by Dan Simmons
I got off the man and walked over to pick up his Colt and my flashlight, allowing my back to be turned toward him for two seconds while I watched for movement out of the corner of my eye.
He moved all right, but not for a boot gun or switchblade. Maldonado leaped to his feet, jumped to the corner of the roof, and grabbed my rope to swing himself over the wall even as I dropped to one knee and aimed the .357.
He had forgotten about his broken wrist. He screamed once as he lost his grip and again the instant before he hit something solid down below. I walked to the parapet and looked down. Maldonado had fallen only about twenty-five feet, but his upper body had landed on a raised marble slab while his legs had struck a large urn. At least one leg was twisted at a terrible angle.
I walked around to the back of the dome, found Maldonado’s .30-06 right next to an open door in the wall there, and took it with me as I went down a narrow staircase into the dark interior of the mausoleum. I used the flashlight to find the door on the south side. The metal gate screeched loudly as I stepped outside. The moonlight had partially returned even though it was still raining. Maldonado was gone.
I found him crawling down the narrow pedestrian walkway around the north side of the mausoleum. He was using his elbows and left knee to leverage himself along. His right hand was useless, and it looked as if his right leg had suffered a compound fracture. Something sharp and white had punctured the dark fabric of his trousers and was protruding above the knee. When he heard me coming up behind him, he rolled onto his back with a groan and fumbled in his belt, coming out with a small pistol that gleamed in the rain. A .25-caliber Berretta.
I took the little gun away from him and snapped the .357 out of its holster, standing four feet away from him as I aimed it at his skull. I raised my left hand to protect my face from skull fragments and splatter. Maldonado did not raise his hand or flinch or curl away, but I could see all of his teeth as he clenched his jaws waiting for the bullet.
“Shit,” I said softly. I stepped forward and swung the barrel in a vicious are that knocked the policeman’s head around on the cold stone. I checked his pulse. Soft and rapid, but there. Then I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back into the mausoleum, laying him on the floor between two raised sarcophagi. There was a large brass key in his jacket pocket. Both the door and the iron gate of the tomb locked from the outside, of course, and I locked them both and tossed the key far out into the statuary before leaving the cemetery at a painful jog.
I checked my watch when I got back to Hemingway’s Lincoln: 3:28 A.M. Christ, time sure crawled when you were having fun.
I BROKE EVERY CITY and national speed limit in my wild ride to Cojímar. It was still raining—the moon had disappeared again—and the roads were slick and dangerous. At least the traffic was nonexistent. I imagined my dialogue with a Cuban policeman if I was stopped for speeding with my .357 on my belt, a Cuban National Policeman’s Colt .44 and Remington rifle in my back seat, and blood on my jacket, coat and ear. Hell, I finally decided, I’ll pass him ten dollars American and drive on. This is Cuba, after all.
The departure at Cojímar seven hours earlier, just after sunset, had been the exact opposite of our tumultuous farewell a week earlier. No one was around except for a few disinterested fisherman. Hemingway had chosen Wolfer, Don Saxon, Fuentes, Sinsky, Roberto Herrera, and the boys to go with him. Patchi Ibarlucia had wanted to go, but he was playing in a jai alai tournament. Everyone—even the boys—seemed subdued and serious about this evening departure.
“What do you do if you need me and can’t radio me?” said Hemingway as I handed him the stern line. “Or if I radio Cojímar or Guantánamo that I’ve found something and need you to get there?”
I pointed across the harbor to where Shevlin’s speedboat was tied up. “I’ll take the Lorraine if we’re still allowed to use it.”
“You shouldn’t be after taking that huge gouge out of the deck,” said Hemingway, but tossed the keys.
I had to think a minute before remembering the tiny nick in the mahogany when I had dropped Maria’s rifle.
“It’s still topped off,” said the writer, “and we’ve put two new auxiliary drums on her. If you need to use her, be careful. Tom’s a millionaire, but he can be cheap at times. I doubt if he has insurance.”
I nodded. Then we decided that Hemingway should keep the courier pouch. I handed it over as Fuentes pushed the bow away from the dock.
“Good luck, Joe,” said the writer, leaning across the gap to shake my hand.
I PULLED INTO THE COJÍMAR DOCKS a little before 4:00 A.M. There were lights on a few of the boats as fishermen prepared to get under way. The Lorraine was not at her berth.
I leaned over the steering wheel and rubbed my aching forehead. What did you expect, Joe? Columbia’s been a step ahead of you through all of this. He probably stole the boat while you were heading to the cemetery for your rendezvous.
Which means that he doesn’t have that much of a head start.
I looked around the harbor. There were no other speedboats there in Cojímar, only slow fishing boats, dinghies, skiffs, a couple of leaky turtle boats, a few rowboats, two dugout canoes, and one forty-six-foot yacht that had limped into port from Bimini a week earlier with engine problems and a petulant owner from California.
The Lorraine’s fast. It’ll beat the Pilar to wherever Columbia wants to lay in wait. I’ll need a fast boat just to get down there by noon.
Down where? Nuevitas? I decided to answer that question after I found a fast boat.
I drove back into the city as fast as I had raced through it half an hour before. There were a few good boats tied up at the city piers, and I might be able to hotwire some of them, but the owners of nice boats usually foresaw that eventuality and precluded it by keeping one or more vital engine parts with them when they left the dock area—the equivalent of lifting one’s own distributor cap when parking in a rough neighborhood.
But there was one beautiful boat not tied up at the docks. The Southern Cross was anchored far out in the harbor, all set except for final provisions for its long trip through the canal and down the west coast of South America. It was scheduled to leave on Monday morning, according to the Crook Factory’s most recent reports on Friday afternoon. They had been delayed one day because their new radioman had gone missing and could not be found in the usual bars and whorehouses. They were interviewing Cubans and Americans this time, according to our reports. The yacht obviously had a problem keeping its radio personnel. Hemingway and I had discussed it and decided that the only German agent aboard had probably left the country, much as Schlegel and Becker had before him.
I parked at the city pier, clambered over the chain-link fence, found a rowboat to my liking, tossed my various bundles in it, and began rowing across the harbor toward the huge yacht. Even at night it was white and beautiful, with spotlights fore and aft illuminating its sleek sides and approaches. I noticed that the rowboat was leaking, so I set my duffel and the Remington up on the thwarts and tossed the plaid blanket from the Lincoln across them. I sang loudly in Spanish as I rowed.
Hijacking the Southern Cross might not be completely practical, given its crew of almost a hundred and sixteen able-bodied seamen and officers, its passenger list of more than thirty scientists, and its reported possession of heavy machine guns and many rifles. But hijacking the Southern Cross was not exactly what I had in mind.
I had to sing especially loudly to wake the dozing guards in the Chris-Craft speedboat floating at anchor between the yacht and the shore. The two men in the guard boat were stretched out—one across the bench in the forward cockpit, one across the bench in the stern cockpit—and both were snoring loudly enough for me to hear them over my own drunken singing. I was within thirty feet of them before the one in the front cockpit snapped awake and turned a searchlight on me.
“Hey, amigos, do not do that!” I called in slurred Cuban Spanish. “It hurts my eyes.” I continued rowing sloppily.
/> “Turn around,” said the first guard, in front, using terrible Spanish in a Norteamericano accent. “This is a restricted area.” He sounded sleepy. His partner was awake now, knuckling his eyes and squinting at me. They both saw a lone man in a rowboat. The man was stubble-cheeked under a hat pulled low, and his suit was wrinkled and stained. He had a bloody ear. He was obviously drunk. His boat was leaking.
“Restricted area?” I called in amazement. “This is Havana Harbor… the harbor of the capital of my nation and my people. How can it be restricted? I must get to my cousin’s fishing boat before he leaves without me.” I kept flailing at the oars, moving closer to the speedboat but in a crablike fashion.
The guard shook his head. “Stand off,” he called. “Stay at least two hundred yards from the big white boat. Your cousin’s fishing boat is not out here…”
I nodded, still shielding my eyes from their spotlight. The few stars that had peeked out between storm clouds were gone and the sky was paling despite the continued drizzle. “Where did you say my cousin’s boat was?” I called, slipping against the oarlocks and almost falling onto the forward thwart. Both guards had Thompson submachine guns slung around their necks, but neither had shifted his weapon into a position where he could get to it quickly.
“Goddamn it!” called the man in the stern, reaching for a gaff to hold me off as the rowboat bobbed toward their beautiful twenty-two-foot speedboat.
“Do not move,” I said in English, swinging the Magnum up and aiming it carefully. “Turn that fucking light off.”
The guard in front switched off the light. In the sudden dimness I could see both of them readying themselves for some action.
“You’ll both be dead before you can cock the bolt,” I said, clicking back the hammer on the .357 and swinging the muzzle easily from one target to the next. The rowboat bumped against their speedboat. “You, in front, lean on the windshield. Both hands. That’s right. You… lean over the stern. A little farther over. All right.”
I tossed my gear over and then jumped into the small aft cockpit. The man in the stern made a foolish move and I clubbed him down as he turned. The guard leaning against the windshield looked over his shoulder. “I won’t use just the barrel if you move,” I said softly.
He shook his head.
I took their submachine guns and set them on the stern cushions and then held the Magnum steady as the conscious guard followed my orders and dragged his buddy over the gunwale and into the rowboat. The other man moaned.
I pushed them off with the gaff and pulled up the small anchor with my left hand, holding the pistol on the more conscious of the two as I did so.
The man was wearing a tight sweater that showed a bodybuilder’s physique. He was obviously trying to save face, ransacking his memory for some line from the movies that would serve to show that he was unafraid. “You’ll never get away with this,” he said.
I laughed, started the engine, checked the fuel gauge—three-quarters full—and said, “I already have.” Then I fired twice into the little rowboat.
Both men flinched away. The hollow-nosed .357 slugs tore impressive holes in the rotten wood of the rowboat’s hull.
This speedboat was beautiful and expensive—a twin-engine, twenty-two-foot, barrel-topped Chris-Craft with its forward cockpit partitioned only by the mahogany trim behind the forward bench. The small aft cockpit was set behind six feet of mahogany-topped, chrome-railed engine compartment. I had checked on the boat the first time Hemingway and I had seen it on patrol. It was newly built—1938 or 1939—and sported twin six-cylinder 131-horsepower Chris-Craft Hercules engines, one a standard KBL and the other a KBO—the O for “opposite rotation.” The props turned to the outside, the port to the left and the starboard to the right, providing high speed and negating each other’s rotational torque. It made the boat amazingly maneuverable at speed, able to turn around in its own length.
“You can swim if you want to,” I called over the rumble of the twin engines, “but you probably know that sharks like to come into the harbor before dawn to feed on the fish around the city sewage outlets. And the yacht might not get a ladder down in time. If I were you, I’d row hard for the docks.”
I opened the throttle and headed for the harbor entrance. I only glanced back once before reaching the breakwater. It was raining hard again, but I could see lights coming on amidships on the Southern Cross. The rowboat was heading toward the pier with the bodybuilder guard rowing like hell while the other man bailed with his bare hands.
28
BETWEEN THE WORSENING STORM and the dropping fuel gauge needle, I was not sure that I would reach even Cayo Confites. I kept the rpm as high as I could without risking running out of fuel halfway there or tearing the hull out on the high waves that were pounding the speedboat. A second storm front had come in from the northeast, and I was soaked to the skin twenty minutes out from Havana Harbor. For most of the ride, I had to stand behind the wheel, bracing myself with one hand gripping the windshield while I peered ahead through the spray and rain, leaving my own tail of precipitation whipping off me as I roared south and east.
By that time the entire Cuban Coast Guard must have been alerted about the daring bandit who had made off with the friendly scientific Americans’ Chris-Craft in the middle of Havana Harbor. The Cuban Coast Guard was known for machine-gunning unarmed European Jewish refugees trying to sneak ashore at night; they would dearly love to turn their huge .50-caliber weapons on a certified bandit.
About ten A.M. I spotted two Coast Guard boats—each gray and white and about thirty feet long—heading west to cut me off. I turned north and lost them in a heavy squall that almost capsized the speedboat. More fuel and time lost. As soon as I could, I turned southeast again and opened the throttles. The heavy pounding made all of my many bruises ache worse and gave me the grandmother of all headaches.
I raised Cayo Confites about 1:45 P.M. The fuel gauge had been on empty for the last ten nautical miles and there was no reserve tank. I swung around to approach the little harbor and was elated for a minute when there was no sign of the Pilar. Then I saw the tents and the soggy campfire ring and the men milling around near the guard shack and my heart sank.
The engines sputtered and died as I came through the opening in the reef. The Cuban army lieutenant and his men had turned out with bolt-action rifles left over from the Spanish-American War, and Guest, Herrera, and Fuentes had come down to the beach with their niños before someone used their binoculars.
“It’s Lucas,” yelled Winston Guest, waving for the Cubans to lower their rifles. As I dug out an oar and laboriously paddled in through the lagoon—only the heavy storm surf allowed me to keep the heavy boat moving—Sinsky, Saxon, and the two boys came out of the tents and ran down to join the others.
“Where’s Papa?” yelled Patrick.
“What happened to the Lorraine?” shouted Guest as he waded out to grab the bow of the Chris-Craft and help me pull it up on the gravel shingle of the key. “Where’s Ernest?”
I jumped out and waded ashore as they made the speedboat secure. It was still drizzling, and I was soaked with seawater and shaking with cold. After the hours of pounding, my legs did not want to hold me upright. When I tried to talk, all I got out was the chatter of my teeth.
Sinsky brought a blanket from the tent and Fuentes brought a steaming cup of coffee. The Cuban soldiers and Pilar crew gathered around.
“What happened, Lucas?” said little Gregory. “Where’s Papa?”
“What do you mean?” I managed to say. “Why should I know?”
There was a babble of noise. Saxon went up to the tent and came back with a crumpled sheet of paper. I recognized a page from the radio log.
“This came in clear in Morse on the marine band about ten-thirty this morning,” said the Marine.
HEMINGWAY—NECESSARY THAT WE MEET IN THE BAY NEAR WHERE WE BURIED THE EUROPEAN ARTIFACTS. I HAVE FIGURED THINGS OUT. BRING THE DOCUMENTS. EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. BOYS SAFE NOW.
COME ALONE. I WILL BE IN LORRAINE—LUCAS
“You didn’t send it,” said Guest. It was not a question.
I shook my head and sat on a camp stool. Columbia is always one step ahead. Now he would get both Hemingway and the courier documents. “When did he leave?” I said.
“About fifteen minutes after the message arrived,” said Sinsky.
I looked at them. I said nothing, but my gaze said And you let him go alone? and they must have heard it. Herrera said, “He said that you two had arranged a meeting and that he had to go alone.”
Winston Guest said, “Shit, oh shit, shit, oh shit.” He sat on the sand. I thought that the big man was going to cry.
“Where’s Papa?” said Gregory. No one answered.
I stood up and dropped the blanket. “Gregorio,” I said, “would you please get me a thermos of coffee and some sandwiches? And the best binoculars you have, please. Wolfer, Sinsky, Roberto, I’ll need your help refueling the speedboat. Lieutenant, do I have your permission to fill the tanks and take at least one of the extra drums?”
“Certainly.”
“Patrick,” I said. “Gregory. Would you run up to the tents and get any extra clips of ammo for the niños that your Papa left behind? And two of the grenades in that green ammo box? Be careful carrying them down… the pins should stay on. Thank you.”
“We’re going with you,” said Winston Guest in a tone that would brook no argument.
“No,” I said in an answering tone that ended the discussion. “You’re not.”
IT WAS STILL raining when I came in sight of the broken light at Point Roma. I had taken time to field-strip and oil the Remington while the others were fueling the speedboat. Sinsky had taken the two salt-soaked Thompsons out of the boat and handed me his—freshly oiled with a full clip. The boys had brought down a waterproof bag with six extra clips and two grenades; Fuentes brought down the food, coffee, and binoculars in another waterproof rubber duffel.