I say rooftop, but there was another, higher level set back from the pool terrace and, according to my new friend, Alfredo López, this was the exclusive penthouse where Max Reles lived in considerable luxury. The only way up there was to have a special key to the elevator—again, according to López. But glancing around the deserted pool terrace—the weather was too blowy for anyone to be sunbathing—I filled my idle mind with thoughts of how a man with a head for heights might climb up onto that penthouse terrace from the outside. Such a man would have had to clamber out onto the parapet encircling the pool, walk precariously around the corner, and then climb up on some scaffolding being used to repair the hotel’s neon sign that adorned the curved corner façade. There were some people who went on a rooftop and enjoyed the view; and there were others, like me, who remembered crime scenes and snipers and, above all, the war on the eastern front. In Minsk, a Red Army marksman had sat on the roof of the city’s only hotel for three whole days picking off German army officers before being nailed with an antitank gun. Such a man would have appreciated the rooftop terrace of the Saratoga.

Then again, Max Reles probably had that possibility covered. According to Alfredo López, Reles wasn’t the kind of man who took any chances with his personal security. He had too many friends to do something like that. Havana friends, that is. The kind who make enthusiastic understudies of deadly enemies.

“I thought maybe you’d changed your mind,” Max said, emerging from a doorway that led along to the elevators. “That you weren’t going to show up.” His tone was reproachful and a little puzzled, as if he were annoyed that he couldn’t work out any good reason why I might have been late for our lunch.

“I’m sorry. I got a little held up. You see, last night I told López about that roadblock on the road north out of San Francisco de Paula.”

“What the hell did you do that for?”

“He had a briefcase full of rebel pamphlets, and I don’t know why, but I agreed to take them for him and then deliver them back to him this morning. There was a police truck outside the Bacardi Building when I arrived, and I had to wait until it was gone.”

“You shouldn’t get involved with a man like that,” said Reles. “Really, you shouldn’t. That shit’s dangerous. You want to keep away from the politics on this island.”

“You’re right, of course. I shouldn’t. And I don’t know why I said I’d do it. Probably I’d drunk too much. I do a lot of that. There’s nothing much else to do in Cuba except drink too much.”