Dusky MacMorgan: Cuban Death-Lift Part 8

"Ah . . . muy mareado. Vomito!"

And vomito he did.

When Androsa came back into the cabin, the sound of retching up topside was unmistakable.

"Where's Captain Zapata?" she said, glaring at me, knowing full well what had happened.

"The little guy?"

"You know d.a.m.n well who I mean."

"I think he's got the vapors or something. Left without a fare-thee-well."

With a final glare, she whirled toward Captain Lobo, who was standing now, and poured out a rattling dialogue of apology.

She finished, "El gringo capitn es sumamente estpido!"

Lobo didn't seem to disagree. He looked at me meanly, smiling all the while.

I smiled back.

"Well, I'm going up there to make sure he's all right!"

With a toss of her hair, the woman climbed the steps outside. It left Lobo and me alone in the cabin.

I lifted his empty gla.s.s and, in innocent sign language, asked him if he wanted another beer.

Nothing. He grinned and watched me, his wide face and mustache immobile.

"Sorry about your friend," I said, letting my tone communicate what I meant.

But my tone was wasted.

"I sincerely doubt that, Capitn MacMorgan."

It surprised me. It really did. Lobo had given me no hint that he could understand what I had been saying to Santarun. He had a heavy accent, but his words were confidently formed, well-spoken.

I held the snuff out to him. "Sure you don't want some, too?"

He chuckled, looked away. Big as he was, he was quick. He slapped the can out of my hand before I had a chance to move. The lid went twirling one way and the snuff flew across the indoor-outdoor carpeting like coffee grounds.

"Is that a no?"

For the first time, the grin disappeared from his face. He stepped closer to me, hands on hips, and growled, "You think you're quite funny, don't you, Capitn MacMorgan? Well, let me remind you that this is not the United States. I a.s.sume the woman, Miss Santarun, paid you a great deal of money to bring her here. If you want to live to spend that money, then I suggest you conduct yourself in this harbor with fitting respect. I am not your smiling neighbor, gringo. I am your superior-the moment you entered our waters, it became so." He sneered the last words. "We are no longer island slaves born to shuffle at the feet of Americanos. You are in Cuba now, Capitn MacMorgan. And don't forget it."

I still smiled. It was a necessary ploy. I wanted to see how far Castro's people could be pushed before they would allow themselves to stray into the danger zone of what might be an "international incident."

It might prove useful later to know.

And it didn't take me long to find out.

In years past, it wouldn't have happened. No official of another country would have even considered striking an American citizen-even if that citizen had acted as churlishly as I had. But now we had a President who thought an act of courage consisted of hitting a drowning rabbit with a boat paddle. Or abdicating his control over the safety of American diplomats everywhere to anyone h.e.l.l-bent on holding our country hostage.

"Do you want to know when I was sure this was Cuba?" I said, still smiling.

"Not especially, Capitn."

"Well, I'll tell you anyway, Captain Lobo. When we pulled past that power plant over there, that's when I knew for sure. All the civilian workers were skinny. And all the soldiers guarding the beach were fat."

He slapped me so quickly, so unexpectedly, that I didn't think my next move through clearly. I felt my right hand join into a fist and swing overhand down toward Lobo's face.

I stopped it just in time, a fraction of an inch from his nose.

Lobo hadn't even flinched. "Go ahead, Capitn MacMorgan. Hit me. And after you have hit me I will have my guards escort you into Havana. Before they put you in prison you will have a very fair trial. I a.s.sure you that."

Slowly, I lowered my fist. He held all the cards. No doubt about it.

This time, anyway.

"I'm very sorry, Captain Lobo. Please accept my apology for the way I have acted." I tried to look ashamed. "I was very stupid."

The malicious grin returned to his big face. "Of course! Apology accepted! But please don't forget what I have said, Capitn MacMorgan. You might say that your life depends on remembering. . . ."

9.

Mariel Harbor was a big inland lake of a port umbilicated to the sea by a natural deepwater channel. The east side of the harbor was cliffed, and industrialized with cement and power plants. But the industry gave way to higher cliffs. Bamboo and royal palms grew on the cliffs, all tapering toward the highest peak where the Cuban Naval Academy stood. It was built of native stone, four stories high, with gables and pillars, and broad stone steps that led down to the narrow road which snaked its way through the hills. North on the sheer cliff, beside the academy, were barracks of wood with tile roofs. Beyond the fortress was tropical wilderness, curving around the base of the harbor to the south end, where there were open fields and, on a distant lift of hillside, a small village.

Androsa Santarun didn't say much to me as I motored Sniper down the channel way to the harbor. Boats were everywhere-mostly American boats. There were hundreds of sweeping white shrimp boats with names in broad print on their sterns: Lucky Cracker, Georgia; Lee Wayne, Fort Myers; Pirate's Chest, Key Largo-some of them anch.o.r.ed alone; others rafted in floating communities. There were schooners and skiffs and broad white yachts, all with their bows anch.o.r.ed into the tide-the only hint of order in the chaos of waiting vessels.

The harbor was a jumbled, polluted mess, and only the merchant seamen on the big Russian tanker tethered to the quay near the power plant seemed to move with any intensity of purpose.

"I guess I acted like a jerk back there, huh?"

She stood beside me at the cabin controls.

"There's not much doubt about that."

"Like some immature spoiled brat, wouldn't you say?"

She eyed me for a moment, studying my face. "I would say at least that."

"What did Lobo say to you when he left?"

"I really see no point in discussing what has already-"

There was a rickety houseboat ahead piloted by someone who obviously had no idea what in the h.e.l.l he was doing. I swerved Sniper neatly to keep his blunt bow out of my beam. "I was just trying to make conversation, Miss Santarun."

She cringed slightly as the houseboat came within a foot of hitting us. For a moment, I thought she was going to yell something at the pilot. But instead she said, "Captain Lobo asked me about that scar on your face. He wanted to know why I had hired a gringo charterboat captain. He seemed suspicious of you."

"Well, I'm a little suspicious of him, too. I can't figure out why he followed us in, then boarded us first with all those other boats at the mouth of the harbor waiting."

"Maybe they had already been searched."

"That's another thing-he and Zapata hardly even took a good look at my boat. What did they do? Poke their nose into the cabin and didn't even check the engine compartments. I would hardly call it a search."

I watched her as closely as I could while running Sniper. I wanted to see what her reaction was. I wanted to find out if her suspicions were the same as mine: that Lobo and his cohort gave us special attention because they knew that Androsa Santarun was a spy.

But if she had any suspicions, she never let on.

"Mr. MacMorgan," she said, "please don't ask me any questions, because I have no answers. Just promise me this-that you will never again jeopardize my . . . my attempts to get my father out of Cuba with your silly jokes."

"I thought you hated the Castro Cubans. It seems to me that what I did-"

"I do hate them!" She said it fiercely. She meant it. "I hate every single thing they stand for. Look at that!" She swept her hand toward the tropical wilderness beyond the Naval Academy. "Never was there a place so beautiful as Cuba. But Castro did not take it from Batista to give it to the Cuban people. He took it for himself. I do hate them, and that is exactly why I don't want to take the chance of playing silly jokes. It could . . . could ruin everything."

We had been told to anchor on the west side of the harbor, so I pointed Sniper toward one of the few chunks of open water, away from the flood of other boats. A broad peninsula of white sand and Australian pines separated the port from a finger of bay, and on the peninsula was a ragged military outpost. There was a colony of barrack houses built of concrete block and painted a shabby blue or bleached pink. Some of the roofs were tiled, others were thatched. Just to the south of the huts was a small but modern aircraft control tower and an amphibious landing strip. Absently, I wondered how much it had cost the Russians. Beyond the gla.s.s quadrangular of control tower was a steel pier where two antiquated gunboats were moored, and above that, in a clearing, was a baseball diamond with a chicken-wire backstop. Guards patrolled the beach with emaciated German shepherds, and there were bunkers beyond the beach, poorly camouflaged.

I nosed Sniper uptide, and before I went forward to drop the hook, I turned to the woman.

"You're right," I said. "Giving that Zapata character snuff was a rotten joke. And I promise I'll never do it again. But you have to admit-it was kind of funny. Did you see him start to sweat and hold onto the table like the boat was spinning? I thought he was going to break a leg trying to get out of that cabin. . . ."

Androsa turned abruptly away from me and walked back toward the starboard fighting chair.

I watched her trying hard to repress a smile as she went.

And so the waiting began.

We were just one of fifteen hundred American boats in Mariel Harbor waiting on some word of the relatives we wanted to take back to America.

Androsa Santarun knew all the steps in the procedure after her talk with Captain Lobo. First, her triplicate papers with her father's name would go to the Cuban immigration authorities. They would process the papers and decide if he was eligible to go to America-"eligible" meaning that he was not of military age, that he was not a physician or government employee, and that he was not an "enemy of the people."

The last requirement was pretty vague, of course. And could be used to stop anybody from leaving that they d.a.m.n well didn't want to leave.

After the papers were processed and okayed, the relatives supposedly would be sent to the waiting boats.

But the woman said she knew otherwise. She said it was a lot more complicated than that. She told me about it at dinner that night, in the longest conversation we had had the whole trip. That's one thing about a boat. People crammed together in close quarters long enough either turn murderous, or they find a common plateau of conversation and acceptance that will at least make the trip bearable.

Happily enough, she had chosen the latter alternative.

I had spent the hot afternoon leaning into the narrow confines of the engine room, puttering with this, changing that, adding seals and new belts where they were needed. Every now and then I'd break for a cold beer, wipe my face with a towel, and sit in the shade to watch the Cuban patrol and taxi boats idle between anchorages. The woman had changed from pants and blouse to a striking white bikini that had men on the boats nearest ours running for their binoculars. As aloof as Androsa Santarun was, she seemed totally unconcerned with the impact of her physical appearance.

And the impact was considerable.

She was a woman of length and curves: long black hair streaming toward the ripe flexure of high, round b.u.t.tocks and the grace of long legs. The white suit emphasized the darkness of her, and her ribs undulated promisingly toward the wide, firm impetus of b.r.e.a.s.t.s, barely covered by the skimpy top.

It was all I could do not to stare at her when she walked past me to rummage in the cabin for a book, or a cold drink, or a towel.

But I made myself; forced myself to act oblivious to her s.e.xuality, knowing that if she did feel my eyes upon her-and she would-that I would be dismissed as just one more h.o.r.n.y son of a b.i.t.c.h.

And that's when I knew that she had me.

Any time you start measuring your reactions to please or impress someone, then you know their effect on you is something other than commonplace.

Great, MacMorgan. Just great. You've been with this woman how long? Little more than twenty-four hours. You see her kill a man coldly and professionally, and you have sat like a kid in a corner while she treated you like hired help. So why the special interest? There is a woman in Chicago, another in New York, and the best of them all back in Key West-every one of them beautiful, intelligent, eager, and one h.e.l.l of a lot easier to get along with. So why get taken in by this one?

I really didn't know why I was playing little games for her approval.

Maybe it was the way she had acted when she saw the man with his throat cut on Storm Nest.

Maybe it was that hint of vulnerability beneath the black ice of her eyes in that singular moment. Or the way she had leaned against me for support. Or the smallness of her beneath my hands, or . . . h.e.l.l, I just didn't know.

So I worked hard all afternoon in the sun. And tried to ignore the vision in the white suit. And tried harder to force the urge to seek her favor from my head.

Across the harbor, half a mile of water and several hundred boats away, I could hear the voice of Cuban authority over a big PA system somewhere north of the Naval Academy. On the beach of the peninsula, only a hundred yards away, the guards still patrolled the area with their AK-47s and their shepherds, watching for Cubans who might try to make a swim for one of the American boats.

The place didn't exactly exude friendliness.

For supper that night, I had thawed out four sizable lobster tails. I had caught plenty the season before, and now was a good time to enjoy them. Mariel Harbor, it was easy to see, didn't offer much else in the way of luxury.

At sundown, I went for a short swim, toweled off, and then went below to set water to boiling for the lobster. In another pot, I dumped in a stick of real b.u.t.ter and set the alcohol burner on dead low.

Lobster and what else? I thought for a moment. If I was alone, what else would I fix?

Garlic bread, toasted. Maybe a salad. That's all. And if the woman didn't like it, she could fix her own supper.

I cleaned off the galley table and added plates. Then I went to work on the salad, cutting plenty of sweet onion into it.

"How was the water?"

She came down the cabin stairs, all long legs and swell of womanhood beneath the suit. Her high Indian cheeks were bronzed by the sun, and her hair was shiny with tanning oil.

"Water's dirty-too d.a.m.n dirty for swimming."

She grabbed a chunk of onion as she swept past me and chewed it while she spoke. "I thought about going in, but . . . well, I was afraid there might be sharks around."

"Sharks?" I looked down into her mahogany eyes. For the first time, she looked relaxed. Even sleepy. "I imagine most of the sharks in this harbor left when they heard you were here. No, the most dangerous thing about that water is staph infection. When I got out, I washed my ears with some of that cheap rum under the sink."

"So that's what I smelled."

"And you just thought I was drunk again, right?"

She fished out another piece of onion from the salad. "Isn't that the way you charterboat captains live? You make enough money to get good and drunk, and then you don't go back to work until the booze runs out. That's what everyone says, anyway."