The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [198]
Annie moved the Cessna to first position on the tarmac. Eagerly Dan pulled open a loosened panel in the fuselage of the Cessna. Annie had told him the sort of panel to look for, predicting that her father would have hidden the gold statue of the Queen of the Sea just as he’d done before in the King of the Sky. Why else would he have told her in his phone call last night, “The Queen’s in the plane”?
Dan whistled when he pulled out of its green cloth wrapping the gold Virgin Mary in the Incan Pachamama cape, with her sunburst crown and large rectangular emeralds inserted in three of the seven gold rods. “Look at this thing! Holy Mother of God.”
Carefully strapped into his seat, Raffy clutched a life jacket. “Yes, it’s the Holy Mother. Are you being funny? Don’t be funny. Aren’t you scared?”
Dan looked out the window at the naval crews. “I tell you what’s scary. I’m in love with somebody in the U.S. military.”
Cleared for take-off, Annie taxied onto the runway and turned to look down the center. “You know what, Dan? You’re a whole lot better off with the military than you are with politicians. Like I keep reminding Sam, it was Eisenhower who said, ‘Watch out for the military-industrial complex.’ It was Admiral Leahy who said dropping the A-bomb on Japan would turn us into Dark Age barbarians. Good guys are in the military.”
Raffy shouted at Annie, “Stop talking, stop talking, pay attention to what you’re doing. Oh Jesús Cristo, hear my prayer!”
Dan laughed. “‘Hear my prayer’? Rook, you said you weren’t a believer.”
Raffy checked the buckle on his guitar in the seat next to him. “‘I love long life better than figs.’ And Chamayra will kill me if I get myself killed!”
***
The flight was not a long one. Within the hour, they spotted the green mountains of Cuba’s coast. The mountains were heartbreakingly beautiful.
Soon their small plane was approaching a quiet harbor north of Puerto Esperanza in the western province of Pinar del Rio. Right on time, they were coming in for a sea landing on the Archipiélago de los Colorados: lat 22º 47’ N, long 83º 43’ W. Annie radioed her position as instructed back at Sigsbee. She raised the wheels and soon was being guided in her descent by Raffy’s cousin Tico Ramirez. He’d been watching for them from his boat, just beyond the reef off the coast of the dockmaster’s office in the harbor.
The sea was gray and unexpectedly rough.
Annie glanced behind her at a strange noise. Raffy was making it. “Dan, get Raffy’s head down between his legs right away!” The musician was hyperventilating in loud gasps. She called back from the cockpit. “Raffy, take it easy! This is nothing! This is just a little choppy! Hang on.”
Dan cupped his hands over Rafael’s nose and mouth. “Breathe slowly, paisano. Don’t fight me, you chickenshit Cubano.”
“Let go, son of a bitch,” panted Rafael, pulling free of Dan, his hair flying, distracted from noticing that the seaplane was gliding with a smooth straightforwardness onto the bouncing waves. “O my Savior, gracias, gracias!”
They motored toward the buoy where Raffy’s cousin’s boat was waiting to meet them. So far, Dan admitted, everything had happened as Jack had said it would. “Let them send you to Havana, he said. Fierson will pretend it’s about Cuba and the church and the statue. And the FBI will really believe it. Jack’s gone way up in my estimation. I don’t mind having him for a father-in-law. If they double-cross us and he gets 20 years, I’m going to go visit him in prison.”
They still didn’t know what was in the bank pouch or what picture Jack wanted them to give Helen Clark. Or what Raffy was supposed to do that he always did.
“It will all fall pat,