Some people thought it was a Spanish torpedo that sank the Maine, and some thought it was Cuban terrorists. Whatever it was, America went to war with Spain over the sinking and kicked Spain the hell out of Cuba for good. You’d think Fidel would owe us one, right? You’d be wrong. Fidel was someone Stoke happened to know personally. He never talked about it, but he’d actually been awarded the Cuban Medal of Honor by Castro himself. Yeah, he had that medal in a drawer somewhere, but that was another story.
The old blue fishing boat had to belong to the guy Sharkey had arranged for them to meet. Fort Jefferson was a very out of the way place. Nobody ever came out here unless they were very curious about old island fortresses abandoned after the Civil War.
Stoke had forgotten how massive the thing was. How thick those solid brick walls were, heavy black cannons sticking out all over the place. All they did now, sell a few postcards to touristas who ventured out from Key West after a few too many Cuba Libres at Sloppy Joes booze emporium. Might come a day when America could use a fort down here, Stoke was thinking. In the event of a Gulf War in our own backyard.
Harry Brock believed, as did Stoke, that this neck of the Caribbean was shaping up fast as a place where the shooting could start. Hell, that’s why Stoke was poking around down here, wasn’t it? Latin America was blowing up in our faces. Stokely hoped to hell Sharkey had found something useful down here. He didn’t have a whole lot of time to dick around.
Stoke turned around in his seat and smiled at his sole employee. His trusty gut was talking to him, it was saying maybe Luis was actually on to something worthwhile. Besides, he was starting to feel more comfortable with Luis lately. Yeah, maybe Sharkey was a little hyper. Nervous type. But Stoke’s instincts about the wiry Cubano were trending positive.
“Hey, Shark-bait! This guy we’re meeting at the Fort. How come he’s got the same name as you?”
“His name is not Sharkey.”
“No. It’s ‘Luis’I’m talking about. Your real name.”
“Si, Luis! He’s my father. Luis Gonzales-Gonzales Senior.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that? Now I don’t have to worry about trusting the fate of the free world to this old guy. He’s still fishing, huh, your daddy?”
“Yeah. A lot of these elders here in the Keys, they came down from Miami soon after the Mariel in ’81. They were fishermen back in Cuba. A lot of them took one look at Miami and then came down here to the Keys, man. Cheap housing. Lots of fish round here on the flats back then.”
“The old man and the sea, huh? That his boat?”
“El Bandito, she’s called. That old man going to fish her till he dies, man. He’s a good spy, man, keeps his eyes open. Once you said I was officially in the program, on the case, whatever, I asked him to do it. He’s got a tiny stilt house on a little spit of land in the Marquesas. He can see everything from there. He’s out on the water all day and most of the night. The other fishermen, they are happy to help out. Stick together pretty much and they all hate Fidel as much as I do.”
“You guys buckled up? We’re going for a swim,” Mick said. He’d been circling the landing area, looking for any floating debris before he set the Blue Goose down. Now that he was on final, he’d reduced his airspeed to about ten knots above stall speed, nose up, with maximum flaps extended. Air was getting choppy.
“Is it always this rough?” Sharkey asked.
“Clear air turbulence,” Stoke said. “Relax.”
“Man, what if we crash? Look at all the sharks down there. Those are bull sharks, man.”
Stoke craned around in his seat and looked down.
“I thought you said you were a fisherman. This is an outgoing tide. Sharks don’t feed at this hour. Sharks only feed on an incoming tide. Everybody knows that.”
“Yeah? Tell that to the one bit my damn arm off.”
9
LONDON
A ssume you only live once, Mr. Hawke,” Alex said to Ambrose Congreve. Hawke leaned back in his chair and smiled at his old friend. He liked the phrase and had been looking forward to sharing it with the celebrated detective. Congreve was fond of quoting Conan Doyle and, for once, Hawke thought he’d lob in one of his own zingers.
“Muhammad Top actually said that to you?”
Hawke downed the balance of his rum. “I was under duress. I may have embellished it.”
Congreve returned his pipe to his cherubic bow of a mouth, skepticism plain on his face.
“It’s the bloody truth,” Hawke said.
“Torture is stressful, I suppose,” Congreve said airily.
“Ah, well. It only hurts when you scream,” Hawke said, a brief smile flitting across his face.
“Ouch,” Congreve said, with a grimace only half-mocking.
Hawke nodded, leisurely recrossing his long legs, draped in soft gray flannel, at the knee. Linking his hands behind his curly black head, he leaned back against the indented leather of the deep club chair.
Alex Hawke looked remarkably fit and relaxed, Congreve observed, given what rough sledding he’d endured in months past. Ambrose, like most, had given Hawke up for dead. Reports had reached London, casting a pall over some quadrants of society and the City. It was widely reported that Lord Hawke’s expedition into the Amazon had met with disaster when his yawl, Pura Vida, had been attacked by Indians and sunk with all hands.
Two months earlier, Ambrose had seen the sole survivor’s stretcher being carried off the Royal Navy air transport flight after it arrived at Lakenheath from Rio de Janeiro. It was raining buckets that night, and all assembled had gathered inside an open hangar door, watching Hawke’s gurney unloaded and hurried by a team of navy medics across the glistening tarmac. An ambulance was waiting inside the hangar.
A weary and deathly pale Hawke had attempted a cheery greeting, saluting the few naval chaps present. His brave front could do nothing to hide the terrible shape he was in. In addition to a very worried looking “C,” Sir David Trulove, new chief of SIS, there was a small group from both 85 Vauxhall Cross and Whitehall present, and one got the feeling they’d all come expecting to pay last respects to the corpse.
Congreve, like everyone present, had been horrified at Hawke’s utterly wasted appearance. After a brief, private moment with C, who bent to whisper something in his ear as he was being loaded into a waiting ambulance, Hawke was whisked off to Lister Hospital in Chelsea. There, he was diagnosed as suffering from severe malnutrition, malaria, septic infection from a snakebite, and God knows what else. He’d been in hospital for two months. He’d made a remarkable recovery, and had only been released from hospital three days ago.
ALEX HAWKE and former Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve of Scotland Yard had just completed a lengthy luncheon at Black’s. Hawke’s club was on upper St. James’ Street, an ancient bastion for gentlemen of property. The two friends had met in the bar at one o’clock to hoist a glass or two. One, in honor of Hawke’s hospital release, another celebrating Congreve’s semi-engagement to the beauteous and very wealthy Lady Diana Mars.
Congreve’s splendid news, delivered just that morning, had taken Hawke completely by surprise. Congreve, getting married? He, like everyone else, had Congreve down for a lifelong bachelor.
“Semi-engaged?” Hawke asked, not sure what that meant.
“Hmm. I haven’t exactly asked her. I haven’t proposed. But we do have an understanding.”
“To understanding!” Hawke said, raising his G&T.
Any witness to Congreve’s behavior in Diana’s presence over the last year should have known what was in the offing. Smitten was gross understatement. Love was oversimplification. The man was besotted with Diana Mars. They’d been seen out and about London so frequently, and in such close proximity, many people assumed they’d been married or at least involved for decades.
Ambrose had recently whisked Diana off to the Isle of Skye for a week of sightseeing. They’d also managed to visit the odd distillery, this being preparatory research for a new book the famous criminalist was in the midst of writing.
