Randy White - North of Havana

I waited for a moment, taking my time, but not too much time, because now I wanted Taino's people to panic. I wanted them to run off into the night and leave their Stone Age weapons behind.

So I swung the sights onto Molinas, who had dropped to his knees, arms crossed in front of his face… but then I hesitated… hesitated because Taino's shocked followers were behaving in a way that I had not anticipated.

They were screaming at me-I hadn't expected that. I also hadn't expected them to surge toward Taino's fallen body.

Were they insane?

Then they were pushing toward me idiotically; coming at me in a rage. Couldn't they see that I had an automatic weapon and could kill them all? So I fired two more rounds into the tree limbs above me to freeze them… and then everyone did stop because of what happened next. There was the sound of the breaking of a tree limb overhead… a muffled scream… and from out of the dark leaves, amid a feather-veil of startled white-crowned doves, a little boy fell to the ground at my feet.

I stood there as stunned as the priests, as stunned as everyone else who was now watching him closely… watched Santiago, illuminated by the golden firelight, stand quickly, brush some of the feathers off his clothes… then heard him say to me in a gush of relief, "Holy Mother, that was close!" as he straightened two aged medallions that hung around his neck on a single new cord of fishing line.

One of the medallions was a crusted green-a St. Christopher's medal? The other looked to be made of obsidian… some kind of polished black stone that had been carved into a swirling figure-eight… or the symbol of infinity.

I was looking at the reverent expressions on the faces of the priests… saw the same countenance in the eyes of the men who, a moment ago, had been mobbing me. A child falls among them from a tree of white doves, and he is wearing ornaments that the gods refused to reveal to them. Yes… yes… this was something important…

I felt Santiago touch my elbow. "You idiot, were you trying to shoot me?"

I was still watching the faces of the priests. Said, "Huh…? No

… no I wasn't trying to shoot you. What the hell were you doing in that tree?"

The boy was breathing heavily, still frightened. "Because the strange Yankee said I was supposed to watch over you. But maybe he didn't mean high over you. And try to help you, only I don't know how. Maybe that tree wasn't such a good spot."

Very slowly, I moved my hand and patted his shoulder. Said, "No, it was the perfect spot," listening to Santiago's words being passed through the crowd-I was not to be harmed; the child had said it.

The two priests-white robes and white hats, just like Taino's-were on their knees now, chanting something, staring at us. The other men had bunched up around Santiago, wanting to touch the medallions, or maybe touch the boy, but their veneration was like a shyness and they maintained a respectful distance.

All but Molinas. I surveyed the clearing… then the cemetery… then looked toward the docks where Castro's yacht was moored.

Molinas was gone. He was probably out there in the jungle now, running for his life. I could follow him. Maybe I should follow him-track the man down, kill him, then try to escape to international waters in the fishing smack. Fidel Castro, who had debased so many and so much, would not endure personal debasement, so it was probably better than what awaited me back in Havana.

Or was it?

I released a long, heavy breath, then tossed the Browning and the rifle to the ground. I put my hand on Santiago's shoulder and walked him through the parting wall of men… was nearly to the docks before I asked what I knew I had to ask: "Were they in the grotto?"

He touched his fingers to the medallions. These? "They were right where the other Yankee told me to look. He's a very strange Yankee. He can do magic tricks. He says that he can heal people."

I looked at the figure of Fidel Castro standing on the bridge of his yacht-a man who was back in control-and then I stared at the Gulf Stream darkness beyond. I said, "I would love to believe that."

On the first official working day of the first month of the new year, I was standing among the commercial docks and rusted warehouses that line French Canal in Colon, Panama; had been standing there for more than an hour because I was waiting to see an old friend.

Two friends, really. Two ladies…

I had no other reason to be in that nasty little city. No one in their right mind would want to spend time unnecessarily in Colon, because it is one of those drunken-sailor destinations: ratty bars and prostitute curb-stations and way too much traffic on broken streets that were never designed to handle the burden of what Colon has become-Central America's busiest, tackiest, and probably most dangerous duty-free seaport.

Which is why I was eager to finish my business and get the hell away from there. I wanted to catch my ride back to the isolated beach house I had rented east of Coco Solo. A nice little house up on stilts with a porch that framed its own seascape. Nothing behind the house but an ascending jungle canopy from which the wild cries of howler monkeys awoke me each morning at first light. Nothing to the sides but empty beach… and an interesting lagoon in which I had already begun to collect some unusual littoral specimens. I'd found some striped tunicates there, an interesting species because, unlike some other tunicates, they are solitary creatures. They clump on rocks or mounds of sea grass and grow there alone, feeding by filtering water and, as they do so, clean way more water than organisms that size could be expected to clean.

"The duality of design," Tomlinson had replied, when I told him what I'd been doing. He'd been speaking by phone from Dinkin's Bay; had reconfirmed that he and Dewey and Rita had made it to Key West safely… which is where he had left them to sail back to Sanibel. Then he had said, "This's going to sound strange, man, but guess what? I don't have a clue who you're with. And I didn't know where you were till you told me. I thought Castro, that asshole, might have you in prison. But Panama-far out."

Nope, not prison. I'd spent a day, a night, and part of the next day at the State Security complex in Havana, Villa Marista, hoping that Santiago's renown would spread quickly enough through Cuba to save me from the killing bluff at Mariel. The prospect didn't even qualify as tenuous hope. Castro being Castro, the idea was, in fact, an exercise in absurd optimism. If the Maximum Leader wanted me dead, no child wearing sacred medallions could stop it. Each time my cell door opened, I looked up expecting to see the face of my executioner. On a Thursday afternoon, though, the door opened and I was shocked to see a face so unexpected that I thought I might be hallucinating. After that, it was a matter of mustering political clout to negotiate my release.

But because I didn't want to burden Tomlinson with all the sensitive details, I had replied, "You didn't know I was in Panama? What's so strange about that?"

I could hear some of the old excitement in his voice. "It's because this whole last year, I knew things, man. I could look at you and I knew where you'd been. I knew where you were going, who you were going to meet. Not that I ever knew what was actually going to happen. But now… it's like I've lost my powers. Like maybe that whole gig in Cuba burned them all up. It was so damn heavy. You think?"

I'd told him, "If that means you're going to start behaving normally, then I hope so."

When he answered, his voice turned sad and a little wistful. "Me too, man. Seriously-the whole scene was getting to be a drag. The omniscient are friendless for a damn good reason."