Jacques and Cecilio parked and locked the van. They entered the park and, after a few inquiries, were directed to Captain Vadillo, who sat dozing in the sun, conserving his strength for the battles yet to come.
Jacques addressed the captain by name and said, “We have a strange request.”
The captain eyed them with absolute suspicion. “And it is what?”
“We come from the Inter-Continental Hotel, where a crazed North American paid us a small fortune to deliver a case of Scotch whisky and three cartons of Marlboro cigarettes to a friend of his. The friend is another North American with a rare name.”
“What is the friend’s rare name?”
“Morgan Citron.”
“And where is he supposed to be?”
“In the Presidential Palace,” Cecilio said. “Detained for some minor irregularity.”
“Are you Cuban?” the Captain said. “You speak like a Cuban.”
“Do we look like Cubans?” Cecilio said.
“There are many black Cubans.”
“We are Haitian.”
“I would not help you if you were Cuban.”
“We would not expect you to.” Cecilio smiled at the captain. “Shall we say two bottles of Scotch whisky and two cartons of Marlboro cigarettes?”
“Three,” the captain said. “Three each.”
“Done.”
“Wait for me here,” the captain said.
He returned from the Presidential Palace in fifteen minutes and told them, “The North American is no longer in the palace.”
“Ah,” Jacques said.
“He is in the federal prison.”
“Well.”
“He is to be shot tomorrow morning.”
“A pity,” Cecilio said. He looked at Jacques, who nodded sadly at the news. “Then we must surely get his whisky and cigarettes to him today,” Jacques said.
The two Haitians turned and started in the direction of the rented van. Jacques turned back with a smile. “Coming, Captain?” he asked.
The captain hurried after them and the promised whisky and cigarettes.
Morgan Citron stood with his back to the high stone wall and watched the squad of soldiers fumble with their rifles. Something was wrong with their barrels, which were bent like candles left in the sun. A woman’s voice said, “You are still far too thin.” He turned and looked up at the top of the wall. Miss Cecily Tettah of Amnesty International sat astride the wall as she lowered a rope ladder with glass rungs. Citron was worrying about whether the glass rungs would bear his weight when he awoke in the cell of the federal prison.
He sat up on the edge of the stone bed. He was not surprised that he had slept. Almost half the time he had spent in the Emperor-President’s prison had been spent in sleep — in fast time, as prisoners everywhere called it. He reached into the plastic bucket and brought out the gold Rolex. He wiped it off on the trousers of the suit he had bought at Henshey’s in Santa Monica. According to the watch, he had slept an hour.
It took Citron only two minutes to remove the gold expansion band from the Rolex. He put the watch itself back into the waste bucket, rose, moved to the barred door, and started calling for the guard.
After five minutes the guard shuffled down the corridor and stopped in front of the cell door. He was a round-shouldered, bleak-eyed man who had the beginnings of a potbelly. His uniform no longer fitted him. Citron estimated the guard’s age to be a few yearspast forty, which was good. Ambition had gone, or was going. A younger guard might still have hope.
“You do not have to scream,” the guard said. “My post is only a few meters away.”
“How was I to know?” Citron said.
The guard thought about it and then nodded. “True.” He paused. “What do you want?”
“I want food and beer and coffee.”
The guard almost smiled. “Perhaps a nice steak?”
“I will pay.”
“With what?”
Citron held up the watch band. “With gold.”
The sight of gold produced its usual response. The guard smiled and squinted and licked his upper lip. He looked quickly to his right and left, and then back at the gold band that swung in a small arc from Citron’s fingers. “Real gold?” the guard whispered.
“Eighteen-carat.”
“Perhaps some beans and rice with your steak?”
“And beer and coffee,” Citron said.
“Yes, of course. Beer and coffee. I will be back in thirty minutes.” He turned to leave but stopped at the sound of Citron’s voice.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Do you have any relatives?”
“Yes. Many.”
“And some of them perhaps plan to emigrate soon to the States?”
“My youngest sister and her cousin.”
“Bring me a notebook and a pen and I will write in it. When your sister and her cousin get to the States they can take the notebook to a man in California who will pay them for it. He will pay them at least two thousand dollars.” Citron paused. “Perhaps more. The man is generous.”
The guard hesitated. “What will you write? In the notebook?”
Citron smiled. “A story,” he said.
After the guard returned with the food and the drink and the notebook and the ballpoint pen, and after he bit into the gold band to test its quality, and after the food was eaten and the beer and the coffee drunk, Citron settled down on the stone bed with the notebook. He opened it and on the first page wrote Draper Haere’s name and address in Venice and then: “Draper: Please pay the bearer (or bearers) $2,000 for this — or more, if you like their looks. Regards, Morgan Citron.”
After that, Citron wrote steadily for four hours. And because it was a strange tale that demanded a cold and logical style, he wrote in French.
When Gladys Citron arrived at Miami International Airport, she went to a phone booth and used her telephone credit card to call a man at his home in Middleburg, Virginia. The man was retired now from government service and had been for nearly four years. Gladys Citron had known him for nearly forty years. She had once saved his life in 1944 near Cannes. When the man seemed reluctant to do what she asked him to do, she reminded him of 1944 and Cannes.
“Gladys,” the man said, “looking back on it all, you didn’t really do me any favor.”
“Come on, Harley.”
“You really want to do me a favor, you’d come up here and we’d have a few drinks, and then I’d hand you my shotgun, that Purdey I bought in ’forty-five in London, remember? And then you could do me a real favor.”
“Call them, Harley.”
The man sighed. “Call me back in thirty minutes,” he said and hung up.
Gladys Citron entered an airport cocktail lounge and ordered a martini, the first martini she had tasted in five years. A forty-year-old Cuban with eyes the color of hot fudge tried to pick her up and it helped pass the time. She ended it by paying for both her and the Cuban’s drink, went back to the pay phone, and again called the man in Middleburg. He answered the phone on the first ring.
“I’ve got bad news,” he said. “You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
“According to a cable they got from the charge down there, a guy called Rink, not a bad guy, by the way, well, the good general court-martialed your son today and they’re going to shoot him tomorrow morning at six A.M., which would be seven A.M. Eastern Standard Time.”
“I see,” Gladys Citron said.
“That’s my Gladys,” the man said. “Tell her the fuckin’ world’s coming to an end at noon and she says, ‘I see.’“