concentration— camps all over. He studied the faces inside, behind the wire fences. He'd convinced himself most of the people inside were old and that most of them seemed to be Jewish like himself. It was just a feeling, he knew. Maybe they weren't Jewish; perhaps it was the armed guards and the barbed wire that made him think so— and he had seen films of the camps during World War II. That was enough. He decided some of them were Jewish at least.
He had left his bike and slipped quietly through the streets at night past the Communist Cuban patrols. The house his parents had lived in was gone. There was a house if a roof and three standing walls counted, but there had been a fire and obvious looting. They were not there. He had checked throughout the neighborhood, trying to remember which houses had belonged to friends of his parents from the few times he had visited them there. He hadn't been certain of any of it, but none of the houses in the neighborhood looked to be inhabited anymore, nor habitable.
"Gotta," he muttered, staring away from the road, looking at the meaningless lines he'd drawn in the dirt with the long-bladed knife. There was one large camp, larger than many of the others combined. Somewhere inside, he told himself, there would be someone who knew his parents, perhaps knew what had happened to them. If they were dead, he wanted to know. For certain.
Concentration camps, he told himself, were made to keep people in, not out. The young man smiled. Perhaps after he penetrated the main camp and learned what he could, he could free some of the prisoners. Rourke would, he decided.
Chapter 19
Rourke rolled the Harley Davidson to a stop in the sand. He could appreciate more realistically how thinly spread the Russians must have been. The beach area had been fenced with barbed wire— he'd cut that. But there were no guards in sight. "Stupid," he muttered.
"What did you say?" Sissy asked, sitting behind him on the bike, her grip around his midsection relaxed now that they had stopped.
"I said the Russians are stupid to leave the coast unguarded like this— good thing for us, though." Rourke decided, and without much of a valid reason, he didn't like the girl.
"Oh," she said, noncommittally, almost inaudibly.
"Oh," he echoed, staring down at the surf. He could see a light, blinking from offshore in the twilight. Rourke reached into the belt under his jacket where he'd temporarily stashed the Kel-Lite. He glanced up and down the beach. Then Rourke moved the switch one position forward, pushing the button, releasing it, then pushing it again. He made a series of dots and dashes and, after a moment, the light from offshore, already seeming closer, signaled back in a predetermined pattern he'd worked out with Reed by radio. He moved the switch on the flashlight back into the off position, then handed Sissy the light.
"Put that in the side pocket over there."
"Where?"
"In the pack, Sissy— in the pack."
"All right," she said. "Was that the airplane?"
"The amphibious plane, right."
"Are you going to leave your motorcycle behind?" she asked, her voice sounding strained to him. Watching the approaching plane across the water, he decided she was probably wrestling with getting the Kel-Lite back into the Lowe pack.
"No, I'm bringing the bike. They can get close enough I can get it up a ramp and into the plane. Shouldn't get the bike too wet. I can clean off the salt water as soon as we're airborne."
"Can't you just get another motorcycle?" she asked.
"Why should I? There's nothing wrong with this."
"But isn't it a lot of bother— I mean, cleaning it off, hauling it aboard? Why not just—"
"Did you like disposable things— when there were disposable things? Pens, cigarette lighters, things like that?"
"Yes, I suppose I did," she answered, her tone defensive Rourke thought.
"Good for you. I didn't." Rourke said nothing else. Already, the amphibious, twin-engine aircraft was closing on the surf. He gunned the Harley down the sandy embankment to meet it.
Chapter 20
"Miami Beach was the home of so many capitalists— it is appropriate that I have taken the finest home along the beach and made it headquarters for the People's Army."
Natalia smiled, studying Diego Santiago's fleshy, slightly sweating face. She remembered the file. Diego was correct, but Santiago was an assumed last name, ever since his rise to prominence in the Cuban Communist hierarchy.
"General Santiago?" she asked.
"Si, Major Tiemerovna," he responded.
She smiled at him again, then looked out over the veranda and across the sand toward the inky blackness ridged with white foam, the breakers. "All of this— doesn't it distract you? It would me, I confess," she said and laughed a little.
"You would distract me, Senorita. I use this house because it is centrally located; it fills my needs. I swim. It is the only exercise my demanding schedule allows me. Perhaps, while you and Colonel Miklov are here with us, you too can go for a swim. It is relaxing. I find it so at least." He smiled again, then, looking at her glass, asked, "More wine?"
She smiled. "A little, I suppose— but only a little, Comrade General."
"You are too formal, Senorita. There is no need for a beautiful woman ever to be formal. Call me Diego. I insist. Take it as an order, if you like, from a superior officer in an allied army."
She smiled, taking his outstretched right hand, feeling it to be slightly clammy. She watched his eyes watching her cleavage.
She leaned back in her chair, her hand slipping from Diego Santiago's hand, then resting on the white tablecloth. She studied the hand, knowing, feeling Santiago's eyes studying her. She had arrived with Miklov, expecting nothing to do with Santiago until morning, feeling emotionally drained after her uncle's revelation. She had felt tired, confused when Santiago's aide met them at the airport, announcing there was a formal late supper being served in two hours. She glanced to her Rolex watch. It was nearly eleven.
With Miklov, the aide had had them driven to Santiago's house along the beach— another surprise. She had brought formal attire— she always did on an assignment such as this. While Miklov had changed, she had showered, washed her hair, dried it, then dressed. Looking at herself in the full length mirror before coming down to dinner she had done two things— slipped an ultra light, thin boot knife into a garter holster on the inside of her left thigh, then checked her appearance. She wore a black evening gown, not too much jewelry, black shoes and a small black bag— her COP derringer pistol was in the bag. She didn't worry that it would be discovered. If Santiago had reason to suspect her as KGB, he'd suspect her all the more without a weapon. And an obvious weapon was always a good thing— it sometimes ended a search quickly enough that a hidden weapon, like the knife on her thigh, would not be found.
Now she moved uncomfortably in the chair, straightening her skirt, moving her eyes from her hand to her shoes, then up her ankle to the hem of her dress. Santiago was talking to Miklov and she was trying to appear disinterested.
"I think, Colonel Miklov, that there is no cause for alarm for your superiors. It is only natural to assume that two dynamic nations such as ours operating in such close proximity as we do should, from time to time, become abrasive with one another. Yet it is this very dynamism and this very strength which makes us allies. How is the expression in English— the fortunes of war, no?"