just nervous. Get your finger off that trigger a second, ’less you do something stupid. Cheat y’all selves out of a battlefield promotion. Maybe you boys ought to ring the general’s ass up and tell him you got Alex Hawke hisself down here? He tells you to shoot us, well, hell, we shit out of luck, that’s all. Pull your trigger, Pedro.”
The guard looked at Stoke’s eyes. He didn’t like it, but like all men in his position he was extremely risk averse. He told his colleague to keep his gun on them and ducked back inside the guardhouse.
A minute later, he was back outside.
“Vamonos,” he said. “General de Herreras has agreed to see you.”
“See?” Stoke said to the guard. “Just what I told your ass. You shoot us, you in the deep severe, baby. Now, you a national hero!”
“I’ll take my medal back now,” Hawke said to the guard, but all it got him was a jab to the ribs with the butt of a gun.
Hands still on their heads, Hawke and Stokely were marched through the heavy wrought iron gates and inside the compound. They mounted a wide set of marble steps leading to a pair of massive metal doors.
The doors were from some ancient fortification, heavily decorated with shields and lances. A blinking video monitor picked them up, and the doors swung inward instantly. There was a huge entry hall, with candles guttering in heavy fixtures mounted on the walls. Hawke could see a wide stone staircase curving upwards into the darkness.
Six formidable guards, all in black uniforms with red berets, stood in a semicircle facing them. Hawke was astounded to see that the entire group of guards appeared to be Chinese. Then he remembered hearing Conch say that Raul Castro had long been making overtures toward Beijing. Clearly, they’d passed the overture stage.
Conch would be interested to learn there were highly trained Chinese troops in Cuba. If he lived to tell her about it.
All six guards had Chicom pistols on their hips and lethal-looking Chinese Tsao-6 submachine guns aimed at the bellies of the two prisoners.
Someone then stepped forward from the shadows and, ignoring Stoke, scrutinized Hawke. The man had the dress uniform coat of a highly decorated Cuban general thrown over his silk pajamas. It was barely large enough to cover his enormous paunch.
He poked his silver-plated .357 magnum into Hawke’s stomach until Alex winced, then stepped back and smiled.
“This must be Alexander Hawke himself!” the pajama-clad general said in heavily accented English. “Welcome to el Finca Telarana!” There was the sour smell of rum and tobacco on the man’s breath. His eyes were red-veined and watery. He was more than a little drunk, Hawke thought. May Day festivities, no doubt.
“Good evening, General. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Hawke said, maintaining the casual smile on his face.
“Why, I am General Juan de Herreras. You’ve not heard of me? I am in charge of the whole Cuban Army!”
“A responsibility that no doubt weighs heavily on your shoulders, General,” Hawke said, eyeing the man carefully, seeing a very old picture in his mind.
It was not the skinny one. Or the very fat one who had the machete at his mother’s throat. No, Congreve had already arrested that monster.
No, this was the other one, he recognized the eyes now, the one who held his mother and—it was all Hawke could do not to lunge at the man and rip out his heart. He knew he had to marshal all this anger, compress it, guard his arsenal of hatred jealously. He was going to need all of it if he were to do what he’d come here to do successfully.
“Ah, of course,” Hawke managed to say. “Now I remember. I believe I made your acquaintance many years ago.”
“Really, senor?” de Herreras said. “I don’t think so. I would remember. In any event, my brother Manso is waiting for you in his study. Since you and your friend here have caused us so much distress in recent days, I warn you that he is not in the best of moods.”
“Pity,” Hawke said. “Perhaps I have something that will cheer him up.”
“Excellent! Please follow me,” the general said, and he strode beyond the curving staircase into the deeper shadows of the great hall. Stoke and Hawke felt the presence of the six guards behind them.
Hawke and Stoke had not seen the second stairway. This one curved down into murky blackness. The sound of the heavy-booted Chinese guards reverberated in the stillness. They had disturbed the sleep of two silky Russian wolfhounds guarding the top of the steps.
It was odd, Hawke thought, how removed this bizarre fortress seemed to be from all the gunfire and bloodshed that had taken place within the huge compound. Perhaps these generals did not dirty their hands with mere soldier’s duty.
When they finally reached the bottom of the steps, there was a long red-carpeted corridor leading in both directions. Alex figured they must be a good forty feet underground. The general beckoned, turned right, and walked past several mahogany paneled doors until he stopped abruptly, and knocked on one of them.
It slid open with a hiss, and an elderly Oriental fellow wearing black silk pajamas and white gloves ushered them all inside a massive elevator. He had a wispy little white goatee that looked like milkweed.
“To my brother’s study,” General de Herreras said to the attendant who bowed, then pushed a button.
The elevator came to a gentle stop and the door slid open. The attendant bowed deeply as they all stepped out of his car. Hawke, expecting some grand room, was surprised as they emerged instead into a dark, smallish foyer with a single table along one wall. A gilt-framed painting, lit by an overhead light, dominated the room. Alex bent over to take a look.
An early Picasso in shades of blue.
“This way, gentlemen,” General Juan de Herreras said, pressing his palm against a panel cut in the mahogany. There was a click and a door swung outward revealing a set of steep stone steps leading up. It was suddenly cool and damp inside and the air smelled of, what, chlorine? Alex touched the stone wall. It was wet and mossy. At the top of the steps, two flaming candles hung in iron fixtures on either side of a narrow wooden door.
“After you,” the general said, and Alex and Stoke started climbing.
At the top, they stood aside as the general pushed a number of buttons on a keypad mounted by the door. A green light flashed and the door swung open.
Hawke and Stoke were both struck dumb by what they saw.
The room they entered was circular. The walls and great domed ceiling were made entirely of glass. They revealed what was perhaps the most spectacular underwater view Hawke had ever seen. Huge underwater lights, all hidden, illuminated the scene beyond the glass. Tropical fish of every size and color swam by. Exotic vegetation swayed from the sandy floor.
Above their heads, a great white shark, some twenty feet in length, swam idly by, above the glass dome, followed by a school of barracuda.
“Man living at the bottom of an aquarium,” Stoke whispered. “Look up there.”
Higher above them, at least thirty feet above the glass ceiling, huge stalactites hung down and schools of brilliant fish darted through them. Stalagmites, too, rose from the bottom of the grotto, forming intricate cities of pink and white coral.
The glass room seemed to have been constructed on the sandy floor of some deep natural grotto, most likely fed by the river flowing out to the sea. At this river’s mouth, Hawke thought, the submarine pen where the Borzoi lay.
The tensile strength of the glass had to be enormous, because Alex could discern no seams, no visible means of support. And yet a massive bronze chandelier hung from a fixture at its very center. It provided the only light in the room other than the external underwater illumination. The fixture consisted of finely wrought rings of hammered brass and bronze, getting smaller toward the top.
The largest ring, the lowest, held at least fifty blazing candles, while the top ring held ten or so. It had to be suspended on some kind of hydraulic or electrically powered wire, Hawke thought, capable of being raised and lowered, otherwise, how could you manage to keep all these bloody candles lit? The effect was certainly dramatic, he had to admit.
