Havana Bay

fear.'

'That's quite enough,' Olga Petrovna said.» I know you have homework.'

'If he's a friend of Uncle Sergei's he'll want to see it.'

'That is enough, young lady.'

'Stupid coat.' Carmen looked Arkady up and down.

Olga Petrovna clapped her hands until the girl tucked in her chin and marched to the next room.» I'm sorry, that's children now.'

'When was the last time you saw Sergei Sergeevich?'

'A Friday after work. I had taken Carmen for an ice cream on the Malecon when we ran into him talking to a Cuban. I remember Carmen said that she heard something roar, and Sergei Sergeevich said his neighbor kept a lion that ate little girls. She became so irritable we had to hurry home. Usually they did get on wonderfully.' When Arkady had her show him on a map she pointed to the Malec6n in front of Pribluda's flat.» Sergei Sergeevich wore a captain's cap and the Cuban was carrying one of those enormous inner tubes they fish from. A black man is all I remember.'

'Did you hear a roar?'

'Something, maybe.' As she put the albums away she asked, 'Do you think there's any truth to this story that Sergei Sergeevich is dead?'

'I'm afraid there might be. Some of the Cuban investigators are very competent.'

'Dead of what?'

'A heart attack, they say.'

'But you have some doubts?'

'I just like to be sure.'

Olga Petrovna sighed. Even in her time in Havana the city had become another Haiti. And Moscow was overrun by Chechens and gangs. Where could a person go?

He thought for a moment he had caught sight of a man keeping pace behind him in the dark of the arcade. Was he being followed? He couldn't tell. It was hard to single out a shadow when everyone knew which way the streets ran except you, when everyone looked in place but you, with the sea on one side and on the other a maze of demolition piles, cars hauled onto sidewalks, lines of people waiting for ice cream, a bus, bread, water.

So he plunged on in his coat, drawing glances as if he were a monk wandered off the Via Dolorosa.

Arkady took a taxi back to the Malecon and walked the last few blocks to Pribluda's apartment past boys demanding Chiclets and men offering mulatas, and beyond conversation starters of 'Amiga, que hora es? De que pais? Momentico, amigo.' Overhead hung balconies, arabesques of wrought-iron spikes and potted plants, women in housedresses and men stripped to their underwear and cigars, music shifting from window to window. Decay everywhere, heat everywhere, faded colors trying to hold together disintegrating plaster and salt-eaten beams.

Chapter Six

Ofelia was Arkady and Dr. Bias played Rufo. They positioned the tables and taped the floor of the IML conference room to indicate the perimeters of the walls, bookshelves and doors of the embassy flat so that they could-for their own information-'reconstruct the facts' of Rufo Pinero's death.

'Reconstruction of the facts' distinguished Cuban forensic medicine from the American, Russian, German. In Cuban laboratories, in Nicaraguan rain forests, in the dusty fields of Angola, Bias had re-created homicides to the amazement not only of judges but of the criminals themselves. A reconstruction of the facts surrounding the death of the Russian neumatico might be impossible because of the drifting and deterioration of the body. Rufo's death, however, took place in an apartment, not open water, and left certain irrefutable facts: Rufo's body with an oversized arterial syringe in hand, a knife with Rufo's prints stuck into a bookcase, no bruises on the dead man's body, no disheveled clothes, no signs that pointed to anything but a swift, fatal confrontation.

Nevertheless, the doctor was stymied and breathing hard. They took into account that Rufo Pinero was a former athlete, taller and heavier than Renko by twenty kilos, maybe more. The Russian was exhausted by travel, confused, clearly not athletic, though not totally obtuse. Bias thought that described Renko well enough.

They staged the attack in various ways. Rufo rising from a chair, waiting in the room, entering the door. No matter, wielding scissors and a pencil as a knife and syringe, Bias didn't come close to efficiently or rapidly dispatching Ofelia. Part of the problem was that she was so fast afoot. Ofelia had run the hundred-meter dash at school and hardly gained a kilo since then. She had a habit of shifting her weight from foot to foot that Bias found annoying.

Another problem was that the attack spoke of surprise. Yet using both a 'knife' and a 'syringe' made Bias slow and unwieldy. The simple act of bringing out not one but two weapons gave a victim time to react. Rufo would have been led laps around the room and table and chairs would have flown in all directions had Ofelia been the intended victim.

'Maybe it was a spontaneous attack,' Bias said.

'Rufo wore a body-length jumpsuit of waterproof material over his shirt and pants. There's nothing spontaneous about that. He knew what he was going to do.'

'Renko does not look quite so elusive.'

'Maybe if he was threatened with a weapon.'

'Two weapons.'

'No,' Ofelia decided, 'Rufo had one weapon, the knife. The needle was the surprise for him.' She hurried because she was a mere detective and Bias was a pathologist renowned for the rigor of his methodology. However, she could almost see the fight take place.

'You know how the Russian always wears that ridiculous coat. I believe the knife pinned the coat to the bookcase. There is a tear in the lapel of the coat and there was a coat fiber on the knife. I think that was when Rufo was killed.'

'With the syringe?'

'In self-defense.'

Bias took Ofelia's hand, which was slim on the soap-scented meat of his palm.» What is wonderful about you is your sympathy for the most unlikely people. Only, this is not an investigation. You and I are merely satisfying our professional curiosity about the physical facts of a death.'

'But don't you wonder?'

'No.' Bias's expression said he wasn't a sexist, but that women often lost focus.» You're concerned about the syringe. Very well, we lost one in the lab. Either Renko or Rufo could have stolen it. But why would Renko? For drugs? I found no drugs in the syringe. He stole it as a weapon? If he had any fear for his life he wouldn't have come to Havana. We must be more sophisticated. For example, consider character. Rufo was a hustler, an opportunist. He saw the syringe and took it. Renko is a phlegmatic Russian. Everything for him is a mental debate, I guarantee you. And there is the matter of physical force. Ask yourself if Renko thought he could subdue someone as strong as Rufo. Even in self-defense.'

'Maybe he didn't think, maybe he reacted.'

'With a syringe already in his hand? A syringe for which he had no use? A syringe that ended in Rufo's grip?'

She withdrew her hand.» Rufo pulled it out of his head. I would.'

'Maybe? Would? You are speculating. Truth reveals itself more to logic than to inspiration.' Bias had caught his breath.» We'll try the reconstruction again. Only, this time move a little slower. You forget that Renko is a smoker, probably a drinker, certainly out of condition. You, on the other hand, are most definitely in shape, younger, more alert. I don't see how he could start to defend himself. Maybe Rufo slipped. Ready?'

Rufo was not the sort who slipped, Ofelia thought.

She had had a good friend named Maria at the university. Some years later, Maria married a poet who declared himself an observer for human rights in Havana.

Soon Ofelia saw on television that he had been sentenced to twenty years for assault and that Maria had been arrested for prostitution. When Ofelia visited her in jail Maria told a different story. She said that she had just