“Got a prostate the size of a grapefruit,” he said. “That’s part of the deal. Well, you know what the deal is,” he said. “I come back, do some prison time, get an operation in federal slammer. Maybe I die there. Who knows? It’s all part of the package. If I die in America, they bury me in America. If I survive jail, I live my last years in America. Win-win. Get it?”
She nodded. So that was the angle. The waiter returned with two glasses, one empty and one filled with ice and a bottle of Pepsi, or at least something the color of cola in a Pepsi bottle. The waiter started to pour. Violette shooed him away, indicating he would administer to his own beverage.
“Just asking,” she said, “how do you know the CIA is going to keep any deal they make with you?”
“Why? You think they won’t?” he asked sharply.
“No. Just wondering. Seems they might still be plenty mad at you.”
“I’m sure they are,” he said. “Because I beat them at their own dirty games. I have a lawyer in New York,” said Violette. “A smart little Hebrew with a big nose and a shiny bald head. He negotiated a deal for me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s all money, you know. Who you can buy, what you can buy. That’s the only thing that counts, money, money, money. Capitalist system. Just business. Screw everyone before they screw you. Nothing personal.”
She couldn’t help herself. “Is that why you sold out to so many other people?” she asked. “Just business?” She had expected that he might at least be troubled by the morality of what he had done, even two and a half decades ago, then realized she had been naive to entertain such a thought. If Violette was troubled, he didn’t show it. Instead, he held up the glass with the ice in it, examining the cubes carefully in the light from the ceiling window.
“Never know what’s in the ice in Havana,” he said. “I’ve found ticks as big as my toenail and toenails as big as ticks. Sometimes glass … sometimes I find glass. And fleas. Lots of fleas. World wouldn’t starve if everyone ate fleas.” Then he turned to her. “What?” he asked.
“Just business?” she repeated. “The money you took from the Soviets to give up spies? It was just business?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“But it happened. People got killed.”
“So what? They would have sold me out just as easily,” he said. “They were selling out people themselves. They were Russians, the people I sold out, mostly Russians, and they were squealing on their own people. Dog- eat-dog. Bow wow wow. I needed money.”
“If your Communist system works better,” she asked, “why are you coming back?”
He laughed. “System here doesn’t work,” he said. “System here stinks. Castro sold out his own revolution. I’ve had a snootful for twenty-six years. I can tell you all about it.”
He poured his soft drink and spent several seconds examining the bubbles, as if to find a deeper truth in them. “Everyone thinks I’m some sort of latter-day Leninist,” he said. “Not true. You know what? I love America. I just wish America would be true to America.” He drank half the glass. “American soil, American soil. See, that’s the thing. I want to live my final years on American soil and be buried in American earth. That’s where I came from, so that’s where I go back to. That’s my only wish.”
“So I hear.”
He eyed her. “Why should it bother you?” he said. “What were you, five years old when it all happened? A gleam in your horny father’s eye? How old are you, twenty?”
“Thirty,” she said.
“Thirty,” he scoffed. “You’re less than half my age, less than half. Thirty is the new fifteen. When are you getting me out of here?” he asked. “I want to leave.” His eyes shot to the door and back.
“If the connections can be arranged, we leave in forty-eight hours,” she said. “You ready to travel?”
“I’m ready to travel. Been ready for two years, if you want to know. It’s your own Justice Department people who’ve been dragging their feet.”
“What about the twenty-six years before that?” she couldn’t help asking.
“What about them?” he stiffened.
“Just asking,” she said. “Earlier, you seemed quite content here, from what I saw in your file. Now it’s a different story.”
“Ah,” he scoffed. “Different times. Rica was alive. Life was merrier.”
For several seconds, Violette stared at Alex in an unfocused way, as if trying to see through her or discover some inner truth that he hadn’t found in the Pepsi bubbles. Then he ducked his eyes and picked up what remained of his thought patterns. “None of us are perfect people,” Violette said. “Not me, not you, not Rica. She spent me into oblivion, changed the course of my life, ran off with another man, then came back. But she also brought me more happiness than I’ve known with any other woman. It’s all over now. I know that.”
There was a white stubble on his face that, when the light hit it in a certain way, made him look like a very old man. He rubbed the stubble.
“Know what Mark Twain wrote about Eve?” he asked. “Eve in the Bible, I mean. What Adam said when Eve died?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” Alex said.
“Adam looked at Eve’s grave and said, ‘Wherever she was, there was Eden.’” He paused, and for a second Alex thought she caught a hitch in his voice. Then he went on. “I’ve been waiting for Rica to speak to me since she died. But she doesn’t say much, except in my dreams.”
Alex nodded. “You’re bringing documents with you?” Alex asked.
He nodded. He indicated the box he had with him.
“I need to glance at them,” she said.
“So do it,” he answered.
He pushed the box toward her. The box made her nervous. If the police came in and swept the place, she would be busted for espionage for sure. But she had the idea that Violette wasn’t letting it out of his sight, and she didn’t want to let him out of hers.
So Alex opened it. Keeping the contents out of sight of any onlookers, she quickly glanced through it. The documents were all in Spanish. Alex fingered her way through for two minutes. From the corner of her eye, she saw Paul rise and move toward the entrance. He was watching the door for her. Meanwhile, Violette grew increasingly twitchy and jittery.
She tried to comprehend what the papers were all about. Police stuff. Communist party stuff. Army stuff. She ran her eyes across the dates. Some were fresh, some were from the last five years. It wasn’t Alex’s place to verify the authenticity of the documents, but at first pass they looked good. Not fantastic, but good. Middle-range stuff. Probably worth the trip, probably worth coddling the defector, assuming they got back safely. Who knew how the CIA would inventory the stuff. Again, not her concern. She closed the box and gave it back to him.
“There’s more,” he said. “I wouldn’t be dumb enough to bring it all at once.”
“How many more boxes?” she asked.
“Three.”
“Where’d you get it?”
He paused. “Friends. Women mostly. Various parts of the government. They work in offices and photocopy stuff for future favors.” He smirked.
“What sort of favors?”
“Me helping them get off the island,” he said.
“You’re barely able to get yourself off,” she said. “How do you get anyone else out?”
He shrugged.
“Just business?” she asked.
“Just business,” he answered.
“Okay, then. Be here at 7:00 p.m. two days from now,” she said. “With whatever you’re going to bring with you. One backpack, that’s it, and that has to include the papers. All four boxes or there’s no deal. I’m supposed to tell you that if you’re not here, the deal is dead, and there’ll never be another one. Can you handle that?”
“I’ll be here. I’ll be here.”
Violette finished his drink and the meeting too. He took back his box and stood. For an instant, his cuff slid
