Free Murder in Havana by Margaret Truman

is more political than consular. But we have registered each of you and urge you to contact us if any problems arise that indicate we might be of help. We’re housed in what used to be our embassy—the Swiss have taken it over.” He handed out a sheet of paper on which the Special Interests Section’s address and relevant phone numbers were listed. “Enjoy your stay,” he said. “And welcome to Cuba.”
    “Annabel. Mac.”
    “You’re there.”
    “I think so. I just got to my room.”
    “You sound so close.”
    “Yeah, I’m surprised, too. They evidently brought in Italian and Mexican phone companies to improve the phone service, which used to be two tin cans connected by a string. How are you?”
    “Fine. How was the flight? The hotel?”
    “No problems. The room is lovely, a suite really, on a special executive floor. All the amenities. Cable TV, a safe, minibar. And obviously a telephone. Probably a wiretap. I have an ocean view.”
    “I didn’t think you were supposed to enjoy opulent accommodations in a Communist country.”
    “It probably doesn’t represent most of the country. What’s new back home?”
    “Not a lot. I spent some time at the gallery trying to straighten out the computer problems. A total failure. I’ll have to bring someone in. Oh, guess who called?”
    “Fidel? Looking for a date?”
    “Jessica Mumford.”
    “That’s a voice from the past. How is she?”
    “She’s fine. She loves New Mexico. She’s working for a local hospital.”
    Although Jessica had moved from Washington, she and Annabel kept fairly regular phone contact.
    “Is she still with the guy she moved there with? He was with State. What was his name? Max something.”
    “Max Pauling. She’s still with him, although he’s off on some assignment.”
    “I thought he left whichever agency he was with.”
    “He’s not with the government any longer. Jessica says he’s doing something with his plane in Miami.”
    “That’s right. He was a pilot. Well, I’d better get unpacked. We have a briefing in an hour.” He gave her thephone number of the hotel. “How’s Rufus?” he asked. The Great Blue Dane was part of their family.
    “Depressed. He misses you.”
    “Give him a kiss for me. Here’s one for you, too.”
    “I’m not depressed—but I’ll take it anyway.”

Max Pauling’s arrival in Havana was neither auspicious nor ceremonial. He’d hoped to fly nonstop from Colombia to Havana, but with the plane’s cargo bringing it close to a maximum gross weight of forty-eight hundred pounds, he was forced to make a refueling stop in the Dominican Republic. Now he touched down at José Martí Airport shortly after midnight and was directed by ground control to one of many cargo buildings. There, his cargo was unloaded into a truck dispatched by Havana’s foremost hospital, Hermanos Ameijeiras.
    “I need a taxi,” Pauling told a dispatcher at the facility.
    “Sí, señor.”
    Minutes after the dispatcher placed a call, a Russian-built Lada from Panataxi pulled up, driven by a young man wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. Pauling told him, “Hotel Habana Riviera,
por favor
.”
    The driver thanked Pauling profusely for paying in dollars instead of pesos and deposited him in front of the twenty-story hotel, a throwback to the days when Meyer Lansky and the American Mafia ran Havana. Lansky had built it as his last attempt to emulate the Las Vegas strip before being forced to flee Cuba when Castro, victorious in his revolution, announced, “We are ready not only to deport American gangsters, but to shoot them.”
    Next to it was the more imposing Meliá Cohiba Hotel;well-dressed men and women, few of them Cuban, streamed through its doors.
    Pauling entered and looked in on Palacio de Salsa, a nightclub, off the lobby, before going to the desk and registering, using a MasterCard issued on a Canadian bank that had been in the packet of materials given him by Vic Gosling. Cards issued by U.S. banks