“Likewise.”
“Good night, Mr. Lucas,” said Winston Guest. “I’ll see you aboard the Pilar, I guess.”
The doctor was panting, still out of breath. He bowed in my direction. Patchi Ibarlucia smiled and squeezed my shoulder.
“No whiskey before you turn in, Lucas?” said Hemingway. His face was serious.
“No,” I said. “Thanks for the dinner.”
I went back to the guest house, changed into dark slacks and a dark sweater, took a small flashlight out of my duffel, and slipped out again to the pig fence and the road. A car had been parked there, just on the wet grass near the road, only a short time before. There were broken branches in the shrubs. At the foot of the pig fence, trampled in the mud, I caught the gleam of a single brass shell casing—a 30.06 I saw as I held it in the thin beam of the flashlight—and recently fired from the smell of it.
I went back up to the finca and stayed outside, just beyond the lights of the terrace where Hemingway and his friends spoke and laughed softly until Cooper finally led the retreat to bed and sleep. Ibarlucia drove the doctor away in a red roadster. Guest left a moment later in a Cadillac. The lights of the finca stayed on another twenty minutes or so and then winked out.
I crouched there in the darkness under the mango trees just below the dark shape of the guest house, listening to the tropical night and the sounds of insects and feeding birds. I thought about actors and writers and boys and their games for a while, then I concentrated on not thinking at all as I listened and waited.
A little before dawn I went in to bed.
8
ON MONDAY MORNING, Hemingway drove us both to the harbor town of Cojímar, where his boat, the Pilar, was anchored. Winston Guest, Patchi Ibarlucia, and Hemingway’s Cuban first mate and cook, Gregorio Fuentes, were waiting to go out with us. From the sideways glances the men gave me and the tone of Hemingway’s voice, I knew that this was going to be some sort of test.
Hemingway had told me to dress for the water, so I was wearing canvas deck shoes, shorts, and a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Hemingway had on his baggy shorts, the Basque espadrilles he had worn to the embassy the previous Friday, and a tattered sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. The mate—Fuentes—was a lean, squint-eyed man with dark skin and a quick, hard handshake. This day the man was wearing black trousers, a loose, long white shirt worn outside his belt, and no shoes or socks. The millionaire, Guest, had on hemp-colored trousers and a short-sleeved, yellow-and-white-striped shirt that emphasized his ruddy complexion. He shifted from one foot to the other and jingled the change in his pocket as we all came aboard. Ibarlucia was dressed like a bullfighter on his day off in tight, white pants and an expensive cotton sweater. As Hemingway showed me the boat and made ready to shove off, I could not help but think that it was a motley crew.
The tour took only a few minutes—the writer was eager to get on the water while the weather was still good—but I could sense the pride Hemingway took in the boat.
At first glance, the Pilar was not overly impressive. Thirty-eight feet long with a black hull and green roof, it looked like any one of a hundred pleasure-fishing boats one would find tied up in Miami or St. Petersburg or Key West. But stepping aboard and following the writer to the bridge, I noted the varnished hardwood in the cockpit beyond the bridge and the bronze plaque on the counter near the throttle and gearshift:
HULL 576
WHEELER SHIPYARD
BOAT MANUFACTURERS
1934
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
The Wheeler Shipyard made good boats. Hemingway paused by the wheel long enough to point out the controls, watching me all the time to see if they meant anything to me. The instrument panel by the wheel had another plaque—which read NORSEMAN POWERED—and four dials beneath it: a tach, an oil level gauge, an engine temperature dial, and an ammeter. There was a vertical lights panel to the left of the helm with the buttons reading, from top to bottom: ANCHOR LIGHT, RUNNING LIGHTS, BILGE PUMP, WIPER, SEARCHLIGHT. A chronometer and a barometer had been mounted on one of the cabin pillars.
Hemingway held out his hand as if introducing me to the boat. “You saw the flying bridge I added?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You can steer and handle the throttle from up there, but you have to start the engines here.” His toe pointed toward two buttons on the deck.
I nodded. “Two engines?” I said.
“Uh-huh. Both diesel, of course. The main motor’s a seventy-five horsepower Chrysler. Second one’s a forty-horse Lycoming. After we get up to speed, I cut off the smaller one to damp vibration. The Chrysler is rubber mounted.” He put his large hand on the throttles. “She stops in her own length, Lucas, and idles in gear with the prop turning.”
I nodded again. “But why the second engine?”
“It’s always good to have an auxiliary,” growled Hemingway.
I did not agree—I doubted if it would be worth the extra weight and maintenance if one took good care of the main engine—but I said nothing.
He stepped back into the sunshine. Guest and Ibarlucia moved aside. Fuentes had gone around to the bow and was kneeling there, ready to untie the bowline.
“Cockpit’s twelve feet wide and sixteen feet long,” said Hemingway.
I looked at the comfortable seats and benches around the long space.
Hemingway walked back and tapped a rear access hatch. “She can carry three hundred gallons of gas and has a hundred-and-fifty gallon tank for potable water. Can load a couple of hundred more gallons of demijohns and drums here in the cockpit if we had to. Forward cabin has two double berths—and there are two more compartments with bunks. Two of ’em have their own heads. Warning, though, Lucas… if you use toilet paper in either of the heads, put it out the porthole, not down the crapper. Paper clogs the goddamned pumps. Anyway, the galley has an icebox and a three-burner alcohol stove.” He gestured aft. “You can see I added a built-in fishbox here and had the stern cut down to within three feet of the water.”
I blinked in the sunlight and waited. Guest and Ibarlucia were watching me.
“Any questions?” said Hemingway.
I shook my head.
“The little compartment forward has two shelves we call the Ethylic Department,” said Winston Guest.
I looked at the big man. “Why is that?”
“It’s where we keep the booze,” said the affable millionaire, and grinned.
“She can do about sixteen knots on a flat sea—I like to hold her down to about eight, usually—and she has a cruising range of about five hundred miles with a crew of seven,” continued Hemingway, ignoring Guest’s comment. “Any questions?” he said again.
“Why did you name it Pilar?” I said.
Hemingway scratched his cheek. “In honor of the shrine and feria at Zaragoza,” he said. “And now I have a character in For Whom the Bell Tolls with that name. I like the name.”
Patchi Ibarlucia had opened a cooler and taken out a cold beer. He popped twice with an opener, raised it, and grinned over the top of the can. “And I think you told me once, Ernestino, that it was a secret pet name for your second Señora—Señorita Pauline—is correct?”
Hemingway glared at the jai alai player. Turning back to me, he said, “Why don’t you cast off the stern lines, Lucas. Wolfer, you get in the bridge and start her up. I’ll go on to the flying bridge to take her out. Patchi, you just drink your goddamn beer—nine-thirty in the morning, for Godssakes—and lounge around in the shade. We’ll wake you up when we get out to where the marlin are running.”
Ibarlucia grinned and slurped his beer loudly. Guest ambled into the cockpit bridge, still jingling his change. Fuentes watched impassively from the bow. Hemingway clambered up the ladder with surprising agility for so stocky a man. I went aft to handle the stern line.
Something was up. There would be some test for me before this cruise was over.
Fuentes and I untied and coiled our lines, shouting the
fact to the flying bridge. The Pilar’s engines both fired, the twin screws turned, and we moved slowly out, turning toward the harbor entrance and open water.
SHORTLY AFTER DAWN ON SATURDAY, I heard Cooper and Hemingway splashing around in the pool, then conversation on the terrace, and finally the sound of Hemingway’s Lincoln driving Cooper away. I had no food in the guest house yet and was expected to eat in the old-fashioned kitchen of the main house—where the help ate—but I still gave Hemingway and his wife time to breakfast before I went around to the kitchen.
Hemingway came into the kitchen briefly as I was having my second cup of coffee under the disapproving eye of the houseboy, René, and Ramón, the cook.
“I’m writing this morning,” Hemingway growled at me. “I’ll try to finish by lunch so you can meet some of the Crook Factory agents.” He was carrying a glass of what looked to be Scotch and soda. It was 7:45 A.M.
The writer noticed my glance. “You disapprove, Lucas?”
“It’s not my place to approve or disapprove of anything,” I said softly. “You want to drink before eight o’clock in the morning, it’s your business. Plus, it’s your house… which makes it doubly your business.”
Hemingway held up the glass. “This isn’t a drink,” he said roughly. “This is the goddamned hair of the goddamned dog that almost bit us last night.” Suddenly he grinned. “That was fun… attacking Steinhart’s… wasn’t it, Lucas?”
“Sure,” I said.
Hemingway came over and took a bit of the bacon and a piece of toast that I had made for myself. He crunched them for a minute. “You think this Crook Factory thing is all a game… a joke… don’t you, Special Adviser Joseph Lucas?”
I said nothing, but my gaze did not contradict his statement.
Hemingway finished the bacon and sighed. “I’m not working on a book of my own now, you know,” he said. “I’m editing an anthology. A book of war writing called Men at War. For the last couple of months, I’ve been reading bargeloads of bullshit that a guy named Wartels up at Crown—he and his toadies—think is crackerjack war writing. They’ve already set a lot of it in type. Things like a stupid, totally phony story by Ralph Bates—all about women machine gunners at Brunette. Didn’t happen. Pure bullshit. While they leave out a beautiful story by Frank Tinker about the Italian disaster at Brihuega.”
Hemingway fell silent for a moment, but I had no opinion on any of this. I said nothing.
He sipped his Scotch and soda for a moment and then looked hard at me. “What do you think of war, Lucas?”
“I’ve never been in a uniform,” I said. “I’ve never fought in a war. I don’t have a right to an opinion.”
Hemingway nodded. His gaze never left mine. “I’ve been in a uniform,” he said. “I was badly wounded on a battlefield before I was twenty years old. I’ve probably seen more wars than you’ve seen naked women. And you want to know what I think about war?”
I waited.
“I think war is a fucking old man’s trick pulled on young men,” snarled Hemingway, breaking the lock of our eyes at last. “I think that it’s a giant grinder that ball-less old farts cram virile young men into so as to eliminate the competition. I think it’s bold, grand, wonderful, and a fucking nightmare.” He drank down the last of his Scotch and soda. “And I think that my oldest boy will be old enough to fight in this fucking, useless war,” he muttered, as much to himself, it seemed, as to me. “And that Patrick and Gigi may have to go as well, if it drags on the way I’m sure it will.”
He went to the door and looked at me again. “I’m going to be working on this introduction until about noon. Then we’ll go around and see some of the field agents working for the Crook Factory.”
HEMINGWAY’S “FIELD AGENTS” turned out to be pretty much the motley crew of cronies, drinking buddies, and old acquaintances that he had described to Bob Joyce and about which I had read in Hoover’s O/C file: Patchi Ibarlucia and his brother were to act as spies between jai alai games; also included were Dr. Herrera Sotolongo’s younger brother, Roberto; a sailor named Juan Dunabeitia whom Hemingway introduced as “Sinsky”—short for Sinbad the Sailor; an exiled Catalan named Fernando Mesa, who worked as a waiter and also helped crew Hemingway’s boat at times; a Catholic priest named Don Andrés Untzaín, who spat each time he mentioned Fascists; some fishermen down along the Havana docks; two rich Spanish noblemen who lived in large houses on hills closer to the city than Hemingway’s farm; a covey of whores in at least three Havana brothels; several wharf rats who smelled of rum; and a blind old man who sat in the Parque Central all day.
Once we were downtown, we spent the rest of Saturday afternoon and evening meeting more “operatives” in the various hotels, bars, and churches that met with Hemingway’s approval: a bellman at the Hotel Plaza, near the park; a bartender named Constante Ribailagua at El Floridita; a waiter at La Zaragozana; a doorman at an opera house called Centro Gallego; a house detective at the Hotel Inglaterra; another priest—this one very young—in the incense-smelling vaults of the Iglesia del Santo Angel Custodio; an ancient Chinaman-waiter at the Pacific Chinese restaurant; a Cuban girl who worked in a beauty parlor on the Prado of Havana; and the old man who ground and roasted coffee beans in the little shop called the Great Generoso, across the street from the Cunard Bar. He introduced me to Angel Martinez, the owner of La Bodeguita del Medio—the bar where I had tried the lousy drink—but evidently this was just a social call, because Martinez was not introduced as “one of my best field agents” as the others had been.
It was about seven P.M. and we had stopped for drinks in half a dozen bars when Hemingway led me into the Café de la Perla de San Francisco—a small restaurant just off the town square with a trickling fountain. The bar was nice enough, made of polished stone, but Hemingway led me past it into the tiny restaurant area.
“Are we eating here?” I said.
“Hell, no. The best thing here is the twenty-five-cent blue-plate special. We’ll go back to the Basque Center for supper…. Marty’s got friends coming to the finca tonight and it’d be better if we don’t get back until later. Uh-uh, I brought you here to show you that fellow.” He nodded toward a man standing near the kitchen doors. The man looked to be Spanish or Cuban, but sported a waxed mustache in the Austrian style, had short-cropped hair, and was glaring at us as if demanding that we either sit down and eat or get the hell out.
“Señor Antonio Rodriguez,” said Hemingway. “But everyone calls him Kaiser Guillermo.”
I nodded. “Another field agent?”
“Hell, no,” said Hemingway. “He’s the owner. Doesn’t know me from Adam, although I’ve had lunch here quite a few times. But if we can’t find any real Nazi spies, I suggest we come back and arrest the Kaiser.”
With that our tour of the Crook Factory personnel was essentially over, except for one busboy at the Basque Club whom Hemingway introduced as “our finest… and our only… courier” as we were waiting for our table to be cleared.
ON SUNDAY, there was no Crook Factory business. At least none that I was invited to attend.
There was a serious party going on all that Sunday afternoon, with people swimming and lounging around the pool, cocktail chatter through the screen doors, the smell of a pig being roasted, and cars coming and going. I identified the Ibarlucia brothers as well as half a dozen other jai alai players, several expatriate Basques, Winston Guest, other wealthy athletes including one I would learn was named Tom Shevlin, and many others I did not know. From the U.S. embassy there was Ellis Briggs with his wife and two children, Bob and Jane Joyce, Ambassador and Mrs. Braden—she was a Chilean aristocrat, I knew, and looked the part, visibly elegant even from fifty paces away.
Earlier, I had asked Hemingway if there was a way other than a bus that I could get into Havana.
“Why?” he said. Meaning, perhaps, that the bars were closed on Sunday morning.
“To go to church,” I said.
Hemingway grunted. “Hell, you can take the
Lincoln when Juan or Marty or I don’t need it. There’s an old Ford coupe, but it’s in the shop right now. Or you could use the bicycle we bought for Gigi.”
“That would be good,” I said.
“Remember, it’s ten miles to the suburbs,” he said. “Twelve to the Old Section.”
“The bike would be fine,” I said.
It was. I left in mid-afternoon when the party was in full swing, calling Delgado from a pay phone in San Francisco de Paula. We met at the safe house.
“Quite a tour you two had yesterday,” said the other SIS man as we stood in the shadowed heat of the little room. Delgado was wearing a white suit with only an undershirt beneath the linen jacket. I could see the butt of his pistol in his waistband.
“You weren’t exactly invisible,” I said.
He rubbed his jaw. “Hemingway didn’t make me.”
“Hemingway wouldn’t catch on if he was being followed by a three-legged ox,” I said. I handed him my report in a sealed envelope.
Delgado broke the seal and began to read. “Mr. Hoover likes his reports typed,” he said.
“That report is for the director,” I said.
Delgado looked up and showed his long teeth. “I’m supposed to see everything that goes to him, Lucas. You have a problem with that?”
I sat down on the rough chair across the table from Delgado. It was very hot and I was very thirsty. “Who were the two men who followed me out to the finca on Friday and were in the Buick behind us yesterday?”
Delgado shrugged.
“Not local FBI?” I said.
“Uh-uh,” said Delgado. “But the tall man following you on foot was Cuban National Police.”
I frowned. “What tall man?”
Delgado’s sharp smile broadened. “I didn’t think you saw him. That’s why I’m here to watch your back, Lucas. You’re too busy boozing it up with that alcoholic writer.” He looked back at my report. The smile faded. “Somebody actually took a shot at you with a thirty-aught-six?”