by Dan Simmons
Maria continued to stare at me, smiling tremulously but apparently not afraid, only confused.
“All right,” I said in German. “Come aft. I have some nice gifts to show you.”
She did not seem to understand the invitation until I hoisted myself over the seat and moved to the rear of the cockpit. Still smiling, she accepted my hand, stepped between the console and the seat, and walked carefully to the back couch.
I opened one of the concealed compartments and took out the curved knife that I had taken from one of the dead German boys. “Do you recognize this, Maria?” I said in Spanish.
She smiled immediately, obviously relieved that I was speaking in a way she could understand. “Sí,” she said, “that is a cane-cutting knife. It is used by the men in the cane fields.”
“Very good,” I said in Spanish. “You know that… but you didn’t know the expression ‘Between me and the sea.’ You should have known that, Maria. I should have figured everything out then. Any little girl growing up near the coast in Cuba would have heard adults using that expression. Are you Spanish or German with Spanish parentage? The dialect, by the way, is excellent.”
Maria stared at me wide-eyed. “What are you saying, José? I—”
“If you call me José again,” I said, “I may have to shoot you sooner rather than later.” I took the .357 Magnum from its place in the compartment and held it casually with the muzzle toward her.
“Sprechen Sie!” I snapped.
Maria’s head pulled back as if I had slapped her.
Tired of the playacting—hers and mine—I did slap her. Once. Fairly hard. She sprawled backward onto the cushions and then slid to the deck. She raised her fingers to her cheek and stared at me, her head against the gunwale. The wickedly curved cane knife was where I had set it, in the center of the rear bench, slightly closer to me than to her. I still held the .357.
“All right,” I said in English. “Let’s go over it, and then you can correct the mistakes. You’re half of Becker’s Todt Team. Panama. You always have been. You were inserted into Cuba months ago. If I go to visit your village—what was it? Palmarito, near La Prueba, near Santiago de Cuba?—odds are that no one there has ever heard of the Marquez family… certainly not a Marquez family with a daughter who ran off after her brother raped her. Or was there a Maria Marquez whom you murdered?”
Maria continued to hold her palm against her reddening cheek and stare at me as if I had turned into a venomous snake.
“Very good,” I said, sliding into German. “Martin Kohler, the poor, stupid, Abwehr radioman from the Southern Cross, comes to the rendezvous with you at the whorehouse as planned. Or perhaps he was there to meet Lieutenant Maldonado? It doesn’t matter. You waited until the Cuban policeman was gone and then cut Kohler’s throat… locked yourself in the bathroom and started screaming. Very neat, Maria. Hemingway and I get the codebook we’re supposed to get and you get inserted into life at the finca. God in heaven, I was such an obliging shithead.”
Maria blinked once but did not smile at my use of Scheissköpf.
“You’d already been to the finca, of course,” I said. “The first night I was there when you took a shot at us when we were playing cowboys and Indians on Frank Steinhart’s property. But who were you shooting at, Maria? Hemingway? That doesn’t make any sense. Me? That doesn’t make any sense either, since you people wanted me there to guide the amateur Hemingway through all of this nonsense. Somebody had to decode the radio transmissions for him and keep him alive during all of this. Somebody had to help him get to the right place at the right time so we could be your courier in delivering this…”
I took out the German courier packet and tossed it onto the long leather cushion next to the cane knife. Maria looked at it the way a lost soul in the desert would look at a cold cup of water.
“Maria, you’d better tuck in your dress,” I said in casual German. “The way you’re sitting with your knees up, I can see your underpants and pubic hair.”
The woman reddened further and began pulling her dress tight. Then she stopped and glared at me, showing hatred in her eyes for the first time.
“It’s all right,” I said in Spanish. “You’re very good. It’s just been a bad day.”
She got up and sat in the rear corner of the bench, studiously ignoring the knife and the courier packet between us. “Señor Lucas,” she said slowly in her Cuban Spanish, “you have the wrong idea about me, I swear to you on my mother’s soul. I do know just a little German and English… I learned it in the madam’s house where I—”
“Shut up,” I said evenly. “Who were you shooting at that night at the finca? Was it just part of the script, to keep me interested in the play? Or was there someone in the party you wanted to warn… or even kill? Another agent? British, perhaps? Winston Guest?”
Her eyes gave me nothing.
I shrugged. “So you stayed close, picking up information any way you could and giving it to Haupsturmführer Becker… it was Becker controlling you, wasn’t it?”
She said nothing. Her face might have been carved out of ivory. Not a muscle twitched.
“All right,” I said. “Then you killed little Santiago. Probably used the same knife you’d used on Kohler in the whorehouse. You’re good with knives, kid.”
She did not look down at the cane knife, nor at the .357 I held loosely in my lap.
“It was a bit too tidy when Lieutenant Maldonado showed up hunting for you after all those weeks,” I said softly in English. “Too clever by half, as the Brits like to say. But it worked… you got invited along on this jaunt. But now what, kid? You were close to your target… if Hemingway’s your target.” I watched the muscles around her eyes, but they still gave me nothing. “Of course he is,” I said. “And probably me as well. But when? And why? After we deliver this stuff…” I patted the canvas courier bag. “Are we an embarrassment after we play our part in the delivery? And why did Columbia… your Todt Team partner… kill those poor German boys last night? Couldn’t it just have been arranged for them to drop these documents somewhere we’d find them?”
Maria put her hand over her eyes as if she were ready to weep.
“No, I guess not,” I said. “Those boys were taking orders from Admiral Canaris and the military. The Abwehr doesn’t have a clue, does it, Maria? It thinks it’s running one operation in Cuba while you and Becker and Himmler and the late Heydrich and your Todt partner are running another one. One that betrays the Abwehr. But betrays them to whom… and for what, Maria?”
She sobbed softly. “José… Señor Lucas… please believe me. I do not understand most of what you are saying. I do not know what you—”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said. I reached deep into the compartment and pulled out the long, canvas-wrapped bundle I had dug from the straw of the dairy barn the night before we all left. I unwrapped the Remington .30-06 and dropped it heavily onto the deck. The six-power scope took a nick out of the polished mahogany. “It was stupid to keep it so close, Maria,” I said in rough German, using a Bavarian dialect. “But, then, you might need it soon, mightn’t you? Are those your specialties, knife and long gun? I know you’re a Vertravensmann and a Todtägenten, but are you one of those superagents… one of those Groassägenten that we Bureau boys used to be so afraid of?”
“José…” began the woman.
I slapped her very hard, backhanded. Her head snapped back but she did not tumble off the cushions this time. Nor did she raise her fingers to touch her red cheek or to wipe the blood from her mouth.
“I told you that I would kill you if you called me José again,” I said very softly in Spanish. “I mean it this time.”
She nodded slowly.
“Tell me who the other Todt Team member is,” I snapped. “Delgado? Who?”
The woman I had called Maria for months smiled slightly. She said nothing.
“Do you know how I got Teddy Schlegel to talk?” I said in German. I took a long screwdriver out of the toolb
ox in the aft compartment and dropped it on the cushion next to the cane knife. “There are more options with a woman,” I said, and showed her my teeth in a grin.
If the force of hatred in a gaze could kill, I would have died then.
“You’ll tell me,” I said in English. “And you’ll tell me the details of the operation. Take off that dress.”
Her eyes snapped. “What?” she said in Spanish.
I grabbed both of her wrists and pulled her to her feet. Setting the .357 in my belt, I continued holding her wrists in my left hand while I used my right hand to grab the front of her dress and rip it all the way down, white buttons flying and rolling on the deck next to the empty .30-06 Remington. Releasing one of her wrists, I tore the dress to rags as I ripped it off her. I threw the rags overboard.
Maria used her free hand to claw at my eyes. I slapped her back onto the cushions at the far corner of the stern bench. I had always noticed how white and chaste her brassieres and underpants were—for a theoretical whore—and today was no exception. The white cotton gleamed in the heavy morning sunlight. Her breasts looked heavy, white, and vulnerable above the brassiere as she half lay back against the gunwale, and the insides of her thighs were pale.
“All right,” I said, turning to reach deep into the side compartment again. “One more thing to show you and then—”
She was very fast—faster even than I had expected. I barely had time to whirl and catch her right wrist as the cane knife came around in an arc that would have cut my kidneys out if it had continued. If it had been a pointed, stabbing knife rather than a form of scythe that had to be swung laterally, she would have had me.
She was also stronger than I expected. All those nights rolling on the cots and the floor of the cottage—feeling the power in her thighs and upper arms as she hugged me tighter and deeper—should have warned me. She almost managed to pull her knife hand free from my grip while her left hand scrambled at my belt, tugging at the .357 Magnum tucked there.
I used both hands to shake the knife out of her grip. It clattered across the already cluttered deck, but Maria managed to pull the pistol free. She jumped back to the corner of the cockpit and raised it at my face before I could grab the weapon back. She held the pistol straight-armed with both hands, and her finger was on the trigger. There was no way I could cover that distance before she squeezed that trigger.
“Maria,” I said, my voice shaky. “Whatever your name is… we can do a deal here. No one knows about this but me and I won’t—”
“Schwachsinniger!” she snarled, and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber. I had a second to react before she pulled the trigger again, but I did not move. The hammer came down again and dry-clicked again. A third time.
“I was sure,” I said in English. “But I had to know without a doubt.” I stepped forward and took the empty pistol away from her.
She elbowed me in the stomach and lunged for the cane knife, on the deck.
Gasping for air, I grabbed her around the middle and pulled her back. We both fell on the cushioned bench and the speedboat bobbed ever so slightly. Maria clawed backward for my eyes, but I had buried my face between her shoulder blades so that her nails only raised blood on the back of my neck. I flung her into the rear corner again and got to my feet.
Maria bounced up, quick as a proverbial panther, and went into a professional’s fighting stance. Her right arm was cocked and rigid, the fingers straight as a wedge and reinforced with a folded thumb. She took a half step and jabbed for my belly in the kind of blow designed to come in up and under the ribs and pulp the heart.
I parried the blow with my left forearm and slugged her on the chin. She flew backward onto the deck like a heavy bag of laundry, her head banging the chrome gunwale hard enough to make a noise like a gunshot. She sprawled there, legs apart, sweat between her breasts and in the crotch of her chaste white underpants, eyes fluttering. Pinning her wrists, I slapped her gently on both cheeks to bring her around. I had not hit her hard enough to kill her or keep her out long, but the bump on the head had been nasty. There was blood on the gunwale.
Her eyes fluttered open.
“I don’t suppose you kept the page from the radio log,” I said. “You’re too smart for that. But we might as well check.” I lifted her with one arm and tore the brassiere and underpants off her. No folded page. I had not thought there would be. Part of my mind was watching like a disinterested referee, critically trying to decide if I was enjoying any of this. I do not think I was. I felt like I might be sick over the side any minute.
“Okay,” I said. “Time for our picnic.” I lifted her off the deck and threw her far over the side.
The water brought her to full consciousness, and she flailed her arms to get back to the boat. I lifted the fishing gaff and held her off. She turned around and dog-paddled the thirty feet to the dwindling key, pulling herself up on the rocky bit of exposed reef and sand. Her hair dripped saltwater onto her breasts and knees as she turned to glare at me.
I stowed the gaff, the .30-06, the cane knife, the canvas pouch, and the .357, pulled up the anchor, and tossed the remains of our picnic overboard. I threw her a full canteen. She caught it by its strap with one hand.
I started the engine and swung the bow west. “I’m going back to Confites,” I called. “Get some iodine on these scratches on my back. It should be high tide in about thirty-five minutes. The reef top will be underwater by then and the riptides will be fierce, but maybe if you sink your feet in the sand and find a niche in the coral, you can hang on by your toes.”
“José!” cried the woman on the spit of sand. “I truly cannot swim.”
“It doesn’t matter too much,” I said. “It’s twenty-five miles or so to Cayo Confites.” I pointed to the south. “About twenty to the mainland or the Camagüey archipelago. The tide would be with you, but the sharks are plentiful. And, of course, there are only a few places where the reef wouldn’t tear you to ribbons going in.”
“Lucas!” screamed the woman.
“Think about it,” I said. “Think about my questions. Maybe I’ll check back while you’re treading water. Your ticket for a ride is just a few answers. Do you want to chat now?”
She turned her back on me and watched the waves eat away a bit more of her key. Whoever she was, enemy agent and vicious killer, she had a beautiful back and backside.
I pushed the throttle far forward and the Lorraine leaped ahead west. I did not look back with the binoculars until I was two miles out. Cayo Cerdo Perdido was already invisible, but it must have still been above water because I could see the pale sheen of Maria’s flesh silhouetted against the blue of the sky and the deeper blue of the Gulf. I think she was looking in my direction.
The Pilar was just over the horizon, waiting at precisely the empty point on the chart where we had arranged to rendezvous. Only Hemingway was aboard. He slid down from the flying bridge and dropped a fender between us as the speedboat bobbed next to his green-and-black boat.
“Did she tell you anything?” he said, hooking the Lorraine tight around a stanchion with his gaffe and holding her in place.
“She called me a Schwachsinniger,” I said.
Hemingway was not amused and I guess I wasn’t either.
“Everyone thinks we’re nuts today,” he said, looking back toward Cayo Confites.
I nodded and scratched my cheek. Without planning it, I was growing my own little beard on this trip. I looked at my watch. My stomach hurt where she had elbowed me hard. Or perhaps it just hurt of its own accord.
“What’s next?” said Hemingway.
“I’m not going to beat her up any more or torture her,” I said, my voice sounding dead even to my own ears. “I’ll head back when the water’s lapping around her ankles, but if she doesn’t talk then, we’ll just have to bring her back to Havana with us.”
“And do what with her? Turn her over to Maldonado and the National Police? To your friend Delgado?”
; “I’ll just have to turn her into the Havana field office of the Bureau,” I said. “Leddy and the others there won’t like it, and we’ll probably never figure out just what this Operation Raven was all about, but they’ll arrest her and Becker. Maybe Becker will tell them who else is involved and what the plans were.”
“Or maybe he won’t,” said the writer, frowning at me as we bobbed up and down on the rising blue sea. “Or maybe your buddies at the Bureau already know very well what it’s all about. And maybe Xenophobia will tell them about the dead agents last night and about the documents, and maybe we’ll have to turn over the photostats and pages to the FBI or be shot as traitors ourselves, and maybe it’ll all go the way they planned after all.”
I checked my watch again. “Maybe,” I said. “But one thing’s for certain… if I don’t get back to Cayo Cerdo Perdido in the next few minutes, all this will be academic. We won’t have any prisoner to hand over.”
I started the engine again as Hemingway shoved us apart and pulled in the kapok fender. “Hey!” I called over the rising gulf to him. “The name… Xenophobia… it was an in-joke for you, wasn’t it? You never trusted her or believed her, did you? Not from the start.”
“Of course not,” said Hemingway, and went back to his flying bridge.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER I caught up to the Pilar. Cayo confites was still over the horizon to the west. He throttled back and glared down at me as I cut my own engine, but he did not come down the ladder from his high bridge.
“Where the hell is she, Lucas? What’d you do with her?” He was scanning the open cockpit of the speedboat as if I had hidden her under the cushions.
“I didn’t do anything with her,” I said. “She was gone when I got back there.”
“Gone?” he said stupidly, looking back to the east and shielding his eyes as if he might see her swimming out there.
“Gone,” I said. “There was still a few square feet of dry key left. But she was gone.”
“Holy fuck,” said the writer, taking his sombrero off and rubbing his mouth with his forearm.