I took a shower and put on a crisp new pair of pajamas. There was a positively depraved red velvet lounging robe to go with them. I put that on, too. Then I crossed over to the door separating my room from the one occupied by Victoria Winters. If I’d had a mustache, I probably would have twirled it, I was feeling that sure of myself.
I turned the doorknob. It was locked. “Vickie?” I called. No answer. My ego deflated, and I knew in my heart that it figured. She’d managed to make me cool it all the time we’d been together in Havana. Now I got the message. I just wasn’t her type. She obviously dug professional spy-boys from Boston like Alan Foster more than she did amorous amateurs like me. But I knew myself well enough to know I’d keep trying. Moon-calfing it for a while, I went to bed and finally to sleep.
The next morning I got my first good look at Santo Domingo from the terrace outside our hotel rooms. While we were breakfasting, I looked out over the city and admired its charm. It looked sleepy and peaceful. In retrospect I’m glad I saw it that way. Before long this tropical air would be thick with gunsmoke, the narrow streets flowing with blood, the sleepy silence shattered by the chatter of machine guns, the cannon’s roar and the screams of the wounded and dying.
But this morning there was nothing of the chaos to come in my view of Santo Domingo. It was a clear day and I could look down the geometrically precise streets with their right-angle intersections all the way to the mouth of the Ozama River on the landward side of the city. Looking in the other direction, I could view the blue-green of the Caribbean Sea.
It was, however, the city itself which I found most colorful, rather than the scenery which surrounded it. Santo Domingo--known as Ciudad Trujillo12 during the dictator’s rule from 1936 through 1961—is more than just the capital city of the Dominican Republic, more than a Mecca for sun-seeking American tourists, more than the home of more than 420,000 people, more than the hellhole it was to be for thousands of U. S. troops. It is also the oldest existing city in the Western Hemisphere, having been founded in 1496 and it is made up of some of the finest examples of Spanish colonial architecture to be found anywhere in the world. The houses are huge, built of large stone blocks, violently colored, with large doorways and windows gashed out of them as though by the precise knife of an ancient Inquisitor. The cathedral I was looking at in the distance dates back to 1512, contains the tomb of Christopher Columbus13 ,, and stands as a monument to the soaring spirit of man which impressed even a confirmed cynic like myself. Not far from it stands the old fortress in which Columbus was confined and tortured on order of the ancient tyrant Bobadilla-—like the cathedral, a monument, but not an inspiring one; rather a reminder of man’s baser nature.
“Any time you’re through rubbernecking, we can get to work.” Victoria interrupted my musings.
“I’d rather play.” I was completely back in the present now.
“You Americans are so persistent! You never know how to take no for an answer!”
“Maybe that’s because some of you English are so quick to say yes to some of us.”
Her cheeks flushed. She knew damn well I was referring to Alan Foster. “Some of you don’t behave like such boors!” she told me icily.
“That’ll teach me,” I said, feeling really put down. “Never help a damsel in distress!”
“I am grateful for your having rescued me,” she said with more than a hint of apology in her voice. “But that doesn’t mean I want you to compromise me.”
Brother! Compromise her! The cool, English gall of this babe! After I’d actually caught her in the sack with Foster! Oh, my aching ego! “Let’s just forget the whole thing,” I told her. “Consider yourself revirginized and let it go at that. We’re here for a reason. Let’s get down to it, and the hell with romance.”
“I’m as anxious to get started as you are,” Victoria told me. “But I have to wait for further information. We can’t operate in a vacuum. British Intelligence knows I’m here. They’ll make contact soon.”
But it wasn’t British Intelligence that contacted us later that afternoon. To my chagrin, it was none other than my romantic rival, Alan Foster of the CIA, who came sailing into our rooms. He was as personable, as Bostonian, and as welcome to Victoria as ever. He explained that since the CIA had its hand on the pulse of things in the Dominican Republic-—a dubious claim as subsequent events would show—-British Intelligence had decided to work through and with its U. S. counterpart. And since Foster had been in on the case almost from the first—albeit on the wrong track—he had been assigned as Victoria’s contact.
I was afraid that the first instruction he might relay would be to tell me my job was done and I should bow out. It wasn’t that I was so anxious to risk my neck. I just didn’t want to leave the improper Bostonian a clear field with the bundle from Britain. He’d cut me out once. A second time would really undermine my competitive spirit.
However, far from bearing instructions dismissing me, Foster brought information which made my continued participation essential. While the German scientist seemed to have vanished from sight after having been taken to Santo Domingo, the pilot of the ’copter which had brought him here was still in the city. It was a slim lead, but it was the only one we had. This pilot’s name was Raoul Marti. He was holing up in a brothel in the southern part of the city—and that’s where I came in. As the man from O.R.G.Y., I had a believable pretext for investigating that brothel and tracing him down.
Why was Marti hiding out in a brothel? The information Foster brought provided the answer, along with a story that was almost touching. It seems that Marti, back in the pre-Castro days, had been a procurer in Havana. As such, he had broken in a thirteen-year-old girl named Consuela—-last name unknown—as a prostitute. Subsequently, in a decidedly unpimp-like manner, he had fallen in love with the girl.
Conflict. Holding himself responsible for her downfall, Marti had begged Consuela to resign her trade. Consuela, however, liked her work. Not only was it bringing in more money than she had ever dreamed of getting her hands on, but she also enjoyed the sex involved and the experience of a constant variety of partners. No matter how Marti pleaded with her to quit, the child-whore refused.
Things were still at this impasse when Castro took over. Consuela had fled to Santo Domingo with a group of fellow prostitutes. Marti had joined the revolution. Somehow, a few years later, he had found out where Consuela had gone. From that point he had wangled and connived to find a way to join her there. When the opportunity had come up to train as a helicopter pilot, he had leaped at it. However, it took three years after he qualified before his duties finally took him to Santo Domingo. Pure chance had resulted in the ex-procurer’s being assigned to fly the chopper carrying the mysterious German scientist out of Cuba.
Foster’s information was that Marti had indeed found Consuela, now grown into a woman, and refused to leave her. In essence, this meant that he had defected from the Castro cause. Considering what he might know about the German, it also meant that Castro’s agents were probably after him. If they found him, they’d kill him just to shut him up. It was up to me to find him first.
That night, reluctantly, I left Foster and Victoria alone in the hotel room and set out on my mission. The city was strangely quiet, almost ominously so, as I strolled to the native quarter where most of the bordellos were located. This was in the part of the city to the south of what would later be the International Zone.