Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,69

I’m so sorry,” she said with a measure of self-reproach in her tone. “If only I hadn’t left the train. I should have known better.”

Emiliano put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s all right, Jacqueline. You didn’t realize. And I guess it’s better to know we have traveling companions.”

“But how did they manage to find us here?”

“It’s just bad luck that we all ended up taking the same train.”

Jackie frowned, and Emiliano continued to rub her shoulder. She didn’t want him to stop. But eventually, he removed his hand and said, “I guess we’d better have our breakfast before our food gets cold.”

As they ate, they listened for any sound in the outside corridor that might announce the presence of a band of intruders. The fact that the Three Stooges were riding in the next car back and the Mambo King and his men in the next car up made it difficult for Jackie and Emiliano to find any room in which to maneuver. But they knew that something had to happen before the train reached the next station, Santiago de Cuba, the last stop on the railroad.

Just as they were finishing up their tostadas, there was a knock at the compartment door. Jackie looked at Emiliano, who put a finger over his mouth to tell her to keep quiet. Perhaps if they didn’t respond, whoever was knocking would eventually tire and go away. There was a second knock at the door, this one more adamant.

Then a voice spoke from the corridor with a blunt Chicago accent. “We know yer in there. So open up before we make this door look like Swiss cheese.”

Emiliano shrugged. Jackie realized that they didn’t have any choice either. There was nowhere to hide from a fusillade of bullets. So in the end, she watched as he took a deep breath and opened the door.

“So we meet again, lady,” the Mambo King said as he and his two gunsels pushed into the compartment. It was now as crowded as the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera. But unlike the Marx Brothers, there was nothing funny about the three guns the Mambo King and his henchmen had trained on them. Jackie guessed that the Mambo King had left his trademark machine gun back in his own compartment because it was too unwieldy to use here.

Jackie and Emiliano were ordered to sit on the couch. The three men stood opposite them. The Mambo King gave a slight tilt of his head, and his two comrades began to examine the compartment.

“If you tell us what you’re looking for,” Emiliano interrupted, “we might be able to save you some time.”

The Mambo King tilted his head in the opposite direction, and the two men froze in place.

“The treasure map,” the Mambo King said succinctly. “Hand it over, and we’ll let ya live.”

Emiliano was all set to speak when Jackie interrupted him. “All right, I’ll get it,” she said. She stood up and went to the door leading to the adjoining bathroom. The two men tried to stop her, but the Mambo King waved them off.

“Let ’er go,” he told them. “What’s she gonna do, pack a powder puff?”

The two henchmen let out a raucous laugh, a very unpleasant sound to Jackie’s ears. She slid past them, entered the bathroom, and started to close the door, but one of them prevented her. Jackie looked at the Mambo King.

“I’d like some privacy, please.”

The Mambo King shrugged. “Sure. Go ahead. I’ll give ya one minute.”

The last thing Jackie saw as she shut the door was the look of concern on Emiliano’s face. Poor dear, he had no idea what she planned to do.

There it was, resting on the shelf under the mirror in the bathroom—her camera bag. There had been no room for it in the compartment. Jackie opened it quickly and got to work. She figured that she had only forty-five seconds left, more than enough time to work up the nerve to do what she was about to do.

When the door to the bathroom opened again, the Mambo King and his two gunsels looked unprepared for the sight that greeted them. There stood Jackie, a dynamite stick in one hand and Emiliano’s monogrammed silver lighter in the other. The three gangsters had no idea that the lighter was out of fuel, but Jackie prayed that she could bluff them without actually having to use it. She glanced at Emiliano and could see that he was as surprised as the