Hemingway gave her a flat look. “We’re still talking about Nazis, my dear.”
Dietrich’s smile was as pleasant as before. “And which term, dear Ernest, would be the more insulting?”
“Maricón,” said the writer. “The local code of machismo would have even more contempt for a passive, feminine homosexual. The word connotes weakness and cowardice.”
“Then it is maricón that I shall reserve for the Nazis,” said Dietrich with an air of finality.
“Well,” said Martha Gellhorn, and paused.
Well, I thought. Interesting. Dinner with an Abwehr agent—most probably two agents—but most definitely with the half sister of Hermann Goering’s wife… If all this talk of maricónes and perverts was upsetting Helga Sonneman, she certainly showed no sign of it. Her smile was as fresh and seemingly sincere as ever, as if she were being amused by a private joke—although whether the joke was all this crude talk about her Nazi acquaintances or “Teddy Shell’s” growing unease, or both, it was difficult to tell.
Gellhorn had begun talking, discussing her own travel plans for the coming weeks.
“I’ll be going to St. Louis next week to visit my family,” Gellhorn was saying. “But later in the summer… probably in July… I’ve arranged an interesting project.”
Hemingway’s head snapped up. It was my guess that this was the first he had heard of this interesting project.
“Colliers is willing to pay me to go on a six-week fact-finding cruise around the Caribbean,” said Gellhorn. “The islands in wartime and all that rot. There’s a thirty-foot sloop they’re willing to hire for the trip and even pay three Negro crewmen to travel with me.”
“That’s my wife!” boomed Hemingway in a strong voice that I heard as being a bit hollow. “Planning to spend our summer sailing around the islands with three Negroes. Thirty-five ships sunk a week and it’s bound to get worse. Is Colliers paying for the insurance policy, Marty?”
“Of course not, darling,” said Gellhorn with a return smile. “They know that the U-boats would never harm the wife of such a famous writer.”
Dietrich leaned closer to Gellhorn. “Martha, darling, it sounds wonderful. Fascinating. But a thirty-foot boat… it is small for a six-week journey, yes?”
“Yes,” answered Hemingway, rising to bring a bottle of brandy back to the table. “Eight feet shorter than our own Pilar.” He stood holding the bottle by the neck and looked at Gellhorn as if he wished it were her neck in his hand. “Patrick and Gigi are coming in July, Marty.”
Gellhorn looked up at him. Her gaze was not quite defiant but definitely unflinching. “I know that, Ernest. I’ll be here for the beginning of their visit. And you’ve said for years that you wanted more time alone with them.”
The writer nodded solemnly. “Especially with this goddamn war closing in.” He seemed to shake himself from his low mood. “Enough of this dark talk. Shall we have our brandy out on the terrace? It’s a clear night, and the breeze will keep the mosquitoes away.”
GELLHORN AND DIETRICH HAD GONE BACK in the house to look at something. Schlegel was smoking a cigarette in moody silence, the long, black cigarette holder adding to his Prussian aristocrat image. Sonneman sat close to Hemingway in the comfortable wooden chairs. It had rained earlier, and the night smelled of wet grass, moist palm fronds, dripping mango trees, and the distant sea. The stars were bright, and we could see lights far below the hill. We could also see lights up the hill from us… and hear laughter and the sound of a piano.
“Damn that Steinhart,” muttered Hemingway. “Another party. I warned him.”
Oh, Christ, I thought.
But this time Hemingway did not call for the bamboo tubes and the fireworks. Instead, he suddenly said, “We’ll be doing some scientific research this summer.”
“Oh?” said Sonneman, her eyes sparkling even in the faint light of the candles in hurricane lamps set around the patio. “What kind of research, Ernest?”
“Oceanographic,” said Hemingway. “The American Museum of Natural History has asked us to do some studies of currents, depths, migratory habits of marlin… that sort of thing.”
“Really?” said Sonneman, glancing at Schlegel, who appeared drunk. She swirled the last of her brandy in the big glass and said, “I have several friends at the American Museum. Who is it that authorized this fascinating research, Ernest? Was it Dr. Herrington, or perhaps Professor Meyer?”
Hemingway smiled, and I realized that he was also quite drunk. The writer never showed the effect of the day’s drinking in his speech or balance or general mannerisms, but I realized that enough alcohol made him mean and a bit reckless. It was a fact that I took note of. “Damned if I remember, Daughter,” he said smoothly. “It was Joe here they sent down to work with me on it. Who authorized it, Señor Lucas?”
Sonneman turned the full radiance of her smile on me. “Was it Freddie Harrington, Mr. Lucas? It would seem to be his department.”
I frowned slightly. Schlegel had roused himself sufficiently to glower at me in a sort of piggy insolence. I wondered if all the talk of maricónes and bujarones had hit a little too close to home for the soft, bald man. To Sonneman I said, “No, Harrington is in the ichthyology department, isn’t he? Except for the marlin study, we’re concentrating on oceanographic soundings, temperature readings, isobathic readings, chart updates… that sort of thing.”
Sonneman leaned closer. “So it was Professor Meyer who found the money? He was always involved in their oceanographic program, as I remember.”
I shook my head. “Dr. Cullins in cartography and oceanographic studies is the man who hired me.”
The woman frowned slightly. “Peter Cullins? A short little man? Ancient as Methuselah? Tends to wear plaid vests that clash with his suits?”
“Dr. Howard Cullins,” I said. “He’s not much older than me. Thirty-two or thirty-three, I’d guess. He just took over the department from Sandsberry. I think Professor Meyer was in charge of diorama displays, wasn’t he? He died last December, I believe.”
“Oh, my, yes,” said Sonneman, shaking her head at her own foolishness. “It must be the wine. I don’t believe I’ve ever met Dr. Cullins, but I hear that he is famous for his cartographic knowledge.”
“He published a book about two years ago,” I said. “The Unknown Seas. A sort of history of seagoing scientific expeditions from the voyage of the Beagle to modern-day arctic explorers. It actually sold to the public.”
“Cullins probably got my name from the ichthyologist Henry W. Fowler,” said Hemingway. “I’ve been sending Henry information on marlin migration for more than ten years. In 1934, I took Charlie Cadwalader out on an oceanographic exploration from Key West. I’ve been dabbling in this stuff for years.”
“Charles Cadwalader?” said Sonneman. “Director of the Museum of Natural Sciences Academy of Philadelphia?”
“The same,” said Hemingway. “He loved drinking Tom Collinses while trying to land marlin.”
“Well,” said Sonneman, turning to squeeze Hemingway’s hand, “good luck to all of you in your scientific mission. Good luck to all of us.”
We drank the last of our brandy in toast.
JUAN DROVE SCHLEGEL and Sonneman back to the dock where a speedboat from the Southern Cross would be waiting. Helga had promised to come back for the finca’s Sunday soirée. There were hugs and handshakes. Theodor Schlegel roused himself from his sullen torpor long enough to thank his host and hostess for “a very illuminating evening.”
I started to excuse myself, to leave the Hemingways alone with their actress friend, but Hemingway told me to stay. One more glass of brandy later, Dietrich announced that she was sleepy and was ready to turn in. Gellhorn led her down the path to the guest house, the two women still talking with animation.
When we were alone, the writer said, “Where the hell did you get all that stuff, Lucas? The American Museum stuff?”
“You’ll find two very expensive long-distance calls to New York on
your phone bill,” I said.
“You’re lucky,” said Hemingway. “Usually it takes hours to get through to New York. If we can at all.”
I looked him in the eye. “Why did you feel the need to play that game? If one or both of them really works for the Abwehr, it was dangerous and stupid.”
Hemingway looked down the path. “What do you think of her, Lucas?”
I was startled by the question, then realized that he had to be talking about Sonneman. “Helga?” I said. “She’s very, very cool. If she’s a German agent, she is twenty times the actor that Teddy Shell is.”
Hemingway shook his head. “The Kraut,” he said softly. “Marlene.”
I had no idea why he was asking me for an appraisal of his friend. Then I remembered that the writer was very drunk. It was easy to forget with his measured diction and steady hands. “She’s a lady,” I said. “Very beautiful.”
“Yes,” said Hemingway. “She has that beautiful body… the timeless loveliness of her face. But you know something, Lucas?”
I waited.
“If Marlene had nothing but her voice… nothing but that… she could still break your heart.”
I shifted uneasily. This sort of personal conversation was not part of our arrangement. “Do you want to…” I began.
Hemingway held up one finger. “You know,” he said, still looking down the path where his wife and the actress had disappeared into the lighted cottage, “I’m never happier than when I’ve written something that I know is good and she reads it… and likes it.”
I followed his gaze into the darkness. He could have been talking about Gellhorn, but I was sure that he was not, that he meant Dietrich.
“I value the Kraut’s opinion more than the most famous critic’s, Lucas. Do you know why?”
“No,” I said. It was late. Dietrich was staying for the weekend, they had their damned parties ahead of them, and I wanted to show Hemingway the codebook and get some sleep.
“She knows about things,” said Hemingway. “Knows about the things that I write about in my books. Do you know what I write about, Lucas?”
I shook my head. “Make-believe people and events?” I said at last.
“Fuck you,” said the writer, but he said it in Spanish, softly, and with a smile. “No, Lucas. I write about real people, and the countryside, and life, and death, and matters of honor, and behavior. And I value the Kraut’s opinion because she knows about those things… all those things. And she knows about love. She knows more about love than anybody you’ve ever met, Joe Lucas.”
“All right,” I said. I lifted my empty brandy glass from the wide arm of the wooden chair and ran my finger around the rim. “Do you want to see the codebook?”
Hemingway’s eyes seemed to come into sharper focus. “You did it? You decoded it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, goddamn,” said the writer. “What are we standing out here for? Marty will be down there gabbing with Marlene for at least half an hour. Let’s go into the old kitchen and see what the Nazis were saying to each other out there in the sea and the dark.”
We had retrieved the codebook and were almost to the old kitchen when there was a pounding on the front door. I slipped the book into my jacket pocket just as Hemingway opened the door.
Two policeman were standing there. They were keeping a tight grip on a squirming, struggling, protesting, weeping Maria Marquez.
15
HEMINGWAY ASSESSED the situation immediately.
In Spanish, he cried to Maria, “Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you!” Then he stepped forward and took the struggling girl from the surprised policeman.
These were not National Police, or even Havana cops. They wore the dirty uniforms of the provincial constabulary. One of the men had no cap, and his greasy hair hung down over his right eye. Both looked as if they had been struggling with a panther. The taller and older of the two straightened his rumpled uniform before addressing the writer in Spanish.
“Señor Hemingway, we regret to intrude upon your household at his time of night, but…”
“It is completely permissible,” Hemingway said, still in Spanish. “We have been dining until only minutes ago. Come in. Please enter.”
The two policemen stepped into the foyer. Both were glowering at the whore as if uncertain whether they should grab her again. But Hemingway had his right arm linked under Maria’s left arm now, his big hand around her thin wrist, and he was holding her as if she were a skittish colt. The young woman’s hair was wild and her face was lowered, but sobs still wracked her.
“Señor Hemingway,” began the senior man again, “this woman… she says that her name is Celia. She was reported by people in San Francisco de Paula. It seems that she has been wandering there all evening… we found her sleeping in a barn belonging to Señorita Sanchez.”
Hemingway was smiling at the policemen, but his voice was hard when he said, “Is it against the law to sleep in someone’s barn, Officer?”
The older policeman shook his head, realized that he was still wearing his cap, and took it off quickly, tucking it under his arm. Hemingway might have been a yanqui, but he was still an important man, a famous writer, a friend of many important people in Havana and in Cuba’s government. “No, no, Señor… I mean, yes, it is technically a crime of trespass… but no, we are arresting this girl because the National Police have asked us to look for such a person. An Havana jinetera named Maria wanted for questioning in a murder…” The cop had used the polite word for “prostitute.” He cleared his throat and began again. “This woman, she says that she works for you here in this house, Señor Hemingway…”
“Of course she does,” boomed Hemingway, grinning at the policemen again. “She’s worked here for months… although ‘work’ might be an exaggeration. Her mother said that she would be a good servant, but so far all the girl has done is mope from homesickness.” He turned to the whore. “Celia, were you running away home again?”
Maria kept her face lowered, but she nodded and snuffled.
Hemingway patted her head affectionately. “Ah, well… a good staff is so hard to find these days, gentlemen. Thank you, Officers, for returning her. Would you care to stay for a nightcap?”
The two policemen looked at one another, obviously feeling control of the situation slipping out of their hands. “I think…” said the older one. “I mean, Señor Hemingway, we should probably bring this girl into Havana. I mean, the National Police warrant had said—”
“No need for that,” said Hemingway, walking to the door. “If you drive her down there, someone will just have to drive her back here before morning. You’ve done your duty, Officers. Are you sure you don’t want a small drink?”
“No, no, thank you, Señor Hemingway.” The older man put his cap back on as the writer escorted them out the door onto the front terrace.
“Then you must stop by for one of our Sunday barbecues,” Hemingway said expansively. “Mayor Menocal will be here this Sunday. Please honor us with your presences, Officers.”
“Yes, yes, thank you,” said both men, knuckling their foreheads as they backed down the path toward the gate.
Hemingway waved from the terrace, using his left hand to wave because his right hand was still locked around Maria’s wrist. As soon as the officers’ ancient car wheezed down the drive, he pulled Maria inside where I was waiting.
“You,” he said softly to the whore, “please go in the new kitchen and sit there until we call for you.”
Marquez nodded and went without a word.
“Maldonado will hear about this and come up here,” I said. “To check it out.”
The writer shrugged his large shoulders. “Then I will have to shoot Maldonado,” he said. “It is overdue.” He was still speaking in Spanish, even though I had spoken to him in English.
I OPENED THE CODEBOOK on the table in the old kitchen. No one else was in the house except for Maria, who could not hear through the walls and thick
doors.
My notes were in the codebook, but I had not yet filled in any of Kohler’s grids. I jotted the word Brazilians above the first grid and blocked out the appropriate spaces.
The grid looked like this:
“How did you get that key word?” he said. “And how did you know which spaces to block out?”
“It was the first word on page one hundred nineteen of Geopolitík,” I said.
“How did you know which page to look at?”
“The preface to the transmission said that it was page nine and it was transmitted on April 29,” I said. “They were using April 20 as their baseline.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “April 20 was zero. That’s the one hundred and tenth day of the year. So ‘page nine’ is actually page one-nineteen. The first word on that page is Brazilians.”
“All right,” said Hemingway. “What about the blacked-out squares?”
“They assign numbers according to the key word—Brazilians,” I said. “The first letter in the word is B—which is the second letter of the alphabet. So I blacked out the second space. In this case, they were using a simple alphabet substitution for numbers… k being zero and x being a dummy letter. The preface transmission was ‘x-k-k-i-x’… which translated as ‘page zero-zero-nine,’ which… starting from the April 20 zero point, was page one-nineteen.”
Hemingway nodded.
“The second letter of Brazilians,” I pointed out, “is r, which, not counting the letter k reserved for zero, is the seventeenth place. So I counted seventeen spaces from the first blocked-out square here in the second spot and blocked out another one. Then the letter a is the first letter, so—”
“I get it,” Hemingway said impatiently. “Where’s the code?”
I showed him Kohler’s notes on the facing page. “Subtract the two opening groups of five,” I said, “because they’re dummies, then take away the page code ‘x-k-k-i-x’, and the actual transmission for April 29 begins here.” I pointed.