidewalk behind her, or anyone hurrying to embark, but saw nothing.

  She rode the bus for three stops, pressed the button and then disembarked near the Monumento a José Miguel Gómez. She crossed the busy lanes of traffic, passed a hospital and then skirted the northern perimeter of a public park. She cut through the campus of the Universidad de la Habana and paused at the Museo Napoleónico, always looking for repeats: men or women that she might have seen before, people wearing the same clothes, the same shoes, anyone who might have shown an unusual interest in her. Her skill had been developed in the crucibles of some of the world’s most inhospitable cities, and, despite her thoroughness, she didn’t see anything that gave her cause for concern.

  She took another bus on San Miguel and rode it the rest of the way, disembarking on the main drag behind the plaza. She made her way into the square.

  75

  Beatrix proceeded through a wide alley between two buildings and emerged into the plaza beyond. An old Spanish cathedral anchored the cobbled square. The buildings surrounding it were from different periods in Havana’s history, but their concrete-coloured coral block construction and turquoise doors and balcony rails unified them. It reminded Beatrix of the medieval squares in Spain and Portugal.

  It was seven in the morning and quiet, although the buskers and clowns who would entertain the crowds later were arriving to begin their preparations. The white umbrellas of the patio tables dotted around the perimeter gave the plaza a festival air.

  Beatrix looked up at the cathedral. If the plaza was a theatre, then the building—flanked by tall masonry bell towers at the far end—was its grand proscenium. A pair of tourists, starting their sightseeing early, held their cameras high as they backed up to get a wide enough angle to capture the three sets of massive double doors.

  Beatrix walked the final hundred yards to San Ignacio. The restaurant—El Patio—was quiet. She had used it before for a rendezvous with a Cuban agent who worked in the Ministry of Agriculture, and it had served well. The place had outside tables that spilled out onto the sidewalk, and feral street cats stalked between them, looking for scraps. There was more seating inside. Beatrix knew that Logan would be more careful than to sit in a place where it would be easy for them to be observed; she went in and saw him at a table at the back of the room.

  He stood, stepping out from behind the table so that he could greet her. “Hello,” he said, extending a hand.

  Beatrix took it. Logan looked even more dishevelled than he had done in Hong Kong; his hair was messy, with errant strands plastered to his forehead by sweat that was drying in the cool of the restaurant’s air-con. His cheeks were red and blotchy, and he was breathing a little heavily. Beatrix could see that he was almost constitutionally ill-suited to warm climates, which made his recent activity in Hong Kong and now Havana almost amusing.

  “I wouldn’t recommend eating here,” she said. “The food is diabolical.”

  A waitress came to the table. Logan ordered a coffee and Beatrix said that she would have the same. The waitress scribbled down the order, and, without saying a word, slouched away again.

  “This is a government place?” he asked.

  “It is. They get the staff straight from prison. Still—we won’t be disturbed.”

  He took off his linen jacket, revealing patches of sweat beneath his arms and a stripe running all the way down his back.

  “How long have you been in the country?” he asked.

  “A little while,” she said.

  “You’ve been careful?”

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. Yes—I’ve been careful. No—they don’t know where we are. No—they didn’t follow me here. Yes—I can vouch for my own operational security. And, no—I can’t comment on yours.”

  Logan ignored that. “Where’s Danny?”

  “He’s here.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Not yet,” Beatrix said. “You need to bring me Melissa first.”

  “We didn’t agree to that.”

  “We didn’t agree to anything,” Beatrix clarified. “I’m telling you what we’re prepared to do.”

  Logan sighed in exasperation. “You tell me, then. How do we play it?”

  “We do the exchange tonight,” she said. “You bring her. I’ll bring one of the tapes.”

  “And the other one?”

  “You get that one after.”

  Logan stared at her and, for a moment, Beatrix wondered if he was going to prevaricate.

  “What about Nakamura? Do I get to meet him?”

  “You said you wouldn’t need to.”

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “You can meet him when he’s on the way to the States after you’ve used his evidence to get rid of Lincoln.”

  He stared at her again, chewing the inside of his lip. “Fine,” he said at last. “Melissa for the first tape, the second tape tomorrow. Where and when do you want to meet?”

  She had already decided upon a suitable location. “There’s a town on the coast twenty-five miles to the west of the city,” she said. “Mariel—it’s on the southeast side of Mariel Bay. We can meet outside the church.”

  “When?”

  “Midnight.”

  Logan nodded his agreement. “Very good.”

  Beatrix stood.

  “Don’t you want your coffee?” Logan asked her.

  “You have it.”

  “Bring the tape,” he said.

  “Bring Melissa.”

  She left the café just as the waitress was returning with their drinks. She walked past her and into the bright sunlight outside. It was hot and getting hotter, and the wig on her head was uncomfortable. She was looking forward to getting back to the house and taking it off. There was a taxi rank at the other side of the street; she jogged across and slipped into the car at the front of the line.

  The driver looked up into the rear-view mirror. “Where you want to go?”

  Beatrix would have preferred to go straight home, but that wasn’t possible. She had been sure that she was black on her way to the meet, but she knew that there was a good chance that Logan would have a team ready to follow her; if not him, she knew that the DGI would have a presence here. She was going to have to go through another dry-cleaning route again, just longer and more careful than before.

  “The Necrópolis, por favor,” she said.

  She sighed as the driver pulled away. The cemetery was supposed to be something; at least she’d get the chance to have a look around while she made sure that she was still black.

  76

  It was midday when Beatrix finally returned to the house. Danny was relaxing. There was a bookshelf in one of the two sitting rooms, and he had found a paperback copy of a Jack Reacher novel in its original English; he was reading through it with his feet up on the table when Beatrix returned.

  “How was it?” he asked her.

  “Fine,” Beatrix said.

  “And? What’s next?”

  Beatrix told him what she had agreed with Logan: she would meet him again later, away from the city, to swap one of the tapes for Melissa.

  “He’ll do it?”

  “It’s what he said he’d do. He’s not reneging. We’ll give him the other tape tomorrow, when we know he’s playing straight. He’ll get you out of the country if you want.”

  Danny folded the corner of the page he was reading and laid the book down on the table. “I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about it,” he said. “What do I do for the rest of the day?”

  “Entertain yourself,” Beatrix suggested. “Finish your book. I don’t know—whatever.”

  “I’m not v
ery good with waiting,” he admitted.

  “You’re going to get a lot of practice.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to bed,” she said.

  Beatrix didn’t take chances. She was meticulous about her planning and had never been afraid to call off an operation if she was even the slightest bit wary of the circumstances surrounding it. Tonight had the potential to be tricky, and she wanted to make sure that she was ready for it.

  She took the motorcycle leathers and helmet from the wardrobe and laid them out on the bed. They were all in black and perfectly anonymous. She paid special attention to the helmet: the visor was smoked and it was impossible to see through it from the outside; that was good, and just as she had requested.

  She went into the bathroom and took off the disguise, returning the wig to her bag. She would rely upon the helmet for her secrecy this evening. She undressed and showered, standing under the cold water for ten minutes until her skin tingled. She closed her eyes and let her thoughts drift. She found, to her surprise, that she was almost enjoying herself. It wasn’t as if she had been out of the game—she had been working for Yeung for months, after all—but this was different. She was doing something because it was the right thing to do. Beatrix found that she could almost take pleasure from that.

  Almost.

  She dried herself off, wrapped the towel around her and went back into her bedroom. She took the Makarov out of the holster and checked it over once again. She had no reason to think that she would need it, but, then again, she had no reason to think that she would not. It appeared that Logan had played straight with them so far, but that didn’t mean that she trusted him. Far from it. He had an agenda to follow, and she wasn’t naïve enough to think that he wouldn’t run right over her and Danny if that was what he thought he had to do.