“You, on the other hand, my friend. You are a little bit of both. You think you’re a black-and-white kind of guy. You think you know what you fucking want. But really you’re not, and you don’t. When I first met you, I thought you were just another dumb ex-copper looking to make a quick bill. I expect there are times when that’s even the way you think of yourself. But you’re more than that. I expect that’s what Noreen saw. Something else. Something complicated. Whatever it was, she wasn’t the type to fall for a guy who didn’t fall for her in the same way.” He shrugged. “With her and me, it was just because she was bored. With you, I think it was the real thing.”

Reles spoke calmly, even reasonably, and, listening to him speak, I found it was hard to believe that he had just murdered two people. If I’d felt any better, I might have argued with him, but with the stomach I had and the talking I’d already done, I was more or less exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep and stay asleep for a very long time. And maybe puke a bit more if and when the need hit me. At least then I would know I was alive.

“As I see it,” he said, “there’s just one remaining problem.”

“I imagine it’s not a problem you can fix with that Colt.”

“Not directly, no. I mean, you could do it for me, but I bet you’re the picky type. Well, you are now. I’d like to meet you in ten years’ time to see how picky you are then.”

“If you mean I’m picky about murdering people in cold blood, then you’re right. Although I could make an exception in your case. At least I could until you’ve sent that telegram.”

“Which is why I’m going to leave you on the boat until I’ve had time to go to the Palace Hotel in Potsdam and send the message to Abe. That’s a nice hotel, by the way. I have a suite there, too, for when I’m in Potsdam.” He shook his head. “No, my problem is this. What am I going to do about that Gestapo captain in Würzburg? What was his name? Weinberger?”

I nodded.

“He knows too much about me.”

I nodded again.

“Tell me, Gunther. Is he married? Does he have any kids? Anyone he loves who I can threaten if he gets out of line?”

I shook my head. “I can honestly say that the only person he really cares about is himself. To that extent at least he’s fairly typical of anyone working for the Gestapo. All Weinberger cares about is his career and getting on, at any price.”

Reles nodded and walked around the deck for a moment. “To that extent at least, you said. In what way is he atypical?”

I shook my head and realized I had a blinding headache. The kind that feels likely to leave you blind. “I’m not sure that I understand what you’re driving at.”

“Is he queer? Does he like little girls? Can he be bribed? What’s his Achilles’ heel? Does he have one?” He shrugged. “Look, I could have him killed, probably, but it makes waves when a cop gets killed. Like that cop who got killed outside the Excelsior, in the summer. The Berlin polenta made all sorts of heat about that, didn’t they?”

“Tell me about it.”

“I don’t want to have him killed. But everyone’s got a weakness. Yours is Noreen Charalambides. Mine is that fucking letter that’s in some cop’s desk drawer, right? So what’s this Captain Weinberger’s weakness?”

“Now you come to mention it, there is something.”

He snapped his fingers at me. “All right. Let’s hear it.”

I said nothing.

“Fuck you, Gunther. This isn’t about your conscience. This is about Noreen. This is about her opening the door one night and finding my kid brother, Abe, on her doorstep. In truth, he’s not as skilled with an ice pick as I am. Few people are, except maybe my old man, and the doctor who taught him. Me, I’m just as happy to use a gun. Gets the job done. But Abe.” Max Reles shook his head and smiled. “One time back in Brooklyn, when we were both working the Shapiro brothers-local underworld figures-the kid murdered this guy in a car wash because he didn’t clean his car right. He left the wheels dirty. So Abe told me, anyway. Broad daylight, and the kid knocks him out and then stabs him in the fucking ear with an ice pick. Not a mark. The coppers thought the guy had a heart attack. As it happens, the Shapiros? They’re dead, too. Me and Abe buried Bill alive in a sandpit last May. That’s one of the reasons I came to Berlin in the first place, Gunther. To wait for the heat on that murder to die down a little.” He paused. “So. Am I making myself clear? You want that I should tell the kid to bury the bitch alive, like Bill Shapiro?”

I shook my head. “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you.”

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS from the north, the sea smashes into the wall on the Malecón as if it has been unleashed by a besieging army intent on the revolutionary overthrow of Havana. Gallons of water are launched into the air and then rain down upon the broad, oceanfront highway, washing some of the dust from the big American cars heading west, or drenching those pedestrians who are daring or foolish enough to walk along the wall during winter weather.

For a few minutes, I watched the crashing, moonlit waves with real hope. They were near but not quite near enough to reach the windup gramophone belonging to the Cuban youths who had spent most of the night grouped in front of my apartment building, keeping me and probably several others awake with the rumba music that is everywhere on the island. There were times when I found myself longing for the hob-nailed, juggernaut rhythms of a German brass band; not to mention the street-cleaning properties of a model twenty-four-stick grenade.

Unable to sleep, I considered going to the Casa Marina, and then rejected the idea, certain that, at this late hour, the particular chica I favored would no longer be free. Besides, Yara was asleep in my bed, and while she would never have questioned my leaving the apartment in the small hours of the morning, the ten dollars payable to Doña Marina would probably have been money wasted, since I was no longer equal to the task of making love twice in as many days, let alone in the space of one evening. So I sat down and finished the book I was reading instead.

It was a book in English.

For some time now I’d been learning English, in an effort to persuade an Englishman named Robert Freeman to give me a job. Freeman worked for the British tobacco giant Gallaher, running a subsidiary company called J. Frankau, which had been the UK distributor for all Havana cigars since 1790. I had been cultivating Freeman in the hope that I might talk him into sending me back to Germany-at my own expense, I might add-to see if I couldn’t open up the new West German market. A covering letter of introduction and several boxes of samples would, I supposed, be enough to smooth the arrival of Carlos Hausner, an Argentine of German descent, back to Germany and enable me to blend in.

It wasn’t that I disliked Cuba. Far from it. I had left Argentina with a hundred thousand American dollars, and I lived very comfortably in Havana. But I yearned for somewhere without biting insects, and where people went to bed at a sensible time of night, and where none of the drinks was made of ice: I was tired of getting a freezing headache every time I went into a bar. Another reason I wanted to return to Germany was that my Argentine passport would not last forever. But once I was safely back in Germany, I could disappear. Again.

Going back to Berlin was out of the question, of course. For one thing, it was now landlocked in the communist-controlled German Democratic Republic; and, for another, the Berlin police were probably looking for me in connection with the murders of two women in Vienna, in 1949. Not that I had murdered them. I’ve done a lot of things in my life of which I’m less than proud, but I haven’t ever murdered a woman. Not unless you counted the Soviet woman I’d shot during the long, hot summer of 1941-one of an NKVD death squad who’d just murdered several thousand unarmed prisoners in their cells. I expect the Russians would have counted that as murder, which was another good reason to stay out of Berlin. Hamburg looked like a better bet. Hamburg was in the Federal Republic, and I didn’t know anyone in Hamburg. More important, no one there knew me.