Our Man In Havana by Graham Greene

Author:Graham Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781407086699
Publisher: Random House

2

A week later he took Beatrice out to supper at a fish-restaurant near the harbour. The authorization had come, though they had cut him down by two hundred dollars so that the A.O. got his round figure after all. Wormold thought of Raul driving out to the airport to embark on his dangerous flight. The story was not yet complete. Just as in real life, accidents could happen; a character might take control. Perhaps Raul would be intercepted before embarking, perhaps he would be stopped by a police-car on his way. He might disappear into the torture-chambers of Captain Segura. No reference would appear in the press. Wormold would warn London that he was going off the air in case Raul was forced to talk. The radio-set would be dismantled and hidden after the last message had been sent, the celluloid sheets would be kept ready for a final conflagration …

Or perhaps Raul would take off in safety and they would never know what exactly happened to him over the Oriente mountains. Only one thing in the story was certain: he would not arrive in Jamaica and there would be no photographs.

‘What are you thinking?’ Beatrice asked. He hadn’t touched his stuffed langouste.

‘I was thinking of Raul.’ The wind blew up from the Atlantic. Moro Castle lay like a liner gale-bound across the harbour.

‘Anxious?’

‘Of course I’m anxious.’ If Raul had taken off at midnight, he would refuel just before dawn in Santiago, where the ground-staff were friendly, everyone within the Oriente province being rebels at heart. Then when it was just light enough for photography and too early for the patrol planes to be up, he would begin his reconnaissance over the mountains and the forest.

‘He hasn’t been drinking?’

‘He promised me he wouldn’t. One can’t tell.’

‘Poor Raul.’

‘Poor Raul.’

‘He’s never had much fun, has he? You should have introduced him to Teresa.’

He looked sharply up at her, but she seemed deeply engaged over her langouste.

‘That wouldn’t have been very secure, would it?’

‘Oh, damn security,’ she said.

After supper they walked back along the landward side of the Avenida de Maceo. There were few people about in the wet windy night and little traffic. The rollers came in from the Atlantic and smashed over the sea-wall. The spray drove across the road, over the four traffic-lanes, and beat like rain under the pock-marked pillars where they walked. The clouds came racing from the east, and he felt himself to be part of the slow erosion of Havana. Fifteen years was a long time. He said, ‘One of those lights up there may be him. How solitary he must feel.’

‘You talk like a novelist,’ she said.

He stopped under a pillar and watched her with anxiety and suspicion.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular. Sometimes I think you treat your agents like lay figures, people in a book. It’s a real man up there – isn’t it?’

‘That’s not a very nice thing to say about me.’

‘Oh, forget it. Tell me about someone you really care about Your wife.

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