Lone Wolf #5: Havana Hit Read Online Free Page A

letting them consider what he had said, trying again to reach that blankness of mind and aspect which he had had before they entered the room. It was not so much a mask now, not as much of a mask as it might have been if he had not been on the other side of this kind of desk many times in his life, knew what they were going through, knew exactly how the situation was opening up underneath them. They had a feeling of peril, of falling. It was always that way when you carried through something difficult and dangerous only to find that all along the signals had been wrong, had been issued in a different language.
    “A million dollars worth of heroin,” he said to the silent men. “Let’s call it what it is, gentlemen, let’s not use any of your American terms like shit, smack, horse, H. It’s heroin, the most addictive and dangerous of all the hallucinatives used by humanity over a period of fifteen hundred years, a drug whose mere private possession in your country is a crime with severe penalties … and you have hijacked a plane in flight, imprisoned the crew, imprisoned a man named Wulff who was in original possession of these materials, have discharged your passengers at an earlier point and then have brought all of this within our borders. And what are
we
supposed to do, gentlemen?” He kicked the desk drawer closed with a force he had not expected; his rage was showing again. “What are we supposed to do?”
    He looked at the spokesman intensely and finally, the man saw that he was supposed to speak this time and that an answer was being awaited. “Our instructions were clear,” he said. “We were, if possible, to take the plane in here. We were told that all arrangements had been made at this end and that—”
    “No arrangements had been made,” Delgado said quietly. “There is no level of dialogue whatsoever between those people who are your superiors and my government. There has not been any for many years. You have been lied to, gentlemen, you have been misdirected all of the way. We do not want your plane in our country, we do not want your drugs and we have no arrangements whatsoever for disposition. Cuba is a free country now; it is not a backyard and a playpen for your interests.”
    “Look,” the heavy man said, “I’m sorry; we were only told—”
    “I don’t care what you were told,” Delgado said and came over to the man. He raised his hand and struck him in the place where the wound was, once, hard, the man groaned and spat a trickle of blood and then fell to his knees, Delgado hovering over him. Delgado kicked the man in the stomach until he arced over and then coughed, spat blood on the floor. Instantly, the rage discharged, he was calm again. He walked back to the desk. The man against the wall was looking at him in a pleading way. Delgado let the one on the floor continue to choke and spoke to this one.
    “You see,” he said gently, “I am here to tell you that your position is untenable. As untenable as you have made ours. We do not want anything to do with your traffic, we do not want any of your internal problems. The internal problems and politics of our country itself have changed a great deal over the past decade and some of your people have, perhaps, not caught up to this yet. You have given us an almost insuperable difficulty. The premier himself is very embarrassed. What are we supposed to do with you?” Delgado concluded quietly, his tone almost reasonable, they could have been working out the final details of some arrangement here.
    The other man shrugged and looked away. With the spokesman incapacitated, however, he seemed to feel that some kind of statement was expected from him and after a moment of silence his eyes swung back, away from the mountains, toward Delgado. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We had very specific instructions and no reason to feel that we would find difficulties here. This man left fifty people dead in Las Vegas.”
    “Which