that the club actually existed.'
Erasmo frowned, dug his hand into his beard and scratched.» It does and it doesn't. The building is there, the beach is there, but it's hardly a club anymore. It's complicated.'
'Like Cuba?'
'Like you. Why didn't you tell me you killed Rufo Pinero? I had to hear it on the street.'
'It was an accident.'
'An accident?'
'Of a sort.'
'Yes, that's like saying Russian roulette is a game of a sort. So we do the same things in different ways. Anyway, I didn't lie to you. We did call ourselves the Havana Yacht Club as a joke. It was funny at the time.'
'Some club. Pribluda may be dead, Mongo may be missing and you may be the last living member.'
'I admit, it's not funny when you say it.'
'Unless there are others. Are there any other members you haven't told me about?'
'No.'
'Rufo?'
'No.'
'Luna?'
'No. The three of us, that's all. You know, you're pissing me off and you're making my friends very uneasy.'
The Chinese followed the conversation with an anxiety matched by their lack of comprehension. Erasmo coolly introduced Arkady to them, brothers named Liu with spiky black hair and cigarettes gripped between their teeth. Arkady took in the cemetery's quiet anarchy, a marble cross leaning on a Buddhist altar, tablets inscribed with Chinese characters and wrapped in morning glory, headstone photographs of the departed that peered through scummy ovals of glass. A nice place to die, Arkady thought, quiet, cool, picturesque.
'So this is the Chinese Cemetery?'
'Yes, it is,' Erasmo said.» I told the Lius you were an expert on fighting crime. That's why you're so angry. It makes them feel much better.'
'There's a lot of crime in a cemetery?'
'In this one, yes.'
Now that Arkady noticed, many of the tombs were cracked and reinforced with cement seams and steel bands. Some of the disrepair had occurred over time and under the pressure of spreading roots, but there were also signs of vandalism, marble replaced by cinder blocks or a padlock on a vault's brass door, probably not to keep the dead in, Arkady realized.
'Cubans don't like the Chinese?'
'Cubans love the Chinese, that's the problem. And some Cubans need lucky bones.'
'For what?'
'Ceremonies. If they want money they dig up the bones of a banker, if they want to get well they dig up the bones of a doctor.'
'That makes sense.'
'Unfortunately for the Chinese, their bones are supposed to be the luckiest. So this is where certain people come with their crowbars and shovels, which is very upsetting to Chinese families that revere their ancestors. Dead or alive, they want granddad in one piece. Little did I know that demolition expertise would prove so useful in civilian life. How did you know where to find me?'
'Tico maintained radio silence but I got him to write it out.' Arkady looked down at the coffin, where Erasmo had laid a drill, bell, welder's goggles and surgical mask on a towel. From an athletic bag Erasmo took a vial of something fine-grained and black.» Gunpowder?'
'Just a touch. Life would be boring without it.' Taking a break, the brothers Liu sliced up a papaya and sat down between tombstones to eat. The Chihuahuas curled up with the lions. Was this the 'Chinese contact' that Pribluda had been talking about, a place to come for lucky bones?
The problem was that he seemed to be going in reverse, knowing less all the time rather than more. He didn't know how or where Pribluda died, let alone why. The circle of Pribluda's acquaintances constantly expanded, but none of them had anything to do with the price of sugar, supposedly what the colonel had been investigating. Arkady had never before encountered such a variety of pristinely unrelated people and events: men in inner tubes, Americans on the run, a madman from Oriente, a ballerina, now Chinese bones and Chihuahuas. The truth was, Arkady thought, that apart from grave-robbing there was no suggestion of any crime at all, except for the attacks on him, and that was an error in timing; all they'd had to do was wait. Now? His head was clearing, the bruises on his legs had passed from blue to hopeful green, and the very shapelessness of evidence was interesting. He needed it to be interesting because while he was engaged he was like a man walking on deep black water. He needed to keep going.
Erasmo pulled the mask over his nose and goggles over his eyes before lifting a can with a plastic lid.
'More gunpowder?' Arkady asked.
'A different explosive.' Erasmo lifted the lid and shut it at once, as if taking a peek at plutonium.» Ground habaneros, the hottest chilies on earth. I defused all sorts of bombs in Africa. Bombs that looked like doorknobs, alarm clocks, toilet seats, toy planes, dolls. You have to be creative.' He upended the empty can between his thighs and drilled through its bottom. Erasmo poured in gunpowder and tamped it down.
'In your room I saw some pictures of you with ...' Arkady tried out the gesture of the make-believe beard for the Name That Could Not Be Uttered just to feel Cuban.
'Fidel,' Erasmo said warily.
'And another officer in glasses.'
'Our commander in Angola.'
'You won a lot of military decorations.'
'The ribbons? Oh, yes. Well, what would I rather have, the ribbons or my legs? I'll let you guess. I used to be so proud. Fidel said we would go to Africa and I saluted and said, 'At your orders, Comandante!' I didn't know he would be giving orders after we got there. Fidel was here in Havana looking at a map of Angola. We were in hills and rivers that didn't exist on Fidel's map, but it didn't matter, he gave orders to set up our forces wherever his finger landed. Sometimes we had to ignore him. When he found out he was furious. There was one little village, a speck that must have been on his map. He said we had to take it and use it as a battalion command post. We said it was just a couple of huts, a garage and a well. We could go around it and come back whenever we wanted, but Fidel said that unless the village was taken in twenty-four hours every battalion officer would be charged with treason. So, Tico and Luna and a boy named Richard and I went in to clear the way. Maybe this is a boring story?'
'No.'
'Very well. The village was strung like a Christmas tree. Little plastic mines to pop through your foot. Bouncing Betties to cut you off at the waist. Claymores with trip wires to something as insignificant as an empty can you'd kick out of your way. There was a car in the garage, not with the key, that would have been too obvious. A '54 Ford station wagon with real wooden panels. You can't imagine how valuable a vehicle was in country like that. But just stepping into the garage meant digging up a whole daisy chain of little mines. Then to look underneath the car first with a mirror and then on your back. To pop the hood with a wire from a distance, to inspect the engine and make sure every wire's automotive, open the glove compartment, the trunk, power windows, seats, hubcaps. It was in beautiful condition. We cleared everyone else out of the garage so I could cross the wires. It started right off. It ran out of gas right away, but the battery was good and everything seemed fine until Richard kicked a tire. That was one place I hadn't looked, in the tire.' Erasmo pushed a cardboard disk over the gunpowder.
'That was the end of Richard. Plus, the bumper flew off spinning like a helicopter rotor and caught Tico. We radioed for the ambulance. On the way it hit a hole where we had dug out a mine and drove right into the minefield. Somehow it didn't touch a mine but that's where the ambulance was stuck while Tico was bleeding to death until Luna picked him up and ran right through the mines to the ambulance. And that's how we liberated a pisshole in Angola on special orders from the Comandante.'
'And how Tico became careful about tires.'
