Murder in Havana Read Online Free PDF Page B

Hughes Institute. I’m visiting there next month.”
    The final question from the audience was “Did you have a pleasurable four days in San Francisco?”
    Goldstein answered: “If seeing it from your hotel window at night equals pleasure, we certainly did.”
    Mancuso’s boss stood and said, “I apologize for running late, and I know you all have places to be at this hour. Let me conclude by saying to those of you who dismiss what Cuba might be doing in cancer research, there are Canadian venture capitalists pouring money into Cuban medical research, and investors tossing millions at Canadian mutual funds with interests in Canadian companies backing the Cubans.” He turned to Mancuso and Goldstein and said, “Nice job.”
    The doctor in the front row who’d laughed off what Mancuso had said stopped her on the way out. “These Canadian mutual funds that Gil mentioned. Which are they?”
    Mancuso smiled pleasantly at him. “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I follow medicine, not the market.”
    As Mancuso left the room, she looked for the little man in the green suit. He was gone. She asked her boss who he was.
    “One of our intelligence services,” he said. “Whenever we have anything to report on Cuba, they send someone over to take notes.” He laughed. “Even now, your words are being immortalized in a computer at Langley.”
    The man in the green suit had a name, Raymond Cisneros. He sat in a windowless room at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, entering into a computer his notes from the briefing. He printed a hard copy and delivered it to his superior in the Cuba section of the agency. The ranking officer read it, scowled, looked up, and asked, “Who’s this Dr. Mancuso?”
    “An NIH physician.”
    “Flag her. Another apologist for Fidel. Sounds like she’d like to marry him, for Christ sake.”

Pauling, Doris, their older son, Robert, and Doris’s new husband, Daniel Schumer, had dinner at a local restaurant the night of Max’s arrival. The younger son, Richard, opted not to join them. Max knew that the fourteen-year-old was uncomfortable being at the same table with his biological father and stepfather, and didn’t blame him. Max himself wasn’t crazy about breaking bread with the new man in Richard’s mother’s life, and bed.
    It turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant evening. Schumer, “the accountant,” was a good-looking, slightly overweight man with a full head of hair—mildly annoying to the thinning-haired Pauling—and an amiable table companion. He told a good story and got everyone laughing with a few tales of former clients who’d decided they could beat the tax system and ended up as guests of the federal penal system. Schumer picked up the tab, which Pauling considered appropriate.
    He’d taken a taxi from the private airport to the house, and they drove to the restaurant in Schumer’s white Lexus. As they stood in the parking lot waiting for an attendant to fetch the car, Schumer said, “You’re leaving in the morning?”
    “Yes,” said Max. “An early start.”
    “It must be satisfying flying your own plane, avoiding those commercial flights—with commercial waiting.”
    “It does have advantages,” Pauling said.
    “I’ll pick you up at your motel and drive you to the airport,” Schumer offered.
    “I don’t want to put you out.”
    “I’d do it but I’m tied up with an early meeting,” Doris said.
    “No problem for me,” Schumer said. “I have a racquetball date first thing. What time do you want to go, Max?”
    “Seven too early?”
    “Perfect.”
    They dropped Pauling at his motel, said good-bye, and left him pondering the evening over a drink at the bar. He was glad he’d made the stop. Seeing that his family was healthy and secure was important. But ambivalence reigned.
    On the one hand, he was pleased that the new man in his sons’ lives seemed to be okay. No, that’s not fair, he told himself as the bartender indicated last call.