The lights in the rest of the city were still off, however, so when the car pulled away from the building the night swallowed it.
“What did you get?”
“I got the safe open — took two drawers full of files, everything made of paper that was in there, some files from a desk. Got a laptop, too.”
“Well done.”
“Someone came in while I was there. Santana, I think. Left him for dead.”
“Was he dead?”
“I didn’t take the time to check, and to be honest, I really don’t care one way or the other. I put six bullets into the son of a bitch and whaled on him a while with the sap. If he isn’t dead he ought to be.”
Chance flipped on the interior light of the car, just long enough to check Carmellini’s face. “Looks like he got a piece or two of you.”
“Oh, yeah. He was damned quick.”
“Did he get a look at your face?”
“I don’t think so. Pretty dark. And he’s probably dead. Don’t sweat it”
Chance grunted and stared out the window at the dark, decaying city.
The voyagers on the Angel del Mar saw a ship during the night. It came out of one dark corner of the universe and passed within a half mile of the derelict as the people aboard shouted and waved the single working flashlight.
The ship was a freighter of some type, huge, with lights strung all over the topside and superstructure. It raced through their world and disappeared into the void as quickly as it came, leaving the people gasping on deck, exhausted, starved, devoid of hope.
A child had died earlier in the evening, just at sunset, and some of the people aboard had wanted to eat it. “She is beyond caring, and her body can give us life,” one man said, a sentiment several agreed with.
The old fisherman went below to tell Ocho, who was taking his turn on the pump, which meant he had to pump out the water that had accumulated because the man before him could not keep abreast of it, as well as the water that came in on his watch. He was on the ragged edge of total exhaustion, but he listened to the old fisherman as he struggled with the pump handle.
“Maybe …” Ocho began, but the old man would not listen.
“To eat her would be sacrilege, the moral death of every one who tastes her flesh or watches others eat it. All flesh must die, but to face God with that on our souls would be unforgivable. Come with me! Come!”
He half dragged Ocho up the ladder. Together they swung hard fists left and right, reached the corpse, and tossed it into the sea.
In the fading light the old fisherman stood with his back to the wheelhouse and shouted at the others, some too weak to move. He damned them, dared them, kicked at those who came too close, punched one man so hard he nearly went overboard.
The child’s body floated, supported by the great vast moving ocean, just out of reach, moving with the rise and fall of the swells. Some of the people looked at it, others refused to. When the last of the light faded the body disappeared into the total darkness.
Ocho went back down the ladder to the hold, which reeked of vomit and filth. He worked the pump handle like an automaton.
Finally the fisherman relieved him, helped him up the ladder.
He was lying by a scupper when the ship went by. He roused himself, stood with a hand on the rail, tried to shout and found he had no voice left.
Then someone tried to push him overboard.
There was no mistake. The hard shove in the back, the continuing pressure.
Only his raw strength saved him. Ocho turned and swung blindly, felt his fist connect with cartilage and bone, swung several more times before the man went down.
Ocho collapsed from the exertion. He crawled forward, intent on beating the man as long as he had strength to swing his fists, but Dora was there, sobbing, and stopped him.
“No, no, no, my God!” she howled. “You are killing him!”
“He tried to shove me over.”
“Oh, damn you, Ocho. If it weren’t for you, we would be safe in Cuba.”
“Me?”
“You were his ticket out. You! This is your fault.”
“And you are blameless. With the baby in your body you risked your life.”
“I am not pregnant! I have never been pregnant! He made me tell you I was so you would come.” And she dissolved in sobbing.
Ocho lay in the darkness trying to think, trying to see the boat and the people as God must see them, looking down from above.
Fortunately rain fell occasionally, enough to fill the bucket and let people drink. Maybe God was sending the showers.
He was starving, though, and oh so tired.
His whole life had dissolved into nothing and was soon to end, and he didn’t care. He tried to tell Dora that it didn’t matter but he couldn’t and she was sobbing hysterically, and in truth he really didn’t care.
After another turn at the pump, Ocho came back on deck and looked for Diego and Dora, to say something — he didn’t know what, but something that would make their burdens easier to carry.
But Diego wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the hold and he wasn’t in the wheelhouse and he wasn’t on deck. Ocho scanned the sea, checking in all directions, looking for a head bobbing amid the heaving swells.
Dora was curled in a ball near the bow. He shook her.
“Where’s Diego?”
She had a dazed look on her face, as if she didn’t understand the words. He repeated the question several times.
She looked around, trying to understand.
“I do not see him,” Ocho said, trying to explain. “Did he fall overboard?”
She stared at him with eyes that refused to focus. Her face was vacant, blank. Finally her eyes focused.
“He climbed the rail last night. Jumped in the ocean.”
Ocho looked again on both sides of the boat, staggered to the port side so he could look aft past the wheelhouse. Then he returned.
She was lying down again, curled up, her chin against a knee.
He left her there, lay down and tried to rest.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Who did this to you?”
Alejo Vargas asked the question of Colonel Santana while he lay on a gurney in the hospital emergency room being prepped for surgery. He had four bullets in him and a wicked wound on his forehead where a bullet had ricochetted off his skull. His jaw and one cheekbone were severely swollen, his nose smashed, he had lost two teeth, and he obviously had a concussion. The pupil in his right eye was dilated and refused to focus.
“I don’t know,” Santana managed. He tried to swallow, almost choked on his tongue. After gagging several times, he seemed to relax.
“American?”
“I do not know. Nothing was said, it was dark. He was waiting behind the door when I went in.”
“One of the bullets penetrated the wall of his chest, Minister,” the doctor said. “We must get it out and stop the hemorrhaging. He needs a transfusion and rest.”
Vargas left the emergency room. The car drove him back to the ministry and he took the elevator to his office.
The workers had the worst of the damage cleaned up. Still, the door to the safe was standing open and the drawers within were empty.
The priceless files on the generals and top government people that had taken twenty years to compile, gone — like a storm in the night. Every sin known to man was somewhere in one of those files: marital infidelity, theft, rape, incest, sodomy, even murder. Those files were the key to his power, to his ability to make things happen anywhere in Cuba. And now they were gone.
Hector Sedano was his first suspect. Of course Hector himself was in La Cabana, but someone could have robbed the safe on his behalf.
And it could be one of the generals, or Admiral Delgado. Any one of those ambitious fools.