Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,83
As she looked around at the men and women in fatigues stomping around the rugged terrain in mud-caked army boots or sleeping in hammocks slung between trees, Jackie was certain of only one thing: She was overdressed. She felt like a peacock in a henhouse. The organza evening gown, so elegant at the Mitchells’ gala dinner party, now seemed ridiculous, and the whole, crazy ruse infuriating. But when she saw tuxedo-clad Emiliano, who looked as absurd as she did, wiping his eyes from laughing so hard, Jackie’s anger dissipated, and she had to laugh too.
Fidel Castro beamed a smile at her that made her insides turn to taffy. “Ah, Señorita Bouvier, I trust that you have forgiven me for bringing you here in such an unseemly fashion,” he said in flawless English. Apparently, his fluency in the language had improved greatly since he had dashed off a schoolboy’s letter to the White House. Castro also cut a much more dashing figure tonight than he had when Jackie had first seen him at the Dance Academy. His tight-fitting army T-shirt and paratrooper fatigue pants showed off his tall, strapping physique, and his mass of wavy black hair and finely trimmed mustache set off his ruggedly handsome features. Up here in his heavily forested domain, he looked like a Cuban Robin Hood.
Jackie managed to find her voice. “ ‘Unseemly’ is hardly the word for it, Señor Castro. Terrifying is more like it.” She wanted answers, but seeing the rifle in his hand and knowing his reputation for hotheadedness, she was careful not to provoke him by sounding accusatory. “I’m sure you must have had a good reason for bringing us here like that.”
“A very good reason, Señorita Bouvier.” Castro turned serious. “I needed to inform the two of you about an urgent matter, but I couldn’t let it appear that you were coming here of your own volition. Mr. Mitchell is a good friend of President Batista’s, and it would be very bad for Emiliano if his benefactor knew that he was associated with me.”
“She already knows we have to keep that a secret,” Emiliano said with a trace of impatience in his voice. “So what is this urgent matter that you need to tell us about, Fidel?”
Suddenly, Castro’s jovial manner returned. “I’ll come to that, amigo. First, I’m sure you and Señorita Bouvier would like to change into something more comfortable. And then I’d like to show you what we’ve been doing here.”
Jackie wondered if the matter that had prompted Castro to kidnap them was not really all that urgent or if he was simply giving them time to recuperate from their harrowing journey before springing some bombshell revelation on them.
“This way, por favor,” he said as he motioned for Jackie to slip off her high heels and led them across the craggy, brush-covered grounds. As she looked out over the vista, even in the moonlight, Jackie could see that this was made-to-order guerrilla territory, virtually impenetrable. An advancing column of vehicles would have a hard time navigating the sharply curving ranges that dropped off into steep valleys at every turn, and a foot soldier’s one false step would send him plummeting to his death. But for Jackie, it was an alluring locale. The mountain air was invigorating, and the sound of numerous insects was a pleasant chorale. Even the stray goat chomping on a midnight snack looked quaintly bucolic.
“Here we are,” Castro said, inviting them into a sizable thatched-roof cottage. Jackie was surprised at how comfortable it looked compared to the other rebels’ tents and hammocks that she had seen in the camp. If she and Emiliano had to stay overnight, she was hoping it would be here. Sleeping out in the open, where voracious mosquitoes or other predators, animal or human, might prey on them, did not appeal to her.
Castro offered Emiliano a cigar, and while the men sat at a table smoking, Jackie went into a room to change into fatigues and boots that Castro had given her. She felt terrible that she could not return Stephanie Mitchell’s exquisite gown to her parents, but that seemed impossible under the circumstances. Slipping into the army clothes that, amazingly, didn’t fit her too badly, Jackie had a disturbing thought. She wondered whether she was destined to spend the rest of her life wearing hand-me-downs while her own designer wardrobe moldered away in a closet in Merrywood.
When she came out of the room, Jackie saw that Castro and Emiliano had been