Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,107
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.
XXIV
Of all the places the raft could have washed ashore, Miami Beach couldn’t have been more inviting. Jackie thought she was dreaming when a handsome lifeguard helped her out of the raft and, after hearing of her predicament, had a beach boy escort her to the magnificent Fontainebleau Hotel. When she contacted Dulles, he was eager to make up for this latest mishap and once again provided her with first-class accommodations.
So now Jackie was swimming laps in the hotel’s gigantic pool. When she counted twenty, she climbed out of the pool and, feeling invigorated from her swim, quick-stepped over to a nearby chaise longue, where she began to dry herself off with a beach towel. Deciding to let her hair dry naturally in the sun, she put down the towel, sat back in her chair, and picked up Papa’s copy of This Side of Paradise (now slightly warped from seawater) and once again immersed herself in Princeton student Amory Blaine’s world of “speeds” and “parlor snakes.”
The book reminded her of her recent ordeal in the Atlantic, two days and nights that she didn’t really want to relive or ever repeat. Unfortunately, Papa’s prediction that she would be picked up by a PBY hadn’t come true. Fortunately, his prediction that she would float back to Florida had come true, although she had bypassed Key West entirely and ended up in Miami Beach instead. Not only had Dulles reserved a room for her at the Fontainebleau, but he had even arranged for a physician on the CIA payroll to see her in her hotel room. The doctor pronounced her healthy, although a little too heavily suntanned. Dulles also wired her money so she could go to the shops in Bal Harbour and buy herself some clothes to replace the ones left behind in Cuba. And now here she was in her new Jantzen swimsuit, poolside at the Fontainebleau, recuperating nicely from her ordeal, and waiting to receive her new orders and return home to D.C. for her debriefing.
As she attempted to read, she heard a familiar-sounding voice and looked up. In the near distance, she caught sight of Arthur Phillips, wearing a crisply pressed Palm Beach suit and looking as at home here as he had in the two places in Cuba where she had bumped into him. She wondered what he was doing here, in Miami Beach, and if it was any coincidence that they were both staying at the same hotel. He was greeted by another man, and the two of them walked to a table under an awning at the far side of the swimming pool, where they ordered drinks and watched pretty young women dive into the deep end from the high board.
It was good that he hadn’t noticed her. In a flash, Jackie gathered up her beach towel, Coppertone suntan lotion, and book and was back in her room. There, she called the front desk and charmed the room number for Arthur Phillips out of the desk clerk. Venturing out into the hallway, she came across a chambermaid and, taking a page from Emiliano’s book, bribed the woman into lending her a spare maid’s uniform and her passkey. She then used the passkey to enter Phillips’s room, where she quickly spotted an open attaché case on a desk near the sliding glass door that led to his terrace. She put down the feather duster she had used to complete her disguise, then began going through the documents Phillips had left unattended in his attaché case.
Returning to her room, she quickly changed into her clothes and neatly folded the spare uniform for the chambermaid to collect. Jackie then went back to the pool area, where Phillips, his meeting over, was now seated by himself, nursing