White Cargo

by Stuart Woods

They left the walled city and drove northeast along the coast on a two-lane tarmac road. A few miles out of Cartagena, Meg turned left onto a rough dirt track and slowed enough to manage the potholes.

  Cat had been impressed with the Caribé Hotel and looked forward to comfortable arrangements for the night. Now, as the Mercedes banged along the track through the cactus, he saw that hope vanishing. He began to think in terms of hammocks slung under thatch. His hopes were not improved when Meg got out to open the padlock on a battered steel gate. After that, though, the road smoothed out and showed signs of having been graveled. Shortly a large tree appeared before them, and as Meg swung the car around it, the house came into view.

  It was no more than a few years old, of the traditional white stucco and red roof tiles. Meg used several keys on a sturdy oak door, then they were inside a large, sunlit space, stiflingly hot.

  “Jesus, let’s get some air in here,” she said, and began unlocking large sliding glass doors opening onto a wide veranda. The sea breeze swept into the house, quickly cooling the interior. The living-room furniture was a mixture of Bauhaus leather and steel and soft pieces upholstered in pale Haitian cotton. “You’re this way,” she said, waving him into a large, sunny bedroom with a large bed and wicker furniture. “Say, do you play tennis?”

  “Sure,” he said, dropping his bags on the bed. “I don’t have any gear, though. Tennis wasn’t what I had been expecting from Colombia.”

  She laughed. “In Colombia, expect the unexpected. Look in the second closet, there. I think you’ll find what you need.”

  Cat opened the closet and found tennis clothes and bathing suits in a variety of sizes, men’s and women’s. He found some shoes and changed. He could hear her in the kitchen as he came out of the bedroom.

  “Just thawing some steaks for dinner,” she called out.

  He had another look around the living room. He hadn’t noticed the pictures before. They were very South American-looking, mostly primitives. He liked them. The effect of the whole place was pleasing, much like its owner.

  A moment later she joined him and led the way out the front door and along a path to a nicely built hard court. “This is my pride and joy,” she said. “I never have guests who don’t play tennis.” She blew the surface clean with an electric blower, and they began to hit balls.

  She played more like a man than a woman, he thought, feeling it in his wrist as he returned one of her forehands. She won the serve and aced him twice before he even got a racket on a ball.

  “Sorry about that,” she called out. “I get worse as it goes on.”

  She wasn’t sorry about it, and she didn’t get worse. Cat thought if he had not been working out so much the last few months, she’d have run him off his feet. She took the first set six-one, and he stopped feeling guilty about wanting to beat a woman. Playing as hard as he could, he squeaked through the next set, winning it seven-five. At four-four in the third set, she broke his serve, and he reached down inside himself for something more. He had a brief flash of memory, of Quantico and a ten-mile run, surely the last time he had had to try this hard at anything. He broke her serve, then lost his again, then took hers again. His concentration was total now; he might have been playing at Wimbledon. He aced her to get to seven-six, then hit four of the hardest returns of service he had ever hit to beat her, eight-six.

  They flopped onto a bench at courtside, both pouring with sweat and breathing hard.

  “You sonofabitch,” she said conversationally. “Do you always play so hard against girls?”

  “Girl? You’re the goddamned Bionic Woman. Don’t you have any pity?”

  “You’re the first man to beat me in a long time.”

  “The first man? What women have you been playing—Navratilova?”

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “I’m . . .” He stopped, tried to unscramble his brain, finally looked at his watch. The twenty-ninth. “Good God, I’d forgotten.”

  “Forgotten what?”

  “I’ll be fifty tomorrow.”

  “Fifty?”

  “I may be the boy in this match, but you’ve got what, twelve years on me?”

  “I’ve got fifteen years on you, buster.”

  “Oops, sorry.”

  “Race you to the beach,” she said, and sprinted off.

  He staggered after her down a narrow path to the sea, and as he came around a large boulder, he saw a trail of tennis clothes stretching across the sand and, hitting the water, a lithe, naked form. He hopped along on one foot, struggling with a shoe, then another, then his shorts and shirt. He hit the surf sprinting, loped a few steps through the water, then dived flat and started swimming. She had fifty yards on him but was moving more slowly than he. He caught her a hundred yards out.

  “As a swimmer, you’re a great tennis player,” he said, overtaking her at last.

  She shoved water in his face and began swimming slowly back toward the beach. He followed a few strokes behind. She found the bottom, waded from the water, and flopped on her back on the wet sand. He fell down beside her. They were both breathing hard from the tennis and the swimming, and he was very conscious of her nakedness, particularly her full, tanned breasts as they heaved with her breathing. There were no untanned strips anywhere. He suddenly found it necessary to roll onto his stomach to conceal his growing concern with her body.

  “God, I haven’t had such a workout in ages,” she said, still breathing hard.

  “Neither have I,” he said, breathing, if anything, even harder. He knew he was staring, but he could not help himself.

  She seemed unconcerned with her nakedness or his. “It’ll be dark soon,” she said, shivering a little. “I’d better go start dinner.”

  “I’ll stay here for a minute and recover my health,” he said, embarrassed to move.

  She got to her feet and jogged toward the house, collecting their clothing as she went He watched as she paused to rinse herself under an outdoor shower. The setting sun turned her body a hot shade of coppery gold. Then she was gone.

  It took a couple of minutes of thinking about something else before he felt it was safe to stand. He trotted to the shower, grabbed a towel on the veranda, and let himself into his room through the sliding doors. He shaved, took a hot shower, and stretched out on the bed, just for a moment.

  • • •

  She placed the cool back of a hand on his face to waken him. It was dark in the room. He lay on his back, the towel covering his crotch. “How about a drink?” she suggested. “Dinner’s in half an hour.”

  He looked at his watch. He had been asleep for an hour and a half. “Sure. Make me something local.”

  He unpacked his clothes and dressed in light cotton clothes and deck shoes. She had a rum punch waiting for him in the kitchen while she grilled some steaks and worked on dinner.

  “I’m afraid it’s frozen vegetables,” she said. “There’s nothing fresh in the house but potatoes, which are baking even as we speak.” She was wearing a loose-flowing caftan of a soft beige material that occasionally revealed the outline of her body as she moved about the kitchen.

  “I thought you might be ready for an American meal,” she said.

  “Sounds good. The house is wonderful.”

  “It’s the only thing I own, except for the Mercedes,” she said. “I’ve been putting it together for four years. It’s just about where I want it now.”

  “I should have guessed. It’s like you. Why did you bring me here? You don’t know me.”

  “Yes, I do—better than I did yesterday, anyway. Want an instant character analysis?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, of course, I know the general stuff about you, the business you built, and all that.”

  “I’ll tell you a secret. My brother-in-law built the business. I just worked on the technical stuff.”

  “When I met you, you were wound pretty tight. I thought you might break when your friend was killed.”

  “I did b
reak,” he said. “I was in a state of complete despair, didn’t know what to do next. I was about to pack it in and go home.”

  “But you didn’t. When you got that phone call, you came back fast. That told me a lot—that, and the way you played tennis this afternoon. I beat you pretty easy the first set; then you decided you wanted to win. I was very impressed the way you played the last couple of games of the last set.”

  “Don’t expect that sort of performance again. I don’t think I’ve ever played that well.”

  “I don’t mean how well you played; I mean how hard you played.”

  “Well,” he chuckled, “I couldn’t let myself be beaten by a mere slip of a girl.”

  “A mere slip of a girl who had a year on the pro tour. I was never ranked very high; I overtrained for too long, and my knees went on me.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me to hear that. You strike me as somebody who goes after things pretty hard.”

  “That’s something you and I share,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever had to go after things hard. I had it pretty easy, except in the Marines, and nobody had it easy there.”

  “I learned something else about you during that tennis match, something you probably don’t know yourself. Not yet, anyway.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have it in you to be completely ruthless. It didn’t take you long to put aside the fact that I was a woman, and that it might not be very graceful to play your best game.”

  He laughed at that. “You’re right, you know; I am capable of ruthlessness, but apart from this afternoon, I can only remember once when I let it get the best of me.”

  “Dinner is served,” she said, “but keep talking.” She got the steaks, vegetables, and potatoes on the table and handed him a bottle of red wine to open. “Come on, when were you ruthless?”

  “It was in the Marines. I had a Naval ROTC commission from college, and I was one of four platoon leaders in my company—two other ROTC guys and one Academy man, a guy named Hedger. Hedger looked down on us ordinary college boys, thought of himself as infinitely superior. Our commanding officer, a major and an Academy man himself, shared Hedger’s view.

  “Now you have to understand, you have to be a little crazy to survive in the Marine Corps, and if you’re not, you have to find a way to get a little crazy. Barry Hedger was my way. I lived to beat him, beat him at any and everything. I worked my ass off, day and night, to beat him at tactics, small-weapons training, personal combat—I even beat him in report writing, something an Academy man really does well. My platoon beat his platoon on the obstacle course, on the rifle range—even in keeping their barracks clean. My platoon sergeant knew what was going on between Hedger and me, and he used it to fire up the men. Christ, they reveled in it! The C.O. was on Hedger’s back constantly to beat me in something. How could an Academy man—one of the top ten in his class, yet—allow himself and his platoon to be bested by a Rotsie officer and his platoon?

  “Finally, Hedger snapped, invited me outside one night at the officers’ club, promised to clean my clock. Everybody poured out of the bar, we stripped our blouses, and got down to it. Hedger came at me sort of karate style, half squatting, waving his hands around, making little noises. It’s funny, I hadn’t had a fistfight since grammar school—haven’t had one since, but I kicked him in the knee and hit him once—broke his nose. Oh, Jesus, there was a lot of blood and all, and then some colonel came and broke it up, chewed us both out good, made us shake hands. Didn’t report us to our C.O.

  “On Review Day my platoon won all the silver, and Hedger marched with a limp and a taped nose. And then I realized what I’d done. I—an unmotivated, short-time officer, who couldn’t wait to get out of the Corps—had ruthlessly, gleefully, pursued a good officer—not a very nice guy, but a good officer—pounded him into the ground, inch by inch—for the sheer hell of it. Oh, I didn’t ruin his career, I guess—his platoon finished ahead of the other two and close behind mine—but the commendation that went in my record would have meant a hell of a lot more to him than it did to me. After I thought about it, I was ashamed of what I’d done.

  “We got different assignments after that, and I never saw him again. And you know what? Part of the news in that phone call from my brother-in-law last night was that Barry Hedger is working in the Bogotá embassy. He’s my contact if I need help!”

  Meg laughed. “I sure as hell hope you don’t need it!” She began clearing dishes away. “Here, take the brandy into the living room.”

  He poured two glasses and sank into the large sofa. As he did the lights went off.

  “Oh, damn,” she said, settling into the sofa beside him, her feet tucked under her, “the power’s always going out. It’ll probably be out all night.”

  “Never mind,” he said, pointing outside, “we’ve got another source of light.” A large moon had risen from the sea, illuminating the room in a patchwork of astonishingly white light.

  She rose to her knees, reached down, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. “I didn’t think you’d do this first,” she said.

  “I wish I had had the guts,” he replied, kissing her back. He reached for her, and his hand fell squarely on a breast. She made a small noise, and he left it there.

  Then, in one smooth motion, she hoisted the caftan over her head and let it drop to the floor. The moonlight made her naked body glow like marble as she helped him with his clothes. They stretched out together on the wide sofa, and in a moment were locked hungrily together.

  When they had finished and were lying, spent, Cat felt as if he had taken a great leap across a wide chasm and safely made the other side. He tried to think more about it, but sleep overwhelmed him.

  • • •

  Much later, he woke. The moon was high over the house now, and the room was dark; the veranda and the beach were nearly as bright as day. He thought about himself, thought about the way he had been in the months since Katie had died. With his right hand he felt his wedding ring; he had never taken it off since the day he had been married.

  He gently extricated himself from the sleeping Meg and walked out onto the terrace. He continued down to the beach, a warm breeze playing about his naked body. At the water’s edge, tears streaming down his face, he dipped his hand into the water, for lubrication, then, with difficulty, worked the gold band over his knuckle. He stood still for a moment, then drew back and threw the ring as far out into the sea as he could, out to where Katie slept in Catbird. For weeks he had not been able to recall her face clearly, but now he could, this last time. Finally, he could let her go.

  “Goodbye, Katie,” he said aloud to her. “Peace.”

  He turned and walked back toward the house.

  17

  WHEN HE WOKE THE FOLLOWING MORNING, THE HOUSE WAS empty. He went down to the beach for a swim, and when he came back the smell of bacon greeted him.

  “Morning,” she called out. “I had to pick up some groceries. I didn’t want to wake you. Breakfast in ten minutes.”

  He showered and got into some shorts. When he came out breakfast was on the table.

  “Happy birthday! You were really sleeping this morning,” she laughed.

  “Can you blame me?” he asked. “The tennis alone was enough to render me unconscious.”

  She looked up from her breakfast. “Am I the first woman you’ve been with since your wife died?”

  “Yes.”

  She turned back to her food. “Good.”

  “That was some birthday present,” he said, and he meant it.

  After breakfast he asked about a phone. “I want to see how Rodriguez is doing with the telephone records.”

  “In my study, through there.”

  The study was also an editing room. A number of videotape machines occupied one end of the space, and everything was pin-neat, very professional. He called the Caribé and asked for Rodriguez.

  “Who is calling, please?”

&n
bsp; “Mr. Ellis.”

  “One moment.” The operator was gone for a few seconds, then came back. “Mr. Rodriguez is not available.”

  “Ask him to call me, please.” He gave her the number.

  He lay around the house, read for a while, went for a run along the beach while Meg edited her Santa Marta tape on the gamines. When, at five o’clock, Rodriguez had not called back, he rang again and was told the man was still not available.

  That night they drove into Cartagena and had dinner at a lovely place in the old city, a restaurant in an open courtyard. The heat and humidity were high, even in the evening, but the food and wine were excellent. Cat found himself relaxing into the relationship with Meg. She was now more than just a lover, she was a friend. Back at home, they made love again, and Cat found it even better than the first time. They were getting to know each other. The following morning he telephoned Rodriguez again and got the same answer from the operator.

  “I feel as though I’m getting the runaround,” he told Meg.

  “Let me try,” she said. She called the hotel and asked for Rodriguez in Spanish. He came onto the line almost immediately. She handed the phone to Cat.

  “Hello, Mr. Rodriguez,” he said. “This is Mr. Ellis. I’ve had difficulty reaching you.”

  Surprised, Rodriguez waffled for a moment, then said, “I am very sorry, señor, but a search of our records shows no such telephone call. I will be unable to assist you further.” He hung up.

  Cat told Meg what the man had said. “I don’t buy it, do you?”

  “Let’s go look him up,” she said.

  Cat went to change. As he was leaving the room, he hesitated, then slipped into the shoulder holster and put on a bush jacket. At the hotel, he didn’t ask for Rodriguez but walked around looking for him. Presently they saw the young man talking to a table of guests at poolside. When he turned to walk toward the main building, Cat stepped behind a large palm and waited.

  “What are we doing?” Meg asked, getting behind him.

  “I don’t want him to see us until it’s too late.” Cat saw the man approaching and stepped out to meet him.