Topaz - Leon Uris [48]
On the second night of the watch, the sea calmed and it was moon-bright. Shuey Mendoza crept carefully from the hiding place and climbed down the jagged rocks to the sea. Alternating silent breast strokes and diving, he swam for a mile and ducked unseen under the pier pilings. He knew every cranny and hole. When the moon fell behind clouds, he slipped up onto the pier and hid in a lumber pile.
Carlos waited until two hours before daybreak, then made a shorter swim to the wreckage of an old ship which had piled up on the rocks just a hundred yards from the harbor entrance.
Each of them took a camera wrapped in plastic, and in short intervals shot film of the cargo which had been unloaded during the dark hours and now sat on the dock.
They stayed thus for twenty-four hours and on the third night retraced their steps, swimming back to the cliffs.
22
THE NEXT DAY, AT THE ancient graveyard of Matanzas on the road between Viriel and Havana, Rosa Mateos, wife of the local druggist, bought a bunch of flowers from the old vendor outside the cemetery walls.
She adjusted her shawl and entered. The wet ground and leaves sagged under her step. She looked about. The graveyard was empty.
Rosa Mateos walked to the third row of tombstones in the new section near the mango grove and counted to herself as she passed the tombs. Ten ... eleven ... twelve ... thirteen ... fourteen. She stopped and knelt, placing the flowers at the base of the stone.
HERE LIES IGNACIO GÓMEZ, DIED ... 1947
MOURNED BY HIS WIFE AND SONS
GOD KEEP HIS SOUL
Rosa patted the earth around the stone until her hand felt a crack in it near the ground. She pulled a loose fragment away and her fingers searched deftly, then found what she was looking for. She withdrew a plastic bag containing the film of the Mendoza brothers.
She slipped the packet inside her shawl quickly, replaced the piece of stone, prayed, made the sign of the cross and left the cemetery.
That evening her husband, Humberto Mateos, the druggist of Matanzas, left for his weekly trip to Havana to requisition the drugs he needed to fill several prescriptions. It had been thus with the bureaucracy since Castro nationalized the druggists.
He personally delivered his requisitions to Amelia Valencia, a senior pharmacist at National Pharmacy No. 15 in Havana, along with the film.
During the afternoon break, Amelia Valencia visited the old market of Havana, as she often shopped during her time off. Her first stop was a futile attempt to buy some decent sandals at the sandal-maker, whose product had become atrocious since the Revolution.
The second stop was at the chicken stall of the butcher, Jesús Morelos. She passed the film to him.
Jesús Morelos put the packet into a chicken, sewed it up and set it aside.
Later in the afternoon, Maggie, Juanita de Córdoba’s Negro cook of twenty years, also visited the stall of Jesús Morelos. The chicken and its messages then found its way to Juanita de Córdoba.
23
THESE WERE TO BE THE longest, most harrowing days of André’s life. For the intelligence chief there is no relief from the pressure. There are no fistfights, no gunplay, no swinging from balconies, no rescuing of maidens, no acrobatics, no karate chops, no miracle electronic gimmicks.
The pressure dictated silent courage and the brain-sapping work of outthinking and outmaneuvering a skilled and dangerous opponent.
As the moving force behind the mission, André had no choice but to wait in agonizing silence while his agents carried out his instructions. They were nonprofessionals for the most part ... decent patriots ready to die at his command ... and this responsibility weighted him down. André was able to hide the erosion of his innards, and publicly mask his tension.
Only his woman, Juanita de Córdoba, knew the truth when that ashen color came to his cheeks and his overworked brain betrayed itself behind a curtain of bloodshot eyes.
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