Havana by Stephen Hunter

was on or off, buttoned or unbuttoned, collar up, collar down. Then, at random hours determined by predesignated unpredictables—like the appearance of a pigeon with gray wings, or of a rare woman seller of bolita tickets (as the unofficial lottery was called)—he’d abandon the cab he was in, or he’d make a guess as to destination based on good professional instincts, and zip ahead, not to follow them but to foreshadow them.
    It was expensive, of course; too expensive for the annoying Pashin, who would not cover the taxi expenses, would not hire a car and driver, yet would not alter the nature of his assignment either. Make do, Speshnev. You are supposed to be so good, simply make do.
    So early in the mornings, when the congressman and his more interesting companions had tired out, he went to a smallish casino, lost a little money playing blackjack, and then, when the decks were charged with face cards, made a swift big hit, pocketed the excess and left. He never hit the same place twice, he never wore the same hat twice, he never won too much to get himself beaten or robbed. He just knew the numbers and held them in his mind with an eerie concentration, made his profit, and retreated quickly, before he became known, before his card-counting could be classified a professional’s skill as opposed to luck. He’d already made $10,000 that way, in a few nights. It was a shame he didn’t defect, he thought, and make the numbers work for him in the world’s gambling spots.
    But fool that he was, he did his duty, for men who despised him, for a system that had almost murdered him, for cynics and scoundrels and sociopaths that ran the intelligence service. His duty: it was all he had.
    He followed them for the better part of a week and had reached some kind of provisional judgments already. The first was that the American congressman, showy and vain about his hair, was a man of great strengths but equally great weaknesses. The man was a drinker and if Speshnev still had instincts for such things, a whoremonger as well. He loved to dominate and to be obeyed and he sat back and watched people scurry, enjoying every second of the theater of fear. Of those around him, most were of the sort familiar in political circumstances: little factotums who did what the Great Man ordered and sought to acquire his favor and avoid his rage whenever possible. An assistant seemed to be the chief of these pathetic creatures, and he never ventured far from the Great Man’s elbow, which made him the prime subject of those compliments and those terrible rages.
    There were a few others, a Cuban driver, an embassy babysitter, a secretary, who at various times accompanied them. But mainly, there was the bodyguard. This was Speshnev’s true quarry, the first American he’d ever been assigned to evaluate from a professional point of view, and the man whom he might in fact have to eliminate.
    Speshnev knew the type. He had something. Some tankers had it, some ace aviators. Old infantry sergeants had it, and the snipers, the really good ones, who scored kills in the hundreds, they had it. He’d seen a lot of it in Spain too, in some of the crazier advisors who had to go on every attack, so burning were they with fervor. Death truly meant nothing to such men. It was courage and cunning, but those alone weren’t it.
    Speshnev picked it up at once. No word really existed in English; the Russians had one however, tiltsis, expressing a certain unmalleability of character. This chap could not be bent, influenced, seduced, tempted. He simply was what he was.
    Speshnev read body language. In the separation, the isolation, of the bodyguard he saw the man’s bull-pride. He would not be one of them, “them” being political operatives of a parasitical nature. He had a quality of stillness to him. His body was under discipline at all times, his arms always held in. He carried some kind of big American automatic