“He’s too damn eager. What’s in it for him?”
“Well, money for one thing. We arrived at a nice gentlemanly price for his influence. Still, I agree with you. He came too cheaply and too easily.”
“Do you really think we can trust him?”
“Not as far as we can throw him. But we don’t have any choice. I don’t have time to go shopping around,” Foster pointed out. “The more we delay, the further Castro’s boys are likely to take our German mark from us. So let’s just hope Mendoza is trying to ingratiate himself with the Yankee and go along with him.”
“Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. “I guess we’ll have to. I just wish I knew what his angle really is. He’s just to damn smooth for my taste.”
Despite my suspicions, Captain Mendoza proved as good as his promise. The very next morning we bid Raoul Marti good-bye and were off to the airstrip in a car provided by Mendoza. The streets were empty as we drove. There was an occasional sporadic outburst of fire in the distance—to the south of the newly established International Zone——but generally Santo Domingo was quiet. Later that afternoon, fighting would break out in earnest again, but by then we would be well on our way.
At the airfield Mendoza’s authority cut through the red tape like magic. A sports plane— a four-seater Piper -- was all gassed up and waiting for us. Mendoza got in behind the wheel. I sat beside him and Vickie and Alan Foster sat in the back. Mendoza taxied the plane smoothly down the field and we soared into the air. I took one last look at Santo Domingo as we circled it, and then there was nothing but the blue-green Caribbean beneath us.
I dozed off. Mendoza’s elbow in my ribs woke me. He pointed, and I saw the seaport of Barranquilla coming up toward us.
Foster had wired ahead, and there was a CIA man waiting for us when we got there. The rest of us waited while they went into a huddle. I could feel Mendoza’s eyes on me when Alan called me over to fill me in on what he’d been told.
“The town is lousy with Red agents,” he told me. “Cuban, Russian, and Chinese. Our man doesn’t know why. He only knows that something must be up and he guesses that it’s something pretty big. He’s been asking Washington for help and he thought that was why we were sent here. When I told him it wasn’t, he was pretty disappointed.”
“Too bad. But what about the German? Does he have a lead on that for us?”
“Sort of. It was shortly after he recognized a Castro agent here that there was this influx of other Commie agents. So he put two and two together and he’d had a tail on this Cuban. He traced him to a cabin-—a sort of hunting lodge-—in the hills on the outskirts of the city. Our man’s had this place staked out for the past few days. As far as he can tell there are five men there. Four of them are Cubans. The third doesn’t look Cuban and he’s older than the other two. It sure sounds like it might be the German.”
“It sure does,” I agreed. “Can we have a look-see?”
“I guess so. What do you think? Should we take Vickie with us? Or should we leave her here to wait with Mendoza?”
“Mendoza! What do you want to leave her with him for? Let’s just pay him off now and get rid of him. I don’t trust him any more now than ever.”
“We need him, Steve. If it is the German and we manage to grab him, we’ll still need a way of getting out of the city. That isn’t going to be easy with the whole bloody Comintern15 looking for him. They probably already know we’re here, and they’ll be right behind us. So we need Mendoza and his plane to get us out of Barranquilla. If we leave Vickie with him, she can make sure he doesn’t take a powder on us.”
Again I had to agree reluctantly that Foster was probably right. I went over and told Vickie that he wanted to speak to her privately. I stayed with Mendoza while they talked.
His spotless white uniform with the medals and ribbons dribbling all over it made him look like a comic opera figure. But I was dead sure there was more to Mendoza than that. I don’t know why. Maybe it was his eyes. They were too watchful. They missed nothing. Somehow they seemed too shrewd to go with the rest of him. They just didn’t match-up with the cavalry officer mustache, the plastered-down black hair and the dashing pomposity of his military stance. I sure didn’t feel right about leaving Vickie with this character, but as Foster had pointed out, there was no choice.
The CIA contact had a car waiting for us. Foster and I got in and we headed out the rough-hewn highway toward the hills. After a while the highway turned into a dirt road, and we had to slow down and drive more cautiously. Finally he pulled the car off the road and parked it behind a copse of trees and bushes. “From here we have to go on foot,” he told us. Foster and I followed him from the car.
We must have hiked about a mile. Then our man stopped us and pointed toward a small rise in the landscape. “The lodge is just over that hill,” he told us. “From here we have to take it very slowly and very quietly.”
Foster and I nodded and crept behind him as he wormed his way up to the top of the hill. Here he stopped again and pointed. We saw a small hunting lodge made of stone blocks in the Spanish style.
Just as we were casing it, the figure of a girl appeared on the porch. She wore a red gown that was much too dressy for her surroundings. It looked out of place, as did the high heels on her feet, the lavish, fruit-topped hat, and the too-thick make-up on her face. She stretched for a moment and inhaled deeply. Then, as if in response to some order from the inside of the lodge, she swiveled and quickly went back inside.
“Who’s that?” Foster asked the other CIA man. “You didn’t say anything about a woman being here.”
“She wasn’t here yesterday. She must have just come. Looks like a pro from the city. I suspect the Cubans must have gotten lonely and arranged for some female companionship. That wouldn’t be hard to do. Barranquilla is a wide open town.”
“I just hope it doesn’t complicate things.” I struck my two cents worth in.
“No reason why it should,” Foster assured me. “Come on. And keep under cover. Surprise is the most valuable thing on our side. If they see us coming, we’re licked before we start. They can hold out against us forever in that place. It’s built like a fortress.” He started down the hill, darting quickly from bush to bush and tree to tree. We spaced ourselves out and followed him.
My fingers were clammy on the revolver Foster had provided me as we approached the last hundred yards between us and the house. It was all open country, and if they spotted us coming, they’d be able to pick us off with ease. We’d just have to dash for it and keep our fingers crossed.
We dashed and we made it. We were all three out of breath when we reached the porch, but there was no time to stop. We went straight through the door and immediately saw the reason why we hadn’t been spotted.
One of the Cubans had been standing guard all right, but he’d been distracted. The distraction was the girl we’d seen before. Instead of keeping a lookout, he must have just started to play pattycake with her as we were racing that last hundred yards down the hill. Now, as we entered, he froze in the middle of their little game.
He had his arms around her and one of his hands was pulling down the zipper of her red dress. It was far enough down so that it was obvious she wasn’t wearing any slip or bra under it. In his other hand, the guard still held a tommy-gun. But it was pointed at the floor, and he made no effort to raise it as he saw us. His face was a study in conflicting emotions—passion, frustration, surprise, fear—-they were all there. But most of all he just looked like a man who couldn’t think what to do next.
We relieved him of the decision—and of the tommy-gun along with it. He didn’t put up even the pretense of a battle. And he didn’t say a word as we bound and gagged him. The girl had more pep.