The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [131]
“Raffy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You want to see what’s in here?”
“‘The rest is silence.’”
She spun the numbered casters on the combination lock above the handle. “There’s probably nothing in this case.”
He looked nervously around the bar. “Too many people in here.”
She arched her Claudette Colbert eyebrow at the slender man. “Too many for what?”
“Let’s go out by the pool.” With the case under his arm, Raffy held the door for her. “My cousin Juan? His brother is the branch manager of the bank in Havana. Where we need to go. So, as soon as we get to Cuba—” He stopped talking and waited until a couple in bathrobes left their deck chairs and shuffled back inside in their big terry-cloth slippers. There was no one else at the pool.
“Raffy, you and Dad don’t seem to be getting the picture. For a long time now, Americans can’t fly private planes into Cuba or even go to Cuba.”
He gestured for her to take a seat at a poolside table, under a deco light in the shape of a palm tree. “Not true. Your papa and I did it for years. I have family on the coast there. They’re a help, being of the philosophy, as Avon’s great son would say, ‘What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.’” He claimed that Annie’s father had often piloted the hydroplane into Cuba at dusk, landing at a place where a relative of Raffy’s was the harbormaster, near Puerto Esperanza in the Archipiélago de los Colorados. Raffy himself had such a fear of planes that he had stayed in Key West in charge of “communications” with his relations.
Annie was rattled; these details sounded real to her.
The Cuban leaned over the shiny locked stainless steel case, carefully sliding the numbers on the four lock dials one by one. He hadn’t sufficiently angled the lid to hide the combination from her.
“2-5-0-6,” she read aloud. “Ah, the Brigada.”
He glanced over at her, surprised. “So you know the Brigada? Bahía des Cochinos? Bay of Pigs?”
“Yes, but that’s all I know. I know they called it ‘2506.’ I don’t know why it’s 2506.”
He told her that 2506 was the number of the first training casualty of the exiles who had gone in with the CIA to invade Castro’s Cuba. They had amplified their numbers by starting with “2500” rather than “one,” so it had actually been the number six invader who had first died at the Bay des Cochinos. He added, “And the word is ‘fish,’ not ‘pigs,’ so it was really the Bay of Fishes, though cochinos is also the word for pigs. Jack let me pick the numbers for this combination and I picked 2506 for my grandpapa Simon Rook. He spoke ten languages.” He sighed and tapped the case. “And for what? He washed up on the Cuban shore, like La Reina.”
“Open the case.” She placed it exactly between them.
Each of them clicked a sidelock at the same time and the latches flew up. Inside the case, padded with gray Styrofoam, wrapped tightly in green velvet strips of cloth, was a rounded object, cubic at its base, a foot and a half long. Slowly, holding his breath, Raffy unraveled it. His sigh blew upward, like leaves rustling high in the air. “Madre de dios. Es la Reina!”
Even in silver moonlight, the Queen of the Sea was gold. Gold from the tips of her slippers to the points of her crown. She wore a broad cape that was gleaming with gold and with the sparkle of the few small rubies and emeralds and sapphires that were still intact in its borders. Most of the casings were, however, empty. Her crown was a spray of gold rods that Raffy gently loosened from her face. The rods spread into a sunburst, each tip capped with a rectangular frame of gold. These larger casings were also empty.
Holding the statue up so its golden surface glowed in the lamplight,