Four Months in Cuba

by Luana Ehrlich

  I slipped out the door and walked down the hall to the living room.

  It was empty.

  As I headed back down the hall, I thought I heard voices coming from the kitchen. When I got closer, I realized they were coming from the dining room.

  The first time I’d attended a dinner party at The Meadows, I’d heard Gladys tell one of her guests that she considered the dining room her decorating masterpiece.

  I hadn’t questioned why once I’d seen the room.

  The dining room was dominated by an enormous crystal chandelier. It was centered over a rectangular dining table, which rested on two carved columns. The table seated sixteen people, and was reminiscent of the type of furniture found in English country homes in the 1700s—all dark wood and sturdy construction. In addition to the dining table and tapestry-covered chairs, there was a matching china cabinet that covered almost an entire wall.

  When I walked in the room, the doors of the china cabinet were standing wide open, and Nikki and Juliana were removing dishes from the shelves.

  Water goblets and silverware had been laid out on the dining table, along with linen placemats with a pink floral pattern on them. Besides being surprised by what the ladies were doing, I noticed there were four place settings on the table.

  “Oh, hi, Titus,” Nikki said, when she saw me standing in the doorway. “Juliana and I decided to make ourselves useful and set the table for dinner.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Nikki said with a nervous laugh. “I invited Juliana and Frank to join us for dinner.”

  “Mind? No, of course not,” I said, lying through my teeth.

  Juliana asked, “Are you sure you have enough food for all of us? Frank and I don’t have to stay for dinner.”

  At that moment, Benson walked in the room. “Did I hear my name?

  When Juliana told him they’d been invited to dinner, he looked over at me and asked, “What’s going on with you, Titus? On the same day I get a compliment from you, I also get an invitation to dinner.”

  I had no idea what was going on with me.

  * * * *

  When Benson got a call on his cell phone, he excused himself and went back to Carlton’s study, and I left the ladies in the dining room and walked across the hall to the kitchen.

  A few minutes later, Nikki walked in the kitchen as I was removing a pot of green beans from the stove.

  When she came up behind me, she put her arms around me and asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  I stopped what I was doing and turned around. “This wasn’t exactly how I envisioned our evening together.”

  She took a step back and said, “Well, me neither, but it would have been rude not to invite them to eat with us. It was dinnertime, and Juliana kept talking about how delicious everything smelled. The socially acceptable thing to do was to issue them an invitation.”

  “Being socially acceptable is way overrated.”

  Nikki ignored my grumpy behavior and gave me a peck on the cheek.

  “I’m looking forward to your dinner anyway,” she said. “Now, tell me what I can do to help?”

  I pointed over toward the island in the middle of the kitchen where Millie had laid out the ingredients for a salad. “Would you mind making a tossed salad?”

  “You’re having salad?”

  “Don’t you like salad?”

  “I love salad, but when guys cook, they usually don’t bother to make a salad.”

  “Not me. I always say if you’re gonna eat dessert, you should have a salad first.”

  Nikki rolled her eyes. “That makes no sense.”

  * * * *

  When Juliana came in the kitchen and offered to help, I asked her to fill a pitcher with ice water, while I sliced the brisket.

  After she’d finished filling up the pitcher, she walked across the room and showed it to me. “I’m telling you, Titus, you’ll make a domestic diva out of me yet.”

  I laughed. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, walking back over to the refrigerator and removing a lemon, “the secret ingredient. I guess we could also call it the secret word.”

  I nodded. “That too.”

  When I noticed Nikki wasn’t smiling, I tried to think of a way I could explain what Juliana and I were joking about without bringing the Agency into the picture.

  I finally gave up and said, “How’s that salad coming?”

  She picked up the bowl. “It’s finished. I’ll put it on the table and see if I can find Frank.”

  I wondered if her comment about finding Frank was an attempt to send me a message.

  Something like, jealousy can run both ways you know.

  When Nikki left, Juliana walked over to the stove where I was arranging the meat on a platter.

  “That looks delicious,” she said. “Anything else I can do to help?”

  “Yeah, you can tell me what’s going on with you and Frank.”

  She shrugged. “He called me this morning and asked me if he could pick me up for lunch. That’s about it.”

  “Did he quiz you about anything while you were having lunch?”

  “Such as?”

  “Frank collects information the way some people collect coins. It’s a hobby with him. Since he’s not well acquainted with either the Senator or Ben, I’m guessing he may have asked you what you know about them, especially the Senator.”

  She nodded. “As a matter of fact, their names did come up, but when I told him I didn’t really know the Senator, he dropped the subject. To be truthful, Titus, I think he just wants to get to know me better.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “He’s a nice guy. I like him.”

  “That’s good because the DDO wants us to work with him, and I’ve already given him his first assignment.”

  “What kind of assignment?”

  “We’ll talk about that later. With Nikki here, we shouldn’t be doing any shop talk.”

  “I’m glad I got to meet her. I think we might become good friends.”

  I didn’t see that happening anytime soon.

  * * * *

  Other than one awkward moment, the dinner was a huge success. Everyone raved about the food, especially the chocolate pie, and along with a few laughs, there was plenty of conversation.

  Although Benson dominated most of the conversation with stories about the cases he’d worked, I was fine with that.

  One of his stories involved a guy who tried to rob a bank by using a bicycle as a getaway vehicle. That story reminded Nikki of a similar incident at a convenience store in Oklahoma City, where the getaway vehicle turned out to be a horse.

  She claimed the guy got away. Everyone laughed.

  No one brought up the Agency during dinner, which is probably why Nikki entered into the conversation and seemed to be having a good time.

  However, her attitude changed after the awkward moment.

  It happened at the end of the meal when my sat phone vibrated.

  When I pulled it out of my pocket and saw that Carlton was calling, I quickly excused myself and walked down the hall.

  “Are you clear?” he asked.

  “Clear.”

  “Have you and Frank had your briefing yet?”

  “We did it here at The Meadows a few hours ago. In fact, he and Juliana are still here.”

  “That’s perfect. I was going to have a conference call with all three of you, but now that you’re there together, you can just put me on speaker. I need to brief everyone about some new developments with Phase II.”

  “Are you ready to do that right now?”

  “Do you have a problem with doing it now?”

  “Ah . . . no. No problem. Juliana and Frank are in another room, so you’ll need to give me a minute or two.”

  I put the phone on mute and walked back into the dining room.

  Frank was in the middle of telling yet another story. This on
e had him holding a water glass over Nikki’s head. When I interrupted him—which might have been a good thing—I said, “I’m sorry, but I have to break this up.”

  After Frank lowered the glass, I said, “Juliana, would you and Frank join me in the study?”

  As they got up from the table, Frank asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Our . . . ah . . . operations officer needs to give us an update.”

  I turned to Nikki. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

  As she watched Juliana and Frank leave the room, she nodded and said, “I understand.”

  Although I felt sure she understood, I wouldn’t describe the look she gave me as being understanding.

  * * * *

  After closing the door to the study, I walked over and placed my phone on top of Carlton’s desk. The desk was bare, except for a stack of yellow legal pads.

  For some reason, the three of us formed a kind of half-circle around the desk and stared down at the phone as if Carlton were actually sitting at the desk.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Douglas,” I said, after releasing the mute button. “Frank and Juliana are here with me now.”

  “Good. I wanted to give you an update on Phase II of Peaceful Retrieval. The first thing you need to know is that Senator Mitchell heard back from the cartel this morning.

  “The message said: ‘Book your flight for San Andros for August 13. Once you’ve checked into the resort, someone will contact you. Remember, if you want to see your son again, don’t notify the authorities.’

  “The Senator immediately wrote the cartel back and explained the difficulty of coming down to San Andros himself. At the end of the email, he asked permission to send his legislative assistant, Austin King, and his new bride in his place. He included photographs of their wedding, which he claimed had just taken place this past weekend in Arlington.”

  I glanced over at Juliana to see her reaction to the news that Support Services had produced photographs of our wedding. She was smiling and seemed to be amused by the whole thing.

  Carlton continued, “Two hours ago, the Senator received the following reply: ‘You’re right to be cautious about publicity, Senator, so we’ve agreed to your request. However, rest assured, both Austin King and his wife will be thoroughly checked out before we make the exchange. Instruct them to remain at the resort until someone makes contact with them.’”

  I said, “That means Juliana and I need to be in The Bahamas the day after tomorrow.”

  Carlton said, “I’ve scheduled your final briefing for one o’clock tomorrow afternoon. And, Frank, the DDO told me to give you an invitation to attend that briefing as well.”

  Frank nodded. “I’ll find someone to cover for me at Quantico.”

  “That’s all I have for now. Any questions?” Carlton asked.

  “Did the cartel include a proof of life photograph in their email?” I asked.

  “No, they didn’t send a photograph of Ben, but I don’t believe we should attach much significance to that. Any more questions?”

  No one said anything.

  “Okay, then, I’ll see everyone tomorrow.”

  * * * *

  After Carlton disconnected the call, Juliana expressed her disappointment we weren’t being sent back to Santiago to find Ben.

  I said, “To be truthful, I was pretty sure we’d get some new intel about Ben’s location before the cartel contacted the Senator again.”

  “There’s still time,” Benson said. “When I talked to the ASA office earlier, Katherine said they’d never looked into the governor’s holdings in El Cobre, and she promised to expedite my request.”

  “Did I miss something?” Juliana asked.

  After I told her I’d asked Frank to look into the possibility Governor Gilberto owned property in El Cobre, he said, “That phone call I had earlier was from one of our agents in Miami who has contacts in Cuba.”

  “You didn’t—”

  “Don’t worry,” Frank said, “I didn’t tell him the reason I was asking him about Governor Gilberto. He may not be able to help us, but when I’m constructing a grid, I’ve learned it’s better to have too much information on a person than to have too little.”

  When Juliana asked Benson what he meant by constructing a grid, he went into a long-winded explanation about how he conducted an investigation.

  As he described designing a grid around a person’s connections, I walked over and looked out the French doors that opened onto the patio. A few minutes later, I saw Nikki come out the door on the other side of the house and sit down on a stone bench about forty yards away from the swimming pool.

  Stormy immediately trotted over and dropped a ball at her feet. When she picked it up and threw it out across the lawn, he took off after it. She smiled when she saw him race past it, then retrace his steps, scoop it up, and finally drop it at her feet once again.

  As I watched this idyllic scene playing out in front of me, I felt like I was part of the audience at a stage production, someone who was enjoying the show, but who knew the fantasy didn’t come close to the reality of his own life.

  The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I was being cruel to Nikki to suggest the two of us might have a future together. How could I have a future with her when we lived in two different worlds?

  I didn’t know the answer to that question, but I knew if Nikki and I couldn’t even manage to have an evening alone together, there wasn’t much chance we could have a lifetime together.

  “Titus, did you hear what I was saying?” Benson asked.

  “No,” I said, turning away from the window. “I was thinking about something else.”

  “I said Juliana and I are leaving now unless you have something else we need to go over before tomorrow.”

  “No,” I said, “I believe we’re all done here.”

  Juliana walked over to the French doors. “There’s Nikki out by the pool. Let’s go tell her we’re leaving.”

  When Stormy saw me open up the French doors, he must have thought I wanted to be included in his game of fetch, and before Nikki could stop him, he picked up his ball, raced across the patio, and dashed into Carlton’s study.

  After dropping the ball at my feet, he immediately buried his nose in the carpet and ran around the room as if he’d caught the scent of a squirrel.

  By the time I was able to get him out the door, his muddy paw prints were all over Carlton’s expensive Persian rug, and several chess pieces were scattered across the floor.

  For some reason, Benson found Stormy’s behavior very amusing.

  Chapter 35

  After Benson and Juliana had left, Nikki grabbed a towel and helped me get as much dirt out of the Persian rug as possible.

  Since the rug had a floral design that included patches of brown, I told myself Carlton probably wouldn’t notice the additional dark spots left behind by Stormy.

  Once that was done, I repositioned the chess pieces on the board in their original squares and made sure the black knight was in the square it had occupied before Benson’s obsessive-compulsive nature had compelled him to move it.

  As we walked out of Carlton’s study, Nikki held up the towel we’d used to get the mud out of the rug and asked, “What should I do with this?”

  “Well, Detective, since that’s the only evidence a crime was committed in the study tonight, we should probably dispose of it immediately.”

  She laughed. “I took this towel out of the guest bathroom. If we get rid of it, Millie might notice it’s missing.”

  “Give it to me; I’ll put it in with the rest of the laundry and hope Millie doesn’t examine it too closely.”

  As Nikki and I walked by the dining room, I noticed the table had been cleared off. “Did you clean up the dining room after we left?”

  She nodded. “It was the least I could do after the delicious meal you made us.”

  When we turned the corner and entered the kitchen, I expected to see a pile of dirty dishes a
nd a countertop full of leftover food, but instead, the kitchen was spotless, and the dishwasher was running.

  “You also cleaned up the kitchen?”

  “I wasn’t sure what else to do. I couldn’t just sit around twiddling my thumbs until you finished your conference call.”

  After I gave her a hug, I said, “I know it must have been difficult when we walked out on you like that.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. I felt a little like Cinderella being left alone to do the housework while everyone else was at the ball.”

  “It’s been a while since I heard that story, but if I remember correctly, Cinderella eventually went to the ball, and everyone was captivated by her beauty. I believe the prince even fell in love with her.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, after I kissed her. “Does that mean all this will end at the stroke of midnight?”

  “Seriously, Nikki, maybe it’s time we had a talk about when all this will end.”

  My remark seemed to catch her off guard, and she pulled away from me. “What does that mean?”

  I pointed over to the den. “Let’s go sit down first.”

  * * * *

  If the kitchen at The Meadows was Millie’s domain, then the den belonged to Arkady, although Millie had claimed an overstuffed chair in a corner of the room as her reading chair.

  At one end of the room was a wide-screen television set with a red leather couch directly in front of it. Behind the couch was a square table containing several hundred jigsaw puzzle pieces, along with a half-finished puzzle of a Siberian tiger.

  Puzzles were Arkady’s thing.

  Reading was Millie’s thing, especially crime fiction, and she indulged her passion in a big way by collecting books by Ed McBain, a prolific crime fiction writer. Her book collection filled the shelves of a bookcase that ran the length of the back wall.

  When we sat down on the couch, Nikki said, “Why do I have a feeling you’re about to tell me something I don’t want to hear?”