closed the door behind her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing her skirt under her, she lifted the telephone receiver, pulling off an earring as she brought the earpiece up. 'This is Major Tiemerovna,' she said into the receiver.
'Natalia, listen carefully,' her uncle's voice began. 'Rourke called me— the news he had was important. He used one of our own radio receivers. That is not important, though. Listen carefully.'
Natalia looked down at her lap, then past the hem of her light blue skirt, along her bare legs and to her feet, then along the blue carpet and toward the glass doors leading onto the balcony and past the open curtains. She could just see the ocean beyond. 'John Rourke,' she whispered into the telephone. She heard her uncle telling her of the impending destruction of Florida, the meeting she had to arrange under a flag of truce for Rourke and the Wiznewski woman with General Santiago. She heard all of it, but the words that most stayed with her were,
'John Rourke.' She would see him again....
For several minutes after the conversation with her uncle she lay back across the bed. It was incredibly new to her, the idea that she could love someone and yet debate whether or not she should try to kill him.
Chapter 37
'I don't know what the hell you're talkin' about, fella,' the red-faced, beer-bellied man told Rubenstein, then turned back to work on his boat.
'Captain Reed gave me your name, Tolliver. He said you were the man down here.'
'I don't know no Captain Reed. Now get out of here!'
Paul Rubenstein, the sun glaring down on him, his legs tensed, realized then he'd been balling his fists opened and closed. He reached out with his left hand and grabbed the florid-faced Tolliver by the left shoulder and spun him around, his right fist flashing out and catching the larger man at the base of the chin, the man falling back across the front of his boat.
Tolliver pushed himself up onto his elbows, squinting at Rubenstein. 'Who the hell are you, boy?'
'I told you,' Rubenstein said, his voice low. 'My name is Paul Rubenstein. I'm just a guy who needs your help. I know Captain Reed of U.S. II. He gave me your name when I told him I was coming down here. Now you're bigger than I am, probably stronger, but believe me, I can be meaner— I learned since the Night of the War. Now,' Rubenstein shouted, 'I need your help!'
'Doin' what?'
'You ever go down by the camp— the big one?'
'Maybe.'
'I'm going to break everybody out of there— and you're going to help me.'
'You're full of shit, boy.'
Rubenstein glanced over his shoulder, saw no one by the sandy cove where he'd found Tolliver working on his beached boat. Then Rubenstein reached under his leather jacket and pulled out the Browning High Power, shoving the muzzle less than two inches from Tolliver's nose. The hammer went back with an audible double click. 'If you can sleep nights seeing those people in there, then whatever I could do to you would be a favor. You either help me round up some people in the Resistance to get those folks out of there, or I'm killing you where you stand.'
'You're the one caused all that fracas there this morning, ain't you?'
Rubenstein nodded, then said, 'Yeah— I am.'
'Put the gun away. Why the hell didn't you say so in the first place. I'll help, then we can all get ourselves killed together. Never fancied much dying alone, if you get my drift.'
Rubenstein raised the safety on the Browning and started to shift it down when there was a blur in front of his eyes. Tolliver's right fist moved and Rubenstein fell back into the sand, starting to grab for his gun.
'Now take it easy, fella. That was just to make us even. You shoot me, and you'll never find the Resistance people.'
And Tolliver's big florid face creased into a smile, and he stuck out his right hand.
Rubbing his jaw with his left hand, Rubenstein looked at the bigger man— then they both started to laugh.
Chapter 38
Rourke opened the hatch on the DC-7 and looked out across the airfield. He could tell General Santiago by the ensignia on the collars of his G.I.-style fatigues; but the only face Rourke recognized was that of Natalia. He looked at her eyes, saw the recognition there and then threw down the ladder.
'Come on, Sissy,' he said to the girl standing a little behind him.
Rourke started down the ladder to the runway, helping the girl. As Rourke turned to start across the field toward Santiago and Natalia, he stopped, his hands frozen away from his body, frozen in the movement of sweeping up toward the twin Detonics pistols under his coat. There was a semicircle of men, Cuban soldiers, with AK-47s in their hands, their muzzles pointed at him.
Rourke looked beyond the emotionless faces of the soldiers and across the airfield. Santiago seemed to be poorly disguising a smile— but Rourke couldn't read Natalia's eyes. There was a command shouted by Santiago, the words something Rourke recognized. 'Arrest that man. Seize that woman and the airplane and its pilot— immediately!'
Rourke cocked his head slightly toward Natalia as she took Santiago's arm, hugging it to her it seemed. Her eyes just stared ahead. Coldly, Rourke thought.
'What's happening?' Sissy Wiznewski asked, her voice low, trembling.
Rourke reached out— watching the soldiers watching him— and took her hand, saying to her, 'I'll let you know as soon as I find out myself. It wasn't Natalia's way, Rourke thought— not to go against her uncle's wishes, not to use the Communist Cubans as an instrument for her own revenge.
