Noreen and Dinah didn’t come, either. Not that I had expected them to come. Noreen didn’t come, for the simple reason that she had feared and detested Max Reles in equal measure. Dinah didn’t come, because she had already returned to the United States. Since this was exactly what Noreen had always wanted her daughter to do, I imagined she was now feeling too happy to come to a funeral. For all I knew, she had gone to the beach with López again. Which wasn’t any of my business. Or so I kept telling myself.

As the pallbearers carried the casket, haltingly, to the graveside, Captain Sánchez appeared at my elbow. We still weren’t friends, but I was beginning to like him.

“What’s the German opera where the murderer gets fingered by the victim?” he asked.

“Götterdämmerung,” I said. “The Twilight of the Gods.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe Reles will point him out to us.”

“I wonder how that would play out in court.”

“This is Cuba, my friend,” said Sánchez. “In this country, people still believe in Baron Samedi.” He lowered his voice. “And talking of the voodoo master of death, we have our own creature of the invisible world here with us today. He who escorts souls from the land of the living to the graveyard. Not to mention two of his most sinister avatars. The man in the beige uniform who looks like a younger General Franco? That’s Colonel Antonio Blanco Rico, head of the Cuban military intelligence service. Take my word for it, señor, that man has made more souls disappear in Cuba than any voodoo spirit. The man to his left is Colonel Mariano Faget, of the militia. During the war Faget was in charge of a counterespionage unit that successfully targeted several Nazi agents who were reporting on the movements of Cuban and American to German submarines.”

“What happened to them?”

“They were shot by firing squad.”

“Interesting. And the third man?”

“That’s Faget’s CIA liaison officer, Lieutenant José Castaño Quevedo. A very nasty piece of work.”

“And why are they here, exactly?”

“To pay their respects. It’s certain that from time to time the president would ask your friend Max to pay off these men by making sure they won in his casino. Actually, most of the time they don’t even have to take the trouble to gamble. They just go into the salon privé at the Saratoga, or for that matter any of the other casinos, collect several handfuls of chips, and cash them in. Of course, Señor Reles knew exactly how to look after men such as these. And it is certain they will have taken his death very personally. So they too are very interested in the progress of your inquiry.”

“They are?”