Green Ice (43 page)

They arrived in Cartagena at eleven that night. There were many large luxurious hotels, such as the Caribe. They were tempted, could use a little first class for a change. But they couldn’t risk it. They settled for a front room on the second floor of a private house that took in tourists. It was on Calle Bonda, practically in the heart of the old walled city.

Across the street from the tourist house was a combination
taverna-lonchería
called El Globo—The Balloon. While Lillian prepared for bed (a wash basin in the corner but the toilet down the hall) Wiley went across the street to El Globo for two fried-egg sandwiches and four bottles of beer, a local beer called Poker.

When he returned to the room, Lillian was on the floor, the bedspread under her, her feet propped on the bed. She sat up for the food. Wiley undressed. Last off were his socks. He took the banded wads of hundreds from them. The money had made an impression on his lower legs. And it was a relief to have that matched pair of brilliant-cut twenty-carat emeralds out from between his big and second toes. He placed the money and the two emeralds on the night stand and sat on the spread opposite Lillian.

A paragraphic moment. His point of view toward her shifted. He was able to see her more as a person than as his love object. He contemplated her—her, intent on the sandwich and the beer. It was strange that she should need to eat and drink. He wondered what her hunger and thirst felt like. There was a childishness to her face, scrubbed honest, an innocence to her arms and shoulders and the recesses of her collarbones. In their time how many different ways would he see her?

Her breasts brought him back to his usual perspective. He leaned forward and kissed one of them and promised, without saying, that after his sandwich and beer he wouldn’t slight the other.

Early the next day they went shopping for a boat.

The two brokers they went to offered boats that were too small for their needs or too large and attention-getting.

They took off on their own, walked along the waterfront of the bay, the Bahia de las Animas. Tied up there were boats of all sizes and sorts. The first likely looking one they came to, Lillian went right aboard. Wiley waited for her to get chucked off. When she didn’t, he went after her.

A stocky, gray-haired man in floral-patterned bathing trunks was hosing down the deck.

“Your boat?” Lillian asked.

“Yes.” His inflection said why.

“Want to sell her?”

“Not really.” The owner was English. He had the type of fair English complexion that couldn’t take much sun, and yet he apparently enjoyed few things more than the feel of the sun on him. He was more red than tanned. The bridge and tip of his nose were peeling.

“For seventy thousand?” Lillian asked.

“May I offer you some tea, a gin and tonic or something?”

“Tea will do nicely,” Lillian said.

They followed the owner below. He had the tea kettle on. He talked about how fond he was of the boat and how much he would regret ever having to part with her.

Wiley saw through all that, thought they’d probably have to fight their way off if they withdrew the offer.

He was right. The Englishman was three payments behind and had no outlook for a charter. Seventy thousand was about fifteen to twenty more than the boat was worth.

The Englishman showed them around.

It was a custom-built forty-five footer. A cross between a trawler and a sportfisherman. It had the lines of a trawler and sat in the water like a trawler, but it was equipped for deep-sea fishing. Among other things, it had a live-bait hold in the rear deck.

“When would you want to take her over?” the Englishman asked.

“Immediately.”

The Englishman got out the papers.

Wiley and Lillian went, one after the other, into the head and came out with the money.

The Englishman became short of breath when he realized they intended to pay cash.

Fifty-five thousand now. The balance tomorrow.

The Englishman said that gave him time to get his gear together and have a farewell night with the vessel he loved.

When they were ashore Lillian told Wiley, “See? Intuition.”

Wiley let her take the credit. But he wondered if they’d ever not have to overpay for things. It was a way of life, he supposed, but it had its psychological drawbacks.

They used a public phone near the Cartagena branch of First National City Bank. Lillian put in a call to Marianna in Mexico City.

Marianna answered: “Ms. Holbrook’s residence.”

Lillian hung up. That wasn’t how Marianna normally answered the phone. In fact, she’d told Marianna that was precisely how she didn’t want her to answer. It had to be Marianna’s way of warning her that someone was there, listening. Conduct Section agents, no doubt.

Fortunately, Lillian hadn’t said a word. No way they could know it had been her.

She phoned Benjamin Corey in New York, the chairman of her board. He would cable $25,000 at once to First National City Bank in Cartagena, Colombia, payable upon demand to Marianna McLean (the name on Lillian’s passport). The money would be there by tomorrow noon at the latest, Corey promised.

Almost as easy as ordering a pizza, Wiley thought.

He was up first the next morning.

Dressed and went across the street to El Globo for a coffee and roll.

He sat at a table near the door, his back to the street. The place was crowded. He got only a glimpse of the man in a booth at the rear of the room. And the man got only a glimpse of him before other customers blocked the view. But Wiley thought surely he’d been recognized by Carlos Johnson.

The pilot, parachute instructor, part-time comrade of Miguel.

Wiley got up, hurried out and across the street and into the tourist house. He peeked back, and after five minutes, when Carlos didn’t come out, he decided that perhaps Carlos hadn’t recognized him after all.

But it was too close for comfort.

Carlos recognized Wiley right off.

He stood up on the booth seat to see Wiley rush out, across the way and into the tourist house.

The man having coffee with Carlos was a comrade named Luis Hoyos. A full-time lefty recently arrived from Guatemala. His notoriety as an agitator had preceded him. He had already been welcomed into the periphery of the Colombian left wing, and it was only a matter of time before the inner circle accepted him.

Carlos told Hoyos, “I just saw the fucking guy.”

“Who?”

“The one who ran with the emeralds. The
norteamericano
. He is in the house across the street.”

“Are you sure?”

Carlos went into the bar side of the place. There was a telephone. He called Miguel.

Miguel was staying in a safe house in an outlying poor section of Cartagena. His priority now was to get back the emeralds and punish the two traitors. He had made the deal to sell a hundred thousand carats in two equal lots. The transaction would have taken place there in Cartagena. He figured Wiley and Lillian would try to get out of the country from one of the Caribbean ports. He had comrades on the lookout also in Barranquilla, Santa Marta and even the smaller coastal towns. Every commercial hotel was covered and, of course, every airport.

Carlos told him where and when.

Miguel was on the way.

Carlos joined comrade Luis Hoyos at the bar.

They had a whiskey with their coffee.

Hoyos said he had to phone a girl.

He went to the phone in the back and called F-2. Army intelligence.

Hoyos was an infiltrator.

Ten minutes later a gray sedan came down Calle Bonda and pulled up in front of the tourist house.

Miguel and three comrades, including the remaining Cuban.

They were out on the walk, about to enter the tourist house, when two other cars pulled up.

Four F-2 agents and five from Conduct Section.

They spotted Miguel immediately. His was the face they knew and had been looking for.

Miguel was so intent on his own purpose that he wasn’t as alert as usual.

Three bullets hit him almost simultaneously. Two in the chest, one in the head. He was spun around and slammed down dead on the veranda of the tourist house.

The Cuban threw up his hands.

Which made it that much easier for a Conduct Section agent to kill him.

The other two comrades had no more of a chance. Were caught in the open. They managed to get off only a couple of shots.

The F-2 and Conduct Section agents jumped over the bodies and rushed into the house.

In the upper front room they found an empty bed and a full ashtray.

Wiley and Lillian had found a back way out.

They separated.

Lillian went to the bank.

Wiley went to the novelty shop.

The Señora Silva imagined by Wiley from their phone conversation was a hundred and fifty pound forty-five-year-old with a pigeon breast, a wartish mole or two someplace around her mouth and too much black overpunished hair. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been so evidently receptive, he reasoned.

The Señora Silva he found at the novelty shop on Calle de Quero was a slender twenty-five-year-old, an extremely attractive, neatly cut blonde with large brown assertive eyes.

From the way she looked at Wiley, he was also more than she had expected. She offered coffee, led him to the back room.

He saw his two footlockers standing on end in one corner. When asked, he told Señora Silva (call her Elena) that he was staying at the Caribe. She told him he should have come there directly, intimated she would have suggested a place more accommodating.

The store was not small, at least not a hole in the wall, but like most novelty shops, it was overstocked. Wiley thought Elena probably got to meet a great many salesmen. Wasn’t a novelty something new and different?

Browsers entered the store, required attention. Wiley told Elena he had appointments, would take his samples and return shortly. She said she would close early, gave Wiley’s hand a squeeze. She had a very communicative, purely feminine touch.

Wiley carried the footlockers out to the street. A taxi took them and him to the waterfront, to the boat. The Englishman had just departed. Everything was in order, the transfer-of-ownership papers signed and witnessed. Lillian was on the bridge at the wheel. She had the engines running.

“What kept you?” she asked, meaning, who?

“I got waylaid.”

“I thought as much.” She revved the engine so as not to hear anything else he had to say.

He unhitched the bow and stern lines, had to jump aboard because Lillian backed the boat so quickly from its slip. Maneuvered it well out into the Bahía de las Animas and then, despite the urgency, at a safe, inconspicuous speed down the bay and out through the mouth of the breakwater.

In ten minutes the northern coast of South America was only a far-off gray strip between the sea and the sky. It wouldn’t be a short trip. They would have to make stops for fuel and supplies.

The two footlockers were sitting on deck. Wiley could store them below just as they were, but he had thought of a better safe place to hide the emeralds for the time being.

The live-bait well was situated on the afterdeck. It extended about a foot and a half above deck level and was recessed about four feet below. It measured about four by five, which made it considerably larger than usual. Deep-sea fishermen kept small fish alive in such wells, to be used as bait. But this one was large enough to bring home fresh a fair-size catch of red snappers or blues.

Wiley removed the cover from the live-bait well. It was clean inside, enameled high-gloss white. Nearly two thirds filled with seawater, as it should have been.

He unlocked the footlockers and, layer by layer, dropped the emeralds into the well. They reflected and gave the water an ideal green hue. That was it. The water seemed green, not the stones in the bottom. Same premise as turquoise-looking water in a turquoise-painted swimming pool. Unless someone looked closely, the stones, except for their texture, might go unnoticed.

Wiley replaced the well cover and stored the footlockers below. He was glad he’d decided to put the emeralds in the well, felt easier for it.

Lillian had the boat on a course due north, cruising at ten knots. First stop would be Haiti. Then they would island-hop to the Bahamas and on to Fort Lauderdale.

Wiley took over so Lillian could go down to the galley to fix something to eat. “Keep her steady as she goes,” Lillian told him.

He kissed her instead of saying aye-aye.

He acquainted himself with the instruments. The electronic compass, depth sounder and speedometer. And the switches, all clearly labeled, that controlled the various automatic systems throughout the boat. The fuel indicator said
full
. The sea ahead was vacant, its surface not unruly but neat and repetitive, dabbed with small waves like a pointillist painting. One scanty streak of cloud in the sky, nothing in front of the sun.

Lovely day.

They’d gotten away—away with it.

Some people he knew were miserable, but he was feeling fine enough to sing, full out, the oldie:

Just a gigolo
,

Everywhere I go
,

People know the part I’m playing
.

Paid for every dance
,

Selling each romance
,

Every night some heart betraying
…

Keeping only a finger on the wheel, he leaned out and sang louder, down to the galley.

A sharp but distant
boomph
was what he heard first.

Then a sibilant sound of air being cut.

An explosion geysered the sea about two hundred feet ahead, a few degrees to port.

Wiley grabbed up a pair of binoculars, sighted the ship. About two miles off the starboard beam, bearing directly at them. It was war gray, had the huge, condensed numeral
18
on each side of its bow. Wiley could make out the horizontal yellow, blue and red of the Colombian flag and the sailors in white manning its forward 3.50 inch gun.

Another sharp report like a command.

This time the shell exploded so close it drenched the boat with spray.