Read Online Mambo by Campbell Armstrong - Free Book Online

manhunt I read about. Every cop in the country is looking for Ruhr. He’s too hot.”
    â€œNobody is going to find him.”
    â€œStill. My gut tells me we should look elsewhere, get somebody else.”
    The Cuban said, “From now on, no more accidents, Enrico. No more mistakes. Smooth,” and he planed the surface of the table with his palm for emphasis. “You have my word.”
    Rafael Rosabal glanced at a nearby table where two middle-aged women drank tea. They had the furrowed brows and glazed eyes of habitual eavesdroppers and they bothered the Cuban, who regularly experienced the sensation that he was being watched or followed. In the Soviet Union recently he knew he’d been observed by the KGB, which was standard practice. Here, in Britain, there might be surveillance from the internal security arm of intelligence. He hadn’t seen anyone suspicious, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t being watched. He leaned across the table, closer to Caporelli, whose fussy caution annoyed him. Rosabal understood that the stakes were too high for Enrico to abandon Ruhr at this stage. Caporelli would go with the German in the end, but first there had to be this song and dance.
    â€œWe have to trust each other, Enrico,” Rosabal said. “I need to know that when I return to Cuba you won’t change the way things have been set up. I need that assurance. If you drop Ruhr now, you abandon everything. That’s the bottom line. Keep this in mind – we want the same thing. We have the same goals.”
    The same goals, Caporelli thought. The rich, gravy-filled pie that was Cuba. He said, “I asked for this meeting because I wanted to find out what safeguards you could give me. But my cup of confidence isn’t exactly overflowing, Rafael.”
    Rosabal plucked another sugar cube from the bowl. “What would you have me do? Put Ruhr in a straitjacket until the time comes? He isn’t going to be a problem. He’s on his best behaviour. I give my word. I stand or fall by that. If my word isn’t good enough for you … You want to drop the plan, tell me now. The first stage is only two days away.”
    Caporelli pinched the bridge of his nose. What were two days when you weighed it against the thirty years that had passed since the barbarians had taken control of the island and given everybody the shaft with their so-called Revolution? Two days: if the first stage went without flaw then he and his associates would see things through to the end.
    He looked at Rosabal and what he perceived in the young Cuban’s face was bottomless determination and in those dark eyes an intensity of fierce ambition such as he hadn’t seen in a long time. He liked these qualities. He liked this young man’s conviction. In a world where trust was a debased currency, he trusted Rafael Rosabal, even if he had the feeling that the Cuban sometimes wasn’t sure how to walk the fine line between restraint and impatience. A flaw of youth, that was all. A little too much fire in the belly.
    â€œHow is the Vedado these days?” he asked. The Vedado was his favourite part of Havana, where the large hotels and enormous private residences had been built. He’d always thought of it as his own sector of the city, his personal domain, and he’d ridden the streets with a proprietorial attitude. He’d been an intimate of former President Batista, who’d conferred honorary Cuban citizenship upon him. He still had a photograph of the ceremony. Government ministers had owed him favours.
    He’d owned a magnificent baroque house near the University – cobbled courtyard with bronze statues, mango and pomegranate trees growing against the walls, the smell of the ocean through the open windows of the huge master bedroom. The bathroom had been built out of the finest Italian marble with gold taps, in the shape of gargoyles, created by the kind of proud craftsmen who no