Shift: A Novel Read online

  Bayo didn’t say anything, and Melchior exchanged his knife for his pistol, brought the gun to the back of Bayo’s head. A shot to the back of the head sent a message. If you were going to execute someone, you might as well make it count. Still, the gun in his hand felt ponderously large and heavy, and Bayo’s head seemed suddenly very small, as if, if Melchior’s hand didn’t stop shaking, he might miss. He brought the gun so close to Bayo’s head that it tapped against his hair like a typewriter key worried by a twitching finger.

  “They’ll kill you, too,” Bayo said, a desperate whine in his voice.

  Melchior laid his thumb on the hammer to still it. “I’ll take my chances.”

  “Not the Russians. The Comp—”

  Bayo jerked to the left—even managed to get a foot on the floor before Melchior squeezed the trigger. Clumps of brain splattered across the room, along with his right ear and half his face. He remained upright for a second or two, wobbling like a metronome, then fell forward. His cracked skull shattered when it hit the floor, and his head flattened out like a half-inflated basketball.

  As the reverberations of the shot faded from the room, it occurred to Melchior that he should have cut Bayo’s throat with his knife. He only had five bullets left in his gun. Four now. If Bayo hadn’t lunged, he would’ve remembered that before he pulled the trigger.

  “Damn it, Eddie. You went and ruined it.”

  Well, that was Cuba for you. It could take the fun out of just about anything.

  Cambridge, MA

  October 26, 1963

  Fifteen hundred miles north as the crow flies (no airplane had made the journey since the embargo had started in February) Nazanin Haverman walked into a dingy bar in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. Morganthau had selected the King’s Head because it was far enough from Harvard Yard that the usual rabble didn’t frequent the place, yet still well known among “a certain set,” as he called it. Naz hadn’t asked who the members of that set were, but somehow she suspected they were responsible for the smug graffito scribbled on a months-old mimeograph advertising Martin Luther King’s March on Washington:

  W. E. B. DuBois went back to Africa.

  Maybe you should join him!

  There was a mirror in the vestibule, and Naz looked in the glass with the disinterested gaze of a woman who’s long since learned to inspect her war paint without reckoning the face beneath. She took her gloves off, easing the right one over the big ruby on her third finger, which she rubbed, less for good luck than to remind herself that she still had it—that she could still sell it if things got really bad. Then, keeping her gait as steady as she could—she’d primed herself with one or two gin and tonics before she left home—she headed down the narrow corridor toward the bar.

  It hit her as she paused in the jaundiced light over the inner door. The cigarette smoke and the stale odor of spilled drinks and the urgent murmur of voices, the sidelong glances and equally circumspect feelings that accompanied them. A miasma of frustrated, sexually charged emotions swirled around her as palpably as the bolts of smoke, and against its press all she could do was fasten her eyes on the bar and forge ahead. Fifteen steps, she told herself, that’s all she had to take. Then she could center herself around a tall, cold glass of gin.

  Her form-fitting pearl gray suit directed the men’s eyes to her hips, her waist, her breasts, the single open button of décolletage in her white silk blouse. But it was her face that held them. Her mouth, its fullness made even more striking by deep red lipstick that picked up the color of the ruby on her right hand, her eyes, as dark and shiny as polished stone, but slightly blurred, too—anthracite rather than obsidian. And of course her hair, a mass of inky black waves that sucked up what little light there was and radiated it back in oil-slick rainbows. A hundred times she’d had it straightened with the fumy chemicals Boston’s blanched housewives used to relax their hair, a hundred times it had sprung back to curl, and so, in lieu of the elaborately sculpted coifs that helmeted the rangy blondes and brunettes in the room, Naz’s hair was piled against her skull in a thick mass that framed her face in a dark rippling halo. There was too much of it for her to wear one of the pillbox hats that Mrs. Kennedy had made all the rage, so she wore a bandeau instead, perched precariously forward on her head and held in place with a half dozen pins that pricked at her skull.

  The girls noticed her too, of course. Their stares were as hard as the men’s, if significantly less sympathetic. It was a Sunday, after all. Business was slow.

  “Beefeater and tonic, easy on the tonic,” Naz said to the bartender, who was already setting a chilled Collins glass on the bar. “A splash of Rose’s lime, please. I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

  She tried not to gulp her drink as she perched herself on the bar stool, not quite facing the room—that would read as too obvious, too desperate—but not quite facing the bar either. The perfect angle to be looked at, yet not seem to look back. There was the mirror over the bar for that.

  She brought her glass to her lips, was surprised to find it empty. That was quick, even for her.

  That’s when she noticed him. He’d stationed himself at the darkest corner of the bar, faced his drink like a defendant before a judge. Both hands were wrapped around the stem of his martini and his gaze was aimed directly at the olive at the bottom of the shallow pool. There was a sober expression on his face—ha!—as if he regarded what the drink was telling him very, very seriously.

  Naz shifted her gaze to the mirror to study him more openly, tried to sort his vibe from the general miasma in the room. A new word, vibe. Part of the hipsters’ jargon, which was creeping into the language like uncracked peppercorns that popped between your teeth. But you didn’t need a special vocabulary to see that something was bothering this guy. A bitter olive that only a river of gin could keep below the surface. The sharpness of his eyes, the broad plain of his forehead below his dark hair, the delicate movement of his fingers all said that he was an intelligent man, but this wasn’t a problem he could solve with his mind. His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, and, though he hunched over his martini like a dog guarding a bone, his spine was supple, not bowed. So he was athletic, too. But there were some things you couldn’t run away from. Some things only alcohol could keep at bay.

  With a start, Naz realized the man was watching her as intently as she was watching him, his amused smile bracketed by a pair of C-shaped dimples. Caught out, she shifted her gaze from the mirror to his eyes.

  “The last time a pretty girl stared at me this hard, my house brothers had written D-I-M-E on my forehead.”

  Naz reached for her glass, then remembered it was empty. The jig was up. She abandoned her empty glass and walked down to the end of the bar. If nothing else, she was pretty sure he was good for a drink.

  Up close he was easier to read. His vibe. His energy. He was troubled, sure, but he was also horny. He was here for a drink, but he’d take something more if it came his way. It just had to be someone he could pretend was as complicated as himself. As—what was the word the beatniks liked?—deep, that was it.

  She smiled as politely as her mother had taught her all those years ago. “Dime? Or perhaps di me. Spanish for—”

  “‘Tell me.’” An embarrassed chuckle. “It’s rather more jejune than that.”

  “Jejune,” Naz said mockingly. “In that case, dit moi indeed.”

  She’d fixed the accent—local, refined but also relaxed—and the shirt, which, though a little worn around the cuffs (French, fastened with tarnished silver knots), was bespoke. The knowledge that he was of the patrician classes emboldened her. She knew these people. Had been raised by them, manipulated by them on three different continents, and learned how to manipulate in turn.

  The man shook his head. “I’m sorry, the story isn’t repeatable in polite company.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell me what you’re drinking, and we’ll start there.”

  He held up his martini glass. “I believe we are b
oth drinking gin. Although I prefer mine without all that tonic, which only dilutes the alcohol.”

  “Oh, but the carbonation speeds its absorption, and the quinine is good for treating malaria, should you travel to exotic climes.”

  “I’m afraid summers in Newport is as far south as I’ve gone.” The man waved a finger between their glasses as though it were a magic wand that could refill them—a task the bartender accomplished almost as quickly. “My grandmother swore that quinine kept her gout in check. She took an eyedropper full every evening, although I think the decanter of vermouth in which she took it had something to do with any salacious effects she realized. Salubrious, I mean.” The man’s blush was visible even in the dim light. “Salubrious effects.”

  Naz touched her G&T to his martini. They each sipped longly, then sipped again. Once again Naz prompted:

  “D-I-M-E.”

  “Okay.” The man chuckled. “You asked for it. As part of the initiation ritual into my finals club, pledges were required to submit themselves, if you take my meaning, to a female volunteer known as ‘the coin mistress,’ who translated inches to cents, which were then recorded on the pledge’s forehead in indelible ink. Anyone below a nickel was refused membership. I was one of only three dimes, which, frankly, surprised me, since I’m pretty sure I’m one or two pennies short of the mark.”

  He fell silent for a moment. Then:

  “I cannot believe I just told you that story. Actually, I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that I told the story, or the fact that I said I was one or two pennies short of the mark.”

  Naz laughed. “I feel as though I should say something about how much candy eight cents will buy, or nine—” She broke off, blushing even more than her companion, and the man waved his hands like a drowning swimmer.

  “Bartender! It is very clear we are not drunk enough for this conversation!”

  “So tell me,” Naz said while they waited for their refills, “what has your brow so furrowed this evening?”

  “I, uh—” The man’s forehead wrinkled even more as he tried to figure out what she meant. “I have to get the first chapter of my thesis to my advisor by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You seem a little old to be an undergraduate.”

  “My doctorate.”

  “A professional student. How many pages do you have to turn in?”

  “Fifty.”

  “And how many more do you have to write?”

  “Fifty.”

  “Aha.” Naz laughed. “I can understand why you’re so, um, furrowed in the brow area. What’s your dissertation on?”

  “Oh please,” the man swatted her question away. “Can’t we just start with names?”

  “Oh, pardon me. Naz, I mean—” She broke off. So much for an alias. “Naz Haverman,” she said, offering him her hand. “Nazanin.”

  The man’s fingers were cool from his glass. “Nazanin,” he repeated. “Is that … Persian?”

  “Very good. People usually think I’m Latin. On my mother’s side,” she added in a quiet voice.

  “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

  Naz smiled wanly, sipped at her empty glass. “You haven’t told me—”

  “Chandler.” His hand pressed hers so firmly that she could feel a pulse bouncing off his fingertips, though she wasn’t sure if it was hers or his. “Chandler Forrestal.”

  “Chandler.” The name made her conscious of her mouth. The lips had to purse to pronounce the ch and her tongue popped off her soft palate to voice the d-l combo, making her feel as if she’d just blown him a kiss. But it was the last name she commented on.

  “Forrestal. I feel like I know that name.”

  Chandler offered her a pained smile. “My uncle perhaps. He was secretary—”

  “Of defense!” Naz exclaimed, but inside she was less excited than suspicious. This seemed a bit … fortuitous, given the circumstances. “Under Roosevelt, right?”

  “Navy under Roosevelt. Defense under Truman.”

  “Well. I had no idea I was chatting with a member of the political elite.”

  But Chandler was shaking his head. “I keep as far away from politics as I can. As you said, I’m a professional student, and if all goes well I will be till I die.”

  They both suddenly realized they were still holding hands and released each other simultaneously. A true gentleman, Chandler had eased off his bar stool to introduce himself. He slipped back on it now, but even so, Naz felt a closeness between them that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She relaxed then. She’d been at this long enough to know when the deal was closed.

  “Would you excuse me a moment? I have to powder my nose.”

  Camagüey Province, Cuba

  October 26–27, 1963

  The road to the village Bayo had named cut through a swath of jungle that had been cleared and grown back so many times it was all one height, like a thirty-foot-tall golf green. The dense weave of trunk, vine, and leaf was as intricately layered as chain mail. This, Melchior thought, was the real difference between forest and jungle: not some measure of latitude or climate, but the willingness of lesser plants to yield to greater. In the temperate zones, oak and maple and conifers choked out all the other life with their spreading canopies and root networks, whereas in the tropics lattices of vine strangled the trees—eucalyptus and palm mostly, the mahogany and lemonwood and acacia having long since been harvested. Strange succulents took root in the trees’ bark and branches, leeching the life from them until they were left whitened skeletons. If he were prone to generalizations, Melchior might’ve seen something symbolic in this: the top-down stability of northern democracy versus the bottom-up anarchy of southern revolution. But a lifetime in intelligence had made him a practical man, one who dealt in facts, not abstractions, targets rather than causes. Eddie Bayo; his Red Army contacts; and whatever it was the latter hoped to sell to the former.

  He cursed himself again for shooting Bayo. It was the kind of mistake he couldn’t afford to make. Not tonight. Not after two years spent crisscrossing this godforsaken island. The only thing that gave him any hope was the fact that no one seemed to know anything about the deal. Cuba had more intelligence agents per capita than any place this side of East Berlin—KGB, CIA, the native DGI, plus God only knows how many paramilitaries hopping from one sponsor to another like the local tree frogs, fat, warty fuckers whose skin exuded a poisonous mucus (the frogs, not the paramilitaries, although the latter were if anything even more toxic). At any rate, the blackout suggested the operation was small. Melchior himself would have never gotten wind of it if he hadn’t been keeping tabs on Bayo for more than a year. Two would be perfect, he thought now. Two Russians, two buyers, four bullets. All he had to do was make sure he didn’t miss, or else he’d end up with a lot more holes in his suit than the one over his heart.

  He reached the rendezvous without surprising anything more than one of the island’s ubiquitous feral dogs. Melchior’s relationship with them stretched back to the beginning of his time in Cuba: early on in his eight months in Boniato, he would toss dead rats through the bars of his window after lacing their corpses with strychnine. The guards used the poison as a rodenticide, but the inmates gathered up as much of it as they could, partly to use to kill one another (or commit suicide when they could no longer take their captivity), but mostly because the rats were the steadiest source of food in the prison. Later on Melchior, too, learned to keep the rats for himself, but for a while it was fun to watch two or three wretched mutts fight over a poisoned corpse, only to have the winner collapse in a pool of its own vomit. One thing you could say about the dogs, though: they knew the value of keeping a low profile. The bitch bared her teeth when Melchior’s flashlight passed over her, but she didn’t snarl or bark.

  In fact, Melchior’d been hoping one of them might show up. He’d brought a sack of meat from Bayo’s house, and he used morsels of it to keep the bitch trotting behind him all the way to the burned-out sugar plantation and the sing
le structure still standing, though barely: the mill. Its main edifice, a large barnlike structure, was a dark shadow against the moonlit sky. The windows had been boarded up, but flickering light came from a thousand chinks in the siding.

  Melchior made one man at the entrance. A perimeter check turned up no other guards or trip wires or jury-rigged warning devices. KGB would’ve never been this careless, he thought. He might pull this off after all.

  He took the dripping burlap sack with the meat from Eddie Bayo’s body—Eddie Bayo’s house, that is, heh heh—and tied it over a tree branch about five feet off the ground. The bitch watched him curiously. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth and she smacked her chops greedily.

  “Shh.” Melchior jerked a thumb at the guard, who was so close Melchior could smell the smoke of his cigarette.

  When the sack was secure, he moved out in a wide arc to the guard’s left. Before he’d gone halfway, he heard the branch rustle as the bitch went for the meat. More important, so did the guard. His flashlight jerked in that direction. There was a louder rustle as the dog jumped again. The sound was loud and repeated enough that no one—not even a guard stupid enough to stand around in the dark with a cigarette clamped between his lips like a target—would’ve taken it for a person. But it was still enough to hold his attention, and while the guard peered to his left, Melchior drew himself about thirty feet off the man’s right flank. He pulled his knife out and waited.

  After the crashing had gone on for more than a minute, the guard finally went to investigate. Melchior moved in. There was no cover between the edge of the jungle and the barn. If the guard turned around, Melchior was dead. But he also had to wait to strike until the guard was far enough from the mill that no one inside would hear him if he managed to cry out.

  He was twenty feet behind the guard. Fifteen. Ten.

  The guard was almost at the bush. He’d seen the dog but not the sack of meat. He leveled his gun. Melchior was afraid he was going to shoot her. He was five feet behind the guard.