"Be careful, darling," Denise warned. "She is Estomago's woman. And you are already being watched here, since you are the last American agent on the island. If she suspects that you know anything, Estomago will kill you."
"Tell her I'm on my last fling before heading home to the bad old USA."
"But she must know that we're married."
"That's perfect. Say you married me to get a passport out of this stinkhole, and you'll be leaving with me, just as soon as I have my fill of young poon-tang."
Denise led him upstairs to the girl's room. The door was closed.
"She is very private," she said. "This one never chats with the other girls or even dines with us. Always alone."
She rapped sharply on the door. After a few minutes, it was opened by a young, platinum-haired, thin-faced girl dressed all in white, her thin lips stretched taut against her teeth to resemble a skull.
"Yes," she drawled sullenly, the hint of the American South drawing out her word.
"I have a visitor for you," Denise said crisply. The girl turned her back on them and walked wordlessly toward the bed, unbuttoning her blouse.
Denise closed the door behind her as she left. "What's your name?" Barney asked, still standing inside the door, his hands in his pockets.
"Gloria," the girl said with a bored half yawn. "Come on. Get this over with."
"Gloria what?"
"Sweeney," the blonde said. "You come here to talk or screw?"
Chapter Eleven
Barney Daniels's arm jerked upward with such force that it shredded the gauze wrapping which held it to the I.V. board bolted to the side of the bed.
The lone nurse monitoring the small section of the clinic rushed over. She pressed a button over the bed that rang a bell in Dr. Jackson's office.
"It's Barney," Jackson said to Remo as he took off at a run.
"Let me talk to him, Doc. If he's conscious, I want to talk to him."
"I don't want you aggravating my patient with any CIA bullshit," Jackson said as he burst through the double doors into Barney's room.
Thrashing under the hands of the nurse, his plastic bag of plasma jiggling precariously above him, Barney Daniels screamed.
It was an unconscious scream, wild and frightened. "The map," he shrieked, his voice breaking. "The map."
The night nurse watched the video monitors frantically as Barney's life signals peaked in jagged, uneven mountains. "There, there," she said uncertainly.
"Move aside," Jackson said as he approached the bed. "Nurse, prepare two hundred thousand CC's of thorazine on the double."
He grabbed Barney by both flailing arms. "Settle down, Barney. It's Doc. I'm here."
"The map," Barney shrieked.
"Shut up, I said "
The nurse swung around to retie the gauze strips around Barney's arms as Doc's hands held them in place. Barney's hospital gown was drenched with sweat. His hair was matted with it, and it poured down his face in shiny streams.
"He's undergoing some kind of intense mental activity," the nurse said. "It's almost like a pentathol reaction."
"It's the curare," Jackson said as he accepted the needle from the nurse.
"No, Doc," Barney panted, his eyes rolling. "Listen to me. Listen... liss..." He forced his eyes to work.
"Let him talk," Remo said. "He could tell us something important."
Jackson looked over to Remo, his hypodermic poised in the air. "All right," he said. "Go ahead."
Remo touched Barney's arm. "The map... Barney."
"Map," he croaked.
"What map?"
"Gloria's map." He licked his cracked lips slowly. "Gloria's apartment. The mosque. Gloria in Hispania." He smiled slowly, his eyes closing. "I remembered, Doc."
"You're better off forgetting all that, Barney," Jackson said quietly. "Whatever it was, it hasn't done you any good."
"I... remembered."
"Who is Gloria?" Remo asked. "What's her name?"
"Gloria..."
Jackson checked the monitor. Its lines were still peaking dangerously.
"Gloria who?"
"That's enough," Jackson said. "He's going to go into shock if you don't stop." He moved forward to press the needle into Barney's intravenous tube.
"Gloria..." Barney's chest heaved. His nose ran. Tears streamed from his eyes. "She was one of them, Doc. She helped kill Denise." He sobbed.
Jackson shot the last of the hypodermic into the tube. "It'll just take a second, Barney."
"Gloria who?" Remo demanded.
"Get out of here!" Jackson raged.
The nurse tugged at Remo's arm. He didn't move.
"Gloria..." The drug started to take effect. Barney's muscles relaxed. The monitor began to resume its normal wave pattern.
Got to tell him, a voice deep inside Barney prodded. Tell Doc. Try. Try for Denise.
"Sw... Sw..." Barney whispered. It was so hard to move his lips. So hard. Swimming so low, circling the bottom...
"Don't talk," Jackson said.
Tell him for Denise. If you die, she deserves that much.
"Sweeney," he gasped, hearing his own voice so far away that it sounded like an echo. Then he gathered together all the strength in his body and tried again.
"Sweeney," he shouted, so that Doc could hear him, so the world could hear, so that even Denise, or what was left of her in her unmarked grave, could hear.
"Sweeney!" he screamed again, as if by pronouncing the name he could expiate all the sins of the past and return to that time in his wife's kitchen when the sun was shining and the world was beautiful.
Then the thorazine took over, and he was back.
The installation had been carved out of mountain rock, lined with lights, floored with tile, heated by a vast steam system and camouflaged by the exterior of the mountain. The Russians had planted a new forest of trees in layers surrounding the entrance to cover the traces made while constructing the site. There was no road, however; since all of the equipment used for setting up the installation had been carefully hauled in by sea. It was a magnificent station, and undiscoverable.
"Mother of God," Barney whispered as he snapped a roll of film. He and Denise sat crouched in the jungle forest in front of the brilliantly illuminated installation where hundreds of Hispanian and Cuban soldiers worked.
"Now that you have seen it for yourself, we must leave quickly," Denise said. "It is very dangerous for us to remain here."
Barney looked at the sun licking through the trees above their heads. "It's hard to believe that this little island has the capability to blow up half the world," he said almost to himself.
"But of course these bombs never will have to be used," Denise said.
Barney nodded. He understood well what she meant. For years, America had maintained a rough equivalence with the Soviets in nuclear might and by this standoff had maintained an uneasy peace in the world. Each side knew that it faced almost total annihilation in the event of war. There had been an unspoken agreement between the superpowers not to try to expand their nuclear influence into areas where they had no real geographical or historical stake. The Russian attempt to move missiles into Cuba was a flagrant violation of this rule, and President Kennedy had backed the Russians down.
But times had changed. Kennedy had owned the military muscle to force the Russians to blink. Too many years of a White House that thought America could be guarded by good intentions had since reduced the country to a poor also-ran in the military might department, and there would be no forcing this installation out of Hispania just by words. It would stay there. And the balance of power in the world would forever have shifted. Missiles could be launched from Hispania anywhere in the United States or Caribbean and the Russians could say, "Who? Us? We didn't do it. Hispania did it on its own," and an American president, faced with an inadequate arsenal of his own, would have to decide: would he attack Russia in retaliation, knowing that the result would be the United States' destruction?