Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,59
of the city in the proverbial nick of time or Colonel Sanchez had decided not to throw up any more. As he drove, Emiliano turned on the headlights to cut through the gloom and switched on the dashboard radio, tuned to an English-language station in the Florida Keys. Instantly, the truck cab was filled with the swooning voice of Kay Starr singing “Wheel of Fortune.”
After they had been on the road awhile, Emiliano pointed south and said to Jackie, “Over there’s the Bay of Pigs. That’s where Gabriela rescued you from the crocodile farm.”
Jackie had no idea who Emiliano was talking about. “Gabriela?” she said. “Don’t you mean Rosario?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. You know her as Rosario. That’s her underground name. She joined Fidel’s group after Sanchez tried to rape her and she had to coldcock him to escape. Gabriela is her real name.”
Jackie remembered the look on Sanchez’s face as Rosario’s—make that Gabriela’s—blond wig came off, and she shuddered with disgust at the thought of that pig getting his hands on her again.
She turned to Emiliano. “We have to get her out of his clutches,” she said in a voice strained with emotion.
“Fidel knows the situation. We’ll leave it up to him to decide what to do.”
Emiliano’s cool-as-you-please statement was infuriating to Jackie. Her mind was plagued by the sickening image of Gabriela being sexually assaulted by Sanchez.
“How can you be so damned casual about this?”
“I’m afraid it’s the only way I can be.” He glanced over at her as he drove. “Look, Jacqueline, the minute Gabriela joined the rebels, she became a soldier in our army. She knew what the stakes were, the chance she was taking. Now she’s been taken prisoner. That’s part of the fortunes of war. And we’ll do everything we can to free her. But we can’t let that deflect us from our higher cause—freedom for the entire nation of Cuba.”
“So you think one person’s life is less important than your main goal?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Emiliano said, “Yes.”
Jackie turned away from him. If this was what the rebels believed, then maybe she already knew which side of the political spectrum Fidel would ultimately fall on.
They drove in silence for a while. It was an awkward silence filled with unspoken reproach, and Jackie could tell that Emiliano knew from her tightly sealed lips how much his curt response had rankled her.
There was a new song on the radio. Louis Armstrong was singing “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.” Satchmo’s soothing voice seemed to have a conciliatory effect on Jackie. And when she looked at Emiliano, she saw that his mood was mellowing too.
Finally, he looked over at her and said, “Do you want to tell me what’s so important about that reel of film?”
“What reel of film?” Jackie asked, playing innocent.
“The one in your camera bag.”
“You looked through my camera bag?” Jackie bristled at the very idea of Emiliano having had the temerity to examine her things.
“Hardly,” he said, sounding defensive. He hiked his thumb toward the area behind the seats, where Jackie had tossed her bag. Improbably, the reel of film was peeking up through its opening.
Looking sheepish, Jackie said, “Oh, that film reel.”
“Yes. A souvenir from El Teatro de Cinema, I take it.”
Jackie cleared her throat. “This is actually classified information.”
“Well, you can tell me, if you like. Deputy Director Dulles has assigned me Cosmic clearance.”
Jackie thought about it, mentally weighing the pros and cons of confiding to Emiliano what the film reel contained. Finally, she turned to him and said, “Okay. I’ll tell you.” She then went into the entire saga of Walker’s treasure, beginning with her purchase of the antiquated book on Cuba and her accidental discovery of Metzger’s diary and ending with Maheu’s revelation that the key to the treasure’s location could be found in the reel of film. She turned to Emiliano and saw an odd look on his face.
“What?” she asked him.
“From the way you speak about him, I think that on some level you identify with him, this nineteenth-century soldier of fortune.”
Jackie pondered that and said, “I don’t know if I identify with him, exactly. But I’m struck by his story. Here he was, an idealistic young man, signing up as a filibuster to help Walker free Nicaragua, only to find that Walker was totally corrupt and probably crazy in the bargain. Then he returns to the U.S., where he fights for the North in the Civil War, but ends up wondering if any just cause