Ted Bell - Hawke

Amen smiled and shook his head.

“Haven’t had a drop since my first day here, near to fifty years now. Good Lord surrounds me with temptation, sees what I do. I sometimes imagine myself at the pearly gates. And maybe the Lord might say, ‘You’ve had a long trip, Amen. Would you like a drink?’ ”

Alex laughed and said, “I was wondering. Those pictures over there on that wall. How far do they go back?”

“ ’Bout fifty years or so, sir,” Amen said. “To the club’s most early days, I think, right after the war. I started working here, let me see, in forty-nine.” Hawke nodded silently, gazing at the wall. Strange, but he found himself studying the jumble of old photographs with solemn intensity. Almost as if he expected to find an old friend or relative amongst the countless strangers.

He caught Gloria’s eye. She had been standing at the window, watching Congreve and the two Russians stroll down the dock. She walked over, keeping her eyes on the floor, and handed him the handwritten chit. Hawke didn’t even look at it. He took her hand and pressed a folded hundred-pound note into it. He caught her gaze and held it.

“I don’t know what happened to you last night. But I’m the one who invited those two men to your island and so I feel responsible. I promise you this. They will never, ever bother you again.”

She looked up at him with gleaming eyes. “You’ll keep them away?”

“Actually, I plan to put them away,” Hawke said with a smile. “Now, you take care of yourself. Cut some fresh aloe and rub it into those abrasions.”

“I will,” she said, not looking up into his eyes.

Hawke paused once more before the wall of photographs on his way to the door. Spying a tiny Polaroid amidst the jumble, he found himself unthinkingly reaching up and plucking it from the wall. Without even looking at it, he stuck it in the breast pocket of his shirt, then walked out into the heat of the tropical sun.

At the end of the dock, the launch’s powerful twin engines rumbled in the somnolent afternoon. Congreve had raised the hydraulic engine hatch cover and was busy showing off the twin supercharged Rolls-Royce power plants to the Russians. Rasputin had climbed down into the engine room for a closer look.

“Giving away the latest of Her Majesty’s technology for free, eh, Constable?” Hawke said, looking down from the dock. Congreve guiltily pushed a button, and the big hatch cover started to close with a hydraulic hiss. The sight of the Russian scrambling out in the nick of time delighted Hawke.

“Everything shipshape?” Hawke asked Tommy Quick after he’d climbed down the ladder and stepped aboard.

“Aye, Skipper,” Quick said. “I’ve got snorkels, fins, and masks for everybody. Tide’s full in now, so the entrance to the grotto is submerged. About six feet below the surface. A few sharks milling about in the vicinity, but I shouldn’t worry about them, sir.”

“I shouldn’t worry about them either, Tommy, if, like you, I were remaining aboard the launch,” Hawke replied.

“Sorry, sir, I only meant—”

“Relax, Tom,” Hawke said, smiling. “Just a bad joke. Why is everyone so bloody touchy lately? Even that aged party Congreve. Somebody pour a wee dram of rum down his gullet for this epic voyage, please? And let’s shove off, shall we? It’s getting late.”

Hawke turned to the Russians now seated in the stern. “You chaps ever done any snorkeling? Great fun. You’re going to love it. Everybody all buckled in?”

Hawke relieved his helmsman and leaned on the twin-chromed throttles. In a second, the launch was up on a plane and screaming out of the Staniel Cay Marina, bound straight for Thunderball Island.

“Look back there, Ambrose,” Hawke shouted, pointing at the two fellows huddled behind them in the stern. “Not the hardy outdoors type, are they? No wonder they lost the stomach for the bloody Cold War.”

Congreve looked back at them. And, indeed, they’d both gone pale as ghosts.

“White Russians, I’d say, by the looks of them,” Congreve said, and Hawke couldn’t help laughing.

Petty Officer Third Class Rafael Eduardo Gomez, United States Navy, Guantanamo, had the shakes so badly he had to duck into a bar. He ordered a double brandy, beer back, and downed the jigger of brandy in two gulps. Which was perfectly okay except that it wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning yet and he had the most important meeting of his life in fifteen minutes.

But the brandy calmed his nerves all right. Yes, sir, it did! He swallowed the ice-cold beer in one long, Adam’s apple-bobbing gulp and slammed the empty mug down on the bar. Yes! Breakfast of champions.

It was the last day of his family emergency leave from Gitmo. He’d wangled this second leave by using his mother’s death in Havana. Said he had to go to Miami to tie up some important family business. At the last minute, he decided it’d be a good idea to take his family. Make a little holiday out of the thing. Quality time, his wife, Rita, called it. Time to get Rita off his ass for a couple of days, anyway.

It had been raining in Miami for forty-eight straight hours. So, since it was sunny today, he was supposed to be taking Rita and their two daughters to South Beach this morning. He’d promised, she’d reminded him.

“Something has come up,” he told Rita in the kitchen of his Aunt Nina’s apartment in Little Havana.

“Like what?” Rita said.

“Like something,” he replied. “A business deal. I can’t talk about it. It’s an idea my cousin Pablito has. We could make a lot of money, baby.”

“Your cousin, he just got out of jail last week! He misses prison so much already? You know, honey, maybe your cousin, he’s not into crime for the money! Maybe he likes—”

“What you saying? You saying my beloved cousin, he is a—”

That’s when he’d lost it. Slapped her hard enough to hurt. So much for quality time. She was still yelling at him when he slammed the kitchen door behind him and made a beeline over to Calle Ocho. It was the main street of Miami’s Cuban barrio. The two men he was meeting had told him to be at the San Cristуbal Cafй at eight sharp.

He walked in at one minute before, feeling good now, feeling the glow, baby. There was one old guy sitting at the counter sipping a cafй con leche and watching the waitress’s short skirt hike up as she bent over to fill an ice bucket; otherwise, the bodega was empty. So he was here first, which was good.

Basic military training. Do a little recon. Get the lay of the land. He was tempted to take a seat at the counter and recon the waitress bending over the ice machine. Incredible booty on this bitch and—no. This breakfast is strictly business, he had to remind himself. He took a seat at a table by the window where he could keep an eye on the door. He wanted to check out these two dudes before they checked him out.

He pulled out the folded Miami Herald he’d been told to bring and set it on the table open to the sports section, just like the guy had said. Frigging Dolphins. What were they, fourth in the division? Ever since Marino had retired—a large black shadow fell across his paper.

“Seсor Gomez?” a big tall guy in a white guayabera said. Christ, he hadn’t even seen them walk in. So much for his recon and surveillance plan.

“That’s my name,” he said, trying to pull off a cocky grin but not too sure he had it working just right. Maybe the double brandy hadn’t been such a good idea. His teeth felt funny.

“Are you a Dolphin fan, seсor?” asked the second guy, who was shorter than the first guy but way wider. This one was carrying a suitcase, a beat-up old gray Samsonite. Amazingly enough, it looked exactly like his own suitcase. Exactly. The guy put it on the floor very carefully and looked at Gomez, waiting for an answer.