Nick Carter - The Black Death

Hank, using the bottle as a spy glass, sighted back. “I don’t think, Admiral, that they ever heard of it.”

The patrol boat was gaining on us. There was nothing we could do. I had Sea Witch on full throttle and I had her on a NW by N bearing and that was it. The rest was up to fate or whatever you want to call it. One thing — it was going to be a long stern chase for that patrol boat. Sea Witch was very nearly matching speeds with her, and the patrol boat was barely inching up on us. But it was early, and I knew I couldn’t count on darkness bailing us out. To break the tension I decided to get them talking.

I told them what had happened after I left them. From time to time I glanced astern. The patrol boat was still creeping up. She was going to ignore the coastal limit. I had been afraid of that. Papa Doc’s boys would not worry about a little piracy, Lyda clasped her slim tan fingers and frowned. “What a fool I was! I trusted Duppy — the man you say was Diaz Ortega. All the time he was KGB.”

“He was good,” I consoled. “I lucked into the identification because I do my homework with the files. And he fooled P.P. and Papa Doc, too, remember. They never saw him, or even knew he existed, but he fooled them just the same. He planted a phony Dr. Romera Valdez on them. The man was a mulatto, probably a Cuban, and he must have been a ringer for Valdez to begin with. They made it a little more convincing by using plastic surgery. I saw the scars after I killed him.”

Hank took a drink and said, “This is all too screwing complicated for me. I’m just a simple fly boy who wants to get back to Hong Kong before Mai Ling gives away my grog shop.” His reddened eyes skittered at me. “I ever tell you I had a little business? I ever tell you, huh?”

I knew that Hank was not going to be any sweat, he was a drunk and an innocent,»but he didn’t have to know what I had to tell Lyda. I put the boat on gyro and told him to sit there and watch the patrol boat. Call me when she got within range.

He grinned and pointed to the recoilless rifle and a little pile of .57 mm shells. “I’ll knock the crap out of them.”

I took Lyda into the deckhouse. She watched me as I made drinks and lit cigarettes. Finally she said: “Romera is dead, isn’t he? He has been dead for a long time.”

“Yes. More than five years, if I’m putting it together right. You want to hear it all?”

She leaned toward me, her fragile nostrils pinching out smoke. “I do. I must. I–I think I fell out of love with him a long time ago, but I want to know.”

“Here it is. It goes back to the Cuban missile crisis. The Russians didn’t pull out all the missiles.” Hawk’s précis had told me that.

“Some were hidden in caves. Near Managua, not more than fourteen miles from Havana. We knew it — from the over-flights by spy planes — but we didn’t push it. Let sleeping dogs lie, you know. But we watched.

“Someone, I would say Duppy, got an idea how to use those missiles. In Haiti. Start a phony revolution, then take over. By that time the missiles would have been moved into Haiti and he would be holding an ace. But he needed a front, a good one, a figurehead. The man had to be a Haitian. Someone who was well known and trusted.”

The girl nodded. “Of course. Romera Valdez.”

“Sure. Duppy had his men in Haiti and he knew that Papa Doc was really going to kidnap Valdez. Maybe Papa Doc wanted missiles — the real Valdez was a physicist — or maybe he just wanted to get rid of Valdez. Anyway he planned to snatch him, and Duppy found out about it. So Duppy snatched Valdez first, killed him, and set up a phony in his place. Papa Doc kidnapped Duppy’s man! Thinking he had the real Valdez.”

Her eyes teared, and she gulped at her drink. “Then the man I saw that day, the one who ran from me into the subway, wasn’t really Romera at all. It was—”

“Yes, kid. It was the phony. You must have scared hell out of him. They must have known about you — they wouldn’t overlook that — but they thought the phony Valdez could play it cold and drop you. It didn’t work out that way. You were lovesick and you called and you threatened and you made a hell of a nuisance out of yourself. And you were damned lucky!”

She got it. She rubbed her mouth and her fingers trembled. “You mean that night, when he promised to come see me, he was going to—”

“He was going to kill you. You were causing too much trouble. Remember what he said that night?”

She licked her lips with a small scarlet tongue. “I remember. He said, ‘Be sure you’re alone.’ ”

“Yes. I said you were lucky. He was on his way to kill you that night. But Papa Doc’s goons grabbed him on the way, thinking he was the real Valdez.”

Lyda covered her eyes with her hands. “And Romera? The man I knew and was in love with?”

I did it as gently as I could. “He was dead by then, Lyda. Dead and buried where he would never be found. I wasn’t going to give her any details, even had I known them. But I could guess — a concrete jacket in the river, a grave in the pine barrens on Long Island, a fire in the Jersey flats, a man in a junk car being squeezed into a four by four hunk of metal and shipped abroad. Better let it lie.

She wiped her eyes and went to the bar to freshen her drink. “They waited a long time, Duppy and his people.”

I nodded. “Yes. They’re very patient. And they had to wait for the Cuban thing to cool down. There was a lot of planning involved. They had to be sure the trick would work, that Papa Doc and P.P. Trevelyn would accept the phony Valdez as the real thing.”

I grinned at her. “They must have had some bad times. The phony Valdez wasn’t a physicist — probably an actor— and they had to cram him and nurse him along. No wonder Papa Doc’s missiles didn’t work. But the real missiles, the black ones I saw in that cave, they would have worked. They were just starting to bring them in, by submarine and freighter, at night, and they would be bringing in skilled people, too.

“All Duppy needed then was his revolution. He wanted you to do that for him, and while you and Papa Doc were at each other’s throats he would move in and take over. Those people never give up — they couldn’t do it in Cuba, so why not Haiti!”

All of a sudden she smiled. “Maybe it isn’t so bad, Nick. I still have Sea Witch and the guns and the money.”

I frowned at her. “And Papa Doc is still running Haiti. As far as you are concerned he is going to keep on running it. Remember what I told you — no monkey business. One wrong move, sweetheart, and you end up in the slammer.”

Lyda Bonaventure laughed and smiled and crossed her long legs and I could see the fireworks sparking in her brain. She would lie low for a time, that I knew, but sooner or later she would make another try at it. I sighed. Let someone else worry about that. Maybe Hawk could find me a nice assignment in Lower Slobbovia.

The first shell came in, arching over Sea Witch and bursting far in front of us. We ran out on deck.

The patrol boat was gaining steadily. She fired again and this time the burst was closer.

Hank Willard was staggering around the deck trying to get the recoilless rifle loaded. He waved a round of .57mm and shouted defiance at the patrol boat.

“Come on, you bastards. Come on and fight!” He lurched and was almost overboard and I grabbed him. He dropped the shell into the water. I hauled him back.

“Don’t give up the ship,” he carolled. “We ain’t started to fight yet. Full steam ahead and screw the screwing torpedoes.”

I took the ammo and rifle away from him and led him back to the cockpit. “Calm down, Commander. Let’s not agitate them too much. They’ve got the range and the weight on us — they can sit out there and rip us to pieces.”