Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,104

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