Hawk unlocked the door and we went into a big, cool, dusty-smelling livingroom. All the shades were down and the draperies drawn. Hawk took a sheaf of onion skin paper from his inside pocket and tossed it to me. It was closely typed, single space, and there were maybe twenty pages.
“Read it,” he said. “Not now. At your leisure on the way to Haiti. Then destroy it. How is the subject doing?”
I said she was doing okay and gave him a fast and succinct rundown on events since the shoot out at the voodoo church. He kept nodding and gumming his cigar and didn’t interrupt.
When I finished he said: “Watch her every minute. I think she and the HIUS are on the level about wanting this Dr. Valdez out, but on the other hand they may want him in. We know they want him as the next President of Haiti. The mulattos, that is. The elite. They want their land back, their cane and coffee plantations, and to do that they have to kill Papa Doc and replace him with this Valdez. He’s a mulatto too, you know.”
I hadn’t known and said so. Hawk waved a hand.
“No matter. What does it matter that Dr. Valdez is also a physicist. Theoretical, but still a physicist. At least he was at Columbia, before Papa Doc snatched him, and I don’t suppose he has forgotten much in five years. That mean anything to you, Nick?”
It did. “It begins to sound a little familiar and ugly,” I said.
“It is. You remember those Sidewinder rockets that were stolen recently in Bonn? That were supposed to have been shipped to Moscow?”
I said I remembered.
Hawk stuck a new cigar in his mouth. “They never got to Moscow. They were stolen again, enroute, and ended up in Haiti. The CIA lucked into that bit of information. The Coast Guard picked up a Cuban refugee not long ago. He was a member of Cuban Intelligence and he was pretty well shot up when they took him aboard a cutter. Before he died he convinced the CIA boys that Papa Doc has got missiles, modeled after the Sidewinder, and that he is trying to develop atomic warheads for them. Castro knows this and is about to go nuts. You see it?”
I saw it. If Papa Doc had missiles, and if he could arm them with nuclear warheads he was going to dominate the Caribbean. Every little banana republic was going to dance to his tune.
And Dr. Romera Valdez was a physicist. No wonder that Papa Doc refused to ransom him for the million the HIUS had raised. Lyda was right about that.
“Valdez was a Commie when he was at Columbia,” Hawk said. “The FBI and CIA have a file on him from here to there. He was never an activist, only a parlor pink, but he was a Commie. We don’t really want him back in the States.”
I watched him carefully “You really want him dead?”
Hawk shook his head. “Only in extremis, son. That’s what The Man says. You’re not to kill him unless there is absolutely no hope of getting him out.” He frowned and spat a piece of cigar on the floor. “I wouldn’t do it that way but that is the way The Man wants it, and I have to take orders the same as anybody. But we can’t let Papa Doc keep him.”
I lit a cigarette. “How much of this, of what we know, do you think Lyda Bonaventure knows?”
The old man shook his head. “I can only guess. In all her dealings with the CIA she played it very close to the vest. They were trying to mulct each other, she and the CIA contacts, and I’m damned if I know who came out ahead. You’ll have to find out from her the best way you can.”
“She’s all for getting Valdez out,” I said. “Or so she tells me. And she must know he’s a physicist and a Commie.”
Hawk nodded. “Yes. She will know that. She also knows just where in Haiti Valdez is being kept prisoner. Don’t let her con you that she doesn’t. She can take you straight to him. You know she is the Black Swan?”
“I know.” I had told him about the arms and the uniforms and how I had a BG on my hands.
“She’s probably got a pretty good underground organization in Haiti,” Hawk said. “She was planning on using the blacks for the rank and file of her invasion Army. She only has a small hardcore of mulattos.”
“Why would the blacks go for that? Once the mulattos are back in power the blacks will be worse off than they are under Duvalier.”
“They don’t know that yet,” Hawk said. “Things are so bad under Papa Doc that the blacks are ready to try anything. By the time they wake up it will be too late. If she can bring off an invasion.”
“She’s not going to bring off any invasion,” I promised [him. “She’s cute and clever, all right, but she isn’t that good. I’ve got her in control. Forget the invasion.”
Hawk sighed and leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “All right, son. I trust you on that. But you still have to get to Valdez, get him out of Haiti or kill him, and let us know the stage of progress Papa Doc has achieved with his missiles and atomic warheads. The last thing in the world that The Man wants to do is to have to occupy Haiti again. They hate us enough as it is, we’ve still got the stink of the Dominican thing hanging over us, and right now is a poor time for trouble in the Caribbean. Any time is a poor time, but right now it would be murder. We’ve got enough on our plate with the Mid-East and Vietnam. You’ve got to do us a job in there, boy, and you won’t have any help. The CIA is blown to hell and I’ve got one agent left in Port-au-Prince. One man! I would like to keep him. But if things go badly and you’re running for your life, and can get to Port-au-Prince, he might be able to help.”
He told me how to contact the man in Port-au-Prince. He went on to talk for another quarter of an hour, really socking it to me, and I listened and felt worse by the minute. What I really needed was a regiment of Marines — real tough Marines like those who had occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. I didn’t have any Marines. I had only me. As I drove the Chevy back to Duval Street Hawk told me about the New York thing.
“The CIA is plenty teed off about losing Steve Bennett, but they’re covering. The New York cops don’t know what’s going on, but they smell a rat and their Homicide people aren’t trying too hard. That third goon got away clean and the other two are dead.”
“I knew I got one for sure,” I said. “I couldn’t be sure about the other one.”
“DOA,” said Hawk. “He didn’t talk in the ambulance.”
Hawk didn’t go out on the pier with me. We shook hands and he said, “Study the precis carefully, son. There is a lot more to this than I had time for. Be sure you destroy it.”
“Will do. Goodbye, sir.”
He flipped his gnarled old hand at me. “Goodbye, Nick. Luck. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
As I rowed the dinghy back to Sea Witch I could only hope that his waiting would not be in vain. That he would hear from me.
Chapter 7
I ran through the old Bahama Channel, keeping well clear of Cuban waters. In fact I made so much northing that as I turned south to enter the Windward Passage I could make out the dim smudge of Matthew Town astern.
The Excalibur, like a faithful dog taught to heel, was running to port of me and a couple of miles back. As soon as I got into the Passage she came boiling up to circle in front of me and signaclass="underline"
Leaving you now — rendezvous per instructions on call— goodbye and good luck—
I had a lonely and chilly feeling in my gut as I watched her churn away. Her officers and men were watching us through glasses and, feeling as alone as I did, I couldn’t help but chuckle. A day out of Key West Lyda had taken to going topless. She wanted sun on her breasts, she said, and to hell with a bunch of peeping Toms.
“You’re an exhibitionist,” I told her, “and you are driving a lot of nice clean American boys off their rockers. Onanism is frowned on in the Coast Guard and you are encouraging it. In this case going without a bra is probably treason.”