“Now how could I put together anything that fancy? I can’t even hit a nail with a hammer. Obviously some dirty dog like you planted it on me.”
“Yes, that must be your story,” she said, “but they will need X-ray eyes to see anything peculiar about those cigarettes. I would like to open the cartons and show you. They are Pall Malls, his usual brand. You will have them in your dispatch case, and with a little luck they won’t ask for it to be opened. The interview is to commence at ten, and to impress you with their efficiency, they will be prompt. There is a desk on the ground floor as you enter the prison. If you are to be searched, it will happen there. But a journalist-why should they search you? Then you will go up one flight of stairs to a waiting room. When they are ready you will be admitted for the interview. He speaks English, of course, but out of books. Now there’s a possibility, a very, very faint possibility, that if there has been any kind of delay the material will go off while you are still there-”
“Hey,” Rourke said softly. “That’s the first I’ve heard about that…”
“It will make no difference! The room is not locked. There will be two guards with you, an interpreter. As soon as the tear gas hits them they will be no less anxious than you to get into the open air. Now this is what I wish you to remember. At the bottom of the stairs, as you come into the main corridor, the lobby, don’t continue out the front door or you may be knocked down by our people coming in. Swing into a side corridor and out by another door.”
“Dodging bullets, no doubt.”
“No.” She sketched a design with her fingernail on the sheet. “Turn to the left into that corridor and go straight on. Notice the corridor when you come in. I am sure we will manage this without shooting. There are fifteen guards at the most. Another six or seven political police, a total of less than twenty-five. They will be in a panic, and we will have oxygen masks, keys. The leaders know the layout perfectly. The whole operation will be over and done with in the space of five minutes.”
“If everything works.”
“Which it sometimes doesn’t,” she admitted. “Let’s say the timing control breaks and the devices fail to go off. The first sign of smoke is to be the signal. If there is no smoke we will simply turn about and go home. You will have your interview at least, another series when you return to Miami, the kind of thing that could get you the Pulitzer.”
“And if I end up in jail, will you come in and break me out?”
“Darling, if you seriously think there’s a chance of that happening-”
He grinned at her. “An outside chance. There’s also an outside chance I’ll be mugged in the elevator.”
“Oh, not in the Hilton,” she said, smiling. “It isn’t permitted here. Look-we’ve done everything possible to lengthen the odds. We’re planning some fireworks downtown. A bomb at the Columbus monument. A raid on a bank in the Centro Bolivar. Every available soldier will be rushed into the center of the city, and we will have Los Carmenes to ourselves. Guillermo Alvares will be whisked out of the country. Our MIR comrades will rejoin the fighting units in the mountains. The new junta will shake and shiver. And Mr. Timothy Rourke will be even more famous than now, if such a thing is possible.”
She had been gesturing while she talked, and the sheet had slipped. Rourke laughed.
“Baby, they knew what they were doing when they gave you this assignment. You’re one hell of a sexy guerrilla.”
To his surprise, the serious, self-assured girl looked confused for the first time. “Damn it, Tim, I wish politics didn’t have to creep into everything.” She looked up at him swiftly. “Even in Miami, when I was chasing you around. That wasn’t because you were a bright, interesting-looking guy. You were a newspaperman with a byline everybody knew. I was always thinking of ways you could help us.”
“That’s always been one of my problems. Do they love me for myself, or because of the byline?”
“When I came to see you here, you know I’d almost forgotten how nice it was to have sex with you?”
Putting out his cigarette, Rourke came over to her under the sheet, and after a moment, he felt her relax.
“Do you think we really have time?” she said gently.
“Out of the question. You’ve got me thinking of timetables and tear gas.”
“That was part of my role as a revolutionary. I should do something now in my role as a girl.”
She guided him into position above her. “But I believe it’s not possible. We have done it so frequently, and you say you are thinking of bombs. I wish it could happen, because we won’t see each other for how long, but as a Marxist-Leninist I believe in facing facts.” She touched him. “It is possible, I see. And it would make you less nervous. I think it would be the best thing to do politically, don’t you agree?”
He kissed her gently to make her stop talking.
TWO
They dressed hurriedly.
Larry Howe called again from downstairs. Rourke, wearing only his socks, assured him that he was just that minute walking out the door.
“I wish there wasn’t this last-minute difficulty,” Paula said, zipping up her skirt. “But if somebody else goes to the interview with you, I don’t see that it changes anything.”
“If I was in their shoes I’d squawk, too. They don’t like somebody coming in from outside to grab off the big story.”
“So long as the cigarettes are delivered.”
“Count on it,” he told her. “I know I can make it stick.”
Paula ran a comb through her hair and checked her appearance in a mirror. She made a disgusted face, though Rourke thought she looked as splendid as usual.
“I’d better tell you,” she said nervously. “I didn’t want to worry you, but I think I spotted a policeman behind us when we went out near the prison this afternoon. But who cares? In one hour and a half you’ll be at sea and I’ll be holed up in a barrio, where they won’t dare to look for me.”
She put the two cartons of Pall Malls into Rourke’s battered attache case, otherwise empty except for a ruled yellow pad, several soft pencils, and a pint of American whiskey. Rourke thrust his necktie into a side pocket. She came up to him, put her hands inside his jacket and hugged him hard.
“It’s been marvelous,” she said. “Now, speaking as a girl… do you think we’ll ever see each other again?”
“After you win.”
“Then I hope we win soon. Tim, I think I would have come to see you even if it hadn’t been for these cigarettes-”
“I doubt it,” he said, “but that’s all right. I never thanked you for the Christmas card you sent me.”
“Oh, well. I know you’re not the Christmas card type. Tim, will you be careful?”
“You’re the one who ought to be careful. You’re the guerrilla.”
She came up on her toes and pressed her lips against his briefly, then turned and went out, cracking the door first to make sure there was no one in the hall.
Rourke’s smile faded abruptly. He opened the dispatch case. Taking out the yellow pad, he wrote a quick note. He ripped off the sheet, folded it, and slipped it into an unstamped envelope addressed to his friend Michael Shayne, the well-known Miami private detective. The envelope already contained another folded sheet, torn out of a memorandum book or a diary. The phone was clamoring again as he went out.
He knocked lightly on a door near the elevators. It was opened by an American in a T-shirt and slacks. Rourke gave him the envelope and a $20 bill.
“You’re still going up on the early plane?”