In Spanish, El Feliz said, “Do not force the animals. They cannot go more rapidly than the men.”
“The men go too slowly,” Angel replied.
“Too slowly for what? It will still be there on Tuesday.”
“Then I long for Tuesday,” Angel said fiercely.
16
The ship was too small.
Luke was unfamiliar with its layout, and he was certain that whichever passageway or ladder he took would lead into a nest of Jason’s men squatting on their haunches with rifles across their knees. He had circled to the fantail with Samantha, and then had come forward again until they were now back to where he had attacked Benny and dropped him over the side. A set of ladders went up on either side of the ship, and he supposed they led to the bridge, which was where he definitely did not want to go. Even moving here on the main deck was extremely dangerous; there were too many open spaces, Samantha’s blond hair caught too much starlight.
He wished he knew where the captain’s cabin was; he did not think it would be on the main deck. As he moved aft of what seemed to be some sort of deck structure behind the forward stack, he saw a companionway and a ladder leading below. He listened at the top of the steps for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, heard no voices, and then tugged gently at Samantha’s hand and began leading her down. He stopped in the middle of the ladder because he realized he was entering the engine room and further realized there had to be men down there, undoubtedly Jason’s men, and probably some of the ship’s engineers as well. He could hear the engines pounding. From where he stood midway on the ladder, he could see clear to the other end of the compartment where a workbench and a lube-oil tank were against the bulkhead. A man with a rifle leaned against the tank. Luke put his hand flat against Samantha to stop her forward movement, and then they eased themselves up the ladder and onto the main deck again, slipping to the port side of the engine-room trunk as they heard voices approaching from aft and starboard. The voices passed into the night.
He said nothing to Samantha, but only increased the pressure on her hand tight in his, and moved aft again, circling around the stack and finding there a pair of ladders that led below. He reasoned correctly that it was impossible for the entire deck below the main deck to contain only an engine room and nothing else. There had to be sleeping compartments, there had to be mess halls and offices and storage lockers. There had to be a magazine. There had to be a place where they kept guns. He listened at the top of the ladder on the port side, again heard no voices, and again decided to chance it. He started down the ladder with Samantha behind him.
The ladder led into what obviously was a mess hall of some kind, with a long table against the port bulkhead, and a bench in front of it. There was a clock on the aft bulkhead of the compartment — the time was six thirty-five — and a door to the left of that. Luke stopped just outside the door and listened. There were no sounds coming from behind it. He grasped the knob and slowly turned it, opening the door a crack and peering into the room. There were two chairs in front of a long desk on the port bulkhead, and a pair of typewriters rested on the desktop. A small cabinet was against the aft bulkhead and alongside that a larger filing cabinet. Diagonally across the room from the entrance door, on the starboard bulkhead, there was a hanging curtain, partially open.
Luke tiptoed into the room and looked around the curtain and into the next compartment. He knew immediately that this was the wardroom. There was a transom seat angled into the corner formed by the aft and starboard bulkheads, padded, covered with either leather or a plastic facsimile. A table with several chairs around it rested inside the angle formed by the corner seat. There was a serving board and a coffee maker and a toaster and a cabinet with dishes and cups and saucers in it and a radio and a bookcase
And a telephone.
He moved to the phone where it hung on the bulkhead. A small black rectangular box was bolted below it. There were three buttons set into the face of the box. Bakelite plates beneath each button covered three small typewritten labels. The label under the first button read BRDG, which Luke assumed was the bridge. The label under the second button read ENGR, which he supposed referred to the engine room or the engineering officer. The third and last button was labeled CABN. He figured this was either an abbreviation for the “cabin” or else a misspelling of an abbreviation for the word “captain.” In either case, he didn’t see how he could lose. He didn’t know how many cabins there were aboard the cutter, but he was willing to bet the only CABN that had a direct line to the wardroom was the captain’s. He lifted the phone from its bracket.
There was a button on the handgrip. It was marked PRESS TO TALK. He looked at the labeled buttons on the bulkhead once more, pushed in the one marked CABN, caught his breath, and waited.
When the sound-powered telephone buzzed in Cates’s cabin, he looked at it in surprise and debated whether or not he should answer it. He had decided long ago that the only reason they had kept him aboard was that they had a future possible use for him, and he had further decided that he would let them kill him before he would help them with their plan, whatever the plan was.
The phone buzzed again.
No, he thought. If you want something, come in here and ask for it. Then I’ll spit in your eye and tell you to go to hell.
The phone buzzed again, insistently.
Cates looked at it.
He was being childish. The ship was in their hands. He would not help them, but neither would he behave in a manner unbefitting an officer. He lifted the phone from its bracket.
“Yes?” he said.
“Is this the captain?” the voice on the other end asked. The voice sounded cautious. He could have sworn the man was whispering.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“Is this the captain?” the voice asked again.
“Yes. Who—”
“My name is Costigan. We’ve never met, and it doesn’t matter,” the man said. He spoke quietly and with restraint, but the words came rapidly and tensely, with an urgency that immediately demanded Cates’s full attention.
“Go on, Mr. Costigan,” he said.
“I’m in the wardroom right now, trying to keep away from the people who’ve taken this ship. They’re heading for Cuba, Captain, where they hope to involve the United States in a shooting war.”
“What?” Cates said.
“Yes, sir.”
“How—?”
“Sir, I’ll explain later, if there’s time. Right now, I need a gun.”
“The armory locker,” Cates said.
“Where?”
“Aft of the exec’s quarters. On the first deck.”
“Where’s that?”
“Where did you say you were?”
“The wardroom, I think.”
“Through the ship’s office?”
“Yes, it seemed to be that.”
“Was there a curtain over the hatch?”
“Yes.”
“All right, that’s the wardroom. Go out the way you came in, through the ship’s office, and then through the CPO’s mess, back up the ladder to the main deck. If you come forward on the main deck to... well, just aft of the gun there are two deck hatches, and then my cabin, and a hatch leading into a passageway. About midships in the passageway, you’ll see a ladder leading below... wait a minute.”