Excerpt from Havana Bay by Martin Cruz Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Arkady had talked to Pribluda's son, who had refused to come to Havana. He managed a pizzeria, a major responsibility.
Rufo went on. "Fortunately, the captain says, the identification performed today before your eyes is simple and conclusive. The captain says that a key found in the effects was taken to the apartment of the missing man where it unlocked the door. From an examination of the body recovered from the bay, Dr. Blas estimates that it is a Caucasoid male approximately fifty to sixty years of age, 165 centimeters in height, 90 kilos in weight, in every regard the same as the missing man. Moreover, the dental chart of the Russian citizen Pribluda you yourself brought shows one lower molar filled. That molar in the recovered jaw is a steel tooth which, in the opinion of Dr. Blas, according to the captain, is typical Russian dental work. Do you agree?"

"From what I saw, yes."
"Dr. Blas says he finds no wounds or broken bones, no signs of violence or foul play. Your friend died of natural causes, perhaps a stroke or aneurysm or heart attack, it would be almost impossible to determine which for a body in this condition. The doctor hopes he did not suffer long."
"That's kind of him." Although the doctor appeared more smug than sympathetic.
"The captain, for his part, asks if you accept the observations of this autopsy?"
"I'd like to think about it."

"Well, you accept the conclusion that the body recovered is that of the Russian citizen Pribluda?"
Arkady turned to the examining table. What had been a bloated cadaver was now split and gutted. Of course, there had been no face or eyes to identify anyway, and finger bones never did yield prints, but someone had lived in that ruined body.
"I think an inner tube in the bay is a strange place to find a Russian citizen."
"The captain says they all think that."
"Then there will be an investigation?"
Rufo said, "It depends."
"On what?"
"On many factors."
"Such as?"

"The captain says your friend was a spy. What he was doing when he died was not innocent. The captain can predict your embassy will ask us to do nothing. We are the ones who could make an international incident of this, but frankly it is not worth the effort. We will investigate in our own time, in our own way, although in this Special Period the Cuban people cannot afford to waste resources on people who have revealed themselves to be our enemy. Now do you understand what I mean?" Rufo paused while Arcos took a second to compose himself. "The captain says an investigation depends on many factors. The position of our friends at the Russian embassy must be taken into account before premature steps are taken. The only issue we have here is an identification of a foreign national who has died on Cuban territory. Do you accept it is the Russian citizen Sergei Pribluda?"
"It could be," Arkady said.

Dr. Blas sighed, Luna took a deep breath and Detective Osorio weighed the keys in her palm. Arkady couldn't help feeling like a difficult actor. "It probably is, but I can't say conclusively that this body is Pribluda. There's no face, no prints and I doubt very much that you will be able to type the blood. All you have is a dental chart and one steel tooth. He could be another Russian. Or one of thousands of Cubans who went to Russia. Or a Cuban who had a tooth pulled by a Cuban dentist who trained in Russia. Probably you're right, but that's not enough. You opened Pribluda's door with a key. Did you look inside?"

Dr. Blas asked in precisely snipped Russian, "Did you bring any other identification from Moscow?"
"Just this. Pribluda sent it a month ago." Arkady dug out of his passport case a snapshot of three men standing on a beach and squinting at the camera. One man was so black he could have been carved from jet. He held up a glistening rainbow of a fish for the admiration of two whites, a shorter man with a compensating tower of steel-wool hair and, partially obscured by the others, Pribluda. Behind them was water, a tip of beach, palms.

Excerpted from Havana Bay by Martin Cruz Smith. Copyright© 1999 by Martin Cruz Smith. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.