Murder in Havana Read Free Page B

thing,” Pauling said.
    “What kind of project?” Jessica asked. Pauling read the edge in her voice.
    Gosling shrugged. “I’m working for a private investigation agency,” he said. “No need to check your clearances, is there?” He laughed. “Max has been telling me I’m paranoid, which I suppose I am. Hard to shake it. Right, Max? At any rate, I’m working for Cell-One. We have a Who’s Who of corporate America as clients, top companies. One of them has given us an assignment that Mr. Pauling here, with his experience, might find interesting.”
    Jessica silently awaited a further explanation. It wasn’t to come. Gosling yawned, stretched, and said, “Getting close to my bedtime. Hope you don’t mind, Jessica, having an unannounced overnight guest. I sleep well on couches.”
    “No need for that,” she said, forcing lightness back into her voice. “We have a real guest room, an office most of the time—but with a comfortable pullout.”
    He followed her into the room carrying his small blue canvas overnight bag. “Sleep as late as you want,” she said. “I leave for work at eight.” To Max: “Do you have students tomorrow?”
    “Two, in the afternoon. I thought I’d give Vic a spin in the plane in the morning. He wants to learn how to fly.”
    “I thought you already had a spin in the plane,” she said, “coming up from Mexico.” Had Gosling outlined the assignment to Pauling during that flight? She didn’t bother asking.
Check clearances indeed!
The games little boys play.
    “That was all business,” Gosling said pleasantly. “I’d enjoy a purely personal joyride. Good night. You’re the perfect host and hostess.”
    Max and Jessica sat on the deck for another hour. She didn’t ask about the project until they’d gotten into bed.
    “You told me you never trusted him, Max,” she whispered. “The book was a phony, you said.”
    “It was,” he whispered in reply. “But no harm in hearing him out. It’s private work. I am still employable, I think. Or I’d like to think so.”
    Her silence was verbose.
    He kissed her on the lips. “I love you,” he said.
    “Me, too,” she said, turning her back to him, sighing, and snuggling her head into the pillow. Max didn’t know whether that meant she loved him, or herself. But as long as love was in the air.…
    They heard the shower go on at six. When they emerged from their bedroom at six-thirty, Gosling had made coffee and was sitting on the deck, a steaming cup in front of him.
    “Sleep well?” Jessica asked.
    “Extremely,” Gosling replied. “Hope you don’t mind that I helped myself to coffee.”
    “Not at all,” Max said. He suggested that Jessica shower. “I’ll get breakfast.”
    As Jessica was about to leave for work, Gosling thanked her again for the hospitality. He then cocked his head, nodding in agreement with something he was thinking. “Leave it to Max Pauling to fall in love with the most beautiful woman in the State Department.”
    Jess didn’t feign modesty. “Thank you,” she said. “Please visit again.” She accepted Max’s kiss and was out the door.
    “I meant it,” Gosling said when she was gone.
    “I’m sure you did,” Max said. “Because you’re right.”
    Max had met Jessica Mumford and her friends Mac and Annabel Smith a little over a year ago in the John Quincy Adams State Drawing Room at State, where a new Russian minister-counselor of trade was being fêted. Jessica was there because of her job in State’s Russian section. Max had just returned to Washington from an extended stint in Moscow, operating as a State intelligence officer under embassy cover.
    His attraction to her was immediate and powerful. She was tall and willowy. She wore her blond-and-silver hair short and wet. Her profile was clean and strong, cheekbones prominent, nose appropriately long and fine. He circled, planned his angle of attack, moved in, said the right things knowing she wouldn’t respond to anything