Spy in a Little Black Dress

XXIII



The most famous living writer in America waited nearby, visibly impatient, as Jackie said her good-byes to Emiliano and Gabriela by the shoreline. The young Cuban woman hugged Jackie, holding her so tight that Jackie felt like she might break in two—or was that just the emotion she was feeling? Tears in her eyes, Gabriela said, “I was an orphan for so long. I barely remember my parents. And now you have restored my family to me. I will be forever in your debt.”

Jackie found herself too moved to speak.

After a kiss on both cheeks, Gabriela moved to one side, and Emiliano took her place. “Do you remember what you told me in the truck after we left Havana?” he asked Jackie.

She looked at him, mystified.

“You said one person is more important than a single cause. Do you recall?”

She nodded.

“I think you might have been right.”

Jackie looked at him closely. “And what made you change your mind?”

“Let’s just say one brave woman’s act of self-sacrifice,” he answered with a little smile.

Well, Jackie thought, once again Emiliano had managed to surprise her. Maybe there was hope for this Cuban revolutionary movement after all.

Emiliano reached out with both arms and pulled her into his warm embrace.

“I will miss you, Jacqueline Bouvier, miss you more than I can say.”

“And I you.”

Emiliano leaned down and kissed Jackie full on the lips. Jackie knew that this was the last time this would happen and the memory of this kiss would have to last for a long time. The kiss simultaneously seemed to go on forever and was over in the blink of an eye. She didn’t recall who broke it off first, but suddenly, there they were, with Emiliano holding her at arm’s length. The time had come to say good-bye.

“Mi corazón,” whispered Emiliano tenderly. Jackie felt as though her own corazón might break in two.

There was more that they wanted to say to each other, much more. But there was not enough time to say it. So perhaps it was better to say nothing at all and let the silence do all the talking. They just stood there, holding each other and looking longingly into each other’s eyes until Papa barked out, “The tide’s coming in, and I’m not getting any younger. So could we please haul anchor? Now!”

The mood broken, Jackie and Emiliano reluctantly let go of each other. Then Jackie had an idea and said, “Come with us.”

“What?” Emiliano asked.

“Come with us. To America. You too, Gabriela. Sanchez knows who you are. Your lives are in jeopardy if you remain here. So come to America, where you’ll be safe.”

Emiliano looked at Gabriela, who adamantly shook her head, and turned his attention to Jackie.

“I’m sorry, but this we cannot do,” he said. “Cuba is our home. We are committed to a cause. To leave now would be an act of cowardice on both our parts. So we must stay to make things better for our people.” Emiliano paused, his voice strained with emotion, then said, “Jacqueline, I hope you understand.”

“I do,” Jackie replied, fighting hard to keep the emotion out of her voice, knowing Emiliano would appreciate her more if she dropped the subject.

Papa gave a loud ahem. It was definitely time to go. Giving Emiliano one last look, trying to fix his handsome, noble face in her mind forever, Jackie abruptly broke off contact and followed Papa through the shallows and up onto the fishing well of Pilar. There were tears in her eyes. She wiped them away and looked back. But it was too late. Emiliano and Gabriela had melted into the shadows.


Pilar sailed through the purple Caribbean night, the moon above playing hide-and-seek through the clouds. Jackie stood beside Papa on the flying bridge of the fishing boat, watching as he adjusted the helm and throttle and navigated by the light of the compass binnacle to pilot his way around the eastern tip of the island, past Guantánamo Bay, and headed northwest into the Atlantic Ocean toward Key West, the southernmost point of the United States, where Papa also kept a home.

“It’s a good thing I was fishing in the vicinity when the call from the embassy came,” Papa explained.

Standing alongside him, Jackie’s thoughts were still with Emiliano and Gabriela. She wished them well. She knew how difficult their fight for freedom would be. Hiding in the jungle with Fidel and his men. Living off the land. Fear of betrayal at every turn. Suddenly, a memory of Jacques came unbidden to her mind, and she wondered why it was that she was always falling for men only to have them leave her for the causes that were really their true passion.

Papa’s words intruded on her reverie. “So you’re it, daughter? Their man in Havana. Or should I say woman? Who’da thunk it?”

Papa slapped the helm with one meaty hand, and Jackie smiled. Hemingway went to such lengths to sound more like a backwoods hunter than a famous literary lion, and having adopted the name “Papa,” he felt it only right to call younger women “daughter.”

“I didn’t know you worked for the CIA,” Jackie said. There was a strong breeze on the flying bridge, and she buttoned her shirt to the neck to ward off the cold.

“I let the CIA know they could always depend on me if I was in Cuba and they needed something,” Papa said. “I did the same thing for the U.S. government during the war. I volunteered to work as a U-boat spotter. Fitted out Pilar with weapons and special electronics equipment and used her to hunt U-boats trolling these waters. Called us the Hooligan Navy, they did. We never found any of those Nazi U-boats, but that doesn’t matter. The way I figure it, word of our antisubmarine patrol got out and kept them away.”

Jackie smiled at Papa again. Obviously, he couldn’t envision any outcome other than one that cast him in a heroic light. She suddenly shivered from the dropping temperature.

“If you’re cold, daughter, I’ve got some sweaters belowdecks,” Papa said. “Just take any one you like. Mary might have left one or two behind too.” Jackie knew that he was making a reference to his fourth and current wife. She’d read somewhere that Mary was nine years younger than Hemingway and that he called her “daughter” too.

Papa’s cabin was located right below the flying bridge. Jackie found it littered with clothes and fishing and nautical equipment, like the combined inventory of Abercrombie & Fitch and a ship chandler’s had been dumped in there. The only thing she could find to wear that looked appropriate was a tattered, faded fisherman’s sweater. She put it on, and it almost swallowed her up.

When she returned to the flying bridge, she saw that Papa wore a concerned look. Before she could ask him what was the matter, he said, “See those running lights in the distance?” He pointed to off to starboard and abaft Pilar. Jackie looked in that direction and could see the running lights of a boat coming up fast, looking like it was headed on an interception course with Pilar.

“I don’t like it,” Papa said, assessing the situation. “Going too fast for a fishing boat. Probably a Cuban patrol boat. We gave the country six of our Coast Guard patrol boats during the war. They’re faster than Pilar, more powerful engines. If it is them, we just have to hope we get to the three-mile limit before they catch up with us. Once we’re in international waters, there’s nothing they can do to us.”

“And if they do catch up with us?” Jackie asked, fearing the worst.

“Let’s just hope they don’t and leave it at that for now.”

Papa pulled out a pair of binoculars from a nearby cupboard and put the glass to the boat that was narrowing the gap with every passing minute. He put down the binoculars and pulled a face. “Damn it to hell, it’s the Cuban navy, all right.”

Jackie felt a chill as she realized that the long arm of Colonel Sanchez was reaching out to pull her back. And now he had called on the Cuban navy for assistance. Heaven only knew what story he’d told them to get her back in his clutches.

Papa pushed forward on the boat’s throttle and said, “C’mon, sweetheart, let’s see what you can do.”

Despite the danger she was in, Jackie had to smile hearing Papa refer to his boat as a woman (in fact, Pilar was the pet name of his second wife, Pauline). In Paris, Jackie had known a safecracker who said that opening a safe was like seducing a woman. She wondered what it was about men that constantly caused them to liken inanimate objects—safes, boats, race cars, and such—to women.

“They’re gaining on us,” Papa said, looking back. The three-mile limit was not far off now, but it was anyone’s guess whether Pilar would get to it before the patrol boat got to them. Turning forward again, Papa said to Jackie, “Hey, daughter, do me a favor and take the helm for a minute.”

Jackie looked surprised but immediately grabbed the wheel, which turned out to be a steering wheel from a car, good for easier handling. If she could steer an amphibious vehicle up the Seine on a wild chase to save a princess’s life, she could surely keep this fishing boat on course. As she took firm hold of the wheel, Papa disappeared down the ladder, and she could hear him rummaging in the locker directly under the flying bridge. When he returned, he carried a weapon that Jackie recognized from her firearms course at the Farm as a Browning automatic rifle, more commonly referred to as a BAR. As she watched, Papa slapped a clip into the slot beneath the rifle and said, “Say hello to my little friend. Kept it as a souvenir from my sub-hunting days. Knew it would come in handy eventually.”

“What do you plan on doing with it?” Jackie suspected that the Cuban patrol boat had more powerful weapons onboard.

“Maybe I’ll fire off a clip or two if they get too close. Give ’em a shave and a haircut. They can keep the two bits.” Papa smiled at Jackie, but she knew that although he meant well, his bravado was as inflated as his expanding gut.

“Maybe you should have just dropped me off at Guantánamo,” Jackie said, dubious at whether one BAR could stand up to the patrol boat’s superior firepower.

“Couldn’t. Under orders not to. The last thing the CIA wants to do is get the U.S. Navy involved in your assignment. Too many embarrassing questions to be answered.”

Jackie couldn’t help but notice that Papa sounded a lot like Harry Morgan, the smuggler hero in his novel To Have and Have Not.

“Mind if I take a look?” Jackie asked Papa as he took the wheel back from her.

He handed her the binoculars and Jackie put the glass on the Cuban patrol boat. It was bristling with machine guns and cannons and looked like a giant seaborne wasp with a lot of extra stingers.

Jackie returned the binoculars to Papa and said, “I think you’re going to need a bigger gun.”


Only several minutes had passed, but in those moments, it had become obvious that the Cuban patrol boat was going to catch up to them before they could reach the three-mile limit. You had to give Papa credit, though. He never panicked. He was the true exemplar of his own phrase “grace under pressure.” Instead of looking panic-stricken, he scrunched up his features as though deep in thought.

After a minute, Jackie put her hand on his arm and said, “Papa?”

Papa shook himself out of his stupor and said, “I’ve got an idea, daughter. You mind the wheel till I get back.”

Once again, Papa descended the ladder to the fishing well and rummaged around in the locker beneath the flying bridge. Judging from the racket he was making, that locker must have been as overstuffed as Fibber McGee’s closet. A slight explosive pop from the fishing well startled her, but Jackie held on to the wheel, looking at the compass binnacle occasionally to make sure that Pilar remained on course.

A fog bank appeared from out of nowhere. Jackie could barely see the running lights of the patrol boat and knew that the mist had bought them a little more precious time.

Papa clattered back up the ladder, knotted an anchored piece of rope over one of the steering wheel spokes to hold it in place—a very crude form of autopilot—and told Jackie to come with him. She followed Papa down the ladder and immediately saw that the fishing well was taken up with an inflated yellow life raft. Before she could ask its purpose, Papa began to speak.

“I’ve thought it all out, and this is our only choice. This is a small boat. There’s no place to hide. If the Cubans board us and search Pilar, they’ll be sure to find you. And I don’t think I can pass you off as my first mate. Then they’ll haul you back to Cuba and throw you in the deepest, darkest prison cell you’ve ever seen, and you probably won’t be heard from again.”

“Me? What about you?”

“I’ll just play dumb. A role that comes naturally to me.” Papa smiled at Jackie, a token attempt to break the tension. “Say you chartered my boat for a tour of the island.”

“At night?”

“I’ll tell ’em you’re too fair-skinned to go sightseeing during the day.”

Jackie looked at Papa. Who knew that the author of A Farewell to Arms could be so funny?

Papa’s expression suddenly changed to one of complete seriousness.

“So the only thing for you to do is take off in this life raft.”

Jackie laughed, thinking that Papa was making another joke. But when she looked into his face, she could see he wasn’t laughing with her.

“You can’t be serious.”

“As a heart attack, daughter. I am.”

Jackie looked horrified and could tell that the expression on her face had registered with Papa.

“Don’t worry. I’ve tied an eighty-pound test-fishing line to the raft and will cleat it to this davit.” He pointed to a davit on the stern transom. “It’ll pay out five hundred yards, so you’ll be far enough away there’s no chance of the patrol boat spotting you in the water. Besides, they’ll be concentrating on me and Pilar and not what’s out there.” He motioned with his hand to take in the wide expanse of the Atlantic. “And this line’ll be invisible to ’em. I’ll just reel you out and, after they’re gone, reel you back in. Easy as your mother’s apple pie.”

Jackie wanted to tell Papa that her mother had never made an apple pie in her life but chose instead to utter the more pertinent, “But what if something goes wrong and I end up adrift?”

“It won’t happen. This is the same line I used to reel in a five-hundred-pound marlin. It’ll more than hold you and the raft. But if it does break, Florida is only ninety miles away. Look at this map—it’s nothing.”

To prove his point, he removed a map from the life raft, unfolded it and placed his thumb over the narrow gap between Cuba and Key West.

“You don’t even have to steer or paddle,” Papa went on. “The Gulf Stream is right there and will take you straight to Florida. It’s like a highway in the ocean. And if worse comes to worst, I’ll call the coast guard as soon as the patrol boat leaves, and they’ll send out a PBY to search for you and pick you up.” Jackie knew that a PBY was a Catalina flying boat, used by both the navy and the coast guard for air-sea rescue operations.

She could not believe she was hearing this. Papa was going to abandon her to the elements.

He continued, “Besides, I’ve provisioned this life raft for just that emergency, and here’s what you’ve got. A map of the waters between Cuba and Florida. Enough K rations to last for a week. Enough water to last for a week. One compass. One fishing hook—that’s if you run out of food, which definitely won’t happen. One flashlight, in a waterproof pouch. Spare flashlight batteries, also in a waterproof pouch. One flare gun, for when you spot that PBY. Some spare flares; the gun’s easy to reload. And here, I’ll even throw in my binoculars so you can catch sight of that PBY early.”

He took the binoculars from around his neck, threw them into the life raft, and went on, “There’s a blanket in case you get cold. Oars if you feel like rowing. And a canvas cover to keep the sun and spray off you. Oh, and if you get bored during the day, I’ve thrown in a book. It’s by my late friend Scott, This Side of Paradise. It has the strengths and weaknesses of all first novels, but you’ll still find it entertaining. Okay, I guess that’s about it. Are you ready?”

Jackie looked at him. “No.”

“What’s the holdup?”

“This sounds like a desperate maneuver to me.”

“It is. Unfortunately, it’s the only one we have left in this chess match.” So, Jackie noted, even in life, Papa couldn’t resist a sports metaphor.

“Then I have no choice, do I?”

“Not unless you want to spend time in a Cuban jail, which will not be anywhere near as luxuriously appointed as this life raft.”

Jackie sighed. She knew that she had run out of options. It was risk either the open sea or the close confines of a Cuban jail cell. She had already been incarcerated twice during her visit to Cuba and guessed she would choose the former any day of the week.

Papa could obviously sense that she was stalling. “Okay, here’s the thing,” he said. “We have to get you in the water… now. You have to be far enough away by the time they get here. And that’s going to be at any moment now.”

In the weakest of voices, Jackie said, “Okay, let’s do it.”

“Great. I knew you were as game as you looked.”

As Jackie watched, Papa lowered the life raft over the low stern of Pilar on the port side, where the fishing boat itself would mask this activity from the oncoming patrol boat.

“Okay, daughter, your turn.”

He helped Jackie cross the fishing well to the stern. Before she went over the side, she stalled again. Then she drew courage from her reservoir of inner strength and started to put one leg over the low stern of the craft.

Papa held her arm to steady her and said, “In my life, I’ve known plenty of brave women. Young girls who fought the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. Housewives and mothers who served in the French Resistance during World War II. But I have to say, daughter, that you’re the bravest woman I’ve ever seen.”

A melancholy expression suddenly transformed Papa’s usually ebullient face. It was like he was looking back to the past or peering into the future and had seen something troubling. Jackie understood that, like the currents surrounding the waters of Cuba, there was a darkness in Hemingway’s psyche, and this darkness disturbed his otherwise confident demeanor.

Jackie also knew that Papa was playing a kind of trick on her. She had once read that in order to get soldiers to volunteer for a particularly dangerous artillery position, Napoléon had posted a sign that read, “This battery is manned by the bravest soldiers in the army.” Apparently it worked for Napoléon, for he couldn’t keep his men away from that suicidal battery.

Despite her foreknowledge, it looked like the ploy was going to work again here, because Jackie climbed over the stern of Pilar and into the life raft, which began to bob up and down in the water as it adjusted to her weight. Jackie quickly sat and got her bearings. As she looked up, she saw Papa holding the fishing reel whose line was attached to the life raft. He looked down at her and whispered, “Godspeed, daughter. I’ll see you in a little while.”

Papa stood there, looking over the stern as he paid out the fishing line from the reel, and the life raft slowly began to drift away from Pilar. Jackie sat in the raft and watched as the fog bank lifted and the running lights of the fishing boat could be seen receding into the distance.

They were soon joined by a second set of running lights, obviously belonging to the Cuban patrol boat. It looked like Jackie had gotten off Pilar in the proverbial nick of time. Now all she had to worry about was that the moon, once again ducking behind the clouds, might put in another appearance at any moment, illuminating her, and that she was not far enough away and would be spotted by the patrol boat’s searchlight if it should turn in her direction.

From this vantage point, she watched breathlessly as the running lights of the Cuban patrol boat circled around the now stationary running lights of Pilar. Then these running lights stopped too, and Jackie knew that Papa’s fishing boat was about to be boarded. She hoped he had put away that silly BAR; it could only get him hurt.

Suddenly, the searchlight from the patrol boat stabbed out through the night. Jackie instinctively ducked and peered over the edge of the life raft. But the searchlight passed harmlessly overhead as it continued its circuit of the surrounding ocean, and she felt safe once more.

The life raft continued to drift away from the two stationary boats, whose running lights grew smaller and smaller until they were no larger than the stars that dotted the night sky of the Atlantic. Jackie began to get a very bad feeling. Surely, at some point, the lights should have stopped receding and remained fixed. Something must have gone wrong. The line must have come loose from the davit. Or maybe it had been spliced in two by the patrol boat’s propeller. Whatever the case, she felt certain that she was no longer attached to Pilar and was now drifting through the Atlantic.

Jackie started to panic. She was afraid of being all alone in this ocean, afraid that Papa had miscalculated how easy it was to get back to the U.S., afraid that the life raft would slip past the PBY that was sure to come out searching for her and she would die of starvation or lack of water before she encountered land.

Her first instinct was to call out for help, but she just as quickly stifled herself; that would only bring the Cuban patrol boat to her. Her second instinct was to grab a paddle and try to row her way back to Pilar. But then she would surely be spotted by the patrol boat too. Easy, Jackie, she told herself, you’re letting your imagination get the better of you. She talked herself into remaining calm, weighing her options and taking things one step at a time. That was the only way to stay sane in this kind of situation.

An unexpected thought came to her. Jack Kennedy was a sailor. Boy, would she have a story for him the next time they saw each other. And then she realized that this was a top secret mission. There was no way she could ever tell any of this to him, or anyone else for that matter. Too bad, because she was sure it would have impressed the hell out of Jack to know that she had once gone fishing with Papa Hemingway.

The moon continued its game of peekaboo through the clouds. When it disappeared again, Jackie was shocked at just how stygian the ocean around her was. It was an immense darkness, a crushing presence that seemed to go on forever, and Jackie shivered at the knowledge of how small her life raft was compared to the vast ocean. She hoped that Papa was correct and prayed that the Gulf Stream would transport her back to the United States as swiftly as possible.

In the meantime, she shuffled through the provisions until she found what she was looking for—the flashlight and the book. The best way to stay calm, she knew, was to distract herself. So she turned on the flashlight and opened the book and began to read about the Princeton adventures of Amory Blaine.