'You hunt any, Earl?' Ray asked, as Earl cracked a box of 173-grain brown-box ammo from the Frankford Arsenal and threaded the shells in behind the bolt, down into the magazine well.
'I do, and dearly love it. Took my son after his first whitetail this spring, but he decided not to take it.'
'I know he'll be a sure shot like his daddy.'
'I hope he don't never have to fire a rifle at a man,' said Earl.
He shoved the bolt forward and down where it locked like a vault door closing, then squirmed into position to find the rifle after a time-after his muscles quit ticking and stretching-pointing naturally so that the crosshairs bisected the black dot of the target three hundred yards out.
'Any time, Earl.'
Earl settled in, until it was only himself and the rifle, and then the himself part went away and only the rifle existed. He forced all his concentration on the intersection of the two dark lines in the dark of the spot that was the target, waiting for it all to settle. It never would, he knew, but he knew also that you had to read and feel your own breathing, so when the crosshairs fell through absolute center, you were already into your trigger press.
The gun snapped, jerked, rose an inch or two and settled back down. He watched as the target disappeared into the butts and anonymous men put a spindle through the hole. When it popped back into view he saw a white marker, lower left hand quadrant of the circle.
'Good shot. Fire again please, sir,' said the lance corporal hunched on the spotting scope.
Earl sent four more downrange, clustering his hits in that lower left area. Then he relaxed as the rifle was taken from him and the other lance corporal clicked the scope the prescribed amount of windage to the right.
Earl received the corrected rifle back and fired another cluster of five, this over to the right, but still under the bull. The lance corporal worked over the rifle again, and when it was returned with the new corrections, it put the cluster into three inches at the center of the bull.
'That's a good three hundred-yard combat zero. You still shoot a bushel, Earl.'
'I ain't forgot as much as I'd thought.'
For the next hour or so, they diddled. The young men coached Earl through his positions, and he forced reluctant muscles into positions they hadn't assumed in years. He practiced sitting, kneeling and offhand, the latter at a shorter range for snap shots.
'Trigger feel fine, sir?' asked one of the boys.
'Could let off a little more lightly,' Earl said, 'but not too lightly.'
'Yes, sir.'
The rifle was taken from him, broken down from its stock, and the tiny twin screws in the mechanism manipulated. Reassembled, a few ounces had vanished from the press. He requested more and it was done and measured to be a two-pound trigger, and was then slopped with shellac to keep the tiny screws from slipping under the pounding of recoil.
'We've made you a sniper, Earl.'
'Next thing you know, you'll be painting my old face green like a bush. Wouldn't that be a thing.'
'Earl, green. What a sight that would be.'
And then at four the Navy Ford returned with its two crisp officers in their tropic khakis, neatly pressed and ironed, a far cry from the sweaty marines who'd been working hard in the sun all afternoon.
The two didn't approach the marines directly. They parked and waited.
Earl waited as the two lance corporals quickly and effectively cleaned and greased the rifle, restoring it to a condition of maximum accuracy. Then after their nod, he placed the rifle and two boxes of the Frankford 173-grain brown-box ammo into a civilian gun case that had been thoughtfully provided, took it, shook hands and turned to go meet his sponsors.
'Earl,' said Ray, behind him, 'I hope you know what you're doing, getting mixed up with these birds.'
'I hope I do too,' said Earl.
Earl took a shower, changed into his suit and a fresh shirt, and went with the two officers to the Officer's Club, where as 'Mr. Jones' he felt himself the secret celebrity of a dull room full of dull naval officers and their dull wives. He saw the odd marine officer here and there, including an old-breed fellow here and there, and felt a longing to go over and say, 'Hey, I'm Earl Swagger, USMC, wonder if you'd mind if I joined you.' He knew they'd say, 'Hell no, Mr. Swagger, set yourself down and we'll listen to your sea stories and we'll tell you some of our own.' But that didn't happen, couldn't happen, wouldn't happen.
He had good steak and salad and passed on the drinks, though the two officers each belted back a couple of martinis apiece, and, loosened up, began to yap idiotically about 'it,' by which he took it they meant the Agency. They didn't say, but their curiosity was overwhelming. 'What's it like,' they wanted to know. 'How secret is it? How tough to get in?'
He knew the answers to none of their questions and really didn't give a damn about either of them, the kind of dandy, fancy, educated boys who somehow didn't end up in the lines but always wangled intelligence or communications or staff. No, that wasn't true. There were a few who?
But a seaman, clutching his cap, came in and whispered something in Lieutenant Dan's ear, which sobered the young fellow up instantly.
'We heard from Roger,' he said. 'Finish up. You aren't getting another night on the navy. They want you in town but fast.'
'Okay,' Earl said. 'Havana?'
'No, Santiago. It's only an hour away. We'll get you there by staff car. They say something's about to happen in Santiago.'
'What would that be?' Earl wondered.
'Maybe there's a war about to break out,' Lieutenant Dan said.
'Hell,' said the younger officer, 'it's more like an orgy. Hey, Mr. Jones, take me along.'
'Jerry, what the hell are you babbling about?'
The answer, from Jerry, was one lascivious word: 'Carnival.'
Chapter 37
Speshnev worked the streets, but it was difficult to get people to pay attention. It was carnival week in Santiago and those not yet drunk thought only of becoming drunk, and at night with the music, the beat of the drums, the running of the blood, who could tell? What adventures lurked, what possibilities beckoned?
He began at the Plaza de Armas, the plush green square that was the center of Santiago's red roofs and riotous streets that careened out of control toward the harbor. He started in the lobby of Hotel Casa Grande but wandered in wider and wider circles, avoiding the billy goats pulling children in the square-he doubted either goats or children knew much-then moseyed through the great Cathedral of Santa Ifigenia, where the devoted lit candles and the priests muttered like conspirators but dried up when a stranger approached. It was the one place where the air was not filled with love and pleasure and cigar smoke; only the muttering priests were there, and those hungry to confess so that their consciences would be free to accumulate yet more sin over the weekend of paganism, thus to be purged again with time in the booth.
He drifted by the oldest house in Cuba-a conqueror built it in 1516 and now, in 1953, conquerors were here still-and eventually wandered over to the heart of the city, Calle Herrera, locus of bars and tourists, the latter who had tired of Havana's commercial vulgarities and come in search of a more refined style of debauchery in the night. Perhaps they wouldn't have to pay as much for their pleasure; it might even be free. There was so much excitement that it reminded him of Catalonia in 1936, where the war was fought for real and people's passion-for revolution, bread and freedom, not sex-was so intense the desire reached out to embrace death itself. There were no tourists in Barcelona in 1936 and too many in Santiago in 1953.
He kept moving. He strode by police stations and military installations, he got his hair cut at one barber's and his chin shaved at two others, and his shoes shined three times. He bought seven bolita tickets and four cigars. At every stop he paid attention, asking an outsider's bland questions, hoping for interesting answers. He located the biggest newspaper, and followed a fellow with a notebook to the bar where all the reporters hung out-reporters, especially the stupid American ones, had been a source of much information in Spain-and jostled among them,
