Middle of the man’s circular driveway was this splashing fountain, all lit up. Three cars in his driveway, all bright red. Two Humvees and what had to be one of those Ferrari Testosterones. Where the hell you gonna drive a Ferrari on this island? Can’t hardly keep a schoolbus on the road at more than twenty.
He looked at Ambrose and started undoing the snaps on his Kevlar vest.
“Since I’m going up the
outside
of the house, I won’t be needing this,” he said to Ambrose. “Best you wear it since you goin’
inside
the front door.”
Ambrose looking at him like he’d lost his mind.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that monstrosity,” the man said.
“You sure as hell might get caught dead you not wearing it, Constable. Now put it the fuck on.”
“I’m quite comfortable with what I’m wearing,” Ambrose said.
“Ain’t no time for this shit, Ambrose, know what I’m sayin’? Alex already lost Vicky. What I’m going to tell him I come back without his best friend, huh?”
Ambrose heaved a sigh and pulled the vest on over his tweed jacket, muttering to himself the whole time.
“Okay. Quick, get your boys through the woods to the back of the house and wait for my go signal. Check?”
“Check.”
“Ross, you and Ambrose wait here twenty seconds after I go. See me goin’ up that wall, you haul ass for that front door. Stay low. Wait. You hear me tell Quick ‘go,’ that means I’m inside, and Quick’s going inside and you and Ambrose blow through that front door. Then straight up them steps to that top-floor bedroom fast as you can, cool?”
“Cool,” Ambrose said, smiling at him.
“I believe you are,” Stoke said.
He gave Ambrose a punch to the shoulder right on his Kevlar vest, laughed, and took off, sprinting around the fountain like a running back. He looked in both Humvees and saw keys stuck in both ignitions. Man sure seemed lax about a lot of shit. In seconds, he was crouched beneath a window, looking up at the balcony. The sun’s rays had just hit one of the tallest towers on the roof and were moving down toward the balcony. Shit.
He caught the balcony rail with the first toss of the rubber-coated grapnel hook on the end of his climbing rope. Didn’t make a sound. He went up the wall hand over hand with the dagger in his mouth, just in case the man had decided to sleep out on his porch. Knife in your mouth like to scare folks shitless.
Peeking over the rail, he saw that the long terrace was empty. Just a row of louvered mahogany doors onto the bedroom, all closed. He hauled himself up and over and stood for a second, thinking it through. He turned to the rail, leaned over, and saw Ross and Ambrose scrambling around the fountain. He gave them five seconds, then started trying the doors, praying to find one open.
Third one was ajar. He pulled it open two inches and put his ear to the door. Snoring. Loud damn snoring. He started feeling lucky.
He slipped through the door and pulled it shut. Like stepping into a damn meat locker, it was so cold. Man had the AC down to fifty. He couldn’t see shit for a couple of seconds, it was so dark. The snorer was to his left, maybe thirty feet away. To his right, same distance was a goddamn fire going in a fireplace. Had to be ninety outside and the man had a fire going!
Across the room, he could see light shining under a wide doorway. He started in that direction, not making a sound, and bumped into something hard. Banged his damn knee. It was some kind of damn chair, bolted to the floor. He felt the arms and back. Like a dentist’s chair felt like. What the hell?
He moved through the darkness to the double doors most likely leading to the upstairs hallway. Tried them, both were unlocked. He cracked one door wide enough that Ross would see it, then he felt around on the wall for a light switch. Just before he pressed it, he whispered the word “Go!” into his mike.
He hit the switch, and the whole room lit up. Huge damn bed with a huge damn bald-headed man under some shiny black satin sheets. Man was on his back, had about twenty pillows behind him, propped up with a black and pink silk sleep mask over his eyes. Son of a bitch was still snoring!
That’s when the first of many concussion grenades went off downstairs and the man sat bolt upright, lifted his cute little mask, and saw this huge black guy standing by his bed with a pistol aimed at his forehead.
“Madre de Dios!”
he shouted.
“Qué pasa?
Who the fuck are you? What’s going on?”
“Good morning, Doctor,” Stoke said, a big grin on his face.
“Doctor?” the man said. “There must be some mistake. I’m not a—”
“You a pussy doctor, ain’t you?” Stoke asked. “Otherwise, why you got that damn gynecological chair stuck in the middle of your damn room? Banged the shit out of my knee on one of your damn stirrups, Doc.”
All hell was breaking loose downstairs, and just when he was starting to worry about them, Ambrose and Ross came through the man’s bedroom door.
“I was just waking up the doctor here,” Stoke said as Ambrose and Ross joined him at the foot of the bed. “See his chair? Man like to play doctor. Do pelvic examinations and shit.” The man shifted under the sheets and Ross brought up the Streetsweeper and put it right on the target. Streetsweeper tended to get people’s undivided attention.
“Take your hands out from under the sheets, very slowly, and cross them behind your head,” Ross said. The man, who’d gotten real quiet, did like he was told, but who wouldn’t, looking down the barrel of Ross’s sawed-off weapon?
“Is this your man, Constable?” Stoke asked.
Ambrose stepped closer to the bedside and studied him, mentally adding thirty years to the face in the Polaroid photograph and the one in Stubbs Witherspoon’s police sketch. It wasn’t the face that did it so much as the eyes. One look at the eyes and you knew this was a killer. Wild, dark, killer’s eyes. There was no question in Ambrose’s mind.
He was face to face with the man in the New Year’s Eve Polaroid. One of three brothers who’d slaughtered Alex Hawke’s parents. He leaned in close to the fellow and spoke.
“What is your name, sir?”
The man stared at him in disbelief. This could only be the work of his brother Manso! He’d been set up. This was why he’d been forced off the
Martí
. Humiliated in front of his men. His treacherous brother would pay dearly for this. He would—
“I asked you your name!” Congreve shouted.
“I am Admiral Carlos de Herreras,
señor!
Commander in chief of the Navy of Cuba! This is an outrage! I demand that you—”
“Quiet.”
Ambrose pulled out a little leather case and flipped it open, showing the man his shield.
“My name is Ambrose Congreve,” he said in an even voice, full of measured intensity. “I am a special investigator for the Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard. In the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I am placing you, Carlos de Herreras, under arrest upon suspicion of murder. I order you to get out of that bed and come with me. Now.”
“You will regret this,
señor
. We are the new ruling party of Cuba! My brother, he is the new—”
“Get out of that damned bed!” Congreve shouted, and ripped the sheets back. “As if I give a hoot in hell who you are! On your feet, Admiral, you’re under arrest!”
The man sighed, major league all pissed off, slowly pulling his hands out from the pillows. Still had the little black and pink mask up on his forehead. Stoke was looking at Ambrose, smiling, about to congratulate him, when Ross shouted, “Stokely, watch out!”
Stoke turned but it was too late. The fat man’s arm was extended toward him, a little black automatic in his hand. His thought was, shit, this is what happens when you go lending out your flak jacket. Then a sledgehammer hit him.
Stoke stayed on his feet long enough to see Ambrose raise and fire his weapon, hitting the suspect’s gun hand before he could squeeze off a second shot. The fat man was screaming in pain as Stoke hit the floor.
Ambrose knelt beside him, stuffing his handkerchief into the wound. There was a tremendous amount of blood, but he was still breathing. Ross had the big man cuffed and was speaking into his mike. Stoke was fading in and out and Ambrose was feeling for his pulse when he heard Ross in his headphones say, “Tom, give me a sitrep.”
“Still taking fire,” Quick said. “I’ve got one man down.”
“We’re coming down the front way,” Ross said. “Give us some cover.”
Then Ross had his hands under Stoke’s armpits and was pulling him to his feet.
“Come on, Stokely, we have to get you to a doctor now!”
“He’s a doctor, ain’t he?” Stoke said, grinning weakly at the fat man and getting woozily to his feet. His whole front was sticky with hot blood.
Ambrose led them out into the hallway and they headed for the stairs. Ross was in front with the Streetsweeper, supporting Stoke. Next, the prisoner, with Ambrose’s pistol jammed in his back. Ambrose could tell the firefight below was a lot less intense as they started down the broad marble staircase. He saw Stoke tighten his grip around Ross’s neck to steady himself going down the stairs. He heard Quick shout a warning to Ross in his headphones. What the—
Suddenly, rounds whistled by his ear and over his head and he looked down to see three young chaps in T-shirts crouching at the foot of the steps, guns trained directly on them. One guy squeezed off another burst. He felt a sharp jolt of pain, clutched his chest, and fell back hard on the marble steps. Staring at the ceiling, Ambrose managed to move his hands and legs. God in heaven, he was still alive. But they were getting killed up here.
Ross didn’t wait for another shot. His finger snapped shut on the trigger of the Streetsweeper, and it erupted in a rapid series of blasts that blew what was left of the three men right out the front door and down the steps to the driveway.
Ross stuck out his hand, and Ambrose grasped it, pulling himself to his feet.
“Hold on,” Ross said to him, shouldering himself into the Streetsweeper’s strap and getting his other arm under him. “We’re going right out the front door!” They were going down the stairs fast. Then they were outside. Somehow, the sun had come up.
The front steps of the
finca
were slick with bodies and blood. Stepping over somebody’s blown-off foot, Ambrose somehow managed to tell Ross what he’d seen on the way in. That there were keys in both Humvees. Blood was pumping out of Stokely, even with the handkerchief stuffed inside the wound.
Ambrose dredged up a strength he’d never known and jammed his gun into the back of the prisoner. The chap had been about to run for it.
“I’m all right,” he told Ross. “Let’s just get this bloody bastard the hell out of here!”
Then Ross was behind the wheel of the Humvee, the prisoner next to him up front. Ambrose climbed into the backseat and pressed his pistol against the back of the Cuban’s head. He felt dizzy, and the sight of their prisoner still wearing black and pink silk pajamas, with the matching mask on his head, made him doubt his own mind.
Suddenly a new wave of chaps started coming out on the steps and seemed to be shooting at them. Then they started dropping to the ground, left and right. He thought he saw the sharpshooter Tom Quick in an upstairs window, picking them off with his sniper rifle, putting neat little black holes in people’s foreheads.
“Hold on, Inspector,” Ross said, and he mashed on the accelerator, the Humvee screaming around the fountain, heading for the wooden gates, and taking both of the gates off their hinges as they went crashing through.
“Okay, we have the suspect,” Ambrose heard Ross say in his phones. “We have two casualties needing immediate medical attention. Get your guys the hell out of there! There are keys in the second Humvee at the front door. Use it!”
Two casualties? Ambrose thought. That meant he must be one of them.
That’s when he felt a sharp pain in his chest and all the lights went out.
Vicky had nicknames for most of her Cuban guards.
There was Ace, of the small black plastic comb, who was continually running it through his long black oily locks, swooping it up into an endlessly collapsing pompadour. And X-Ray, who was at least six-five and weighed maybe one hundred thirty pounds. Then there was Big Pimpin’, so called neither because of his enormous size nor his scarlet pimples, which he had in pustulant abundance, but because he was constantly bragging about all the girls he was running in and out of the compound.
And, finally, the one she called Eyes Wide Shut. He was the putative leader of the four, and by far the worst of all. He had never hurt her, thank God, but he never took his eyes off her either. They had taken her bathing suit and jewelry away in exchange for a cotton shift she washed each day.
Eyes made her strip two or three times a day so he could search her. He would poke and prod, smiling all the while. He always found an excuse to get rid of the other three first. Sent them on errands, told them to take a break. Vicky was sure they knew what was going on. But they never said anything.
Eyes was the only one with a key to the manacles that shackled her to the bed. She had to ask his permission whenever she needed to use the bathroom. He always made her leave the door open. Once, when she’d stepped out of the shower, he was standing there in his trademark grungy sweatshirt with his pants down, erect.
“Aw, you think I’m supposed to get upset over a little thing like that?” she’d said.
Maybe he didn’t understand what she’d said, but he understood what she meant. He never did it again. Then, of course, there were the Russians. The fat one. And the weird little one she vaguely remembered as having bought her a drink at the junkanoo.
So far, Eyes had kept the two Russians away from her. She’d learned from X-Ray that they were constantly offering the guards huge sums of U.S. dollars for an hour alone with her. Eyes, so far, had told them to stay away from her or he’d kill them. But you never knew just how long or how far his jealousy would stretch. She reassured herself daily that an ounce of flirtation equaled a pound of protection.
She was going to survive this. No matter what it took. No matter how long it took. At night, she thought of Alex. Worried about how what had happened added to the pain he was already suffering. And she thought of her father. She was all he had. If only there were some way to get word out. Bribe one of the guards? With what?
Eyes. If she could gain his trust, make him intimate promises she’d maybe never have to keep, he could get word out for her. He was both her principal tormentor and her only hope.
Little boys, big guns.
There were eight guards in all, working consecutive twelve-hour shifts. The night shift, she hardly dealt with. She’d talked the doctor who’d examined her that first night into giving her some heavy-duty sleeping pills. So, she either slept, or feigned sleep, from eight at night until eight in the morning when the night guards left. It made the time more bearable.
The guards were all killers and proud of it. She’d heard them bragging about kidnapping and torturing high-ranking journalists and politicians believed to be still loyal to Castro. Some spoke English, and she had three years of college Spanish, and when they got careless, they sat around saying things in front of her.
She listened to every word, and picked up a lot she wasn’t supposed to know. Castro was a guest here. So was his son. So were the former officers of Fidel’s secret police, army, and navy. It was a busy place. “The Hostage Hilton” was how she came to think of it.
Bit by bit, Vicky learned that there was a price on the heads of many people in Cuba. Millions of pesos for a long list of disloyal generals and journalists. Hundreds of thousands for certain “friends of Fidel” who were unfriendly to the new regime. Organized murder was about to become a booming business in Cuba.
Naturally, she didn’t recognize the names, but some of the targets were apparently pro-Castro left-wing bigshots in Miami and New York, too. Meanwhile, an army of boys, just like the ones who guarded her, were roaming the island, murdering whoever got in their way. Cuba was now on the verge of becoming the new Colombia. Lawless. Murderous. Lost.
One afternoon, after Eyes had made her strip, he pointed his gun at her and said in good English, “If there is trouble, any kind of trouble, our orders are to shoot you first. You understand that,
chica?”
She nodded. Since everyone thought she was dead, she wasn’t too optimistic about a rescue attempt. Escape, yes, she was worried about how to do that. Very worried. Especially since the nightly screaming had started.
The guards called him Scissorhands.
He worked in a warren of basement rooms where all the interrogations took place. Late at night, she could hear the piercing screams. They said that when he looked at you, he had no eyes.
She’d overheard enough to know Scissorhands was not one of the top two or three generals who had overthrown the old regime. Apparently, his real name was Rodrigo, and she overheard someone say he was some rich nightclub owner from Havana. Scary-looking, because his eyes had no color. Another time, someone said he worked directly for the new military chief, General Manso something or other. This guy they all called Scissorhands, Rodrigo, was apparently the new head of State Security.
Scissorhands liked to attend interrogations just for fun. He wore a blood-soaked smock and carried a large pair of gleaming silver scissors in his pocket as he scurried from room to room during interrogations. “Snip, snip, snip,” the guards would laugh whenever the screaming started.
She thought she was on the third floor of the prison. Blindfolded immediately after her abduction in the waters off Pine Cay, she’d not seen a thing until she was brought into the room she currently occupied. The windows were boarded shut. There were no newspapers. She was not allowed to watch TV.
All she knew, she got from careful listening. During the day, there were sounds of Jeeps and tanks and large numbers of troops going by under her window. So she was on a fairly main thoroughfare of some kind of military base, most likely the headquarters of the rebel general who had overthrown the old regime.
One morning, the thing she’d dreaded most actually happened. Someone came to take her away. Whether it was to be shot or simply “interrogated,” she was sure it was not going to be a good morning. Still, she forced herself to stay calm.
It wasn’t really a surprise. The guards had been acting strange all morning. Looking at her and then looking away. No Nintendo, no idle conversation. Just smoking and speaking quietly amongst themselves. Even the girl who came to clean each morning was acting strangely.
No one said a word. But she knew. Today was her day.
When the knock at the door finally came, Vicky was almost relieved. She heard the door open. When she looked that way, Ace pressed the barrel of his gun against her cheek, turning her head from the door.
Eyes unshackled her without looking at her. He wore a look of grim satisfaction. He grabbed her roughly by the back of her shift and held her while Ace tied a thick blindfold around her head.
Panic bloomed. She tried to pull away and heard the rip of cotton as the thin shift split down the back. She felt her heart thudding in her chest and her breath getting very shallow. She forced herself to breathe deeply and stay calm. The breathing helped a little.
Eyes and X-Ray steered her toward the door, Eyes managing to squeeze her breasts roughly as he did so.
The one who had entered said something in a raspy Spanish, and Eyes released his grip on her. She heard the door close behind her and knew she was outside and alone with this new raspy-voiced Cuban.
“Buenos días, señorita,”
he said, and then, in perfect English, “I am Major Diaz. You are to come with me, please.”
He held her arm lightly and led her down a flight of stairs. She was barefoot and she felt damp concrete underfoot. It had rained last night. If she was right about which floor she was on, three flights of steps would mean they were descending to the ground. One more would mean the basement. They reached a landing after three flights, turned right, and started down again.
“Where—where are you taking me?” Vicky asked.
“You’ll see soon enough,
señorita,”
Diaz said.
They went through another door. Now they walked down a long corridor and suddenly there was shouting and whistling on either side of her. She heard what sounded like tin cups being banged on bars. It was not hard to imagine the row of cells on each side, or the prisoners’ reaction to the woman in the torn shift.
They came to a stop, and Major Diaz said something to a guard. She heard a key turning in a lock, and then she was being pushed through an open door. A wave of cold air shocked her. The thin shift offered little protection. Air-conditioning. A new experience. A chilling experience, she thought, glad she still had a tiny reserve of humor in there somewhere.
“Just tell the truth,” Diaz said, a harsh whisper in her ear. “And tell it quickly.” He then released her.
“Muchas gracias,
Major,” a new voice said. “That will be all.” This new voice was velvety and musical. She didn’t know if that was good or simply terrifying.
She heard Diaz walk out and the door close behind her with a solid thump. Thick door. Soundproof. She felt dizzy and disoriented without Diaz’s hand on her shoulder. She had no choice but to stand and wait for whatever was coming.
“Bienvenido a Telaraña,”
the man finally said. “Be seated.”
“Where is the…” She reached out, feeling for any piece of furniture. “Where is the, uh, the—?”
“The chair? Ah. Three steps forward,” the man said in his soft voice. Almost singsong.
She took three tentative steps, felt soft carpet beneath her feet, and put both hands out in front of her. She felt the wooden back of a chair, pulled it toward her, and managed to sit down.
“You may remove your blindfold,” the man said.
Vicky did, blinking in the harsh light. There were two men in the room. There was one man in uniform sitting in a big leather chair behind a beautiful carved mahogany desk. Another man, tall and very handsome in a white suit, stood behind the desk, looking down at some photographs. Behind him on the wall was a large painting in a massive gilt frame. A museum-quality Goya. On the floor, a magnificent Aubusson carpet. She breathed a silent sigh of relief. This seemed an unlikely setting for all the midnight screaming.
Then the handsome man walked around from behind the desk and looked into her face, staring at her. “Good morning,” he said in beautiful English. “I am so happy to meet you. My name is Rodrigo.” He smiled down at her. His eyes, she was shocked to see, were completely colorless. And in the breast pocket of his elegant white suit was a pair of silver scissors.
Vicky thought her heart would burst as the word exploded in her mind, Scissorhands.
“What is your name?” the uniformed man seated at the desk asked, and she squinted her eyes, trying to focus on him instead of the other one. She decided not to even look at the eyeless one. If she did, she’d never get through this alive.
She took a deep breath and composed herself. Somehow, she was going to make it out of here alive. She stared at the man behind the desk. He’d asked her a question. What was it?
Though he was seated, she could see that her interrogator was tall and thin. He wore an elaborate uniform, covered with decorations. He was handsome in a way, almost pretty. Long black hair, carefully swept back from his high forehead. Tied in a ponytail. Long black lashes and deadly gray eyes.
Spidery hands folded quietly before him on the leather top of his desk.
“I asked you a question. Your name?”
“Sorry. My name is Dr. Victoria Sweet. What’s yours?”
“I am General Manso de Herreras. How are you being treated, Dr. Sweet?”
“Abominably.”
Scissorhands smiled at this and walked back behind the desk. He perched on the edge and resumed leafing through his glossy eight-byten photos. From time to time he would look up at her with those monstrous eyes and smile at her.
“Sorry. We try to be accommodating. What kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m a pediatrician. I help children with neurological disorders. I also write books for children.”
“Ah, a fellow student of human emotions. I’ve no degree, of course, I’m a lifelong military man. Yes, but a politician as well, and so a keen observer of the psychological.”
“May I ask a question? Why am I here, General?”
“Ah. You would like to be the interrogator?”
“I’d like to know why I’m being held against my will.”
“You ask the simple ones first, Doctor. Very well. You’re here because you’re a pawn.”
“I’m a pawn?”
“Yes. The pawn resembles a queen perhaps, but she is still a little pawn. Does the little pawn play chess?”
Vicky sat silently for a moment, deciding how best to play this dangerous game. “Tell the truth, quickly,” Major Diaz had said. For no good reason at all, she decided to trust him.
“You’re holding me because you want to use me in some way. Probably to get to Alex Hawke,” Vicky said, staring him straight in the eye. “How do you intend to do that?”