It wasn’t really okay but she had to accept it. She nodded and dropped the Webley on the carpet beside the chair. “I think I know where it is,” she said sullenly, “but I can’t budge those crates.”
I could understand that. I can lift 300 pounds, and I had I been sweating getting the crates back into the locker in the forepeak.
I picked up the Webley and grinned at her. “Why this blunderbuss, of all the guns we’ve got aboard? You can hardly hold it.”
She shrugged and wouldn’t look at me. “It looked big I enough to kill you and it was already loaded. I–I really don’t know much about guns, Nick.”
I tossed the Webley out a port. Not much loss. “Don’t let your troops find that out,” I said. “A leader is supposed to be able to do anything the troops have to do, and do it better.”
She put her face in her hands and began to cry. I watched the silver tears slide down her light coffee hued cheeks. Nerves. Tension. Seasickness, whatever. I patted her shoulder lightly, offering no sympathy because I knew she didn’t really want it.
“Cry it out,” I said. “And trust me, baby. For both our sakes.”
I went up to the flying bridge and snapped her off gyro and took over the con. To my left, like a black speck on the inside of a blue bowl, the Excalibur was sheep-dogging us.
It was out of my way, but Hawk had said Key West and so Key West it had to be. Anyway I figured to get fuel and water there, taking on enough extra of both to get me to Haiti and back again. Back? I wasn’t counting much on back, but if we did make it I didn’t want to run out of fuel and water somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean. We rounded the tip of Florida and headed for the Key. I was standing a 24-hour radio watch with Excalibur and when I made my westing she was puzzled, some snafu about orders, and she came booming in on the loud speaker to question me.
I explained that I had orders for Key West and after a moment the signal came back to proceed accordingly. Even the signal sounded a little puzzled and disgruntled, and I knew how the commander of the cutter felt — he was working in the dark, on a directive from Washington, and he didn’t know what in hell it was all about.
The Gulf was a mill pond. The weather was holding and it was hot for April. I stripped to the waist, stowing the Luger and the stiletto in a locker, and began to refurbish my tan. Lyda took to wearing very short shorts and a halter. She was in good spirits again and sang as she went about her chores. Just before Key West, while I had the cruiser on gyro, she made a sudden grab for me in the deckhouse and we rolled around on the floor for a time and I got another real working over. It was good and exciting, and I didn’t mind the way she put her teeth into me.
When it was all over and she was satisfied, she was, as always, very cool and all business. By now I had her emotional patterns pretty well figured out and only hoped she didn’t deviate from them when we really got down to business.
I brought Sea Witch in at the foot of Duval Street. Instead of docking I rigged a make-do anchor and took the dinghy in. Not wanting to tempt Lyda more than necessary, I took the keys with me and, just to make doubly sure, a couple of vital doo-dads from the engines. Lyda watched this with a sardonic smile.
“Mutual trust, huh?” Her smile was white and sour. “It doesn’t seem to work both ways, does it?”
I kissed her on the mouth and patted her fanny. “I do trust you,” I lied. “But I have to follow orders or I get my ass in a sling. Orders are to take absolutely no chances.”
“Hah.”
I held her away from me and grinned. “Anyway, if your heart is pure, and you don’t intend any monkey business, what does it matter?”
As I shoved away in the dinghy I said, “Stay off the deck all you can. Keep out of sight. The Key is full of Cuban refugees and God knows who else — maybe some of the Tonton Macoute. We don’t want you spotted.”
She gave me a little wave and headed for the deckhouse, almost running. All I ever had to do was mention the Tonton Macoute and she got scared. There was something more to that than I understood at present.
I didn’t know who I was looking for. The deal was that an AXE agent would contact me when I came ashore from Sea Witch. I snubbed the dinghy and climbed a ladder. I was wearing the green dungarees and a white tee shirt and the yachting cap and I hoped I looked like any other part time, small craft, sailor.
I was not prepared for the old man, but there he was in person. Hawk. He had on a wrinkled seersucker suit and a white shirt with a sweaty collar and a horrible tie. He had a new Panama cocked on his gray head at what he probably considered a rakish angle.
He came up to me and extended his hand and growled at me: “Hello, son. Nice to see you. You look like a pirate.”
I grinned at him. He was dry smoking one of his cheap cigars and he looked like a farmer come to town to see the sights.
I said: “Everybody tells me that, sir.”
He dropped my hand and squinted at me in the hot hard sun. “Yeah. I suppose. Come on. We haven’t got much time. I have to get back to Washington right away, and we have a lot of ground to cover. Things have come up — a lot of things.”
I fell into step with him. “Must be,” I said. “For you to come down here in person.”
The old man nodded grimly. “It’s hot and getting hotter all the time. Just to clue you in I’ll say that this could be as rough as the Cuban missile crisis.”
I whistled softly. “Devious. Very devious. I thought all I had to do was go in and snatch this Valdez out of Papa Doc’s teeth.”
“That too,” Hawk said. “That too — but a lot more.”
He led me to a Chevy hardtop and handed me the keys. ““You drive. And you can relax — I’ve got three men covering us just in case. Probably a waste, because I think the Tonton Macoute have lost you and the girl for now.”
“Leave us pray,” I said.
He glanced out over the Gulf to where the Excalibur was just visible, then flashed his false teeth at me in a grim little smile. “How are you and your escort getting along?”
“Just fine. Only the skipper doesn’t seem to know what it’s all about.”
Hawk laughed curtly. “He doesn’t. This was a hurry-up job — I had to jump channels and go direct to The Man.”
I started the Chevy. “Where to?”
“Just drive. I’ll tell you.”
I watched the mirror as I pulled out into traffic. A Ford with two men in it pulled out from the curb and followed us. As I approached a stop light a red MG gunned out of a parking lot and cut in front of me.
I glanced at Hawk. “I feel so safe, boss. You’ll spoil me with all this security, you know. I might get used to it.”
He made a sour grimace. “Don’t. You’ll be on your own soon enough. Take that next side street.”
We did a little futzing around while Hawk watched the mirror. Following his directions I drove the Chevy past the Ernest Hemingway museum and across Truman Avenue to skirt Garrison Bight. A lot of the charter boats were in. We circled and cut back past the old turtle kraals and eventually ended up in front of a private house on Greene Street. Hawk told me to pull into the drive. The red MG turned a corner ahead of us and stopped. The Ford stopped half a block behind us.
Hawk was grumbling. “A lot of goddamned nonsense but I have to do it. I don’t think there’s a goon within seven hundred miles of here. Come on, Nick.”
It was a little over seven hundred miles to Haiti.
Just to put the spurs in him a little I said, “That’s what the skipper of the Pueblo thought about the North Koreans.”
He just grunted and didn’t answer me.