Spy in a Little Black Dress

XIV



They drove out of the city headed east through Matanzas Province. It was dusk, and Emiliano steered the truck with the sun sinking behind them and the darkness falling ahead. Leaving Havana, they had encountered no further roadblocks, which meant that either they had gotten out of the city in the proverbial nick of time or Colonel Sanchez had decided not to throw up any more. As he drove, Emiliano turned on the headlights to cut through the gloom and switched on the dashboard radio, tuned to an English-language station in the Florida Keys. Instantly, the truck cab was filled with the swooning voice of Kay Starr singing “Wheel of Fortune.”

After they had been on the road awhile, Emiliano pointed south and said to Jackie, “Over there’s the Bay of Pigs. That’s where Gabriela rescued you from the crocodile farm.”

Jackie had no idea who Emiliano was talking about. “Gabriela?” she said. “Don’t you mean Rosario?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You know her as Rosario. That’s her underground name. She joined Fidel’s group after Sanchez tried to rape her and she had to coldcock him to escape. Gabriela is her real name.”

Jackie remembered the look on Sanchez’s face as Rosario’s—make that Gabriela’s—blond wig came off, and she shuddered with disgust at the thought of that pig getting his hands on her again.

She turned to Emiliano. “We have to get her out of his clutches,” she said in a voice strained with emotion.

“Fidel knows the situation. We’ll leave it up to him to decide what to do.”

Emiliano’s cool-as-you-please statement was infuriating to Jackie. Her mind was plagued by the sickening image of Gabriela being sexually assaulted by Sanchez.

“How can you be so damned casual about this?”

“I’m afraid it’s the only way I can be.” He glanced over at her as he drove. “Look, Jacqueline, the minute Gabriela joined the rebels, she became a soldier in our army. She knew what the stakes were, the chance she was taking. Now she’s been taken prisoner. That’s part of the fortunes of war. And we’ll do everything we can to free her. But we can’t let that deflect us from our higher cause—freedom for the entire nation of Cuba.”

“So you think one person’s life is less important than your main goal?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Emiliano said, “Yes.”

Jackie turned away from him. If this was what the rebels believed, then maybe she already knew which side of the political spectrum Fidel would ultimately fall on.

They drove in silence for a while. It was an awkward silence filled with unspoken reproach, and Jackie could tell that Emiliano knew from her tightly sealed lips how much his curt response had rankled her.

There was a new song on the radio. Louis Armstrong was singing “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.” Satchmo’s soothing voice seemed to have a conciliatory effect on Jackie. And when she looked at Emiliano, she saw that his mood was mellowing too.

Finally, he looked over at her and said, “Do you want to tell me what’s so important about that reel of film?”

“What reel of film?” Jackie asked, playing innocent.

“The one in your camera bag.”

“You looked through my camera bag?” Jackie bristled at the very idea of Emiliano having had the temerity to examine her things.

“Hardly,” he said, sounding defensive. He hiked his thumb toward the area behind the seats, where Jackie had tossed her bag. Improbably, the reel of film was peeking up through its opening.

Looking sheepish, Jackie said, “Oh, that film reel.”

“Yes. A souvenir from El Teatro de Cinema, I take it.”

Jackie cleared her throat. “This is actually classified information.”

“Well, you can tell me, if you like. Deputy Director Dulles has assigned me Cosmic clearance.”

Jackie thought about it, mentally weighing the pros and cons of confiding to Emiliano what the film reel contained. Finally, she turned to him and said, “Okay. I’ll tell you.” She then went into the entire saga of Walker’s treasure, beginning with her purchase of the antiquated book on Cuba and her accidental discovery of Metzger’s diary and ending with Maheu’s revelation that the key to the treasure’s location could be found in the reel of film. She turned to Emiliano and saw an odd look on his face.

“What?” she asked him.

“From the way you speak about him, I think that on some level you identify with him, this nineteenth-century soldier of fortune.”

Jackie pondered that and said, “I don’t know if I identify with him, exactly. But I’m struck by his story. Here he was, an idealistic young man, signing up as a filibuster to help Walker free Nicaragua, only to find that Walker was totally corrupt and probably crazy in the bargain. Then he returns to the U.S., where he fights for the North in the Civil War, but ends up wondering if any just cause is worth the price you pay in blood.”

Her fervor took even Jackie by surprise. “You see, Emiliano, that’s why I don’t believe violence is the necessary response to any political problem.”

Emiliano looked over at her and nodded. “I understand your position perfectly. And I think you understand mine. So, at least for now, can we just agree to disagree?”

Jackie nodded in return. “A truce,” she said.

“A truce,” he agreed.


The town was a small collection of whitewashed buildings radiating from a dusty central square with a rusted fountain that had stopped dispensing water many years ago. One of the buildings turned out to be a hotel, and Jackie and Emiliano decided to take a room there. Because he didn’t want to let her out of his sight, Emiliano insisted that they pass themselves off to the desk clerk, a small man with a big mustache, as husband and wife.

But once in the room, the first thing Emiliano did was take a blanket off one of the twin beds and use a clothesline he found in one of the dresser drawers to rig up a curtain to divide the room in two to give Jackie her privacy. Jackie smiled inwardly at Emiliano’s constant deference to decorum.

“You make me feel just like Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night,” Jackie said, referring to Clark Gable’s similar solution to sharing a room with his unmarried traveling companion.

“Well, if you’re expecting me to act like Clark Gable and take off my shirt, you’ll be disappointed,” Emiliano said. Jackie was surprised. Here was Emiliano displaying a hide-and-seek sense of humor again, as well as his familiarity with a romantic comedy. And beyond that, revealing that maybe he was more shy about sharing a room with her than she was about sharing a room with him. It was an odd turnabout of gender roles, but Jackie found Emiliano’s modesty completely endearing.

The hotel had no dining room, but they found a cantina nearby that was still open. Jackie thought that it was the equivalent of the twenty-four-hour diners back home. The place was rustic, with a menu to match. Jackie and Emiliano both ordered arroz con pollo and fried plantains, a dinner that turned out to be rather tasty. Afterward, they returned to their hotel room, where they retired to their beds on either side of the makeshift curtain.

Jackie closed her eyes but found that sleep just wouldn’t come, partly because a chain of events kept playing out in her mind. First, there were the events of the day, then the events of the last few days after her arrival at the airport, and then the events of the past year—starting with the discovery of the diary—that had led to her being here, in this hotel room, in a small nameless Cuban town in the province of Matanzas, with this stand-in for Fernando Lamas. And that, she had to admit to herself, was the other reason she was finding it so hard to fall asleep: having the gorgeously handsome man lying on the other side of the curtain.

After what seemed like several hours of tossing and turning, Jackie gave up all thoughts of sleep. In a small voice, she called out, “Emiliano?”

At first there was no response. Then, from the other side of the curtain, came, “Yes?”

“Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, you can’t sleep either?”

“Well, frankly, all your tossing and turning is keeping me awake.”

“Sorry,” Jackie said contritely. “Well, since we’re both up, would you like to talk?”

Before he could answer, Jackie drew back the curtain, hoping the sight of her would encourage Emiliano to say yes.

“I guess so,” Emiliano said, sitting up in bed. His shirt was off, but unlike Clark Gable, he was wearing a sleeveless undershirt. Even so, the sight of his muscular biceps and chest rippling beneath the shirt made Jackie’s eyes widen. “What would you like to talk about?”

Jackie thought about it. “Why don’t you tell me a story?”

“What kind of story?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Then a thought occurred to her: “Why don’t you tell me about your childhood? You said you were from Oriente, and so was Fidel Castro. Did you grow up together?”

“We played together as boys even though my father was a poor campesino and Fidel’s father owned a sugar plantation. But you see, Fidel wasn’t raised at home. He spent most of his childhood in foster homes and private Catholic boarding schools.”

“How sad,” Jackie said. “Why was that?”

Emiliano seem reluctant to go on, but he finally said, “Well, it’s common knowledge in Cuba that Fidel was born out of wedlock to a household servant of Angel Castro’s when Angel was married to another woman. He didn’t divorce her to marry Fidel’s mother until Fidel was fifteen. All the other children made fun of Fidel for that. But I didn’t. I liked him because he was such a smart student and a good athlete. We both played on the baseball team at El Colegio de Belén, a Jesuit school in Havana. I was an outfielder, and Fidel was a pitcher. A very good one, I might add.”

“Yes, Mr. Dulles told me about that,” Jackie said. “So you were both athletes. Were you both always interested in politics too?”

“Yes. History was my favorite subject in school. Maybe being named after Zapata had something to do with that. And Fidel’s biggest heroes were political figures.” Emiliano smiled. “Do you know what his most prized possession was as a boy?”

“No, what?”

“A letter from U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, thanking Fidel for the letter that he wrote to him when he was fourteen years old.”

Jackie was incredulous. “Fidel wrote a letter to President Roosevelt when he was fourteen?”

Emiliano smiled again. “Yes, but he said he was twelve in the letter. I guess he thought that sounded more impressive.”

Jackie smiled too. “Here I thought only women lied about their age,” she said. “What did he write in the letter?”

“He was learning English, and he addressed the letter to ‘My good friend Roosevelt’ and told him how happy he was that Roosevelt got reelected. Then he wrote, ‘If you like, give me a ten dollar bill green American, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill.”

Jackie laughed. “I don’t suppose he got the ten dollars, did he?”

“No, but he got a very nice form letter that he still has to this day.”

“That’s a cute story,” Jackie said. “A history buff and a Roosevelt fan. I can see how you both wound up in law school. That must have made your parents very proud.”

“It did. I was the first one in my family to even go to college.” Emiliano’s voice dropped to a low tone, almost as if he was speaking to himself, but his eyes were fixed on Jackie’s, and she could see sadness pooling in them. “I wish my father had lived to see me graduate from law school,” he said softly. “That was his dream. But the life of a farmer is a hard one. My father worked ten hours a day in the broiling sun just to put food on the table, hardly eating anything himself most of the time. He died when I was in my junior year of college. My mother was devastated. He was the love of her life, just as she was his.”

“Oh, Emiliano, I’m so sorry,” Jackie said. She squeezed his hand, half expecting him to extricate it from hers the way he had the first time she had reached for it, but he didn’t seem to want to let it go. Overcome with feeling for him, Jackie inched her face closer to his until their lips were almost touching. It felt strange to know that he was waiting for her to make the next move, and yet it excited her to be the one in control for a change. She brushed his lips lightly with hers, testing him. When he didn’t draw back, she threw caution to the wind and kissed him full on the lips, drawing her arms around him as their mouths opened, and the kiss went on and on.

Finally, they pulled part, gasping for air. Emiliano had such a stricken look on his face that Jackie began to laugh. “Emiliano, it’s all right,” she said. “We’re allowed to show affection for each other if we feel it. We’re only human.”

Emiliano shook his head. “Yes, we’re only human, but in circumstances like these”—he pulled the sheet around him and glanced at the narrow space between their beds—“perhaps it would be best if we to try to be superhuman.”

Jackie had to laugh again. “Yes, I guess you’re right,” she said, pulling her own sheet around herself. “This is a pretty slippery slope we’re on here.”

Now it was Emiliano’s hand that reached for Jackie’s and held it just long enough for a warm feeling to suffuse her inside before he gently pulled it away. She took that tender gesture as a plea for understanding that Emiliano was withdrawing from her not because he didn’t find her attractive, but because he did—dangerously so.

“Well, I hope my little bedtime story will help you be able to fall asleep now,” Emiliano said with a hint of irony in his voice.

“Yes, I think I do feel sleepy now,” Jackie said, covering a yawn with her hand. Actually, she felt a kind of dreamy contentment at achieving a breakthrough with Emiliano, brief as it was.

“Good.”

He drew the makeshift curtain across the space between the two beds, and from the other side of it, she could hear him say, “Good night, Jacqueline.”

“Good night, Emiliano,” Jackie said, settling herself down in bed again. But she knew that, with the feel of his strong hand in hers and that delicious kiss lingering in her mind, it would be hours longer before she could shut her eyes and enjoy the welcome release of sleep.