“To each his own,” I told her in Spanish. “Why don’t you just ignore them and go back to sleep?”
“I can’t,” she admitted. “They excite me despite how I feel about them. They make me hungry.”
I almost suggested she take some caviar before I realized that wasn’t the sort of hunger she was talking about. When I did, I tried to think if there was any good reason why I ought to turn her away. I couldn’t think of any.
“It had been so long since I have had a man,” she was whispering. “It is very lonely here in the hills, and the men are kept so busy fighting. For a girl like me who’s been accustomed to turning five or six tricks a night, it is like being on a starvation diet.” Her body writhed against me as if to accentuate the point she was making.
“You hardly seem old enough to have built up such a hunger,” I told her.
“I am older than I look. I am twenty-four.”
“That’s not very old. That would make you only about eighteen when Castro took over. You couldn’t have been working as a prostitute for very long at that time.”
“Six years. Since I was twelve.”
“But why so young? You were only a child!”
“It was necessary under Batista. It was the only way to get enough to eat. Indeed, that regime encouraged prostitution. It was good for the tourist trade.”
“Then perhaps Castro was right,” I mused. “At least he’s done away with turning children into prostitutes.”
“Right? I don‘t think so. Now they have no choice. They simply starve to death. I am sure they would rather have sex and food than neither.”
That struck me as one of the most valid comments in the field of economics which I’d ever heard. I made a note to remember it when I evaluated my future researches in the field of sex. Perhaps it would keep me from jumping to hasty moralistic conclusions. Rosita was right. It is better to have both sex and food than neither.
At the moment, she was opting for sex. Her eager wriggling was getting to me. We stopped talking and got down to a more basic form of communication. By tacit agreement we were very quiet and stealthy about it.
There was a drawstring at the low neckline of Rosita’s blouse. I pulled it. The blouse fell away and her heavy, opulent breasts tumbled into my hands. She was breathing heavily and they were inflating and deflating like twin balloons at the bursting point. They were very soft as I buried my face against them-—-very soft except for the tips which were stretched taut like quivering ruby penpoints.
She moaned low in her throat as I ran my tongue over them and I lifted my head momentarily to hush her. Her hands were gripping my legs now, the nails digging into the tendons under my haunches. One of them let go to stroke the inside of my thighs. Then it was at the waistband of my pants, fumbling at the buttons, pulling them down over my stomach.
I reached for the bottom of her skirt and pulled it up over her legs. She wore nothing underneath it. Her belly was smooth to my touch, trembling and eager. As my fingers tangled in the silken down below it, she bit my ear savagely and dug her nails into my flesh once again.
I bit back. Then I kissed her and felt her thighs separate at my knowing touch. A moment later she locked her legs around me. I thrust forward and then we were together, locked in a pulsating embrace, thrashing frenziedly in our quest for fulfillment.
Her body gave a mighty surge that lifted it clear of the cement floor. She started to squeal and I quickly clapped my hand over her mouth so that the others wouldn’t hear us. Rosita subsided—-but only for a moment. Those long, red breast-tips peeping through the strands of her ebony hair, she leaned the upper half of her body away from me, arching so that the lower portion was even more firmly fixed. Again she moved windlessly and again I had to muffle her cry of ecstasy.
I don’t know how many times this was repeated before I finally joined her in one last release that left both of us drained and exhausted. We lay quietly for a few moments. Then Rosita said “Thank you,” rearranged her clothing and left me to return to her corner.
I listened to Brigid and Selma for a few minutes. They were still at it, more audibly now. Finally, I drifted off to sleep.
Morning brought a few shafts of light to our cell. We breakfasted on caviar, which made us very thirsty. We washed it down with champagne, which relaxed us all.
We were still sipping the champagne when we heard the first tapping from above. I sprang from one to another of the holes in the ceiling to see if there was any sign of help. I saw nothing. But the tapping continued.
After awhile I detected a pattern to it. I recognized it as Morse Code. Somebody was trying to communicate with us. I told the girls what I had figured out. I also told them that while I could recognize Morse Code, I couldn’t understand it.
“I can!” Rosita was very excited. “That’s my job here. I’m a radio operator. Only we can’t use a radio. It’s too risky. It would give away our position. So we use Castro’s telegraph wires and keep changing the points from and to which we communicate. I work the telegraph key frequently.”
We were all very quiet now as Rosita listened. “They are asking if there is anyone alive down here,” she told us after awhile. She found a rock, positioned herself under one of the holes in the ceiling, and began tapping it against a slab of concrete. “I have told them we are here,” she said when she was through, “how many and who we are.”
Again there was the tapping from above. When it concluded, Rosita translated it for us. “It’s your friend Pedro,” she told me. “He is with Senor Bregaria and Senor Minneti.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
Dawn answered. “Senor Bregaria is in charge around here,” she told me. “Minetti is an Italian from the States. He was deported in the early 1950s and received refuge from Batista.”
“Why was he deported?”
“He was in the rackets. I gather he’s a big shot in the Mafia,” Dawn told me.
“How come they weren’t blown to bits?” I wondered.
“Pedro explained that,” Rosita continued. “He says that Senor Bregaria and Minneti were not in the house when the alarm sounded. They were out in back at the far wall surrounding the property to inspect some fortifications we just installed. Pedro was on his way back to join them when the bombs began to fall. None of them were hurt. Wait a minute.” She held up her hand. The tapping had resumed again.
“Pedro says not to worry,” Rosita translated. “Senor Minetti used to head a construction firm. Also he is a demolition expert. He feels sure he can extricate us. But it will take time. Two, perhaps three days. Pedro says we should all just relax and be patient.”
“This Minneti sounds like a handy fellow to have around,” I observed. “Tell Pedro we’ve got plenty of food and drink and that they should take it slow and get us out without blowing us up.”
Rosita relayed my message and then translated the tapping from above again. “Pedro says Senor Bregaria has information that the English girl you seek is in the prison in Havana. She was seen there by one of our men who recently escaped.”
That was encouraging news. At least I was on the right trail. Or anyway I would be if I ever got out of this make-shift fall-in shelter. “Ask him if there’s anything on the man I’m looking for,” I said, wondering if Vickie Winters had really been on the trail of the German scientist when the Reds grabbed her. “He’ll know what I mean,” I added to Rosita.
“There is a foreign man at Castro’s palace,” she told me a few minutes later. “But Pedro says they are not sure if he is the one you seek. Also, they are not sure if he is a guest, or a prisoner. Senor Bregaria is going to try to get further information. He hopes to have it for you by the time they rescue us.”