by Dan Simmons
“Marty was awake when we got home,” said Hemingway, looking through his field glasses again.
I glanced at him. Was he going to pass along a reprimand for our waking the mistress of the manor? I realized that I was not fond of Martha Gellhorn.
Hemingway lowered his glasses and grinned at me. “I helped her wake up,” he said in his low tenor. “Irrigated her twice so as to get the day off to a good start. Maybe that whorehouse gave me ideas.”
I nodded and looked back at the yacht. Irrigated her? Christ, I hated this supposed man-to-man locker room talk.
As if on cue, a tall, bald man in a dark blue bathrobe and an equally tall blond woman in a white bathrobe came out of a stateroom door halfway back along the hull and stood on the sunlit side of the superstructure, peering into the orange sun. The tall man said something to one of the guards on that side, who knuckled his cap, fetched the other guard, and lowered a rope-and-wood ladder over the port side. Both men saluted again and disappeared from sight.
The man in the blue bathrobe peered up at the bridge and superstructure as if checking that no one was watching from there. He spoke to the blond woman, who did not look at him but who dropped her white robe to the deck. She had been naked under the robe. Her skin was bronzed by the sun, her breasts and lower belly as tanned as the rest of her, and I could see the pinkness of her nipples from three hundred meters away. She was not a natural blonde.
The woman stepped to the open gate in the railing, but instead of going down the ladder, she paused only a second and then dived gracefully, skillfully, barely leaving a ripple as she disappeared beneath the calm gold of the harbor surface. I expected the man in the bathrobe to follow her, but instead he moved to the railing, removed a silver cigarette case from his pocket, took out a cigarette, tapped it the way I had seen only actors in movies do, set the case away, and lit the cigarette with a silver lighter from the same pocket. He stood and smoked as the woman broke the surface ten meters farther away from the yacht and proceeded to swim back and forth with steady strokes. Neither the lookout on the bow nor the one on the stern turned her way as she dove to reverse course, her long, tanned legs and marginally whiter ass turning skyward at each lap. When she did a backstroke, her breasts and small white belly and shadowy navel and pubic hair were perfectly visible to us.
I had seen more naked women in one day than I had in the past six months. And the sun was barely above the horizon.
Ten minutes, exactly, and then she swam to the manladder, climbed it without modesty, and stood dripping as the bald man wrapped her white bathrobe around her. They went through the nearest hatch. A moment later, the two port lookouts returned to their posts. I saw no snickering or exchanging of leers from the men as they resumed sweeping the harbor with their glasses.
Hemingway set his binoculars on the hood of the Lincoln. “Interesting.”
I was studying the deck. There were crates and cartons lashed under tarps ahead and behind of the main superstructure. Some of the cartons had stenciled writing on them, but none were exposed enough or at the correct angle to be read from here. Of more interest, near the bow and at several places along each side on the railings were reinforced metal mounts with complicated brackets. I pointed these out to Hemingway.
“Gun mounts?” he said.
“Machine guns, I think,” I said, although I was certain enough. I had worked an operation on a Mexican Coast Guard Q-boat which had used similar mounts. “Fifty caliber,” I said.
“Six of them,” said Hemingway. “Could that private yacht actually be carrying six fifty-caliber machine guns?”
“Or one gun,” I said, “and six places to mount it.”
Hemingway lowered his glasses again. His face had that serious, tight-lipped expression it had carried while looking at the corpse. I understood it. Fifty-caliber machine guns were frightening things. Even at this distance, there was nothing we could hide behind—not even the huge Lincoln—that would stop such a heavy, high-velocity slug. I expected Hemingway to start in about his “machine gun wounds” in the Great War, but instead he said softly, “You’re the consultant, Lucas. What would it take to find out what book Kohler was using as his cipher base?”
“Someone would have to get aboard the yacht and take a look,” I said. “Before the police roust Kohler’s berth or someone on the ship tosses the book.”
“No sign that the cops have been there yet,” said Hemingway. “And maybe they won’t bother.”
“Why is that?”
“If Caballo Loco did the killing, he and his pals don’t have much incentive to investigate it,” said the writer.
“But they didn’t find the notebook,” I said, tapping the pocket where I had put the notebook when Hemingway handed it to me during our drive downtown.
“Do you think that was what Maldonado was looking for?” said Hemingway.
“I have no idea.” I studied the yacht again. Crewmen were turning out to scrub down the decks. It was late for that; most naval craft would have seen that chore completed before the sun was fully up. But this was not a naval craft. And perhaps the blond woman’s morning skinny-dip was part of the regular routine when the ship was at anchor.
“I think we ought to take a look at Kohler’s berth and the radio shack before the cops toss the place. I’ll make the arrangements today, Lucas,” said Hemingway. “We’ll see if the Crook Factory can do its job. Should we steal the book if we find it?”
“No need for that,” I said. “Just check the titles there. It would probably be a common book.”
Hemingway grinned. “If I create the diversion and arrange to get one operative on board, do you want to be that operative? You’re supposed to know about this crap.”
I hesitated. It would be silly for me to risk arrest or worse by playing at this game—this was not a cherry bomb attack on a neighbor’s farm. Whatever the Southern Cross was up to, its crew looked efficient, and there was a military feel to the yacht’s operation. I could imagine Mr. Hoover’s face if he received a memo from the Havana branch of the Bureau saying that its special SIS agent needed to be bailed out of the Havana jail… or had been fished out of the harbor after the crabs had feasted on his eyes and soft parts.
Still, it was a basic black bag job, and I was almost certainly the only one in Hemingway’s ragtag counterespionage ring who had actually been trained to do such a thing.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do it if there’s a sensible plan to get me aboard and off without getting shot.”
Hemingway tossed the binoculars into the back of the Lincoln and slipped behind the wheel. I went around and got in the passenger side. The sun had been up less than thirty minutes and already the interior of the big car was baking.
“I’ll tell you the plan while we have breakfast at Kaiser Guillermo’s Café de Perla de San Francisco,” said Hemingway. “When we get back to the finca, we’ll get people busy on it. And we’ll find Xenophobia another place to live where we can keep an eye on her. Tonight, when it’s dark, we’ll go see what Herr Kohler likes to read.”
As we drove into an Old Havana redolent with the previous night’s garbage and rich with that morning’s light, Hemingway was singing a song which he said had been taught to him by his friend the priest, Don Andres. He said that he was dedicating it to the fucking big yacht and all who sailed on such:
No me gusta tu barrio
Ni me gustas tú
Ni me gusta
Tu puta madre.
The second verse was the same as the first:
I don’t like your neighborhood
And I don’t like you
And I don’t like
Your whoring mother.
11
I WAS SURE I would not have time to make the rendezvous with Delgado at the safe house at five P.M., but as it turned out, my Crook Factory errands took me into Havana that afternoon and I had twenty minutes to spare. It was one hell of an informative twenty minutes.
When we had returned to the
finca after a huge breakfast at Kaiser Guillermo’s that morning, Maria was sitting out by the pool in shorts and a halter top obviously borrowed from Gellhorn, reading a Life magazine and chewing gum.
Gellhorn intercepted us at the back door of the main house and said softly, “Is Señorita Putita la Noche another permanent guest, Ernesto?”
Hemingway grinned. “I think we’ll offer her the other guest house,” he said, waving at Maria over Gellhorn’s shoulder.
“What other guest house?” said his wife.
“La Vigía—Grade A,” said Hemingway. He glanced at me. “Maybe Herr Lucas could spend some of his time there as well.”
La Vigía—Grade A turned out to be a dairy across the road from the finca. Hemingway took me to it before moving Maria there. He said that it had been a working dairy when he moved in—the milk sold in long bottles marked “La Vigía—Grade A”—but that the owner, Julian Rodriguez, had shut it down and sold the property to Hemingway the year before. The writer said that he had no plans for the property, but that he liked the idea of owning all of the hilltop except for Frank Steinhart’s house, which he fully planned to burn down one night on one of his rocket raids.
“Also,” said Hemingway in his soft Spanish, “the rich man Gerardo Duenas and I run a gallera just across the field there and it is good not to have too many neighbors.”
I understood. A gallera was a cockpit—a pit for cockfights. I could easily imagine Hemingway caught up in the art and science of breeding fighting cocks, even more easily imagine him grinning in bloodlust as the shouts of the men rose around the pit.
The Grade A guest house was a small shack just off the abandoned dairy barn, only about two hundred meters from Hemingway’s farm. The entire complex was empty, but it still smelled of manure. The cottage Hemingway had in mind had been the caretaker’s home. It was a tiny, whitewashed shack, two bare rooms, one fireplace, an outhouse behind the little house, a woodstove for cooking, an outside pump for running water, no electricity. The floors and walls were relatively clean, but spiders had woven webs in the corners, and it looked like a pack rat had been living in the fireplace. One of the windowpanes had been shattered, and rain had stained the ceiling and wall along the west end of the main room.
“I’ll send René and Juan and a couple of the other boys over this morning to get it cleaned up,” said Hemingway, scratching his cheek and creaking the old door back and forth on sagging hinges. “We’ll put in a couple of pieces of furniture, a little icebox we have in the old kitchen, a chair or two, and two cots.”
“Why two cots?” I said.
Hemingway crossed his hairy arms. “Xenophobia isn’t totally full of shit when she says that everyone’s out to kill her, Lucas. If Maldonado finds her, he’ll cut off more than her nose and ears before he kills her. Do you know why he’s called Caballo Loco?”
“Could it have something to do with him being crazy?” I said tiredly.
Hemingway scratched his cheek again. “He’s a big guy, Lucas. And he’s hung like a horse. And he likes to use his equipment, especially on young girls. I don’t think we should let him find Maria Marquez.”
I stood at the fireplace and looked at the mess in it. I was thinking about the plans for the evening. “Won’t the whores at the house tell?” I said. I had never known a whore who could keep a secret.
Hemingway shook his head. “Leopoldina la Honesta is as good at keeping her word as her name implies. She swore to me that she and the other girls would say that Maria had run off and that no one knew where she went. She’ll frighten them until they will be more terrified of her than they would be of the National Police; I guarantee none of them will tell the police that we were there last night.”
I made a rude noise. “From the way you describe him, Lieutenant Maldonado could make any one of those putas talk in thirty seconds.”
“Probably,” agreed the writer, “but Leopoldina shut down the house and sent the whores who know anything back to their villages and home cities an hour after we left last night. They’re not exactly licensed, you know. It will be hard for the cops to track them down, and I don’t think they’ll try. It’s not as if there’s any mystery involved in this killing… except for where Maria’s fled. And if Caballo Loco or his boss, Juanito the Jehovah’s Witness, show up to ask if we know anything about her… well, she’s certainly not at the finca.”
“No,” I said, “she’s a couple of hundred yards away in this stinking old dairy.”
“Being guarded day and night by an expert on counterintelligence and hand-to-hand combat,” said Hemingway.
“Fuck you,” I said.
“And your mother,” said Hemingway in an agreeable tone.
ALL THE REST OF THAT MORNING and afternoon the operatives of the Crook Factory came and went. Maria was bundled off to the Grade-A guest house by Juan and several other servants, Hemingway and I cleared the large table in the living room of the real guest house, and there was a solid procession of his motley crew reporting, getting orders, reporting again, arguing, drinking, making suggestions, and then disappearing only to reappear.
Winston Guest, “Wolfer,” was there all day when he was not running messages; as was Juan Dunabeitia, “Sinsky the Sailor”; not to mention the first mate, Fuentes; Patchi Ibarlucia; Father Don Andres Untzaín, the composer of Hemingway’s morning song, and Felix Ermua, El Canguro, “the Kangaroo,” a friend of Ibarlucia’s and another jai alai player; as well as a weasellike little man named José Regidor who talked tough and whom I guessed would fold like a cheap accordion in a real fight. Also in attendance were Dr. Herrera Sotolongo and his brother Roberto; Hemingway’s gardener, Pichilo, who seemed more intent upon talking to Hemingway about the Spanish jerezano cock he was breeding and training than about the intelligence operation; and a dozen others, including some of the Havana wharf rats and waiters I had met on our first inspection of the Crook Factory and just as many that I had never met.
By four-thirty in the afternoon, cars had been coming and going since ten o-clock that morning, the guest house was knee-deep in beer cans and filled ashtrays, and I was sure that we were no closer to realizing Hemingway’s half-assed plan than we had been at eight o’clock that morning.
“We still need plans of the yacht,” I said. “Without an exact diagram of where Kohler’s radio shack and berth are, all this elaborate scheming is so much jerking off.”
“Please, Lucas,” said Hemingway, looking around at the eight or ten grizzled rumrunners, longshoremen, sailors, and fallen-away priests standing around the room, drinking and arguing. “Watch your language,” he said, “there are children present.”
“I won’t disagree with that,” I said with a sigh. My head hurt.
“Lucas, do you want to do something indispensable?”
I looked back at the writer through the blue haze of cigar smoke. Hemingway did not smoke, but he didn’t seem to mind the constant puffing around him.
“What?”
“Martha wants to go into town for a few hours. We need the Lincoln back here by six to send out the final communiqués. Could you drop her off and bring the car back? Juan’s still cleaning up Grade-A for Xenophobia.”
I glanced at my watch. I had not been able to get Delgado on the phone to cancel our rendezvous. Perhaps I would be able to make it after all.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll drive Mrs. Hemingway.”
DELGADO WAS THERE and waiting, wearing the same white linen suit and undershirt as before. He smiled his mocking smile as I came into the dim room.
“You’re a busy man, Lucas.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I don’t have much time to waste. Did you get the file?” I did not expect it to be there. Over the past twenty-four hours, my skepticism about the rapid delivery of such highly classified material to Cuba had grown into almost absolute doubt. Delgado had been showing off his clout. And wasting my time in the process.
Delgado reached into a battered briefcase under the table and brought out
a dossier. It had the pink file cover and green stamps of an O/C file. It was about the size of a Chicago phone directory.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, and sat down heavily. One look at the subheadings in the dossier directory showed me that this would be more than twenty minutes’ reading: The Southern Cross/Howard Hughes/The Viking Fund/Paul Fejos/Inga Arvad/Avard: contacts with Hermann Goering/Adolf Hitler/Axel Wenner-Gren (aka “the Swedish Sphinx”)/Threat analysis: COI-Donovan, Murphy, Dunn/Arvad: surveillance tapes and transcripts, sexual liaison with Ensign John F. Kennedy (U.S. Navy—Division of Naval Intelligence, Foreign Intelligence Branch). “Jesus Christ,” I said again.
“Be careful what you wish for, Lucas,” said Delgado.
“I have to take this file with me,” I said. “Read it later.”
Delgado chuckled. “You know better. It has to be back in Washington by midnight.”
I rubbed my chin and glanced at my watch. I had twenty minutes before I had to get the Lincoln back to Hemingway. Goddamn it to hell. I flipped open the dossier and began scanning pages.
The Southern Cross: Three-hundred and twenty feet long. The largest private ship in the world. U.S. registry. It had been owned and specially modified by Howard Hughes (a referral here to Hughes’s complete dossier).
I had seen Howard Hughes’s dossier before. The thing was encyclopedic. Everyone knew of the millionaire aviator and inventor. Howard Hughes was precisely the kind of loose cannon that drove Director Hoover crazy—rich, involved in half a dozen top-secret U.S. military projects, erratic, a risk taker. The government kept giving the man top-secret clearance and increasingly more important war projects while doubling and tripling the surveillance and wiretaps on him. I wouldn’t be surprised if the director had nightmares about Howard Hughes at least once a week.
In this case, Hughes’s ownership and modification of the Southern Cross was suspicious, but not as suspicious as his sale of the boat to Axel Wenner-Gren. This was also a name I knew well.