Randy White - North of Havana

"It's not my blood." Nor was it human blood. I'd used the newspapers to finish cleaning my hands after I'd left the happy little man and his children on the riverbank. When reduced to the context of survival, my view of nature is pragmatic, not romantic. Even so, I didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to think about it, certainly wasn't going to tell Geis. I said, "You were about to give me bad news."

"I decided to make an early-morning reconnaissance on the Santeria compound. You know, see if they had any guards posted-sometimes they use some of those Abakua, freaks, the ones I told you about. Don't want them drinking any blood from our skulls. Right? Just wanted to get a feel for the place before we made any moves."

I thought: Yeah, and shoot Adolfo and Rita if he got the chance.

Geis said, "But guess what? The place is deserted. Nobody home but this old woman who said she was a cook. Oh, that reminds me-" He reached into his field satchel and tossed me a soggy banana leaf that was tied like a bandanna. Inside was cold rice mixed with black beans and fried plantains. I began to eat even though I didn't feel like eating. Listened to Geis say, "The cook, she didn't want to talk. Had to use all my charm, but she finally told me that Taino and his people pulled out late last night. Looks like they didn't care if you and your buddy Adolfo showed up or not."

"Was Dewey with them?"

"Yep. A blonde that tall, these people don't forget."

He was right; not good news, though I had expected worse. But we had the names of a couple of towns-Candelaria and La Esperanza-and we could track them down. I started to ask a question, but Geis interrupted. "Wait. I'm not so sure that's all the bad news."

Said, "What do you mean?"

He reached into the satchel again and tossed something to me… something small and silken. I caught it and held it up as he said, "They seem a little fancy for a Cubana to own. You recognize them?"

A pair of bikini underwear, nearly new but both sides had been ripped away from the elastic band so that now it was a single piece of cloth. The underwear was jade green. Dewey had told me about buying it in Madrid.

I took a deep breath, then another, trying to stem the rage I was feeling… then wasn't so sure I wanted the rage to disappear. "Where did you find these?"

"One of the rooms. The cook told me the blond woman, as they were leaving, seemed pretty upset, but that the Mi-ami-Cuban-she meant Rita-was taking care of her. So at least they haven't killed her yet."

"Yet?"

Geis said, "They're hers?"

"Yes."

"Well… assuming what we're both thinking happened actually happened, I doubt if Taino's dumb enough to let an American girl go back to the States and tell the kind of story she might tell. Fidel wouldn't like it. It's better she just disappears."

I began to pace; had to move. "Why in the hell would they do… that to Dewey?"

"I liked the girl, but she had a pretty smart mouth on her. Taino-remember me telling you about these people?- Taino, one of his followers gets out of line, they might wake up with blood and chicken feathers on them or they might wake up with their legs on fire. It happens. I've seen the bodies. The priests don't tolerate disobedience from men, how you think Taino's going to react if a woman gives him a hard time?"

"That's no reason. With Tomlinson there?"

"Maybe he realized the Santoyas were feeding him a line of bullshit and gave up on Tomlinson. Or maybe the guy came through, finally pointed to a place on the map, so they figured they didn't need to keep him or anybody else happy anymore. They pulled out without you or Adolfo for a reason. They were in a hurry to get someplace."

I was making myself think it through; to be anything but clinical was to think about Dewey, what had happened to her, what was going to happen. Said, "Last night, when you were waiting for us on the hill, did you see their vehicles leave? No cars passed us, either direction."

Geis said, "I was sort of wondering about that myself." Meaning that he hadn't.

"Those two villages, Candelaria and La Esperanza, is one of them on the water?"

"Yeah, well, there're a couple of Esperanzas. But one of them, it's west, down the coast about eighty kilometers. It's on the water. Like a fishing village with some islands off it."

"Can you drive to those islands?"

"Shit, the roads in that section are so bad you can barely drive to Esperanza."

Which explained why Taino and company hadn't left by car; they'd gone by sea.

I threw open the door so hard that its window shattered. "We need to find a boat. Can you get us a boat?"

The expression on Geis's face illustrated a hard-edged amusement-you're giving orders? "A boat? Sure, I can get a boat-but not officially. Between you and me, Fidel didn't exactly sign off on this little project of mine. He doesn't want me screwing with one of his favorite Babalaos."

Something else he had refused to tell me about. But he would tell me. I would make him tell me everything.

I said, "Then I'll find a boat for us unofficially."

I found what I was looking for aboard a scarred-up Grand Banks, a forty-six-footer, that hadn't been in Mariel Harbor long enough to be thoroughly scavenged. On the stern, the port of registry read Grand Cayman, so the owners had probably made the same mistake Tomlinson had-strayed too close-or maybe got nailed by the Cubans for carrying drugs.

That would have been a double windfall for Cuban authorities. They had a boat to keep and sell, same with the drugs.

It had taken awhile to find what I wanted. I had stripped to my underwear and swum out to the little pod of confiscated boats while Geis sat in among trees, smoking a cigar. First, I climbed aboard a shrimp boat out of Brownsville, Texas. The thing had been completely stripped. Nothing usable, nothing of value left aboard. Checked the fuel tanks. Empty.

Tried a beat-up wooden sailboat next, about a thirty-two-footer. It still had its canvas, but everything else was gone. The sailboat could be useful, but I wasn't going to attempt to sail it along fifty miles of Cuban coastline. There wasn't time.

Before I slipped over the transom of the sailboat and headed for the Grand Banks, I took another look toward shore. Couldn't see Geis but knew he would still be there. It was the reasonable thing for him to do.

At first it had bothered me that he had agreed so quickly to my plan… but then I realized that I provided the perfect cover or an ideal alibi for him. He had said himself that Castro didn't believe there was a plot to assassinate him. But there had to be more to it than that. It had to have something to do with Taino, or maybe all Santeria priests. It was possible that Castro had forbidden Geis to take any kind of action whatsoever against a Babalao, but Geis, being Geis, was finding a way to circumvent those orders. Whatever happened next, from stealing a boat to murder, he could place the blame squarely on me. Could say he'd been on my trail the whole time but got to me just a little late.

That was fine. He could use me; I would be using him.

The galley and staterooms of the Grand Banks were a mess. The authorities had torn the vessel apart looking for something-yeah, it was probably drugs-but hadn't yet come back to finish stripping out the valuables. Which is the only reason that a sixteen-foot Avon inflatable, with a hard-shell deck, still hung from davits, ready to be swung off the stern and lowered. It had two six-gallon gas tanks in it, both nearly empty.

Trouble was, there was no motor on the boat. I assumed the Cubans had already taken it but searched the aft storage lockers anyway… and found a beat-up forty-horsepower Mercury outboard wrapped in plastic sheeting.

A spare motor. Anyone who owned a Grand Banks would have had something new and flashy on their runabout. But the old forty would do if I could get the thing started. Too much engine for a boat as light as the Avon, but I preferred to have it overpowered rather than underpowered.