Señor Saint (The Saint Series) Page 9

  “It looks fine,” she said.

  “I can only apologize again for the inconvenience,” he said. “I am sorry we could not have met in any other way, so that I could have hoped to see you again without you thinking bad things of me.”

  It was her turn to feel awkward and embarrassed.

  “I think you’ve been very charming,” she said. “If everyone who had an accident was like you, the insurance companies would be out of business.”

  “You are very kind. But still I have made it impossible for me ever to ask you to dinner.”

  His manner was studiously correct but disarmingly wistful, and his good looks were finally able to make their impression on her.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Why not ask me, and let me decide how I feel?”

  He had given her the most enjoyable evening she had yet spent in Havana, and had distinguished himself further by not making a single premature pass. Therefore she had no excuse for refusing to let him drive her around sightseeing in her own car the next day—which prolonged itself painlessly into another dinner together, and thus into another project for the following morning. And so on.

  Almost from the first evening she began to notice odd things about him—the way he would stop and look carefully up and down the street every time they came out of a building, a trick of glancing back over his shoulder at unexpected moments, his phobia about taking any table in a restaurant where he could not sit facing the entrance and with his back to a wall, the continual restless wandering of his eyes. By the third day she had no hesitation about asking him why.

  “And so he told you,” said the Saint.

  “I suppose it was easier for him, since I was a foreigner, so at least he could be pretty sure I wasn’t already on the other side. And we’d become very good friends very quickly. You know, that can happen.”

  Simon nodded.

  “What is he afraid of?”

  “You forget, it’s really a dictatorship here. And Ramón is one of the people who are trying to get rid of the Strong Man and bring democracy back. You know what would happen to him if the Secret Police caught him.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t been following Cuban politics too closely,” Simon confessed. “However, what’s the programme for getting rid of the Strong Man? A fine rowdy revolution, or a nice neat assassination?”

  “Neither,” she said with some spirit. “Ramón and his friends aren’t gangsters. You can’t build a lasting good government on any kind of violence. And it isn’t necessary, either. The majority wants freedom, as they do in any dictatorship. They’re just held down by one small group that’s well organized and has all the key positions. So the Underground is organizing too, and they’ll just arrest that group all at once, the same as a surgeon would remove a growth, without chopping the patient up with an axe.”

  “It sounds frightfully humane and tidy,” Simon remarked. “South American revolutions were a lot more fun when I was a boy. So time marches on…Well, when is this change-over set for?”

  “Very soon now. It might be almost any day.”

  “If it’s all so efficiently organized and ready to roll so soon, I’m still wondering why you so desperately need me.”

  She stood up again, as if the springs of repressed excitement would not let her relax.

  “They’re afraid that there may be a traitor in the Underground.”

  “Aha.”

  “And if there is, he might know that Ramón is the only man who has a complete list of all the members. You see what that means? If Ramón was arrested by the Secret Police, everything would be lost. He’s sure that they’d never get a single name out of him under any torture”—she shuddered—“but if they got the list, all his courage wouldn’t make any difference.”

  “I’m beginning to appreciate this lad Ramón,” said the Saint. “The list, I gather, isn’t in his head.”

  “Of course not. It couldn’t possibly be. There are thousands of names and addresses on it. Naturally there has to be one key list like that, but can you imagine the responsibility of trying to keep it safe?”

  Simon regarded her steadily.

  “Looking at you,” he observed thoughtfully, “I gather that it makes you pretty jittery.”

  She stared at him, her eyes widening and her mouth falling open.

  “I didn’t say—”

  “No, you didn’t say it, darling. But my brain is beginning to work. Obviously, Ramón has asked you to take care of this list.”

  She brought her lips together again with a shrug of resolution.

  “All right, that’s it. I’m leaving tonight, and I’m to take it back to the States with me. I can put it in a safe deposit box in Miami until Ramón needs it, and the Secret Police can’t do anything about that.”

  “But you’re scared about getting it there—is that it? You’ve been seen around with Ramón too much. If he’s already being watched—which you don’t know—then you may be suspected yourself.”

  “Ramon thinks the odds are on my side. As an American who’s never been here before, they ought to believe I’m…well, just a passing romance. But I can’t help thinking and thinking about the other possibility. Suppose they don’t?”

  “You’ve got something to worry about.”

  “So that’s why—when I saw you for the third time running last night—and by that time I knew who you were—it seemed like an omen. I had to ask you for help.” In her intensity she was completely sexless, either because she scorned such wiles or because nothing in her background was consonant with the use of them; yet for that very reason her appeal was stronger than any siren could have achieved. “Please, will you?”

  “Yes,” said the Saint calmly.

  She slumped against the wall, twisting her hands together.

  “I feel so stupid and small,” she said. “And I was so excited at first. Coming here, and meeting a man who turned out to be a real hero like Ramón and winning his confidence. And then having the chance to do something really important for the first time in my life—something truly dangerous and romantic, like most people only read about. But when it came right to the point, I found I didn’t have what it takes. It wasn’t only being scared of how I’d react to being arrested, or—or the things they might do to me. It was thinking of the thousands of other people whose lives I’d be responsible for. And I found out I was in a blue frozen funk, all through my insides…You must despise me.”

  “Anything but. I’m glad you had the sense to know when you were out of your depth, and the guts to admit it.” The Saint’s brows lowered over a passing thought. “Ramón spotted me last night, too—I saw you speak to each other about it. What did he say?”

  “He didn’t like it. I told him it must be a coincidence, and you couldn’t possibly be against him, but he was worried. I tried to tell him what everyone knows about you, but I don’t know how much I convinced him. That’s why I still haven’t told him I spoke to you.”

  Simon lighted a cigarette.

  “All right. Where is this list now?”

  “It’s in one of my suitcases. He left it with me last night.”

  She hesitated a moment, and then went and opened a suitcase which stood on a trestle in a corner. She turned over a few folded pieces of clothing and brought out an alligator briefcase.

  She came over to the Saint with it, and he took it.

  “What’s the opposite of a nightmare?” she said. “It’s the word I need for the way it feels to know I don’t have to think twice about trusting you.”

  “The words you’re thinking of may be ‘pipe-dream,’ ” he said sardonically.

  The briefcase was brand new, so that the leather bulged stiffly over the bulk that it contained. It was equipped with a lock which Simon recognized as being much more resistant to amateur picking than the average run of such hardware, although of course it had no defence against a sharp knife in the hands of anyone who was not bothered about preserving its virginal appearance.

&
nbsp; “I’d suggest you go on packing, and let Ramón think this is still in the bottom of that suitcase—then there won’t be any argument,” said the Saint, and got to his feet. “By the way, when are you seeing him again?”

  “He’s coming here at one o’clock, for a farewell lunch—or I suppose you’d say, an hasta la vista. He has to bring my car back, anyhow—I let him take it home last night after he brought me back, because his own car is in the shop having an overhaul.”

  The Saint’s very clear blue eyes searched her face with disconcerting penetration.

  “You think a lot of this guy, don’t you?”

  “Only because of what he’s doing, and what he stands for,” she insisted. “I’m not a middle-aged sugar-mammy who came here to look for a Latin thrill. You mustn’t believe that.”

  “I don’t,” he said soberly. “And most especially the ‘middle-aged’ part.”

  He stubbed out his cigarette and turned towards the door.

  “Thanks to the discretion ingrained in me by a misspent youth,” he said, “I got out of my taxi two blocks away, walked over to the beach, wandered into the back of this posada by way of the swimming pool, and ambled up a service stairway. If any Gestapo gunsels do happen to be watching you, I don’t think they saw me coming and I don’t think they’ll see me leave.”

  “But where’ll I see you again?” she gasped, in a sudden panic.

  “If you don’t know, nobody can make you tell. But I’ll find you. Don’t worry.” He grinned, and tapped the briefcase under his arm. “Whatever happens, I shall be holding the bag.”

  He had already started down the service stairs when he heard other footsteps coming up. It was too late to turn back, for whoever was coming up would have turned the corner of the half-landing and seen him before he could have retreated out of sight, and his abrupt reversal of direction would have looked guilty even to someone who was quite unsuspicious. And there was no reason why the feet could not belong to innocent guests of the hotel or its equally inoffensive employees. Simon kept on going, with his reflexes triggered on invisible needle points.

  They were two men in dark suits, with a certain air about them which to the Saint was as informative as a label. They looked at him with mechanical curiosity, but he held his course without faltering, and they fell into single file to let him go by. He passed them with the smile and carefree nod of a tourist who had never consciously noticed a policeman in plain clothes in his life.

  As he reached the foot of the stairs, the voice of one of them came down to him from the floor above, speaking low and tersely in Spanish.

  “Hide yourself here, and take note of anyone who comes to visit her.”

  3

  Out there in the Miramar district where the Comodoro Hotel is located, Havana’s Fifth Avenue (which, like Manhattan’s Sixth, has been officially re-christened ‘Avenue of the Americas,’ and is just as stubbornly known only by its old name to every native) is far from being the city’s busiest thoroughfare, and as he reached it Simon was wondering if he would have trouble finding a taxi. He did not want to be wandering around the streets of that neighbourhood for long, where not only might the plain-clothes men he had already encountered decide belatedly to investigate him, but Ramón Venino might come driving by from any direction en route to his rendezvous with Beryl Carrington.

  He need have had no anxiety. He had barely taken one glance up and down the street when a taxi, drawn by the uncanny instinct for prey that achieves its supreme development in the vulture and the Havana taxi driver, made a screaming U turn and swooped in to the curb beside him.

  “Where to?” asked the driver cheerily, starting off without waiting to find out. “Are you hoping to meet a girl, or is your wife here with you? I have a young sister, a lovely girl, but very naughty, who is crazy for Americanos.”

  “I have a weak heart,” said the Saint, “and the doctor has ordered me to leave naughty girls alone.”

  “Some sightseeing then? I can take you to the Botanical Gardens, then to the Cathedral—”

  Simon frowned at the briefcase on the seat beside him. Wherever he went, its pristine newness would be conspicuous, and to walk into his hotel with it in full view, where either policemen or friends of the man he had called Pancho might be watching for him, would be too naïve to even consider.

  “How about one of the rum distilleries?” he suggested.

  “Yes, sir. I will take you to Trocadero.”

  Presently they drew up beside a large low building, at an entrance with sliding doors designed for trucks to drive through. The driver waved aside the Saint’s proffered payment.

  “I will be here when you come out.”

  Simon stepped into the odorous interior, and was adopted at once by the nearest of a number of men who stood waiting by the entrance.

  “Good morning, sir. This is where we make that famous Cuban rum. Step this way, please.” They entered one corner of a vast barn-like factory. “The sugar cane is pulped in that machine there, and then the juice is fermented in those tanks over there. Then it passes through those stills which you see there, and the rum goes into those barrels to be aged. Now this way, please.” They passed through another door into a large room conveniently at hand, where there were several tables already well populated by other visitors concluding their research into the manufacture of rum. “Here we invite you to sample our products. Sit down and be comfortable—there is no hurry.”

  Each table was provided with stools on three sides and a long row of bottles on the fourth. Simon’s guide went behind the bottles and at once became a bartender rapidly pouring samples into an inexhaustible supply of glasses, as other guides all over the room were already doing for their personal protégés.

  “This is our light rum, this is our dark rum, this is our very best rum. Don’t be bashful, it’s all on the house. These are our liqueurs—apricot brandy, blackberry brandy, crème de cacao. Have whatever you want, there is no limit. And you should try our special exotic drinks—banana cordial, pineapple cordial, mango cordial. You are allowed to take back five bottles with you free of duty. Would you like some of our Tropical Punch, or some Elixir, or a frozen Daiquiri?”

  “I’ll take five bottles of plain drinking rum,” said the Saint, sipping very judiciously. “But I want ’em in one of those fancy baskets that you give away.”

  “Of course.” The man whipped out a pad and wrote the order. “I’ll get them for you right away. Help yourself to anything you want while you’re waiting.”

  Simon moistened his tongue experimentally, out of academic interest, with some of the more unfamiliar flavours, but he was in no mood, as most of the students of distillation around him seemed to be, to take memorable advantage of the phenomenon of unlimited free drinks. He was not even interested in the rum he was buying, except as much of it as would be suitable ballast for the container it would come in.

  The guide-salesman returned promptly, bearing a sturdy straw bag of the kind in which every island in the Caribbean makes a trademark of packaging the homing tourist’s duty-free quota of the local brew. Simon paid him, picked up the bag along with the briefcase which he had brought in with him, and went out to look for his driver, who had expected to rack up a nice hunk of waiting time and was disappointed to see him so soon.

  “Take me to the Sevilla-Biltmore,” said the Saint.

  He quietly removed the paper-wrapped bottles from the straw bag, and put the new alligator briefcase in.

  “Do you drink rum, amigo?” Simon inquired.

  “Sometimes,” said the driver indifferently.

  Simon handed a bottle over the back of the front seat.

  “Put this away for when you feel thirsty,” he said.

  “Thank you, señor,” said the driver, much more brightly. “Did you enjoy the distillery?”

  “It was most educational,” said the Saint. He passed over another bottle. “Take this one home to your sister, the lovely and naughty one, with my compliments and
regrets.”

  “I thank you for her,” said the driver earnestly. “She would certainly be crazy for an Americano like you. It is a great pity your heart is not just a little stronger. She can be most gentle, too.”

  “It would be a privilege to die in her arms,” Simon said gravely, “but it might be embarrassing for you both.”

  The three remaining bottles, replaced alongside and overlapping the briefcase, adequately concealed it and left the straw bag bulging just about the same as before.

  “I will wait for you,” said the driver, as Simon got out in front of the hotel.

  “Not this time,” Simon told him firmly. “I may not go out again today at all.”

  He let the distillery basket be snatched by a determined bellhop, and followed it up the steps to the lobby after paying off the cab.

  “What room, sir?”

  “Can you keep it down here for me till I check out?” Simon asked, and added for the conclusive benefit of anyone who might be listening, “I don’t want to start drinking it up before I get home.”

  The bellhop took the bag to the little store room behind the bell captain’s desk, and gave him the stub of a tag. Simon gave him a quarter in exchange and strolled casually away towards the elevators; but as he reached the elevator alcove he swung briskly to his left around a group of visiting firemen and turned off again down the little-used passage to the side entrance on the Prado. But it was not too little used for there to be a taxi waiting outside, and Simon was in it before the driver had time to deliver more than the first four words of his sales talk.

  “The Toledo,” Simon said.

  “If you want a real good restaurant,” said the driver, “let me take you to—”

  “I have to meet someone at the Toledo—and,” Simon continued rapidly, to forestall any further suggestions, “she happens to be a young and beautiful girl.”

  This was the purest fiction, but he had nevertheless picked the Toledo for a reason. He had eaten well enough there once before, and knew it to be a small quiet place that made relatively little effort to invite the tourist trade. He thought that he might have done a fair job of throwing any possible followers off his scent for a while, and he did not want to show himself in any of the places where the bloodhounds would most naturally go sniffing first if they were trying to get back on his trail. At least he would like a chance to enjoy his lunch, and a breathing spell in which to sit still and think.