Very gently, she removed the clips attached to me. Then wiped the sweat from my face with her scarf. “You have not been hurt, señor. They had a long way to go before you were hurt.”
“Get me loose,” I breathed.
“First I must look at you.”
“Damn you.”
“Why, señor? I remember you looking at me like so not long ago. Can you imagine the things I could do to you now?”
I didn’t answer her.
Then she smiled. “But they would not be unpleasant,” she said.
In spite of what had just happened, I felt some crazy things go through my mind. “Stop it.”
Deliberately, she did something, then grinned again and reached in the pocket of her coat and pulled out a small knife. It took only a second to cut me loose. My clothes were in the corner on a chair and I dressed while she watched, never without that damn smile. She didn’t know it yet, but for this she was going to get fixed. Soon and good.
I said, “How long were you outside?”
“Long enough to know you wouldn’t tell them anything, señor.”
She didn’t know, I thought. She was wrong, but she didn’t know.
Sharon changed then. The smile faded and a look of serious concern crossed her eyes. “I know whose side you are on now, señor.”
The shadows dancing across her face gave a different life to her beauty. Her hair was a deep midnight glow, her lips lushly ruby, the Irish and Spanish in her trying to come out at the same time. I felt the firm swell of her breasts brush against my forearm and I ran my hand up her shoulder. Beneath her suit coat, she was warm and a muscle under my fingers trembled.
“How did you find me, Sharon?”
“By following Andre Marcel. He is so smart as to be stupid sometimes. He does not realize that our organization is also efficient. We are small, perhaps, but necessarily efficient. I knew he would keep contact with you. You are the key, señor, to all that we have.”
“I know what the score is now, honey,” I said. “The whole deal. I know about the ship you called Banana.”
“And where it is going?”
“Not yet.”
Stark disappointment flooded her face.
“In a little while, kid, just a few minutes more. Look, where are we?”
“On a wharf in the south end.”
“There’s a phone nearby?”
“I know where one is.”
“Good, let’s find it.”
I got Charlie Traub out of bed and asked him if Tucker had ever taped any of his plane-to-tower conversations.
He said, “Sure, whenever he wanted a permanent record the tower operators would cut in a tape. Why?”
“Back in the old days, Verdo and Cristy were wire recording devices we could call while in flight on photo-recon missions if we spotted something in a hurry and didn’t have time to jot it down. It was a squadron deal our own intelligence officer installed. Tuck still used the system, but with tape. You have a recorder handy?”
“One in the tower.”
“Okay, put me on that extension and get up there. Get out the tapes of Tuck’s last day. He may have called in, and if it was an automatic setup the tower operator never knew what was on there and just filed the thing.”
When he made the exchange of extensions, I held on and got the rest of the information from Sharon. They had definite information on the removal of the warheads and the installation in the ship, but Castro’s security was so tight that’s all they had. A top agent named Manuel Alvada was to come out with Tucker with documented evidence of the switch, but the plane had been sabotaged by Andre Marcel’s men. Gonzales was a technician who had stayed on in Cuba deliberately with intent to buck Castro and the know-how to get inside their major operations. When he defected they knew why and waited for him to show up in the States, Marcel preceding him there. The one thing he didn’t know, however, was where the ship was headed.
Charlie came on then.
“Ready on the tapes.”
“Roll it.”
I heard Tuck’s voice then, the drone of the engine in the background. Very calmly he stated his position and the fact that he was flying out an anti-Castro agent with the story of Banana. He was taking no chances. In the event something happened before he could land he wanted the statement on record even if it wasn’t documented.
Banana was a World War II Liberty ship named Leona. It was scheduled to sail for the Panama Canal where it would be blown up. It was to be quite a coup. In this day of the airlift and almost overnight reconstruction, the damage wouldn’t be enough to impair our military or economic might. But that wasn’t the intent of Banana. It was a propaganda program the Reds had set up that would work against us. With all the unrest in Central America, the Leona would blow and the Commies would say that it was a deliberate United States action to give us a chance to move directly into South American countries to “protect” them — thus offsetting a true people’s movement against capitalistic governments. To back them up would be proof that the Panama Canal was an almost outdated project in these modern days of transportation, not even large enough to take modern carriers or battlewagons.
The cold war would become hot. The Reds had a live excuse of their own to move in militarily and the shooting would start. With the Red propaganda machine rolling, who would be on our side? Great!
Tuck’s voice suddenly cut off. He had died.
I hung up and explained it to Sharon. I watched her pale. “It’s too late, isn’t it, señor?”
“Not now, not after all that’s happened,” I said. “It’s never too late, Sharon.” I looked up the number George Clinton gave me. I got the watchman at Cable-Hurley Supplies Company and he gave me Felix Ramsey’s home number.
Ramsey didn’t like me dragging him out of the sack, but when I mentioned Slim Upgate he was ready to do anything. I nailed it fast. I wanted two 500-pound demolition bombs to swing under the Mustang and I wanted them installed right away. He stuttered a little when I told him, but he said he’d have a truck out at the field in an hour.
I had one more call to make. This one was the big one. I got the man named Jones after three tries and told him to listen carefully and not bother tracing the call. I told him Smith was dead and so was the guy who killed him. I told him where they were. I also told him there was only one way the thing could be handled, and it was my way. If our government stepped in there would be hell to pay and the propaganda bit would go right on, but modified a little. The Reds would play up the attempt but capitalize on the fact that when they blew the whistle on the plot it was their men who were killed performing a public service and the U.S. who tried to destroy the evidence of it. It was all very neat and covered from every angle.
Calmly, Jones said, “Then how will it be done?”
“I’ll do it. They’ll never come back to me, brother.”
“And you want what from me?”
“Get the reports from the planes patrolling the hurricane area. One of them might have spotted that ship. Can do?”
“Will do. How do I reach you?”
“I’ll call you from another phone,” I said and hung up.
The men were waiting by the Mustang with a truck. It didn’t take long to swing the two bombs under the wing or to hook them up. When they were ready, the guys simply looked at me curiously and drove away.
I made the call to Jones. He had the information at hand, but his voice sounded shaky. He started, “Listen, Fallon...”