López closed his eyes again and laid his head on the seat. The two soldiers were pulling a box out of a hole in the ground. It was time to leave. If we were allowed. Quevedo was just the type to break a deal just because he could. And there would be nothing that I could do about it, either. I had always known that was a possibility, and had figured it was worth the risk. After all, it wasn’t my weapons cache. But I hadn’t figured on Quevedo turning me into his pet informer. Already I hated myself. More than I already hated myself.

I bit my lip for a moment, and then said, “All right. I kept my end of the deal. This deal. The arms cache for López. So how about it? Are you going to let him go, like you agreed? I’ll be your dirty little spy, Quevedo, but only if you keep your end of this. D’you hear? You keep your word or you can send me back to Vienna and be damned.”

“That was a brave speech,” he said. “I admire you for it. No, really I do. One day in the future when you’re feeling a little less emotional about this, you can tell me all about being a policeman in Hitler’s Germany. I’m sure I’d be fascinated to find out more and understand what it must have been like. I’ve always been interested in history. Who knows? Maybe we’ll discover that we have something in common.”

He raised a forefinger as if he’d only just thought of something.

“One thing I really don’t understand: why you ever wanted to stick your neck out for a man like Alfredo López.”

“Believe me, I’m asking myself the same question.”

Quevedo smiled a smile of disbelief. “I don’t buy that. Not for a moment. When we were driving over here from Marianao just now, I asked him about you. And he told me that before today he’d only met you three times in his life. Twice at the home of Ernest Hemingway. And once at his office. And he said it was you who did him a good turn, not the other way around. Before today, that is. That you got him out of a tight spot once before. He didn’t say what that was. And frankly, I’ve already asked him so many questions I didn’t feel like pursuing the matter. Besides, he has no more fingernails to lose.” He shook his head. “So. Why? Why help him again?”

“Not that it’s any of your damn business, but López gave me a reason to believe in myself again.”

“What reason?”

“Nothing you would understand. I hardly understand it myself. But it was enough to make me want to carry on in the hope that my life might mean something.”