Free Murder in Havana by Margaret Truman Page A

were forbidden in Cuba, Gosling had said. He’d also told Pauling that if he needed cash, he could use the card to obtain up to five thousand dollars at Banco Financiero Internacional, in the Hotel Habana Libre.
    The room to which he was shown was large but utilitarian; some of the furniture bore scars from years of use. It was on the fourth floor. He opened a window and looked down on the Malecón. Even at a late hour it teemed with activity, hundreds of people milling about, young couples openly necking on the seawall, street merchants hawking their wares, radios blaring infectious Cuban riffs and rhythms. The music, and the heat, drifted up to him and he suddenly felt nauseous. Pauling closed the window, turned up the room’s air-conditioning, and sprawled on the bed. The room was dark except for a small lamp on the desk. Even with the windows and drapes closed, the sounds from the Malecón reached him. The urge for a cigarette came and went, and returned.
Maybe a fabled Cuban cigar
, he thought;
I won’t inhale
.
    Then, for no known reason, as though some alien spirit had invaded his body, tears came to his eyes and he felt cold and alone.
    It had been years since such a feeling had overtaken him. It had happened in Budapest while on assignment for the CIA, working through an embassy cover, handling an informer from Hungary’s military bureaucracy who wanted to defect, accepting the secrets the informer brought to the safe house, feeding the man’s ego alongwith good whiskey and food, flush with the excitement of clandestine meetings and shadowy relationships, the danger and intrigue a kind of nourishment for his own soul—until the informer was found dead one morning in a vacant lot near his modest home, discovered by his ten-year-old son.
    It was that night, after the informer had failed to show up at the safe house—and after Pauling had learned the reason why—that this damnable wave of weakness and vulnerability had swept over him while lying in bed in his apartment in Budapest, hearing music and people laughing outside, and he had thought of Doris and his sons.
    Now, he wondered, what was Jessica doing at this moment? Did she miss him?
    He went to the small bathroom, splashed cold water on his face, but avoided looking at the mirror.
    Music from the nightclub followed him across the lobby, through the front door of the hotel, and along the expansive Malecón. But after a half hour of walking, fatigue from the long flight caught up with him and he returned to the hotel. The cocktail lounge was still open. He sat at the bar and ordered Hatuey, a Cuban lager. A group of Canadian tourists, loudly proclaiming their presence, occupied a large corner table. An affectionate couple—they looked French to Pauling—held hands and kissed in another corner. To Pauling’s left was a heavyset man who attempted to speak in Spanish to the bartender. On the right was an extremely attractive woman, perhaps thirty, no younger, possibly a few years older. He assumed she was Cuban; certainly of Hispanic origin. Her hair was raven black, thick and luxurious, shimmering beneath the targeted light from a recessed spotlight above her. He saw her in profile; her features were fine; good genes had prevailed. She wore a blue-and-yellow silk dress and a dozen thin gold bracelets on her left wrist.The half-finished drink on the bar in front of her was dark, a rum concoction, he assumed. He’d noticed since arriving in Havana that Cuban women, at least those in the prime of their sexual lives, tended to be lusty and voluptuous. It wasn’t so much physical assets that defined their attractiveness. It was an exuded sense that, for them, sex was to be freely and openly enjoyed, even celebrated, giving further credence to the theory that the major sexual organ is between the ears.
    She’d ignored him when he sat down, never bothering to turn. Was she a prostitute? he wondered. Prostitution was rampant in Cuba, particularly with young