by Ted Bell
“He says never again will Cuba need to rely on the strength of false allies who promise much and then disappear. Cuba’s own might will be felt by anyone who threatens her self-interest.”
“We certainly know what he means by that,” Hawke said. “That bloody submarine. He’s taken delivery, or he wouldn’t tip his hand.”
Ambrose continued translating.
“Cuba will no longer tolerate the injustices it has suffered at the hands of the Americans. He is demanding that the American blockade of Cuba be lifted immediately. He is also declaring that the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo is an insult to Cuba’s sovereignty that will no longer be tolerated. America will be given a deadline to evacuate or face extreme consequences. Further statements on these matters will be issued by the new government tomorrow.”
“Jesus Christ,” Hawke said. “A rogue state with an invisible submarine bearing forty MIRV nuclear warheads ninety miles from Miami.”
“Chilling thought, isn’t it? Here he introduces the new president of Cuba,” Ambrose said, as a new face appeared on the screen.
“Who the fuck is that guy?” Stoke said. “Looks like goddamn Zorro in a three-piece suit.”
“That,” Ambrose said, “is el nuevo presidente de Cuba, Fulgencio Batista. Grandson of the man Castro overthrew some forty years ago.”
“Where’d they dig him up?” Hawke asked.
“Grew up in Spain. Went to Harvard College, and then Wharton School of Finance. Renounced his U.S. citizenship and took his family to Cuba six months ago. Prior to that, he was a partner at Goldman, Sachs on Wall Street. Had a farm in back-country Greenwich, Connecticut, and played golf every Saturday at the Stanwich Club.”
“Really? From partner at Goldman to president of Cuba? Bad career move,” Hawke said. “What’s Batista Junior got to say for himself?”
“More glowing rhetoric about a new day dawning.”
“That’s it?” Hawke asked.
“Basically.”
“And the forces loyal to Fidel?”
“Most likely executed or imprisoned. If you can still find any.”
“The Cuban people themselves? What’s the reaction?”
“Alex, after forty years of lies, fear, and torture, these people don’t believe a word anyone says. Anyone. They don’t trust their own children. Life will just go on. I guarantee you, they won’t even discuss these political events with their closest friends. Someone might chat up his own mum if he really trusts her, but that’s about it.”
Hawke flipped a switch that slowly brought up the hidden ceiling lights. He swiveled his big leather armchair around and faced Ambrose, Stokely, and Sutherland, who were all scattered two or three rows back.
“How do you know so much about this band of brigands, Ambrose?”
“The secretary of state also called immediately after the Cuban broadcast. We had a long chat. You were sleeping. I told her about the tragic events of the day. She asked me to convey her deepest sympathies. She didn’t want to disturb you, but asked if you’d call as soon as you’d seen this tape.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“There is going to be a meeting tomorrow afternoon. She’s assembled a team to deal with the crisis. You’re not going to like this. They’re all aboard the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, currently en route to Guantanamo. The meeting is at five P.M. She knows that you won’t want to come but insists you must.”
“Why, may I ask?” said Hawke, plainly infuriated. It was precisely what he’d told Conch he did not want to do.
“Apparently the British minister for Latin American affairs went directly to the president. He says that since it was a British citizen who ‘cracked this thing wide open,’ namely you, he wants the British represented. The president elected you.”
“Well, he simply ain’t going,” Stokely said. “We going back out to look for Vicky. He’s taking his plane, I’m taking the Zodiac. Soon as it gets light.”
“The meeting aboard the Kennedy isn’t until five tomorrow afternoon, Alex,” Ambrose said.
Alex muttered, “Bloody hell.”
“She predicted you’d say that. Also, she herself may arrive late due to an emergency planning session the president has scheduled at the Little White House in Key West. She’d like you to be on the JFK as her safeguard in case, she said, ‘anybody has any really stupid effing ideas’ close quote.”
Hawke pressed his fingertips to his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
“I suppose I have to go, damn it to hell,” he said after a few long moments. “Ross, can I land a seaplane on a carrier deck?”
“I don’t see why not. Kittyhawke’s pontoons have retractable wheels. All it doesn’t have is a good, sturdy tailhook. I’ll have one installed immediately.”
“Good. Ross, also, please have the radioman send a message to flight ops aboard the Kennedy. Advise them they’re going to have an unusual little visitor dropping in tomorrow afternoon.”
“Aye, Skipper.”
“How long until sunrise?” Hawke asked.
“A few hours.”
“All right,” Hawke said, getting to his feet. “At first light, I’m going back out to find Vicky. Ambrose, would you mind taking a little walk with me aft?”
“Not at all.”
Once the two men reached the stern they stood side by side at the rail staring at the glassy water stretching to the horizon. Hawke finally broke the silence.
“I saw something, Ambrose. On the wall at the club.”
“Yes?”
“I know it means something. I know I should understand it. But I can’t—I can’t see. Or I won’t see. Am I making a complete fool of myself?”
“No, Alex, you’re not.”
“Anyway, see if you can make something of it for me, will you?”
Alex pulled an old Polaroid snapshot, yellow with age, out of his pocket and handed it to his friend.
“I’ll be happy to see what I can come up with, Alex.”
“Thank you, Ambrose. You are the most wonderful friend a man could ever ask for, you know.”
He walked away without waiting for a reply.
40
Ambrose had awoken to the heartbreaking sound of Hawke’s little airplane coughing and sputtering to life. When the noise came to resemble a screaming banshee outside his window, he sat up in bed, yawning, and pulled aside the curtain of the small rectangular port. He watched the silver plane lift off the water and climb into the nighttime sky.
Ambrose was keenly, painfully aware that Alex must know his search for Vicky’s body was hopeless. He also knew that Alex would be up there all day, flying every square mile of ocean within and beyond the search area, praying to find this woman who had seemed to offer him, finally, peace and passion.
He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.
It was useless.
He picked up the brier pipe from his nightstand and jammed it between his teeth. It was both a comfort and a stimulant to thought. He realized despite the tragic events of the day, he was still poking around the edges of the thing that had haunted him for thirty-odd years.
He had slept fitfully, tossing and turning in his bed, unable to erase an image that simply would not go away. The image he saw was black-and-white and compelling. A simple composition. A story. A very old, sad story.
There were three figures in the foreground. A snowstorm of confetti and silver streamers filled the air. The photo was blurred as if some reveler had jostled the photographer at the moment the shot was taken.
Happy New Year.
A beautiful blond woman in a white sarong, diamonds sparkling around her regal white neck. A brilliant tiara in her hair. The woman had a flute of champagne in her raised hand and was smiling. Her other arm was thrown carelessly around the shoulders of a very fat young man with a bald, bullet-shaped head. A heavy golden crucifix was suspended from the thick gold chain around his neck.
There was another man in the foreground of the image. Tall and
strikingly handsome in a spotless white dinner jacket, he stared directly into the eye of the beholder. The sober eyes were not amused. Fixed, impatient, not smiling.
For him, at least, this was not a very happy New Year.
Why?
Because the woman has had too much bubbly? Been too friendly with the bald-headed chap, perhaps. Said something indiscreet.
Ambrose sat bolt upright. He took a deep breath and looked out his oval port window. Overprinting the rippling black water, he saw the lingering image still, and now he had it.
The beautiful woman in Alex’s blurry Polaroid was Alex Hawke’s mother. The man in the dinner jacket was Alex’s father. And the fat youth with the golden cross? His large chunk of the puzzle was rapidly fitting into place, too.
Three Cuban boys on a murderous rampage.
Alex Hawke had handed him a key to the puzzle he’d been trying to solve for over thirty years.
Ambrose picked up the phone and called Sutherland’s cabin, waking him from a dead sleep. He told Ross to meet him on the bridge deck in ten minutes. Then he called Stokely and delivered the same message. He got up, padding quickly across his small cabin. He opened the door to the tiny head and stood before the sink, gazing at his haggard reflection in the mirror.
He was busily brushing his teeth when the magnitude of what was happening struck him like a blow to the head. He was standing at the very brink of solving the insoluble. The mystery surrounding the events aboard the yacht Seahawke that had occurred over thirty years ago.
Dressed, he shoved his service revolver, a pre-war nickel-plated Webley-Scott, into the side pocket of his favorite tweed jacket and headed for the bridge.
Sutherland and Stokely were already there.
“We’re going ashore,” Ambrose said. “Ross, please ask Tom Quick to select four of his best crewmen and arm them with automatic weapons. Stokely, do you need a gun?”
“I am a gun,” Stoke said, dead serious.
“Good. We might well put your talents to use then. Have everyone meet at the launch as quickly as humanly possible.”
“What is it, Constable?” Sutherland asked.
“Our first stop will be a surprise visit to Mr. Amen Lillywhite. If we find out what we need to know, there will be a second surprise party, quite possibly a highly charged affair.”
“We’ll be ready at the launch in ten minutes,” Sutherland said, and picked up the ship’s phone to begin assembling his team of raiders. It took less than a minute.
“Ross, do you have the Streetsweeper aboard?”
“Certainly.”
“Bring it,” Ambrose said, and left the bridge.
The Streetsweeper was Ross’s invention. It was a pistol-gripped, sawed-off shotgun capable of firing fifteen twelve-bore cartridges in less than twenty seconds. He had used it with much success in some difficult operations. He would carry it in addition to the matching flat Wilkinson throwing knives strapped inside each forearm.
Half an hour later, the launch arrived at the Staniel Cay docks. The small raiding party was armed to the teeth. It was just past four in the morning, still dark, and the entire island seemed to be sleeping. They still had the cover of darkness on their side. After disembarking, Ambrose posted one man on the dock to cover their escape if necessary.
The six remaining men moved swiftly toward the old club, bristling with weapons. All they knew was what Stokely had told them on the ramp. It was going to be a search and seizure, and it was most likely going to be a hot one.
The door of the club, not surprisingly, was open. There was a man sleeping atop the bar, snoring loudly. Ambrose considered waking him and reminding him of the club rules but disturbing him seemed unnecessary. He moved to the wall of photographs adjacent to the bar, pulling Alex’s Polaroid from his pocket and gazing up at the montage of overlapping snapshots. His eyes went to the upper left-hand corner where he’d seen a grouping of shots that had the appearance of being taken in the late seventies.
Two days ago, this had been a solid wall of photographs. Now, quite a few obvious patches of crumbling stucco revealed that a number of them had recently been removed. He looked at the picture in his hand, then placed it inside his jacket pocket. Satisfied, he turned to Sutherland and Stokely.
“All right, then. Two doors either side at the top of these stairs. Amen’s room is on the right,” Ambrose said. “At least, I saw him enter that room two nights ago. Ross, you and Stokely come with me. Tom, you and your fellows please remain down here unless you hear something disturbing upstairs.”
Ambrose was first up the steps. He waited for his two colleagues outside the bedroom door. Then he pulled out his revolver and stood back as Stokely kicked the old wooden door open. The force of his kick knocked the door off its hinges and sent it flying into the room.
A startled Amen sat bolt upright in his single iron bed, his eyes wide with surprise and fear.
“Good morning, Mr. Lillywhite,” Ambrose said, and walked straight toward him, his gun aimed at the naked man’s heart. Stoke and Sutherland stood just inside the doorframe, their weapons at the ready.
“What the—”
“Please be silent and listen,” Ambrose said. “I’m going to ask you a few very important questions. If I hear the right answers, no harm will come to you. You should know that I am a policeman and so are these gentlemen.”
Ambrose opened the small black leather case and showed the man his shield. “Are you ready?”
Amen, eyes on the gun, nodded his head.
“Good,” Ambrose said. “What is your name?”
“Amen, sir. Everybody knows that.”
“Your full name, please.”
“My name is Amen Lillywhite,” Amen said. “Named after my father.”
“Mr. Lillywhite, the very first time I visited this establishment, I noticed a number of particularly interesting snapshots on the wall downstairs. Some of them appeared to have been taken at a New Year’s Eve party in the early seventies. Tonight, I return only to find that many, if not all, of those particular pictures, have been removed. Any idea who might have taken them? Or why?”
“I don’t know,” Amen said. “I swear. So many pictures up there, I didn’t even notice they were missing.”
“You don’t have them?”
“No, sir. I don’t.”
“I believe you. Next question. Who is the owner of this establishment?”
Amen Lillywhite leaned back against the stained wall and shook his head.
“I am investigating a murder case for the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard,” Ambrose said. “If you withhold either evidence or information pertaining to this crime, you’re going to prison for a long, long time. Again, who is the owner of this club?”
“I don’t know anything. I just work for the man is all.”
“Give me his name. Now.” Ambrose pulled the hammer back on his revolver. It made a big impression.
“Don Carlo, that’s what he’s always been called ’round this little island. Just Don Carlo.”
“Did he remove the pictures?”
“I guess maybe he wanted some pictures taken down. Two days ago, Gloria ask me why Don Carlo seemed so upset about some pictures on the wall. Said he noticed one was missing. Said somebody had taken one. He told her to take some other ones down and burn them all out in the trash pit.”
“Did she do it?”
“I don’t think so. Don Carlo beat her up pretty badly one time she wouldn’t, uh, well, you know what I’m talking about. Ever since then, she don’t ever do what he say, less he standin’ right there watchin’ over her. Prob’ly, she hid the pictures in her room.”
“I hope so, for her sake. Destroying evidence related to a homicide investigation is a very serious offense.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“Good. How long has Don Carlo owned this club?”
“I guess thirty years or so. As a young man, he work for me tending bar. Only a month or so. Then he
left without a word. One day he shows up again with a big wad of cash money and buys the place from my boss, Mr. Daniel Staniel was his name. Don Carlo, well, he’s what you call an international businessman. Big man. To him, this old club ain’t nothin’ but a hobby, like a—”
“Front for an international narco-terrorist operation. What is this man’s nationality?”
“You mean—”
“What is his country of origin?”
“You mean, where he was born, that would be Cuba. He and his brothers are big shots there. Military.”
“Their names?”
“Don Manso is one. The other he just calls Juanito.”
“Ah, yes,” Ambrose said, barely suppressing an urge to shout with joy at the mention of these two names.
Ambrose removed an envelope from his jacket and took out three folded and yellowed sheets of paper. He selected one and showed it to Lillywhite.
“Is this the man now known as Don Carlo, who worked for you thirty years ago?”
Lillywhite narrowed his eyes and said, “Yes, sir, that’s him.”
It was the police sketch Stubbs Witherspoon had given Ambrose on Nassau.
“Is this man on this island now?”
“Yes, sir. He live here most of the year. Spends a lot of time up in Cuba, too. But the man here now. Showed up yesterday.”
“Where does he live? His house, where is it?”
“Other side of the island. Over on the ocean side. Big place.”
“Guards?”
“Yes, sir. All the time.”
“Does the house have a name?”
“Finca de las Palmas.”
“Describe it.”
“Big white place. High stone walls all around it. Main gate at the top of the steps up from the beach road. Where de guard house is. Some big wooden gates round dere on de west side wall. House sits in a pine forest up high overlooking the sea. Nothing else round that place, sir.”
“Where is Don Carlo’s room?
“I ain’t been up there. But I think it’s third floor, overlooking the sea. He got a long balcony where I think he sleeps sometimes. Anyway, I’ve seen him up there in his pajamas, entertaining, you know? Fancy black iron railing up there.”