have hurt nobody. I would hate this to be the day I had to kill a man.'
'I'm too tired,' said Castro. 'I've been running forever. I need to sleep and eat. They will kill me eventually, I know, but I am beyond caring.'
Kill him! Speshnev ordered himself.
He had finished a long squirm through the brush, reached a creek and loped along, leaving the shooter far behind but keeping a bearing on the three policemen and Castro. Three: too many. Pray for a miracle.
He crawled forward, sliding through the earth itself, the floor of jungle rot, feeling the coolness just beneath the surface. He'd shimmied up an embankment, low-crawled some feet, and now was just ten feet away from them.
Then the officer sent the two men off. Now there were just the two of them, the boy and the old negro.
He looked back, and could see the soldiers easing their way down the mountainside, still forty minutes away.
He thought: kill him. Kill the old man.
Work back through the brush, staying out of the sunlight, the open. Reach the boat. It can still be done. The shooter cannot see me, he will not track us.
Kill him!
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a flick knife. With a snap of his wrist, three inches of naked blade spurted out like a lizard's tongue, and locked in place.
Kill him!
At this point it was so easy. The old negro policeman had his gun out, but it rested easily against his thigh, the finger not even on the trigger. Speshnev recognized it as an old Colt revolver, but so beaten and ancient it was clearly not the gun of a pistolero. The man held it so sloppily and with so little tension that it seemed strange to him.
Speshnev looked at him. He was in his fifties, with a face much ravaged by a hard life. Yet his eyes were milky with moisture and depth, surely the sign of a humane man. The men with feelings, they all had eyes like that unless they were insane, and Speshnev had really met few who were completely insane.
He saw how it would happen. He would be upon the old dog so fast, the man would not have time to look up. The knife would flick out, go to the throat, probe and cut the carotid, and the old man would bleed out in seconds.
Then grab the boy, hold him in the treeline, and race along it till their waving and screaming caught the attention of the men in the trawler. Then they could race into the surf, swim outward, and the boat would pick them up.
Do it, he commanded himself.
Yet the old man was so relaxed and without aggression in his body, Speshnev could not find it in himself.
Do it! he commanded again, trying to find the energy for this last, horrible thing.
He was so damned good. God, he was good.
'Shoot him, for Christ sakes,' said Frenchy. 'Shoot someone.'
'If he moves on the cop, I'll shoot him, Junior. Then and only then.'
'He's a Red agent.'
'He's a man doing a job. We'll see how hard he does it. If I have to, I will. You shut up and keep on the glass.'
Through the scope Earl could see the little drama playing out. The sitting policeman with the revolver, the failed, beaten revolutionary, and the Russian agent crouching in the shadows. Earl had picked him up moving west just inside the treeline, a shape flitting through shadows. It took a great game eye to pick up prey like that, through a scope, but Earl had read the land and knew how he'd have to travel to close on the fleeing boy.
He and Frenchy had moved a few hundred yards down the shoreline. They'd gone inland just a bit, where the land rose, and now were two hundred feet up and three hundred yards to the rear. They could see the two men sitting on the beach, and the shadow that had moved into place not long ago, crouching, gathering his strength.
Don't go, Earl thought. I will kill you if you move on him.
He held the rifle just over the head, so if the Russian lurched, he'd rise into the crosshairs, and Earl would fire and the bullet would take him in the spine. He didn't want to, but he also knew that he would.
'You could kill them both, still,' Frenchy said. 'Do you know what this could mean? It could mean everything for us. It could?'
'Shut up,' Earl said.
'Earl, if you don't do this, I can't protect you. You know that. You are on your own. There will be consequences. There are always consequences. Oh, wait, he's getting ready to move.'
But Earl had caught it. He watched as the form of the crouching man seemed to settle as if coiling to gather strength. Earl saw one hand low, the other high, and guessed that with one he would block and with the other, he would cut.
But it wouldn't come to that.
I will kill you, Earl thought.
Now. The policeman rose. He leaned over the boy and gave him a touch on the shoulder as if to cheer him up. His defenses were completely relaxed. His mind was far away. He was reaching out in his compassion to settle the boy, who had begun to sob, out of delayed reaction to the events of the last few days.
'There, there,' said the old negro lieutenant. 'It'll be all right. You are so young. You have plenty of time left.'
Do it, Speshnev compelled himself.
He gathered his strength for the spring and the kill and the race to the boat, he drew the knife hand back, he studied the three steps it would take him to close the distance, he took his breath, he calmed himself, he?
He saw the ships.
Two white vessels, closing fast on the trawler, each bearing the flag of the United States of America. Coast Guard cutters.
Speshnev knew he had been betrayed, that killing the policeman to free the boy was pointless. He knew there was no exit. He knew it was over. The cutters surged toward the trawler, blocking its escape.
Speshnev faded back.
Not today, he thought.
Chapter 47
By the time the soldiers got them back to Santiago, and Frenchy had made his report to headquarters, another day had passed. Moncada still bore signs of the gunfight waged there almost a week before, except that by now the burned cars had been removed and the shot-out windows boarded up. From there, they caught a cab to go back to the hotel.
It was a time of much revelry, as if carnival had been extended magically. On all the newspapers, the headlines screamed: FIDEL FINITO. There was a famous picture, taken at the village of Sevilla, of the hangdog young revolutionary and his humane captor, the negro lieutenant named Sarria, now as famous as Fidel himself. The radios blared with official announcements from the president stating his pride in the security forces of Cuba, and saying that after the Cuban way, the bad son Fidel would receive a fair trial-this to counteract all the terrible news of the torture and murder of the revolutionaries. Meanwhile the communists, the laborites, the socialists, the ortodoxos all denounced Castro as a putschist, unwilling to apply the principles of democracy to the process of change, and demanded excessive punishment. Everybody hated him, except of course the people.
Maybe that is why the streets were so full and the music so loud, maybe that is why the rum flowed so freely and the fireworks detonated so brightly. Whatever, it was a slow journey through the packed streets to the great Hotel Casa Grande at the Plaza de Armas. Both men were exhausted and dirty and wrung out from what had passed. But finally it was Frenchy who spoke.
