The Betrayers

by Harold Robbins

“Can it travel somewhere, say a hundred miles, surface, and go back under, that sort of thing?”

  Denver stared at me. “Why the sudden interest in my submarine?”

  “Is it a toy?”

  “Hell no, it’s not a toy. It’s a decommissioned U.S. Navy submarine. It got sent to Panama after the Big One as war surplus. You know how much Panama needed a submarine?”

  I shook my head.

  “Like teats on a boar hog. I got it from a Panamanian admiral in exchange for a sixty-foot gunboat that had been converted into a luxury yacht. You know how much use Panama has for a gunboat?”

  I gave him another shake.

  “They use them to protect the smugglers and gunrunners.” He roared with laughter.

  My face was too battered to join in. It had tightened as it was healing and a good laugh would have shattered it.

  “You’ve been wanting to buy a pier to dock it by, one that tourists can use to board. How would you like to have enough money to get your submarine raking in tourist money instead of collecting rust and barnacles?”

  “Who do I have to kill?”

  I thought about it.

  “No one. Maybe just start a war.”

  That got his attention.

  “Think you can attack a small country with your sub?” I asked.

  Yeah, Ramfis and his SIM had overestimated my good sense. I should have been on my way to New York or London, one of those places where you only have to worry about tax collectors and other muggers. But here I was, planning and scheming. They had probably overestimated my intelligence and sanity, too. No one with brains and a mind in good working order would do the crazy things I had planned.

  Like I said, the Russian in me came out when my back was to the wall. When Hitler invaded Russia, Stalin had ordered his troops to institute a scorched earth policy, destroying bridges, burning crops, killing farm animals, making sure the enemy didn’t get any benefit from its conquest. You don’t get any crazier than having the willingness to destroy your own country in an effort to defeat an invader.

  That was my philosophy, too. Scorched earth. I was taking names and giving no quarter.

  I told Denver what I wanted from him and his submarine and went back to my room to call an old friend in British Honduras.

  52

  Ciudad Trujillo

  “A what?”

  As he asked the question, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, Jr., known as Ramfis to distinguish him from his now dead father, stared at Johnny Mena, the head of the SIM.

  Ramfis had returned to the country on the heels of his father’s assassination and took his place as head of the army, which made him de facto dictator of the country. But the crown of kingship sat uneasy on his head. Ramfis was junior in more than name when compared to his father. The generalissimo had ruled the Dominican Republic for nearly thirty years, using a iron fist more often than a velvet glove. He had spilled blood not by the bucket, but filled the gutters and sewers with it.

  Had the generalissimo been born on the south side of Chicago or the Fort Apache area of the Bronx, he might have ended up as a mobster kingpin. Had he been born in Russia, El Jefe would have filled the shoes of Khozyain, “the Boss,” after Stalin died in 1953.

  Trujillo had been smart and totally without conscience. Murdering to stay in power was just part of a day’s work. It was the mark of dictators and conquerors from all ages, from Julius Caesar to Genghis Khan, from Hitler to Stalin and Mao; mass murder to achieve political and military gains was just part of the job description. To paraphrase Stalin, a few deaths were a tragedy, a million was just a statistic.

  Junior had none of the brutal “advantages” of his father. El Jefe rose from the lower classes and pulled himself up by the bootstraps until he ran the army. Poor Ramfis. He became a colonel hardly out of diapers. Now he was a goldfish in a pool of sharks. Not a comfortable position for a man who had had a lifetime of soft landings.

  Ramfis stared at the head of his secret police. Johnny Mena had interrupted a party Ramfis was throwing for the country’s elite in order to discuss an urgent situation with him. Mena himself had had his dinner at a Ciudad Trujillo nightclub interrupted by a Dominican Republic navy admiral and rushed to the Ciudad Trujillo palace that Ramfis was using as his headquarters.

  The two of them were in Ramfis’s office now, along with the dictator’s aide de camp, Colonel Ramirez.

  “A submarine,” Johnny Mena said.

  “A submarine,” Ramfis repeated. “Off our south coast, not far from San Cristóbal. Could it be American?” he asked Mena.

  “I’m certain it is American, but not part of their active navy, not anymore at least. In the reports I received from San Juan, one of the people Nick Cutter was seen talking to repeatedly was the owner of a salvaged submarine, a smaller boat used for training purposes. They are staying at the same hotel, with adjoining rooms.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “That submarine was anchored in San Juan Bay. When I got word of the sighting of a sub off our coast, I immediately contacted the agent in charge of our surveillance of Cutter. He has confirmed several things—Cutter is not at his hotel, and has not slept in his bed.”

  “And?”

  Johnny Mena leaned forward. “The submarine has left its mooring. At least, our man believes so. Naturally, it’s still dark in San Juan, but there was enough moonlight for him to get a good view of the bay.”

  Ramfis asked, “So you believe that Nick Cutter has hired a submarine to rescue Luz?”

  “The submarine was seen off San Cristóbal, so it fits,” Colonel Ramirez said. “The woman dropped out of sight immediately after El Jefe was murdered. The easiest situation for her would be to hide at a fellow conspirator’s house and await rescue.”

  “But it’s been a month,” Ramfis said.

  Ramirez shrugged. “A month in which there has been an intense hunt for the conspirators. She would have naturally kept her head down until she thought it was safe to make a run for it.”

  “But why a submarine? A submarine can’t come that close to land. Can it?” Ramfis asked.

  It was a stupid question. Both men exchanged looks but neither pointed out how naïve the question was.

  Johnny Mena’s tone of voice was smooth when he answered Ramfis’s question. Before his father was killed, Ramfis had not made any attempt to hide the fact he disliked Mena and his brutal methods and reputation. In the weeks since he got back from Paris, Ramfis had fully underwrote Mena’s vicious police methods.

  “Not underwater, of course, but they don’t draw the same sort of water a large ship of war or freighter would, especially a small sub like this one. It could come reasonably close to shore, and of course, they would send an inflatable motorboat ashore to bring the woman back.”

  “If the rendezvous point has enough water for the submarine to get within a mile or two from shore,” Ramirez pointed out, “a rubber speedboat could cover the required distance back and forth, probably in minutes.”

  “Do we know exactly where the submarine is?” Ramfis asked.

  Mena was careful not to commit himself to a reply that could later be used against him. Capturing—and punishing—the killers of El Jefe was Ramfis’s most pressing political and personal concern. Mena didn’t want to be caught guessing wrong about anything arising from the manhunt. He had many enemies in the government. If Luz escaped and Ramfis had an excuse to punish him, Mena had no doubt he’d get a taste of his own painful SIM methods.

  “It was spotted heading for the San Cristóbal area just before darkness fell,” Ramirez answered. “That was several hours ago. We have ships and planes in the area, and they had occasional electronic detection of the sub.” He spread his hands on the desk. “But what that means, I’m not completely certain. It was detected again less than an hour ago. We have helicopters with searchlights patrolling miles of coastline in the San Cristóbal area, and police and troops in vehicles searching on the ground. The sub has to surface to launch a
rubber speedboat to attempt any rescue.”

  “Unless the person on the beach has their own boat.”

  Mena kept a straight face. Colonel Ramirez was right. He had not considered the obvious. “Regardless, there are no reports of a powerboat coming or going from the coast to the submarine. It’s dark, but a powerboat makes engine noises that are heard over a great distance. But the fact that the submarine was detected a short time ago and is still in the area is our best insurance that an escape has not been made.”

  Mena made his excuses and left the meeting. Unlike Ramfis who supped his entire life with the proverbial silver spoon, he had survived hard knocks time after time in his life. Not just the machinations of envious souls who wanted his position of power, but attempts to kill him.

  Now the hounds were gathering, snapping their jaws, trying to get up the courage of a pack so they could attack him. The SIM had not detected the plot to kill El Jefe. Blame was being laid at his door. He had to make sure he rounded up and punished each of the conspirators.

  If Luz escaped by submarine, there would be recriminations. But he was already preparing damage control. Submarines were not within the power of the secret police. They were strictly a military matter. He would recommend the firing and disgrace of the admiral who was in charge of the country’s small navy.

  As he rode in the back of his chauffeur driven car, he thought about the submarine spotted off the coast. He had one observation that he hadn’t shared with the other two. He had a logical mind, and something did not fit properly in the logical arrangement of the facts.

  Submarines were exceptionally hard to spot. Under ordinary circumstances, one would never have been spotted off the coast of the republic. The country had no enemies among nations of the world that would attack it, not with the Americans waiting in the sidelines to come to its defense. And it had only a very small navy, mostly just patrol boats to fight smuggling and potential bands of rebels. The navy was not well equipped to spot a submarine and track it. Not unless the sub wanted to be spotted.

  It was the latter point that bothered him.

  The sub had surfaced twice near government patrol boats on the south coast near San Cristóbal.

  “Why?” Mena asked himself, aloud. Why would a submarine blow its own inherent ability to remain hidden by surfacing in an area that was the most watched in the country?

  “Put out a bulletin to agents at all points, including the north coast,” he instructed his aide who sat next to the driver. “Any suspicious activity is to be reported to me immediately.”

  “What about the submarine?” the aide asked.

  “The submarine is the navy’s problem. My problem is to make sure that no snakes slither under the threshold while we are waiting for the navy to act.”

  Something was wrong. The finely honed survival sense that kept Mena one step ahead of his many enemies was buzzing louder and louder. Mena liked no one, but he respected dangerous enemies. And Nick Cutter was a dangerous man to buck.

  “When you put out the bulletin,” he told his aide, “tell them to be on the lookout for a man with four fingers on his left hand.”

  53

  On a Puerto Rican fishing boat on the north side of the Dominican Republic, I wondered how Sam Denver was doing with his submarine on the south side. And I asked myself for the hundredth time if I was completely crazy.

  I was operating off of pure gut reaction. The place Luz had always found most comforting during times of stress had been the cottage and little banana plantation she had inherited from a maiden aunt when Luz was still a teenager. The cottage, about a mile from the shore on the northwest side of the country, was my destination. I hired a commercial fishing vessel in San Juan to make the short jaunt across the Mona Straits and down the Hispaniola coast. Once we were in range, I’d slip into the rubber dinghy equipped with an outboard we were towing and take it to shore.

  That was part of the plan.

  Another part was Sam Denver and his submarine. I sent him and his submarine to the opposite side of the country to draw attention to the San Cristóbal area. “A red herring,” as he put it.

  If for some reason Luz was in that area, I’d be putting her into even more danger. But my bones were telling me that she’d gone to the plantation to hide out. I had to admit that I didn’t have a history of batting a thousand when it came to predicting Luz’s behavior.

  “I am not a happy man,” the captain of the fishing boat said.

  It was dark, after nine o’clock. I had gone below when the captain spotted a Dominican Republic patrol boat. The fishing boat had headed further out to sea, making sure it was in international waters. I was at the stern, checking to see if the rubber dinghy we were towing was still attached, when the captain approached me about his negative state of mind.

  “That is the second patrol boat I have seen.”

  “Uh huh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I have fished these waters hundreds of times. Do you know how many times I have seen two”—he held up two fingers—“two patrol boats?”

  I had a pretty good idea just from the way he was shaking his head.

  “Never, never have I seen two patrol boats on the same day. I have never seen more than one patrol boat in a single week. And that is what makes me unhappy.”

  “Hmmm.” Another brilliant listening response because I had no answer for his unhappiness.

  “I am unhappy also because these patrol boats are out here at night. Do you know why the patrol boat crews are usually home with their families at night instead of patrolling?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because that is what they are paid to do, paid by the smugglers who come at night. You see why I am so unhappy. Two boats? At night?” He made the sign of the cross across his chest. “Maria mother of God, this is very unusual, don’t you think so?”

  I cleared my throat. “Captain—”

  “Can you tell me, señor, why I would see two patrol boats in these waters, at night, and on the same night?”

  Yeah, I could tell him. For the past month, ever since El Jefe’s death, the whole country’d been an armed camp, with the army, navy, air force and police throwing everything they had into the manhunt. I could have told him that, but he probably would have stuck a hook in my ass and trolled me behind the boat as shark bait.

  I didn’t actually tell him why I had hired him to drop me off along the coast of the country. I had a waterproof duffel bag with some personal effects in it, part of a back up plan in case I needed it. I just let him assume I was smuggling drugs in. It was a perfectly acceptable explanation. Smuggling was considered a respectable occupation in the Caribbean.

  “Your silence, señor, tells me you are not going to offer me an explanation as to why I see these two patrol boats. But I have to say that I misspoke earlier. There was a time when I saw these waters infested with police boats. That was in 1959, just two years ago, after rebels supported by Cuba landed and tried to overthrow the government.”

  He gestured at my duffel bag. “Would you like to show me what is in your bag, señor?”

  “I’m not a smuggler. Or an insurgent.”

  “Then what are you?”

  Telling him that I was dropping in to rescue one of Trujillo’s killers would definitely get the hook up my ass.

  “I’ll double our deal,” I said.

  “A hundred times what you offer would not pay for my boat or the lives of me and my men.”

  Two of his men flanked me. They each had a big gaffing hook used to haul in sharks.

  “You are getting off my boat, señor. Now.”

  54

  The captain of the fishing boat told me that the lights I saw along the coast were the town of Puerto Plata, the “Silver Port.” All it meant to me was trouble.

  The banana plantation was in a rural, undeveloped area about twenty miles up the coast. I couldn’t have gotten more than a quarter of that distance with the gas that was left in the outboard by the
time I reached the coastline.

  I had to give the fishing captain credit, he was an honorable man. I was the bad guy in the scenario. He had me climb into the outboard, threw my duffel bag in after me, and cut the tow line after I got the outboard going.

  If our situations had been reversed, I would have thrown the lying passenger overboard and kept the rubber dinghy and outboard motor as a well-earned bonus.

  I made it to the coastline off the silver port without being boarded or run down by a patrol boat. It was a warm night, without a breeze, and the surf running up on the beach was manageable. I beached the boat, set aside my waterproof bag and then let the air out of the dinghy. When it was deflated, I dragged it into the bushes, did the same with the outboard, and covered them with palm fronds.

  From my waterproof duffel bag, I took out my backup plan—a good pair of slacks, shirt, sports coat, shoes and a small overnight bag with a change of clothes.

  It wasn’t much in terms of equipment for a guy making a one-man invasion of a small, Caribbean country, but there was some logic to it, at least in my own small, twisted mind.

  If Luz wasn’t at the banana plantation, I would have to go to the next best bet, San Cristóbal on the other side of the country-island, and see if I could nose her out there. I would have to backtrack to Puerto Plata and take public transportation to the capital and then to San Cristóbal. I needed to look respectable to make that trip. And I needed a disguise. My blond hair and eyebrows, a real tipoff to the police in a country of dark complexioned people, were now medium brown.

  It was the best I could do short of plastic surgery—some passable clothes and brown hair.

  That and a passport in the name of Sam Denver. Sam would report his passport as stolen. It cost me another arm and a leg to go with the limbs I gave for renting his sub for red-herring duty.

  And there was no gun in my bag. I had thought about it, that I might get into a situation where I had to shoot my way out, but weighing the pros and cons, the idea of packing heat kept coming up snake eyes. Unless I had my trump card to use on myself, a gun would only help me get to hell faster than the speeding bullet I was already riding.