Havana by Stephen Hunter Page B

you. Wouldn’t it be nice if mine helped you and yours helped me.”
    â€œBoth our reports should help the revolution, that’s all. But to get through the business, yes, I’ve nosed around. I’ve seen our young prince. Did you know he has a nickname? I assume he was initially your discovery? So you have a lot riding on this and are probably annoyed I was brought in to handle him, because you were not considered experienced enough. Well, his nickname speaks of his power, his promise, his grand possibilities and your excellent nose for such matters. Do you know what it is?”
    â€œI am not interested in—”
    â€œIt’s ‘Greaseball.’ Evidently, he’s so anxious to hurtle into the socialist future, he periodically forgets to bathe. Ugh. Did you smell him before you saw him? I can’t stand a dirty fellow when there’s no excuse for it. I have quite recently gone nine years without a bath. Not pleasant. I will bathe every day of what little life I have left.”
    â€œForget his odor. Concentrate on his potential. Have you heard him speak? It’s magnificent.”
    â€œI have heard accounts. He likes long ones, or so I hear. And I hear also he likes the spotlight.”
    â€œHe is ruthless; he has already killed in the gangsterismo politics of the forties; he is dedicated; he believes, if in nothing else, in change. He has that thing you have, Speshnev, that most of us lack. The magnetism.”
    â€œIt’s called charisma. Yes, I have it. Yes, you don’t. Yes, he does. Yes, I suppose he has some potential. If only he learns to trim his fingernails.”
    â€œThis may not be as easy as you think. There has been a development.”
    â€œAnd that is?”
    â€œBatista’s secret police aren’t a threat, at least as long as Castro is benign and an orator, not a fighter. The time for fighting is still some years off, and it is your job not merely to recruit him and train him and prepare him, but possibly also to protect him.”
    â€œFrom what? His wife’s wrath at his mistress? Or his mistress’s wrath at his wife?”
    â€œNo,” Pashin said, sliding a photograph across the desk toward Speshnev, “this man’s commitment to his duty.”
    The photo had been snapped at the Havana airport. It was of a group of men leaving the Air Cubana Constellation’s stairway and heading to the terminal. One was flashy in his white hair and two or three others clearly bowed to him in body posture, factotums or assistants or eunuchs or whatever.
    â€œThis one?” Speshnev asked, pointing to the member of the group who was also not a member of the group.
    â€œThat one.”
    It was a large square-headed American, with a jutting jaw and a crewcut.
    â€œA soldier?”
    â€œAccording to embassy gossip, a killer. He killed in the war, many, many times.”
    â€œOh, yes, there’s a word for that. I think it’s ‘hero.’ Why is he here?”
    â€œOstensibly as the bodyguard of that showy one there. That’s a famous politician in their country. But this man for some reason was recruited to accompany the politician to Cuba. Our Washington people have noted it and alerted me. They find it curious.”
    â€œAnd…”
    â€œAnd we don’t know why. Maybe just because. Or maybe it’s that if you had to kill someone, this is the man you’d want to do the killing. He’s not like the rest of them. Give him a job, he does it.”
    â€œHmmm. That doesn’t sound like them.”
    â€œNo, but maybe they’re thinking of changing their ways. They want to get the attention of certain people in certain countries and this would be a very good way to do it, wouldn’t you say?”
    â€œPossibly.”
    â€œSo I think you should look about carefully. See what this fellow is up to. And…”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAnd if he’s here to cut short the