Murder in Havana by Margaret Truman

least in the workplace.
    But there
was
a difference.
    Workplace?
    Going undercover to spy and putting your life on the line in the bargain hardly represented a workplace.
    The smell of her perfume reached his nostrils, carrying such pragmatic thoughts into the humid Havana air.
    “Where are we going?” he asked.
    “An apartment.”
    “You live in Cuba?”
    “No. It belongs to a friend of mine. She’s away on business.”
    “Convenient.”
    “Very. I’ll be staying there for as long as it takes you to finish your assignment.”
    They turned into a
solar
, a dark, narrow alley.
    “The apartment’s here?” Pauling asked.
    “At the end.”
    He stopped walking, allowing her to get a few steps ahead. She stopped, too, and turned. “Are you all right?” she asked. Her voice was low for a woman, and well modulated.
    “Yes, of course.” His defenses were up, his senses sharpened. He didn’t know this woman, yet blindly followed her into the darkness.
    They reached a doorway, which she opened. A key wasn’t necessary. Pauling looked up. Silhouetted against the sky was a wrought-iron balcony; clothing hung from it. A bare bulb in the tiny foyer’s ceiling fixture gave scant light, as though receiving only some of the intended electricity. A set of stone steps led to upper floors. As the woman called Sardiña ascended the steps, Pauling took notice of the sway in her hips and the nicely turned calves and ankles below the dress hem. It was insufferably hot in the cramped staircase; her perfume dizzied him as he followed her to a steel door, which she also opened without a key. She reached for a wall switch and the room took shape; small, square, with two doors leading from it. The only window was open and a blessed breeze rippled white chintz curtains. There was a pullout couch, a tall, slender dresser, two red vinyl sling chairs, and a black rug that lay in the middle of the wood floor like a square on acheckerboard. She went to the tiny kitchen, light from it spilling across the floor.
    “Would you like a drink?” she asked.
    He came to the doorway. “Sure.”
    He watched her take a bottle of rum from a cabinet, and two cordial glasses, which she filled. She handed one to him, smiled, raised her glass, and said,
“Salud!”
    Pauling nodded and tasted.
    “Habana Club,” she said. “
Anejo
. Aged seven years.”
    “It’s good,” he said, returning to the main room and sitting on the couch. She took one of the chairs.
    “You have a first name I assume,” he said.
    “Of course I do,” she said, laughing.
    “All Vic told me—you know Vic, of course—he called you Sardiña. That’s all.”
    “I suppose he didn’t want to scare you off,” she said, “my being a woman. Celia. My name is Celia.”
    “Celia. What’s your story?”
    “My
story
?”
    “Are you Cuban?”
    “Born here, to the States when I was eleven.”
    “You, ah—you spend a lot of time here?”
    “Some. I’m with the Cuban-American Health Initiative. I get to come back often, especially since the embargo allows the sale of medical supplies to Cuba.”
    Pauling nodded. The Cuban-American Health Initiative. Another CIA front? There were so many you couldn’t tell them apart without a scorecard. What
was
her story?
    “How did you get involved with Gosling?” he asked.
    “So many questions.”
    “I like to know who I’m working with.”
    “So do I.”
    He grinned, pulled one of the business cards from Cali Forwarding that Gosling had given him, and handed it to her. She dropped it to the floor next to her chair.
    “You’re working with Celia Sardiña, who can put you in touch with the right people,” she said. “Would you like another drink?”
    “No. I need some sleep. Does that couch pull out?”
    “For me, it does. Can you find your way back to the hotel?”
    “I’ll manage. When do you start putting me in touch with the right people?”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “And what do I do, hang around the bar waiting for