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

Blas studied the photograph and read the scribble on the back. "Havana Yacht Club."
"There is such a yacht club?" Arkady asked.
"There was such a club before the Revolution," Blas said. "I think your friend was making a joke."
Rufo said, "Cubans love grandiose titles. A 'drinking society' can be friends in a bar."
"The others don't look Russian to me. You can make copies of the picture and circulate them."

The picture went around to Arcos, who put it back into Arkady's hands as if it were toxic. Rufo said, "The captain says your friend was a spy, that spies come to bad ends, as they deserve. This is typically Russian, pretending to help and then stabbing Cuba in the back. The Russian embassy sends out its spy and, when he's missing, asks us to find him. When we find him, you refuse to identify him. Instead of cooperating, you demand an investigation, as if you were still the master and Cuba was the puppet. Since that is no longer the case, you can take your picture back to Moscow. The whole world knows of the Russian betrayal of the Cuban people and, well, he says some more in that vein."

Arkady gathered as much. The captain looked ready to spit.
Rufo gave Arkady a push. "I think it's time to go."
Detective Osorio, who had been quietly following the conversation, suddenly revealed fluent Russian. "Was there a letter with the picture?"
"Only a postcard saying hello," Arkady said. "I threw it away."
"Idiota," Osorio said, which nobody bothered to translate.
"It's lucky you're going home, you don't have many friends here," Rufo said. "The embassy said to put you in an apartment until the plane."

They drove by three-story stone town houses transformed by the revolution into a far more colorful backdrop of ruin and decay, marble colonnades refaced with whatever color was available-green, ultramarine, chartreuse. Not just ordinary green, either, but a vibrant spectrum: sea, lime, palm and verdigris. Houses were as blue as powdered turquoise, pools of water, peeling sky, the upper levels enlivened by balconies of ornate ironwork embellished by canary cages, florid roosters, hanging bicycles. Even dowdy Russian cars wore a wide variety of paint, and if their clothes were drab most of the people had the slow grace and color of big cats. They paused at tables offering guava paste, pastries, tubers and fruits. One girl shaving ices was streaked red and green with syrup, another girl sold sweetmeats from a cheesecloth tent. A locksmith rode a bicycle that powered a key grinder; he wore goggles for the sparks and shavings flying around him as he pedaled in place. The music of a radio hanging in the crook of a pushcart's umbrella floated in the air.

"Is this the way to the airport?" Arkady asked.
"The flight is tomorrow. Usually there's only one Aeroflot flight a week during the winter, so they don't want you to miss it." Rufo rolled the window down. "Phew, I smell worse than fish."
"Autopsies stay with you." Arkady had left his overcoat outside the operating theater and separated the coat now from the paper bag holding Pribluda's effects. "If Dr. Blas and Detective Osorio speak Russian, why were you along?"
"There was a time when it was forbidden to speak English. Now Russian is taboo. Anyway, the embassy wanted someone along when you were with the police, but someone not Russian. You know, I never knew anyone so unpopular so fast as you."
"That's a sort of distinction."

"But now you're here you should enjoy yourself. Would you like to see the city, go to a café, to the Havana Libre? It used to be the Hilton. They have a rooftop restaurant with a fantastic view. And they serve lobster. Only state restaurants are allowed to serve lobster, which are assets of the state."

"No, thanks." The idea of cracking open a lobster after an autopsy didn't sit quite right.

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.