“Oh, okay,” said Kuhn. He understood this, too.
Smith walked on, reflecting on the constant danger, and his luck. Suppose Kuhn had ordered him to return the bottles to the mess hall? There could have been trouble, everything might have got screwed up. He had had only one other close call, on the day of the toothache.
It had been during basic training, and one of his back teeth hurt and his jaw was swollen, and he had gone to the post dentist, a captain, chubby and in his forties, like Kuhn. The captain, after finding a cavity festering under the gum line, treating and filling it, had taken a look at his other teeth and spotted the steel incisor.
“Say, that’s funny,” he’d said.
Smith, with his mouth pried wide, couldn’t ask what was funny.
“Didn’t know anybody in this country stuck stainless steel into a man’s mouth,” the dentist said, touching the metal with one of his tools.
Smith had tensed and jumped.
“That didn’t hurt, did it?”
Smith, with the captain’s hand out of his mouth, had enough presence of mind to say, “Yes, sir, it did, a little.”
“I thought only the Russians used stainless steel teeth,” the captain said. “Who put that one in for you?”
“I don’t remember his name. A dentist in Chicago. It was during the war.”
The captain seemed satisfied. “Oh,” he said. “We had all sorts of shortages during the war. And all sorts of substitutes. Guess that was it.”
That night, with a screwdriver and hammer, Smith had smashed out the stainless steel tooth. It showed that no preparations could be too careful, or even careful enough. The little slips could kill you.
When Smith reached his room, Phil Cusack was still asleep. Smith put the thermos bottles in his closet. Cusack wouldn’t disturb them. Cusack didn’t drink coffee, and anyway he understood that Smith didn’t like anything in his closet disturbed. Smith was exceptionally careful about Cusack. 2
As Airman Smith fell asleep, Robert Gumol was waking in his hotel room in Havana. It was a horrid process, accompanied by retching and pain. Gumol had had hangovers before. He had had a beaut, only a few weeks previously, in Atlantic City. But nothing like this. It was so bad that he tried to will himself back into the merciful paralysis of sleep. His condition wouldn’t allow it. He was inordinately thirsty, and his throat burned and was so swollen that he had trouble breathing. His eyes, also, were swollen, and the lids glued together. His lips were numb and puffed, his stomach in noisy turmoil. He knew he could not get back to sleep until he had a drink of water. If he could only get aspirin and water into himself, and keep it down, he might get back to sleep and wake up at some future time with sufficient strength to take a shower. By then he would have the shakes, but if he could only sleep a little longer, and shower, he might be able to hold down a whisky sour, or maybe some kind of an absinthe drink, and get through the morning.
Something else was wrong. Somewhere out of the miasma of the night before something was very definitely wrong and his inner mind told him it would be best not to waken. He stretched out one numbed hand and felt the bed beside him. The señorita was gone. He sat straight up in bed and opened his eyes. The room was empty and so was the bathroom. The last thing he remembered was her fingers on his forehead, softly kneading. Then, some time later, he had heard a man’s voice speaking Spanish, as if far away, and the man’s voice was what was wrong, because no other man should have been in the room.
He got out of bed, lurched to the table in front of the French doors opening on the balcony, and swallowed a tumbler of water. The water in the ice bucket—what a fool he had been to drink champagne on top of rum—was still cold. He put his hands into the bucket and splashed water on his face and felt it roll cold down his swollen naked belly and trembling legs. He shook his head. Where was the brief case? Under the mattress, of course. If it was still under the mattress everything was going to be all right, because money could cure anything, even a hangover. With enough money you couldn’t be too unhappy for too long. He lifted the corner of the mattress. The brief case wasn’t there. He lifted the three other corners. It was gone. With an effort that left him gasping and wet with sweat, he dragged the mattress off the bed. The brief case was still gone. He staggered into the bathroom and threw up.
Had Gumol’s mind been working normally, he would not have taken the action that he now did. He would have written off the $385,000 as the inevitable penalty for allowing lust to black out his thinking processes. He would have caught a plane back to Philadelphia, announced to his wife that the Cuban deal was half completed, raided another safe deposit box, and departed again. All five boxes were loaded, and they were all in his name, and after all he was president of the bank. He could go to Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala—perhaps he should have chosen Guatemala in the first place—almost anywhere. But Gumol’s mind was not only inflamed by the ebbing fires of alcohol, but by a more potent drug. He didn’t realize it until later, but this was no ordinary hangover he suffered. He had been expertly mickey-finned, and he acted unreasonably, stupidly. His rage at his own weakness and carelessness he now deflected towards the girl. She had seemed such a companionable, merry girl, with such a funny accent and so supple and willing, and really pretty, even though her hair was bleached. The dirty, traitorous little whore! He’d get her! He picked up the phone in numb and shaking fingers and when the operator answered, he shouted, “Give me the manager! I’ve been robbed!” 3
At thirty-seven, Raoul Walback’s life divided into a succession of small and pleasant acts which when performed each day were woven into a protective screen against the savage and unpredictable world outside the big house on Massachusetts Avenue. His world could not be awry so long as the maid knocked on his door at seven-thirty exactly, bringing the morning paper and freshly squeezed orange juice, the glass bedded in a silver bowl of shaved ice. He read the first section of The Post and Times-Herald in bed, and took the second section to the bathroom, for the sports news and stock quotations. At eight o’clock, having shaved, he stepped on the scales and marked his weight on a chart. He always kept under 180. If he went over 180 he confined his lunch to chicken or tuna salad, with no mayonnaise, and a glass of skimmed milk, and skipped his five o’clock cocktail. Raoul’s doctor always congratulated him after his semi-annual checkup. “Raoul,” his doctor always said, “you’re going to live forever.”
Now Raoul wasn’t sure. If the forecast was accurate, truth was that if he remained in Washington he probably would not live for five more days. Being conversant with the inertia of big government, he had little faith in the ability of his colleagues to budge the Pentagon. And being a complete realist, aware of the importance of his own life, he did not plan to remain in a primary target area. So this morning was different from other mornings. He could not concentrate on the paper, for he was concerned with what to tell his mother at breakfast, and how to handle her. She was a widow, he an only son, and besides this they had the ties of mutual tastes and prejudices. But Henrietta Walback’s comprehension of the world outside northwest Washington had changed little in thirty years. For instance, Henrietta—she liked him to call her by her first name—did not understand security. To confide a secret to Henrietta was the same as setting it out, in mimeograph form, in the lobby of the National Press Club. So he must try to inveigle her to Front Royal without excitement, or the revelation of what impended. Otherwise she would get on the phone and spread the news to her friends. This would cause confusion, if not outright panic. And it would be traced to him, which would be unpleasant.