by Dan Simmons
“Or at Hemingway. Or at one of the other clowns in our party.”
Delgado looked at me. “Who do you think it was?”
“Where were you on Friday night, Delgado?”
The smile returned. “In the best whorehouse in Havana. And if I were shooting at you, Lucas… you’d be dead.”
I sighed and rubbed the sweat out of my eyes. I could hear the sound of children playing in the weedy lots nearby. An aircraft droned overhead. The air here smelled of gasoline fumes, the sea, and sewage. “Hemingway’s giving me a typewriter tomorrow,” I said. “To type up the Crook Factory reports. My next report to Mr. Hoover will be typed.”
“Good,” said Delgado, slipping the report back into its envelope. “We wouldn’t want you fired from the SIS and the Bureau for the want of a typewriter, would we?”
“Do we have any other business?” I said at last.
Delgado shook his head.
I said, “I’ll let you leave first.”
When I was sure he was gone, around the corner and out of sight, I went into the back room, removed the loose board, and pulled out the wrapped package I had left there. I checked both weapons for any moisture—they were both dry except for the oil from the fabric—and then I set the .357 Magnum back, removing and cleaning the Smith and Wesson .38. I loaded the revolver, leaving one chamber empty, slipped two boxes of cartridges into my jacket pocket, and slid the weapon into my waistband far enough back that it would not interfere with my pedaling on the bike.
Then I went out to hunt for a café that was open. I planned to drink at least three ice-cold lemonades before heading back to the finca through traffic.
AS SOON AS the Pilar was into the Gulf Stream we picked up a heavy swell. The glass had been falling all morning, and a dark bank of clouds was moving in from the northeast. Hemingway’s boat had no radio, but the chalked forecast on the bait shed at the marina had warned of an afternoon front coming in from the northeast and a possibility of heavy squalls.
“Lucas!” Hemingway bellowed from the flying bridge. “Come on up.”
I clambered up the ladder. Hemingway was at the wheel, bare legs wide apart and braced, while Winston Guest clung to the railing. Ibarlucia was drinking another beer in the shelter of the cockpit bridge. The first mate, Fuentes, was still sitting on the bow, bracing his bare feet on the forward railings as Hemingway brought the bow into the tall waves.
“Any mal de mer, Lucas?” said the writer. He had a long-billed cap pulled low over his eyes.
“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll wait for lunch.”
Hemingway glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Why don’t you take her for a while?”
I did. Hemingway gave me the compass heading and I swung the bow accordingly, throttling back a bit to minimize the roll of the small craft. Guest went down to the cockpit, and in a few minutes he and the jai alai player, helped by Fuentes, had rigged lines to the two outriggers for fishing. Fuentes also dropped a big horn teaser off the stern and played out line. I watched the teaser skip around in the center of our wake, attracting nothing but the occasional seagull.
Hemingway stood with one hand on the rail, easily keeping his balance even when he gave me headings that required me to steer at the worst possible angle to the heavy swells. Cuba was the faintest hint of smudge on our starboard side, and the line of black clouds grew closer and more substantial to port.
“You have handled a small boat before, Lucas.”
I had already told him that I had, so there was nothing to say to that. Beneath and behind us, Guest and Ibarlucia were laughing at something. The sea was too rough for fishing.
Hemingway slid down the ladder and returned a moment later with a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. Waiting until the spray had passed us, he removed the rifle from its protection. I glanced at it: a Mannlicher .256.
“We were going to anchor off a buoy I know,” he said, sighting on flying fish leaping ahead of the boat. He lowered the weapon. “Do some target practice. But this sea fucks that idea.”
Perhaps that was to have been my sea trial—bring the Pilar to the proper coordinates and then get in a target-shooting match with these three men who had been drinking all morning. Or perhaps I was just being paranoid.
Hemingway wrapped the rifle and stowed it away beneath the console. He pointed to the coast. “I know a nice little cove there. Let’s put in, have a good lunch, and get back to Cojímar before it gets bad out here.” He gave me the heading and I swung the bow of the Pilar toward land. She was a nice enough little craft, although she rode a bit light and handled a little loosely for my tastes. If he wanted to avoid the storm coming in, it was my opinion that he should have turned back then rather than dawdled around for lunch. But he hadn’t asked me my opinion.
It was easier going in a following sea, and by the time we anchored in the broad cove, the sun was bright again and the storm was less on everyone’s minds. We sat in the shade of the wheelhouse and ate thick roast beef sandwiches ladled with horseradish. Guest and Ibarlucia each had another cold beer with lunch, but Fuentes had brewed up some rich, black Cuban coffee, and he, Hemingway, and I drank that out of chipped white mugs.
“Ernesto,” said Fuentes, rising from his place on the rail, “look at that. On the boulder there on the beach. He is very large.”
We were about a hundred and twenty yards out from the beach, and it took me a second or two to see what Fuentes meant.
“Gregorio,” said Hemingway. “Get the glasses, please.”
The four of us took turns looking through the binoculars. The iguana was indeed very large. I could see the membranes of its eyes flashing occasionally as it blinked slowly while sunbathing on the black rock.
Hemingway clambered up the ladder and we followed. He unwrapped the Mannlicher and wrapped the sling around his left arm in approved infantry firing range fashion, bracing his legs wide against the slight chop and pulling the stock tight against his shoulder. “Lucas, you spot.”
I nodded and studied the iguana through the glasses. The rifle barked.
“Low,” I said. “About a yard. He hasn’t moved.”
The second shot was high. On the third shot, the iguana seemed to levitate and then disappeared behind the rock. Ibarlucia and Guest cheered. Fuentes said, “A purse for Miss Martha, no?”
“A purse for Miss Marty, sí, old friend,” said Hemingway. He led us down the ladder to the deck.
“It’s a shame we left the Tin Kid behind,” said Guest, referring to the little rowboat Hemingway had left tied behind rather than tow it in rough seas.
Hemingway grinned. “Shit, Wolfer, you can almost touch bottom out here now. You afraid of sharks?” He peeled off his sweatshirt and shorts, standing naked except for a tattered pair of underwear. His body was very brown and more muscled than I had thought. There was no gray in the hair on his chest.
“Ernesto,” said Ibarlucia, who had stripped to a very small pair of shorts. His small body was all lean muscle, the planes and ridges of a consummate athlete. “Ernesto, there is no reason for you to get wet. I will swim ashore and finish the reptile while you finish your lunch.” The jai alai player lifted the rifle.
Hemingway had slipped over the side and now lifted one arm. “Dame aca, cono que a los mios los mato yo!”
I thought about what he had said: Give it to me, damn it; I kill my own. It was the first time I had felt any kinship with Ernest Hemingway.
Hemingway took the rifle, held it high, and began stroking with his left arm toward the distant beach. Ibarlucia dove in without making a ripple and soon passed the writer. I pulled off my work shirt, kicked off the deck shoes, and stepped out of my shorts. The air was hot despite the approaching storm and the sun burned at me.
“I’ll stay aboard with Gregorio,” said Guest.
I swam easily in to shore. The surf was negligible in this broad cove. Patchi and Hemingway were walking up and down on the dry sand behind the tall pile of rocks where the iguana had been sun
ning itself.
“There is no sign, Ernesto,” said Ibarlucia. “The shot must have just frightened the reptile.” He squinted toward the northeast. “The storm is coming, Papa. We should think about going.”
“No,” said Hemingway. He pored over the rock, feeling it as if hunting for blood spoor with his fingertips. For twenty minutes the three of us moved up and down the beach and shoreline studying every rock and imperfection. The black clouds moved closer.
“Here,” called the writer at last, crouching on the sand some twenty-five yards up the beach from the rocks.
We stood over him as the writer snapped a dried stick into pieces, marked the tiniest drop of blood on the sand, and began crawling inland, studying the ground so closely that he resembled a bloodhound sniffing for a scent trail.
“Here,” he said again, ten yards farther up the beach, marking the faintest of red spots. “Here.”
The spoor trail ended at a pile of boulders where the cliffs began. We crowded under a low overhang and looked at the tiny, black opening to the small cave. Blood smeared the rock.
“He’s in there,” said Hemingway, dropping the last of his sticks and unslinging the rifle from his shoulder.
I stepped aside as he aimed the Mannlicher at the small hole.
“It is likely to ricochet, Ernesto,” said Ibarlucia, also stepping aside. “Do not shoot yourself in the stomach. The handbag, it is not worth it.”
Hemingway only grunted and fired. There was the noise of violent thrashing in the cave.
“It’s dead,” said Hemingway. “Get a longer stick.”
We found a four-foot length of branch washed up on the rocks, but no amount of poking could locate the iguana.
“Perhaps it crawled further in,” said Ibarlucia.
“No,” said Hemingway, “I gave it the gift of death.” He studied the hole. It was narrower than his shoulders.
“I will go, Papa,” said the jai alai star.
Hemingway put a hand on the smaller man’s brown shoulder and looked at me. “Lucas, you’ll probably fit. Want to give Marty a handbag?”
I dropped to all fours and slid forward, scraping skin off my shoulders as I went into the hole arms first. My body blocked the light. The cave angled downward so that rock cut at my scalp as I bent forward to follow the angle of the hole. I had no intention of going deeper than they could reach to pull me out. About eight feet in, my fingers encountered the scaled ribs and belly of the iguana. I felt sideways toward the throat and my fingers came away sticky with blood. It did not move. Holding it firmly by the ridges on its back, I began inching backward, stopping as my shoulder became stuck at the bend in the tunnel.
“Pull me out slowly,” I called. “I’ve got it.”
Strong hands grabbed my ankles, skin tore from my knees, back, and shoulders, and I was slowly pulled into the light.
Hemingway handed the Mannlicher to Ibarlucia and patted my arms rather than my bloody back as I handed him his trophy. He was grinning very broadly, as happy as a boy.
We swam back to the Pilar with Ibarlucia carrying the rifle above the rising waves, Hemingway kicking on his back while holding the large iguana out of the water, and me wincing as the saltwater rolled over my lacerated back and shoulders. Once aboard, there was much commotion about the size of the lizard, a ceremonial beer for everyone as the iguana was stored away in the fish box and the anchors were pulled up, and then we fired up the engines and pounded back into the heavy swells beyond the cove.
Three miles out, the storm hit us. Hemingway had called me down to the forward compartment, where he opened a first aid kit and smeared some unguent on my back. He pulled rain ponchos from a cupboard and we went up on deck just as the first squall hit us.
For the next hour we beat back to the northwest, the boat rolling and pitching constantly. Ibarlucia went below to lie on a cot, Guest sat on the upper step looking pale, while Fuentes and I braced ourselves on either side of the enclosed bridge and watched the towering waves as Hemingway expertly handled the tiller.
I had the feeling then that this was a place where Ernest Hemingway—a man I had seen thus far mostly as a series of poses and personae—was most comfortable being himself. The waves continued to get rougher and the Pilar pounded through them with spray that all but obscured the windscreen, but Hemingway’s comments were calm and quiet. Rain hammered on the roof above us and made the open deck behind us slick.
“Another hour or so and we’ll see the—” began Hemingway, and stopped. We had moved out of the squall and into a brighter patch of sea, but rain showers moved like curtains across the ocean on three sides. Hemingway snatched up the binoculars and looked to the northeast. “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he whispered.
“Que?” said Fuentes, leaning out of the enclosed bridge to stare into the spray as we rose to the top of the next tall wave. “Ahh… yes, I see.”
I saw the lights first, flashing a mile or so apart, almost lost against the ripples of lightning behind them. It was not Morse code. There was a large shape off the starboard bow, about three miles away, almost concealed by the shifting walls of rain. At first glance, I thought it was large enough to be a destroyer, but the lines were wrong. To port, moving away from us and the larger ship, was the faintest hint of gray metal rising from the gray seas in front of the gray clouds.
“Damn, damn, damn,” said Hemingway, obviously delighted and excited, handing the binoculars to Fuentes. He opened both throttles to two thirds, pounding into the waves so hard that Guest was almost thrown from his seat on the stairs and Ibarlucia cried out from the forward compartment.
“Do you see that, Lucas?” said Hemingway, advancing the throttles another notch.
Fuentes handed me the binoculars. I tried to bring the larger form into focus, but the high waves and pounding of the hull made it difficult. “Yeah,” I said after a minute. “Some sort of huge yacht. I’ve never seen a private boat that size.”
Hemingway shook his head. “Uh-uh,” he said. “The other one. To port. The shape just entering the squall line.”
I swung the glasses, found it, lost it, and found it again. I stared.
“It’s a submarine,” said Hemingway, voice full. “A goddamn Nazi U-boat. See the shape of the conning tower? See the number on it? A Nazi U-boat. It was signaling to that monster yacht. And I’m going to catch up to it.”
“To the yacht?” said Winston Guest, stepping up into the bridge, his face flushed and almost rigid with excitement.
“No, Wolfer,” said Hemingway, advancing the throttles again before taking the binoculars from me and refocusing on the conning tower. “We’re going to catch and board that submarine.”
9
WHY DO YOU WANT INFORMATION on the Southern Cross?” said Delgado.
We had met on a deadend dirt track south of San Francisco de Paula. An old, abandoned farmhouse sagged in the heat. In the weedy field, a single burro watched us with friendly suspicion. My bicycle was propped against a torn fence. Delgado’s old motorcycle stood next to a wireless telephone pole.
“According to Mr. Hoover’s brief to me,” I said, “your job is to funnel information that I need, not to ask why I need it.”
Delgado looked at me with his flat, dead gaze. Despite the heat, he was wearing a faded, leather A-1 jacket over his undershirt. The buttons on it were as expressive as his eyes. “When do you need it?” he said.
This was the problem. In Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, it usually took ten days or more for regular files to be forwarded from Washington. If they were sensitive files that had to be vetted, we might not see an extract from them for a month or more. Usually we had gone on to other things by the time we received the paperwork we needed. In this case, the Southern Cross would probably be gone by the time this request was processed. “As soon as possible,” I said.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” said Delgado. “At the safe house. Seventeen hundred hours.”
I said nothing, but I could not believe that the file
s would be in Cuba by the next afternoon. If they did arrive… how? Courier? Why expedite sensitive information to me in this dead-end job? Who was Delgado, anyway?
“Just about the boat?” he said, making a note in a tiny spiral notebook.
“And anything that would be directly related to her,” I said. “Any current investigations relating to her crew, owners… anything that might be of help.”
Delgado nodded, went to his motorcycle, and straddled it. “What would your writer have done if he’d caught that sub, Lucas?”
I thought of that insane chase through the rising seas, the gray conning tower disappearing first into the rain and then into the waves, Hemingway standing wide-legged at the wheel, his face hard and set, throttles pushed so far forward that I thought the Pilar was going to break her back or bow on the waves, spray dousing the ship and everyone in it. Everyone there… Patchi Ibarlucia, Winston Guest, the unflappable Fuentes, even me… had been roaring with adrenaline and urging the thirty-eight-foot pleasure craft on as if it had been a thoroughbred in the home stretch. And then the sub was gone… completely, totally gone… and Hemingway had cursed, slammed the bulkhead with the flat of his hand, and throttled back, swinging the bow north to close the distance between the Pilar and the impossibly large yacht, shouting at Fuentes to read the name on the stern through the binoculars.
“If you’d challenged the submarine,” continued Delgado, “it would have blown you out of the water.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow afternoon at five? I’ll try to be there.”
Delgado smiled and gunned the motorcycle alive. Still straddling it, he shouted, “Oh, did you see the Buick and its two men watching you leave port yesterday. From the hill above Cojímar?”
I had seen them. The car and its two occupants had been in the shade, so that even with binoculars I had not been able to make out more than silhouettes in the front seat—that tall man and the short man again. Mutt and Jeff.
“I didn’t make the driver,” continued Delgado, “but the passenger was a certain hairless, hunchback dwarf. Sound familiar?”
