Ordinarily he was the most careful and methodical of men, but now he wondered whether he might have forgotten something. There is always a certain hazard in bringing a large amount of cash into a foreign country. His passport, which he always kept up to date and in the top drawer of his desk, was no worry. Cuba required no visas from North Americans. But if your luggage consists solely of a brief case, a certain curiosity is invited. Customs, finding a stack of cash and noting that he was a banker, might jump to a faulty conclusion, and tip off the American authorities in hope of a reward. The bank examiners would find everything correct in Upper Hyannis, but Treasury agents might inquire about the taxes on such a large sum of money. But even as he considered the hazard, Gumol thought of a way to avoid it. If an explanation was necessary, he would tell Customs that the money was for deposit in the Bank of Cuba to finance a certain transaction in which higher officials of their government were interested. That would grease his way, quickly. Gumol was satisfied. The rum glowed within him, and he took his place in the line waiting for inspection.
The line edged ahead. Immigration glanced at his passport and asked, casually, how long he expected to stay.
“Only a few days,” Gumol said.
“You’re a banker. Business, I suppose?”
“Yes, business.” He saw that Customs, a thin, mustached man standing at the table beyond Immigration, was listening.
He moved on. To his relief, Customs didn’t reach out for the brief case. Customs said, “Go right ahead, sir. Taxis are across the lobby.” The little fat man, Customs thought, is uneasy because his brief case is stuffed with money. He wants to get the dollars to the bank in a hurry. He thinks that if I force him to open the brief case someone will see the money, and he will be robbed, and indeed he might be. It is best, therefore, that the brief case not be opened at this counter. Cuba didn’t care how much money Americans brought into the country, so long as a portion of it remained.
Once in a cab, Gumol did indeed consider taking the money to the bank, but decided against it. That might be dangerous. Banks, even in Cuba, listed and reported the serial numbers of thousand dollar bills. In time Treasury might inquire about the source of his cash. Havana was the center of money exchange in the Caribbean. In Havana were certain traders who would accept currency, of any denomination, without question or remembrance so long as there was a profit in it. These traders avoided the authorities, and it would be safe to deal with them. They would enable him to diversify his assets. He would buy Argentine and Mexican pesos, quietly and slowly. After a successful attack on the United States, what would dollars be worth? Until he got rid of his dollars, he would stay married to this brief case.
At the Hotel Nacional it was unnecessary for Gumol to show his credit cards. He was remembered. He registered, and was escorted to a double room overlooking the harbor. When the bellhop was gone he took off his clothes and fell on the bed, much relieved. He had made it, with ease and safety, and he felt he was entitled to another drink. He picked up the phone, ordered rum, ice, and Cokes, and remembered that he ought to telegraph his wife and inform her that he had arrived safely. Then he decided not to wire her. She could wait. If she worried, it served her right. Let her sweat a while. The rum came and he mixed a drink and walked out on the balcony. On a similar balcony, one floor below, two girls were standing in the sunshine, their hands on the white-painted iron railing, chatting. One of them, a yellow-haired girl with bright black eyes and dark brows boldly painted, looked up at him and smiled. He raised his glass in a silent toast, and invitation. 2
At the same time that Gumol landed in Havana, PFC Henry Hazen, wearing the smart green of the Marines, arrived in Jacksonville from the West Coast, and then caught a bus to St. Augustine. He had three weeks’ leave, which would extend through the holiday season, before shipping out to Okinawa, and he was on the way to visit his family and see Nina Pope, who had been his girl. Whether she was still his girl was unclear. Her letters had arrived with less and less frequency, and their language was stilted and vague. Eighteen months in the Marines had changed Henry. He had gained twenty-five pounds, his chest filled his uniform jacket, and his legs no longer resembled those of a wobbly colt. Anyone who survives the Corps’ boot camp and combat training course grows quickly to manhood.
Among the realities Hazen had absorbed was that you didn’t join the Marines to learn a trade, in spite of what the recruiting posters said and his family believed. Marines were trained for other things, such as fighting a dangerous and wily enemy. At Pendleton he had been taught the nature of this enemy, and thereafter he brooded often on what he had seen, and what he had failed to do, on a moonlit night in June the year before.
He could not banish it from his mind. He had to tell someone.
The leader of his training platoon, at Pendleton, was a Sergeant Asbury, a onetime professional football player who might have made second string on the Redskins had not the Korean War intervened. At first Asbury had seemed formidable, tough and distant, but after a few weeks Hazen learned that Asbury, when you grew to know him, was human and friendly, like a high school athletic coach. So it was to Asbury that Hazen had confided his story of the submarine. Asbury listened without interruption until Henry came to the part about the Buick rolling off the landing barge. Then Asbury laughed and said, “Sure it was a Buick, Slim?”
“I’m almost certain it was a Buick.”
“Come on, Slim, don’t try to snow me. You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?”
“No, this is honest-to-goodness truth. Somebody ought to know about it.”
“Well, why tell me? What can I do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You really saw this?”
“I saw it.”
Asbury looked worried. Maybe the boy had seen a submarine, maybe he hadn’t. Anyway, he thought he had, but he also thought he had seen a car delivered by landing barge, and of course that was ridiculous. Besides, it had all happened more than a year before, and nothing could be done about it now. Asbury had been in the Marines long enough to realize how much trouble a tale like that could cause, if bucked to higher authority and taken seriously. “Know what I’d do if I were you, Slim?” he said. “I’d forget all about it.”
“Forget it? Why?”
“I’ll tell you why,” the sergeant said. “Suppose I take this up with the Captain? Whether he believes you or not, he personally can’t do a thing. He has to buck it to the battalion commander. So what does the Major do? He doesn’t know you, and it sounds real screwy to him. Does he take your word for it and go to the big brass and risk getting laughed at? No, sir. He calls in the post psychiatrist. The psychiatrist talks to you and nods, yes, yes. Then he puts you under observation for two weeks. If you’re still sane after two weeks in the crazy ward, he certifies that you were suffering from a temporary delusion. He says you’ve got an inferiority complex and you were trying to compensate for it by inventing this story to call attention to yourself. So he sends you back to the platoon with a note on your jacket saying you’re emotionally immature and unstable. After that, you’ll never even make corporal. Now, still want to see the Captain?”
Henry knew that Asbury’s reasoning was logical and accurate. It could even be worse. They might kick him out of the Corps with a medical discharge, and after that it would be tough getting a job, any kind of a job, on the outside. He said, “No, don’t tell the Captain. Don’t tell anybody, will you?”