She picked up a guidebook that was on the television, leafing through it until she found the illustration she was looking for. El Fortin was the fortress she had seen from the ferry, the last Spanish stronghold, according to the picture’s caption, in the New World. I must have glanced thought this last night, she thought, tossing the guidebook aside. Unless-Unless what? Unless Hans had talked about Vieques. No, but he never did. Never spoke of his childhood, never mentioned it once. And Rose-Anne had given her no such details. Then how did I know?
She knew Annie would say she was channeling Hans. The thought was ridiculous, but then why think it? Did it mean that in her heart she believed he was dead? No, she said to herself-he’s alive. That wasn’t his body in the coffin, that’s why you’re down here, that’s why you’re putting yourself through this craziness. Fine, okay, just keep telling yourself that. But then how did you know? Her father, the Navy man, had done more than his share of traveling, uprooting his family from one base to another. Could he possibly have been stationed here? I would have remembered, she thought, or I would have been told. She had no answer. Absolutely none.
Outside the window, the light was clear, the air fresh and filtered through an abundance of greenery. She left a note for Mary Blanchard and slipped outside. Shore birds flashed against an azure sky, their cries exotic. The air was warm against her skin, too warm for the clothes she was wearing. Ivor Greeley was on the terrace drinking coffee and working a crossword puzzle as she walked past. “Java?” he asked, and when she nodded, fetched it himself. “I need to buy some clothes,” she told him. “Absolutely. You’re going to roast in those. Don’t you got any shorts?” She shook her head. “I left kind of suddenly.” His eyes narrowed. “You on the lam? Got the heat on your tail, in trouble with John Law, price on your head?” Not yet, she thought wildly. “No,” she said. “Too bad. Nothing exciting ever happens around here. How’s the coffee?” “It’s wonderful,” she said politely. She had only had a sip of it. “Cuban,” he said with pride. “It isn’t legit, that’s why it tastes so good. I hate someone telling me I can’t buy somebody else’s coffee just because they don’t have the same politics as Uncle Sam. Back where I’m from we tossed a whole lot of British tea into the harbor for the same reason. “You’re from Boston.”
“Very good. I have a niece goes to Emerson, she thinks World War II and Vietnam were the same war. So how come a bright girl like you travels with no luggage?” She was saved from having to answer the same question again by a deep rumble rolling over the trees beyond the terrace. “Sounds like it might rain,” she said.
He nodded. “We get rain sometimes, in the mornings. But that’s not rain.” “Just thunder?”
“Not thunder neither. The Navy’s bombing this morning. Five-hundredpounders, I’d say from the sound of it. Got to keep those land crabs in their place, you know.” There it was again-the Navy. What had all this to do with the Navy? The bombing lasted for another hour, through breakfast, which she ate at a nearby restaurant, fried snapper over rice and arepas, a delicious fried dough that brought back more vague, untraceable memories. Clearly she was overamping, perhaps compensating for her anxieties about who had invited her to this unnerving paradise by pretending everything was oddly familiar. The food soothed her nerves, and when the shops opened she bought shorts, T-shirts and a well-worn work shirt at a secondhand shop patronized by locals. In another store, she found sunglasses and a small nylon backpack that would hold it all. Her old tennis shoes would do just fine. Next stop was the tourist bureau. The woman at the desk, a sunny octogenarian with snow-white hair, was also skeptical about the fax. But she confirmed that the Inn on the Azure Horizon was real enough, and suggested that Elizabeth head over there. When she finally located the place, she was surprised by its elegance and charm. It was an old country inn right on the beach, its lobby filled with wicker and bamboo. She checked with the desk clerk, a handsome woman with a paper rose in her hair who was entering bar receipts into an adding machine. Indeed, there was a reservation in the name of Elizabeth Parker, but she was there a day early. “I caught the ferry,” said Elizabeth. “So did I win a free stay here?” The woman cocked her head. “Free?”
“I mean, well, look at this.” And once again Elizabeth pulled out the fax. The woman read it and grinned. “You must have a boyfriend on one of the bases, huh?” Elizabeth tightened. “Why do you say that?” Delving into a frayed ledger book, the clerk ran her finger down some handwritten notations until she came to one that included Elizabeth’s name. “See here? The room was booked from Roosevelt Roads. That includes both bases and goodness knows what-all branches of service. But it came from the base, no question about it. Paid by credit card and open-ended. Must want to see you pretty bad, huh?” Elizabeth felt a sharp twist of fear.
“What’s the name on the credit card?” she asked. The woman peered into the ledger and shook her head. “Just an account. Some kind of letter and a code number. We get a lot of that. Military tricks for security. you know. Lots of secret stuff going on over there on those bases. Local kooks think they’re breaking down an alien spacecraft, what’s that called again?” “Reverse engineering,” said Elizabeth, trying to maintain a semblance of calm while she shoved the fax in her backpack. “Nobody from there will ever talk about what goes on. It’s two worlds, really. Us who live here, and they who do whatever the hell they want to, do it whenever the hell they want to. Want to see the room?” Elizabeth shook her head. “No.”
“You’re checking in, though, right?”
She turned on her heels. “No. I’m afraid I’m not.” “It’s a beautiful room!” the woman called after her. Elizabeth was out the door, halfway down the walk, when she heard the door fly open behind her and the woman cry out again. Elizabeth wheeled, as if bracing for an attack. “Ma’am, I found a telephone message. I’m sorry I didn’t see it, it was in the back of your box.” Elizabeth stopped, frozen in her tracks. “What kind of message?” “You won’t be able to read it, the night girl took the message.” The woman squinted at the pink square of paper in the sunlight. “It says he’ll meet you at the airport.” “Who?”
“I don’t think there’s a name.” The woman studied the note again. “I’d assume the guy who sent for you, no? So do you want the room now?” “No, I don’t, not right now.” Elizabeth grabbed the message. It was, in fact, illegible. “But you can tell me something.” “Anything. You came all this way, I’d hate to lose your business. Elizabeth unfolded her tourist map. “Where will the plane be coming in?”
The Vieques civilian airport was a sun-drenched asphalt strip not far from Isabel Segunda, where the ferry docked. Elizabeth had rented a Honda Civic and was hunkered down in the front seat drinking a Coke and listening to the radio. There was informal chat about the weather, which came from Roosevelt Roads Naval Station on the main island. Temperature 78 degrees, humidity 68 percent, dew point 68, wind from the east at eight miles per hour, conditions slightly overcast, visibility ten miles. She glanced at her watch: 6:45.
The news about the weather was suddenly drowned out by an aircraft roaring overhead. She turned the radio off. The plane was already banking out of its downwind leg and making its final approach. It was a Cessna Navajo twin, flown by Caribair. Elizabeth watched as it stopped at the end of the runway, then picked up the binoculars she had borrowed from Ivor back at the hotel. “For bird-watching,” she had told him. She was a safe hundred yards from the parking area, where a half-dozen cabs and rental cars waited. She watched the plane taxi to the small terminal with its pilot’s door open for ventilation against the heat. In the parking lot, people started getting out of their airconditioned cars. Everyone except for one. Like her, he was sitting low in his seat in a Range Rover with a license plate unlike any of the others. U.S. government, she bet.
Wisps of cigarette smoke were wafting from a crack in the window. As the passengers disembarked from the Cessna, she watched the person behind the wheel crush out his cigarette and sit up tall. Not Hans.