Mirror Maze j-4 Read online

  He decided to spend his first full day getting a feel for the city, then make his initial approach to Tania early the following morning. There was risk in this plan-if things didn't go well, he would be trapped in Cuba and vulnerable for two additional days. But there was more risk in waiting until the end of his visit because there was a good possibility that Tania would refuse to speak with him, would not be at home or would be unknown at the address given by her brother. In any of these events, he would need time to convince and/or find her.

  And so, on the first morning, he set out on foot for the Malecon, the wide avenue that rimmed the elegant curve of Havana Bay, with the intention of following it along the seawall to the center of the old city. From there he planned to return in such a way that he would inconspicuously pass Tania Figueras's address.

  Even at ten A.M. the heat was punishing. But he enjoyed the notion that he was walking freely in a foreign capital visited by few Americans.

  Again he was struck by the small number of private cars on the street, the shabby condition of the buildings, the clusters of people waiting stolidly for buses that perhaps would never come.

  Near the end of his walk, within a mile of La Punta Fortress, he noticed he was the only pedestrian on the Ma- lecon. Cubans, he decided, were too smart to take long walks under the broiling Caribbean sun. Perhaps he would do better to move from the hot, sun struck bay side of the avenue to the shady sheltering arcade that linked the buildings across the way.

  He crossed, entered the arcade. Each of its sections was supported by a unique set of columns matched to the architecture of the building above.

  Some columns had Greek style capitals, others were plain. Most were flaking, but one was freshly painted a bright, vivid blue and another a soft Pompeian red. What was most spooky, he thought, was that all the stores that had once fronted on this arcade were now abandoned and gated shut.

  He was in the center of the red section when he noticed two men, in leisure suits and perforated shoes, bearing down on him fast. Sensing danger, he turned to find two more men, similarly dressed, coming up quickly on his rear. Clearly these were not street thieves. They moved with precision and were closing in.

  There was, he could see, only one route of escape-he must run out of the arcade into the street. He was about to do this when a small black car pulled up, blocking his attempt. Its arrival, he noted with a certain admiration, could not have been more perfectly timed.

  A middle'-aged man with handsome features, gray hair, a soft gray mustache and a steady gaze leaned out of the right front window. Janek immediately recognized him as a cop.

  "Senior Janek?"

  "Yeah, I'm Janek. What's going on?"

  The man, who wore a white shirt open at the neck, flashed an ID bearing a red diagonal stripe. Janek saw the name Fonseca and the words "Seguridad de Estado" stamped across the top. Fonseca's voice was disinterested, a well-practiced monotone. "You are under arrest, senora.

  Please get in the car."

  Janek turned. The four men who had trapped him stood in a close semicircle behind.

  He looked back at Fonseca. Fonseca nodded gravely.

  "Yeah, right," Janek said.

  He sat in the back squeezed between two of the young men from the street. The other two got into a second vehicle which had pulled up and now followed behind. His car, a small Russian model, moved rapidly down the spacious avenue, then abruptly entered a labyrinth of narrow streets. Unfamiliar with the city, Janek soon lost all sense of direction. Meantime, the bodies of the men on either side confined his arms, and his knees were crushed against the seat ahead.

  Several times he tried to speak, to ask his captors what they wanted.

  Each time Fonseca turned around and made a zippering motion across his mouth. When he did this the young men on either side of Janek looked out the windows and grinned.

  So, all right, they would take him to their headquarters and there he would get an explanation. But why had they arrested him? He had done nothing and they couldn't possibly know why he had come.

  Yet they knew his name and had trapped him flawlessly on a deserted stretch of sidewalk. Which meant, he realized, that they'd been following him from the moment he'd left his hotel.

  He knew better than to blame himself. He was a detective, not an espionage agent. It was in the nature of his work that he follow others, not look out for others who might be following him. At that realization he was struck by the thought that this was the first time in his life he had been the subject of a police arrest.

  Suddenly the car swerved off the road, entered a dirt track, stopped in the middle of a weed-choked field. The sun outside was blinding. For a moment Janek felt like throwing up.

  "Close your eyes." Fonseca issued his order without any emphasis. "We are going to take a security precaution. Do not be unduly upset."

  Janek looked into the man's eyes and saw a hardness he often affected himself It was a no-nonsense way of looking at a person in custody, a signal that the person is without any power and must do as he is told.

  The moment Janek closed his eyes, the men beside him grasped his wrists, pulled them together behind his back, snapped on steel cuffs. Then he felt them pull something pliant, smelling of oiled leather, over the top of his head. He struggled as they pulled it down over his face but relented as soon as he realized he could breathe. He felt a strap being buckled around his neck. He opened his eyes and then, for the first time, felt fear. They had blindfolded him, he understood, because now they were going to take him to a place they did not want him to see.

  He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there, perhaps twenty-four hours, perhaps longer. The room was dank and smelled of disinfectant.

  There was a plastic bowl of water on the floor and a plastic bucket that served as a toilet. In area the room was not much larger than a closet.

  Its ceiling however, was very high. There was no window. A dim reset bulb, the kind used in darkrooms, burned from a socket far out of reach.

  Also on the ceiling was a small ventilation grill. So at least, he thought, I'm not going to suffocate. Sitting on the floor, arms wrapped about his knees, he tried to take some comfort in that.

  There was little else to take comfort in. When the car had stopped, the young men on either side had helped him out, then taken hold of his arms. When he had tried to speak, one of them had slapped him across the mouth. It had not been a hard blow, but it had stung, a message that he was not to speak again without permission.

  They pulled him along between them into some sort of building, down a long corridor, down a steep flight of stairs, then marched him along another corridor until they reached a room. After they shut the door, one of them removed his handcuffs.

  "Take off your clothes." Fonseca's voice was colorless. Janek could feel the presence of others, perhaps all four of the young men who had cornered him on the street.

  "I demand to see the American consul."

  For that he received another blow across the mouth, harder than the first. It made him reel.

  "Shut up and take off your clothes. This is a standard precaution. Do not be afraid. We will give you something to wear."

  The time had come to take a stand. He would not assist in his own degradation. He stood facing them with as much dignity as he could summon, considering that his head and upper face were encased in a hood buckled to his neck.

  "You refuse. Very well. We will assist you."

  There was nothing sadistic or even exasperated in Fonseca's voice, just the flat intonation of a cop doing his job. He gave his orders in Spanish and then Janek felt large hands grasping at his body. Someone roughly opened his shirt, popping off the buttons. Someone else pulled off his watch. A third man unclasped his belt, then harshly extracted it. After they stripped off his shirt, they handcuffed him again, pushed him down to the floor, grabbed hold of his legs, then tugged off his shoes, socks and pants. He did not fight them but resisted by going limp. That didn't slow them down.
They yanked off his underpants with the dispatch of men who stripped prisoners every day.

  Lying on his back on the cold tile floor, his cuffed wrists crushed beneath him, he sensed them standing in a tight circle around him and assumed that they were staring down. Yes, he was certain, they were studying him, a middle-aged captive lying helpless, hooded, naked, at their feet. And their faces, he guessed, reflected a certain repugnance, too, a certain distaste, for, he knew, he could not be a pretty sight.

  He could smell himself, an aroma of sweat and fear coming off his body, which was probably inducing expressions of mockery and derision on the faces of the men above. He had seen far better men than them wear the victor's smirk. He had even worn it himself occasionally and so knew its purpose-to mask a bully's shame.

  Now he sat on the floor of the tall locked closet lit only by the red bulb. His wrists were no longer cuffed, his head was no longer bagged, but he wore a particularly humbling garment, a kind of hospital gown secured by a single clasp behind his neck. It left a good part of his back and buttocks exposed and its skirt barely covered his thighs.

  He heard footsteps approaching, then a key turning in the lock.

  Crouching back against the wall, he felt like an animal cornered in a cage.

  "Stand!

  The order came from a muscular black man wearing an unmarked khaki uniform. He had a thick, bushy mustache and poorly shaved, heavily pitted cheeks. The timbre of his voice, cold and abrupt, was different than Fonseca's. He thought: This one's a guard, not a cop. "I demand to see the American consul."

  "Stand! " Janek took his time getting to his feet. "Turn!

  Janek turned slowly. The man snapped cuffs over his wrists, then yanked him backward out of the closet.

  "Move!

  "Where?"

  "Move! "

  The guard placed his hands on Janek's back and shoved him hard. Janek stumbled.

  "Fast! "

  The man pushed him again. Understanding he had no choice, Janek obeyed.

  The man continued to shove him down a long corridor lined with doors.

  More closet cells, Janek thought. At the end of the corridor he faced a steel door enclosing a small thick window of wired glass. His guard reached over his shoulder and banged on the door. The face of a second guard, older, lighter-skinned, appeared in the window. He stared at Janek, nodded and unlocked the door. As soon as it was open, Janek felt the hard hands of his escort on his back.

  "In! "

  Another shove as Janek staggered through the doorway into a room with a stained teffa-cotta tile floor. He thought: This was probably where they pulled off my clothes.

  His escort grasped his arms while the older guard approached him with the head bag. This was the first time Janek had seen it. Although he knew they were going to put it on him again and despised the thought, he couldn't help himself-he peered closely to see how it was made.

  Constructed of dark brown leather, it was shaped to fit over his entire head except for the nostrils and mouth. It looked much like an old aviator's helmet, except that the flap, which would normally extend only to the top of the forehead, had been cut lower to cover the prisoner's eyes.

  As the older guard approached, he grinned sheepishly as if to say "Sorry, these are the rules." Janek smelled the oil again, then realized with disgust that he had unconsciously bowed his head to make it easier for the guard to put it on.

  He thought: Prisoner for only a day and already I'm trying to help.

  Her eyes! That was his first reaction when his guard pulled the hood off his head and he found himself face-to face with his interrogator.

  The woman possessed a kind of bizarre beauty, he thought. Her eyes, a pair of smoldering emeralds, glowed out of her gaunt, dark face. Her chocolate-colored skin looked smooth as satin and her cheekbones were exceedingly high. Thin, sinewy, she held herself straight in her chair behind a little wooden desk. Her hands were clasped in front of her on top of a closed folder. As she switched on a portable tape recorder, he noticed that her nails were painted camouflage-green.

  Janek looked around. His guard, expressionless, stood just behind his stool. Janek turned back to face his interrogator. She wore the same khaki uniform he'd seen on the guards, but with red dashes on the epaulets. She was inspecting him, her eyes moving slowly down his body.

  His smock was bunched up beneath him, partially exposing his genitals to view. He wanted to squirm, but fought the impulse. The whole situation, the way he was dressed and seated, had been contrived to make him feel devalued and insecure.

  "I am Captain Valdez," she said, raising her eyes. "An officer of the Agency for State Security." Her English was formal and barely accented.

  "You will address me as Captain."

  Janek stared back. He did not want to reveal his fascination with what was happening and the strange way this woman was forcing him to view himself. It was odd to be on the other end of an interrogation. He thought: So this is what it's like. But he knew that if Captain Valdez was experienced, she would pick up on his interest and use it against him. His best policy, he felt, was to ignore all attempts at intimidation. He resolved to maintain his dignity no matter how scornfully she might behave.

  "There are two ways an interrogation such as this can go," Valdez said.

  "Friendly or hostile. We can work as partners or become antagonists.

  It depends on you." She stared at him. "Have you been mistreated?"

  "I was hit and pushed around. Your people took my clothes and watch."

  "That's standard. Anything else?" Her voice was impatient, her tone clipped.

  "I asked to see the American consul. They hit me in the mouth for that."

  "They did not understand."

  "They understood. Now I'm asking you. I want to see my consul. I have that right."

  She ran her tongue slowly over her lips. "Perhaps."

  So, it's going to be like that. He wasn't surprised. The important thing now was to find out why he was there. He wriggled on the stool, trying to ease himself into a few more inches of smock. She watched his struggle with a smile.

  He looked into her eyes. "Why am I here?"

  "You know why."

  He shook his head. "I have no idea."

  "You lied to an immigration officer. Just as in your country-lying to an official here is a crime."

  "I did not lie to her." "You told her you had come to Cuba for tourism."

  "That's true." "You told her your profession was labor organizer. But in your suitcase we found this." She laid the photocopy of his police ID on the table. When she spoke again, her tone was contemptuous. "This is your true profession, isn't it, Lieutenant?"

  So… they'd been to his room, searched his luggage, which meant they'd also found the ink pad and the blank fingerprint form he'd brought to ID Tania.

  "Yes," he said, "I'm a police detective. I work for the city of New York."

  "So, you are not a labor organizer?" "No," he admitted, "I'm not."

  She stared hard at him and in that moment he understood how good she was. Her timing, expressions, control over the interview were extremely well managed. He was also aware that he had begun to sweat.

  He knew what that meant: She had gotten to him-he was guilty, he had lied. This is why the pressure always works, he thought. You show them how you know they lied about one thing to force them into conceding they lied about another. He had used the same technique a thousand times. Now it was being used against him. And, to his great discomfort, he was discovering he could not resist. He wanted to confess to Captain Valdez.

  He wanted to regain her trust.

  "You are now, by your admission, in considerable trouble," she said.

  "The penalty for lying to an official of the government can be severe."

  Her amazing emerald eyes were glittering. He thought: She's the lepidopterist, I'm the insect. Now she's going to pin me to the board.

  "If you insist, I will telephone your consul. In that case th
is interrogation will be terminated. You will be tried, perhaps as early as tonight. The immigration inspector and I will serve as witnesses.

  This photocopy of your police identity card and the tape recording of your confession will be placed in evidence. The judge will find you guilty. The sentence will be"-she shrugged-"three years, perhaps four."

  She stared at him, licked her lips, then smiled. "Our prisons are well known for their conditions. Perhaps you've read or heard." She paused.

  "That is one way we can proceed. "

  She wasn't bluffing; that was her message. She was using all the leverage she had gained to force him to assist in his own destruction.

  Janek looked at her. "There is another?" She nodded. "What do I have to do?"

  "Simple," she said. "Tell me truthfully why you have come to Cuba.

  Think about it." She rose, picked up her file and tape recorder, then nodded to the guard. "It would be best to decide before we speak again."

  She started toward the door. When she reached it she paused. For a moment Janek thought she was going to say something, but she left without looking back.

  Head bagged, roughly shoved into a room, he felt the presence of other men. He heard them shuffling, and then, without a word, one tore off his smock and others began to rough him up.

  They were methodical. One would hit him then shove him at another, who in turn would pummel him then shove him on to a third. This went on for approximately five minutes. Because he was blindfolded and was turned around many times, he lost his balance and fell.

  When he was on the floor, they stood around him and kicked his body with their boots. But they were careful, he noted, not to strike him in the face or groin. In fact, he realized, after his initial terror, their kicks, like their blows, were light and not injurious. It was a symbolic beating. I They were not trying to hurt him; they were working to increase his sense of helplessness and fear.

  How arrogant of me to think I could just come into this country and do as I liked. I came for you, Kit. Where are you now?

  Locked back in his closet, he thought over his situation. A number of things were clear. First, he had no fights. He had lied to them, and because of that they felt entitled to treat him brutally.