take his place, considering the sharp African light, considering that mines were probably still all around. Arkady could almost hear the flies.
Arkady moved through the rest of the apartment before Mostovoi returned. On his first visit Arkady hadn't seen the autographed photographs in the hallway of Mostovoi with famous Russian film directors or the erotic boudoir series of Cuban girls that seemed to have been shot in his own bed. Arkady looked in the bureau, night table and under the pillow. A side table held a laptop, scanner, printer. The laptop denied him access as soon as he turned it on. The chances of hitting Mostovoi's password were remote. There was no gun in the drawer or under the bed.
Arkady walked farther down the hall into a small room redone as a darkroom with a black curtain inside the door. A red light was on, as if Mostovoi had been interrupted in the middle of developing. Arkady squeezed between an enlarger and trays of sour-smelling fixer and developer. Red film curlicued from a red clothesline. Held to the light, the film had nothing more than volleyball in the nude, and the developed pictures pinned to a board were embassy fare: Russians visiting a sugar combine, delivering postcards from the children of Moscow, pushing vodka on Cuban editors. The Russians, indeed, looked like
Back in the hall, Arkady had to push past more cabinets of photographs. He riffled through contact sheets of vacations in Italy, Provence. No nudes, no Africa. Finally in the kitchen he opened the refrigerator and found vichyssoise, an open can of olives, Chilean wine, canisters of color film and behind a bag of eggs a 9-mm Astra, a Spanish pistol with a tubular barrel. He emptied the magazine on the side of the sink, replaced the clip, wiped the gun and returned it behind the eggs. An empty ice tray sat in the sink. Arkady filled the tray with bullets and water and put it in the freezer before he sat in the living room and waited for Mostovoi to return.
Going by Rufo's sort of calendar-the urgency, that is, in trying to kill someone who would be in town for only a week-Arkady felt that time was running out. His time was. Tomorrow night he could be boarding his flight for home, he and Pribluda, but he felt he was still before the event, whatever it was that would make sense of the Havana Yacht Club, Rufo and Hedy, and the best demolition team in Africa.
Ofelia didn't bring anyone. Careful not to scuff her new shoes, she walked up the steps of the Centro Russo- Cubano, dropping her dark glasses into her bag with the banana bread as she stepped into the lobby, which had changed from the day before: the statues of the cane cutter and the fisherman had toppled facedown on the tiles, the ladder stretched by a splintered counter and no car sat on the lobby floor. Dust climbed the red ray of light falling from the stained glass overhead. Centro Russo-Cubano? From what she knew of this place, when the Russians thought they led the way to the glorious future, it was a very rare Cuban who had ever been invited in.
She took a deep breath. Ofelia had come alone to see whatever Luna had carted in the night before because she didn't want to involve anyone else until she knew what evidence she could find. The PNR did not accuse an officer of the Ministry of the Interior lightly. That was her professional reason. The real reason was personal. Nothing humiliated Ofelia more than being afraid, and inside the trunk of the Lada she had been afraid to the point of tears. She took extra target practice at the Guanabo range just so that wouldn't happen. A dusty mirror hung over the counter. She caught sight of herself as she took the gun from her straw bag and swung, body and weapon moving as one dangerous little
Being back in the lobby made her taste the hemp and coconut milk again. That was the way Luna had picked her up, like a coconut to be thrown into a bag and the bag tossed into a trunk. She'd tried to find the Lada on the way, and it had disappeared, perhaps already being cannibalized in an Atares warehouse. A shiny track showed where the cart's iron wheels had rolled over the floor tiles of a hammer-and-sickle pattern toward a grim corridor of cement walls and doors of Cuban hardwood.
Ofelia kicked the first door open, entered an empty luggage room, scanned with the gun and returned to the hall before anyone could approach behind her. The next door had the title of 'Director' and promised to be larger and farther from the dim light of the lobby. She'd reloaded the gun but she should have brought a flashlight. She knew she should have thought of that.
This was the sort of situation where a person had to gauge what they were most likely to encounter. A sergeant of the Ministry of the Interior carried the same firearm she did, but a man from the Oriente might have more confidence in his machete. Also, he knew the layout of the Centra Russo-Cubano, she didn't. He could pop out of any corner like an oversized goblin.
Ofelia shoved the door with her foot, slipped in and crouched against a wall. When her eyes adjusted she saw that the office had been stripped of desk, chairs, rug. All that was left were a bust of Lenin on a pedestal and horizontal red-and-black stripes spray-painted on the walls, windows, across Lenin's face. She heard something move in the hall.
It occurred to Ofelia that perhaps she should have changed into her uniform. If the PNR found her dressed like this, what would they assume? And Bias? He'd think what fun they could have had in Madrid.
She slid out of the office on one knee aiming left, then right. Whatever it was had stopped, although Luna could be coming from either direction. This was a time when target practice paid off just for holding a heavy gun steady for so long. Banana bread was a ludicrous item to be toting and she considered lightening her load. But the girls had helped bake it.
The next office was empty except for corn kernels and feathers underfoot. She heard a step behind her again, tentative, hanging back, and she tried to get low enough to sight on a silhouette. She moved across the hall into what had been a meeting room with no table, no chairs, no windows, just a faint row of framed Russian faces and ships. She thought if there was more than one individual after her this was a perfect opportunity to lock the doors at each end and seal her in as effectively as entombing her.
Slower, she told herself, although she was blinking through sweat, mouth breathing too, not a good sign, and her shoulders ached from the weight of the gun. She was in the dark until she opened a door to a linen room, where the light poured through unbroken windows onto shelves that once held sheets and pillowcases still white; even the dust was white as talc. On the floor a headless white chicken lay in a circle of dried blood. She left the door open to illuminate the hallway and followed a sign that pointed to 'Buffet.' Checked into a pantry with nothing except lists on the wall in Russian of meat, dairy and starchy goods expected six years before. There was a note to a certain Lena, 'Russian potatoes, not Cuban potatoes.' Historical documents that faded as the linen-room door shut.
This was the darkest yet. Reentering the hall was like stepping into a pit. Nothing but black behind her, and nothing ahead but faint light tracing a buffet door. She could feel as much as hear the step behind her, it was that close. Her father had cut cane, she knew how cane cutters worked. First slice to the base, second high to lop off the cane head. Arkady had said Luna was right-handed, which meant that, constrained by the dimensions of the hall, a downward swing to the left. She got as small she could on the right side.
She felt breathing on her. A hairy face pressed against hers and she reached out to feel two stubby horns. A goat. She'd forgotten about the goats. The rest were gone or this was the only one that had found a way down to the ground floor. A small goat with a stiff beard, sharp ribs and an inquisitive muzzle that pressed into her bag. The banana bread, of course, Ofelia thought. She laid her gun between her legs, unwrapped the bread and broke off half. She couldn't see the goat but she could hear it devour the bread as if it hadn't been fed for days. The scent of the bread must have been an irresistible trail through the building. She was glad her Russian hadn't seen this.
When the goat tried to tear up the rest of the bread Ofelia gave it a not unkind kick, then scratched its scrawny neck to make amends. Growing up in Hershey, she'd had to deal with goats, chickens, voracious hogs.
Discouraged, the goat backed away with a tremulous baa, and although Ofelia expected it to go the way it had come and return to the herd, something seemed to pull it in the opposite direction. She couldn't see the goat, but she heard its hooves tap closer to the buffet door, to the ghostly smell of food six years past. It was a swinging door. The goat nosed it open, there was a glimpse of dingy light, enough to invite the goat and it trotted through. The door flapped twice, settled, and then flew open to flame and smoke.
Although she was shielded at the moment of detonation Ofelia's ears rang, her face felt scoured. Cement dust filled the dark hall, and devoid of both sight and hearing she swung the gun one way and then the other until the air cleared enough for her to make out again the faint light that traced the buffet door. She crawled forward, felt a cord hanging slack on its lower lip and pushed the door open.
It had only been a fragmentation grenade, Ofelia thought, but in close quarters it accomplished its mission
