Our Man in Havana

Milly (real name Seraphina) is Wormold’s teenage daughter, who has lived most of her life in Havana. Unlike her father, Milly is a devout Catholic, attending Mass regularly and praying at home for herself and others. However, Milly lacks maturity. She was formerly a very mischievous pupil in school (for instance, she once set a boy on fire). Now, she is demanding and self-centered, buying riding gear and a horse without her father’s permission and expecting him to come up with the money to pay for it. The difference in their beliefs makes raising Milly difficult for Wormold: “[Her mother] had left a Catholic on his hands” (10). Wormold feels distant from Milly; her faith creates an unbridgeable gap between them.

Milly is very beautiful, and her beauty draws much attention. Greene presents Milly’s beauty in a religious light. She seems to “levitate” as she walks, and she looks most beautiful in church (10). Her original name, Seraphina, suggests an angelic radiance. Milly shines amid the seamy side of Havana and, despite her flaws, she represents everything that Wormold is fighting and striving for. At the end of the novel, Milly shows greater maturity and acceptance of differences than before. She realizes that Captain Segura is not right for her and accepts her father’s remarriage to Beatrice.

Beatrice is the heroine of the novel, who enters about a third of the way through. She is a typist from the Secret Service who is sent to Havana to be Wormold’s secretary and help him in his spy activities. She brings professional training and order to Wormold’s office and offers friendship and sympathy as well. The two gradually come to care for each other and to fall in love. Severn, like Wormold, has been disappointed in her love life; her husband drifted away because he was more interested in his political work than in her. Beatrice is practical, spirited, and down-to-earth. For Wormold, Beatrice (whose namesake is Dante’s beloved in The Divine Comedy) is real and authentic, in contrast to the phony world represented by commerce and the Secret Service: “Her eyes, he noticed, were the same colour as the night before and so was her hair; it had not after all been the effect of the champagne and the palm-trees. He thought, She looks real” (97).

Beatrice stands by Wormold, even though his revelations show that his spy activity has been fake. She shows courage and a willingness to put herself in harm’s way for the sake of Wormold and her job. Like Wormold, she does not agree with the Secret Service mentality and wants to leave the profession. At the end, she is able to start a new life with Wormold.

Henry Hawthorne is Wormold’s connection to the spy world. He is a recruiting officer for London’s Secret Service who travels to Havana to recruit a new spy. An elegantly dressed man, Hawthorne accosts Wormold in his shop and later in a bar, recruiting him to work for the Secret Service in a very sneaky and indirect way. However, Hawthorne is inept and foolhardy like his superiors at the Secret Service; he is also taken in by Wormold’s drawings and other fabrications. He is comfortable and never in any real danger while he continually puts other people at risk. Hawthorne represents everything that Greene resents about faceless organizations that, from a position of power and comfort, seek to control and use other people.

Dr. Hasselbacher is a German-born physician and veteran who has lived in Havana for thirty years. He is Wormold’s best friend; they share much time together drinking at the Wonder Bar in downtown Havana. Hasselbacher enjoys the bottle, and we see him drink more than see patients. Hasselbacher serves as a counselor and father figure to Wormold and is almost part of his family (he is present at Milly’s birthday party).

In the first chapter, he advises Wormold to “dream” rather than worry about life in the modern world. In a sense, Hasselbacher’s advice sets Wormold on the wrong path and later comes back to haunt Hasselbacher himself. Some spies invade his home while he is out and sack it, destroying a prized scientific experiment in the process. After this experience, as well as after the death of “Raul,” Hasselbacher is never the same. He retreats into nostalgia for his past, putting on an old military costume he wore in World War I; he seems lost and depressed at the turn of events. Hasselbacher shows his friendship for Wormold by warning him before the luncheon; in doing so, he precipitates his own death. Wormold shows his loyalty his old friend by seeking to avenge his murder.

The chief of police for the Vedado district in Havana, Captain Segura is, along with Carter, the closest the novel comes to an outright villain. We first hear of him as having given lifts to Milly in his car and having sold her a horse. Segura is in love with Milly. He first appears at her birthday party where he behaves playfully and boorishly. Segura is known as “The Red Vulture,” and has a reputation for torture and owning a cigarette case made from human skin. He is widely feared or hated, both in the police force and among the populace. The night after Beatrice squirts him with soda water, people on the street laugh and applaud.

Later, Segura talks casually and cynically about torture and politics. We sense that he can be a brutal enforcer, and Greene tells us that he looks “like a well-cared-for weapon” (118). Although Segura starts out as a sinister figure, he later comes to help Wormold and Milly, acting as a political and personal ally. His checkers games with Wormold benefit him in his spy work, and these episodes also show Segura’s essential foolishness. At the end Wormold concludes that he “wasn’t a bad chap,” but Milly concedes that he was “not right for a husband” (218). The character of Captain Segura was inspired by Fulgencio Batista’s much-feared police chief, Captain Estéban Ventura.