Honorable Lies by Robert N. Macomber

Author:Robert N. Macomber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pineapple Press
Published: 2012-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

23

Eyeball Reconnaissance

Havana, Cuba

5:10 p.m., Friday

28 September 1888

I returned to Hotel Florida to take a short rest and to check on Rork. Now that I had made the chief American diplomat and the chief Spanish administrator my friends, my second performance of the day would be to deceive the chief Cuban paramour of the city. I intended to enjoy this next phase of the mission. Yes, it would be totally at odds with Consul-General Williams’ admonition, but all the better to camouflage my true intentions from the Spanish.

Yet some additional camouflage was needed. My status as a suspected provocateur had by now been elevated by Colonel Marrón to the point where his surveillance was doubled or tripled. There were always two men at the hotel room door, as well as two more on the street below our balcony. No telling how many new peepholes had been drilled in the walls. Unchaperoned departures from our luxurious abode were no longer possible.

The new watchers, as well as the ubiquitous Señor Acera, were always proactively engaging us in conversation, offering to do any errand, fetch any item, help Rork and me in any way, inquiring into our likes and dislikes, and repeatedly letting us know that we were honored guests in Havana. In fact, so obliging were they that they arranged the carriage for my tour with the lovely Belleza.

I had requested a single-horse victoria for just the two of us, but such was not available. Fine, then we would have a paired-horse phaeton, a sporting vehicle offering greater speed and geographic flexibility. I would handle the reins myself. It was also the sort of thing a man out to impress a lady would do, though it would cost dearly.

Rork, having shouldered much of the action the night before at the theater, was relaxing in the room and, once the shade increased, out on the balcony. A glass of rum-infused orange juice in one hand, a weighty tome on the history of Cuba in the other, and two cigars in his shirt pocket for enjoyment later, he presented the very picture of a man of leisure. His repose had the added professional value of tying down a portion of the considerable complement assigned to our surveillance.

I noticed Rork was moving a bit slower than normal and upon my asking the cause, he said the exertions of late had tired him a bit. An understatement, if ever there was one. He had eight years beyond my forty-nine and had earned those aches and pains the hard way, as an ocean seaman for well over thirty years and an intelligence operative for the last seven. The former had given him arthritis in his hands and feet, common to veteran sailors. The latter had taken that left hand and part of the forearm and given him serious wounds all over the rest of his body. Not for the first time, I worried about Rork and wondered if I had put too much on him lately.

Warriors use humor

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