In fact, the entire time they were threading through this massive airport, Elizabeth had ignored all of Peter’s attempts to speak to her, pulling away eyen if their arms accidentally touched, But as they passed at last through the sliding doors into the humid Miami air, they saw three patrol cars pulling up at the curb not more than a hundred feet away. Uniformed officers began pouring out and Peter saw Elizabeth freeze. He eased up beside her, nudging her toward the taxi stand. This time she didn’t recoil. The line for taxis was six deep. Peter fished the last twenty out of his wallet and palmed it into the dispatcher’s hand. “Medical emergency;” he explained to the other people waiting for cabs, silencing their instant barks of protest, and hustling Elizabeth inside. He hoped it was no more than a white lie, for during the last five minutes an optical migraine had been causing an ominous pressing in the lower margin of his visual field. As the cab slipped past the squad cars, Peter rolled a thumb and finger into his eyelids, trying to make the lights go away. Then Elizabeth spoke for the first time in a long, long while and her voice was unwittingly tender. “Peter?” she said. “Are you okay?
“I’ve been better,” he said, and meant it. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. But thank you for asking.”
Their eyes met for an instant, then she looked away. But in that instant an immeilse amount of information was conveyed to Peter, although it was all still a jumble. There was hurt, anger, love and terror-all of it transmitted in that one moment. He hadn’t felt so protective of anyone since the third year of his marriage when Beatrice had suffered a miscarriage and was thrown into a depression so profound that she didn’t know whether she wanted to live or die. He touched her hand. She didn’t respond, but neither did she take it away. And Peter felt overwhelming love for her. “As I said, Elizabeth, we may be stuck with each other for a while,” he said, as their cab, just entering the Dolphin Expressway, passed a string of police cars and Army vehicles going in the opposite direction, roaring into the airport with sirens blaring and lights blazing. They both fell silent, realizing both how close they had come to being trapped and how ferocious and far-reaching the search for them had become. “What’s that about, man?” the driver wanted to know. He was about forty-five, no taller than five feet, with a keloid scar bulging over his ear like a wad of bubble gum. His head was barely visible above the steering wheel. “Damned if I know,” said Peter.
The driver eyed them in the rearview mirror. “You guys look like you been out in the glades. Been hunting gators?” “Just a filthy airplane. Don’t every fly Air Guyana.” The driver barked out a laugh. “Hey, I get it. You holding any weed? You bring in a shipment of Marimba?” He was eyeing Elizabeth closely. “No,” she said. “But thanks for asking.” “We were doing some work in Cuba,” said Peter, taking a flyer on the cabby’s place of origin. “No shit. What kind of work?”
“Well,” said Peter, darting a look at Elizabeth, “let’s say something for freedom. They shot down our plane.” “No shit! You with the guys who drop leaflets?” “Something like that,” said Peter. They were going to need all the help they could get. “Right on, man!” the driver erupted, twisting around to shake Peter’s hand. Peter took it quickly, eyeing the semi roaring by them six feet away. “Mind your driving, now,” he said.
The driver turned back to the road. “I knew those last guys who got shot down,” he said, shaking his head. “Good family guys.” He swerved through a tiny opening between two all-terrain vehicles, blasting his horn and shooting them dirty looks. “Bay of Pigs, man. I was just a kid, but I almost got my ass shot off. You know what I say? Good for you. Here, take my card. You ever need anything-a car, a little smoke-you give Ramon Martinez a call.” “How about a nice out-of-the-way hotel? Where we can sort of regroup for a while?” “No problem, man.” He rummaged through a tray of business cards and handed one back. To Peter’s relief, Elizabeth took it. She was a participant in their flight now, no matter how conflicted about it she might be. He desperately needed her help, and even more desperately’ wanted her to accept him again, despite every justification for her not doing so. It looked very much like Wolfe and/or Henderson had pulled out all the stops on the hunt. Which meant that some sort of cover story had been concocted to explain the chase’s urgency. Most likely it was something that made either him or both of them out to be a threat along the lines of the Unabomber Meets Patty Hearst. The migraine flicked heat lightning inside the lower rims of his eyeballs: he knew he could easily go down with a massive embolism at any moment. But he found he was much more terrified of losing Elizabeth. By the time they reached the Rosaria Hotel in Coral Cables, Martinez had given them the address of all his favorite restaurants in Havana and the name of his uncle, a one-star general in the Cuban army. “General Jesus Pinar del Rio. He’s plotting from the inside to get rid of the old maricon, you know what I mean? You need a ticket fixed, any other favor, he’s good for it-just pick up the phone and give him a call. Jesus Pinar del Rio, don’t forget it.” He shook both their hands and, refusing payment, drove off. Peter booked them into adjoining rooms. Elizabeth accepted without comment. His room was large enough for a bed, a Formica table and a television. The bathroom didn’t even have a counter. Clearly the driver and the manager were family, but Peter didn’t care. The place felt anonymous, permissive and for the momentproviding his cerebral vessels continued to function-relatively safe. He took a ten-minute shower, letting the hot water warm his skull and, with any luck, expand his blood vessels as well. It seemed to work. Feeling much better, even a little optimistic, he shaved with the Bic razor and lozenge of soap included in the hospitality pack. He then picked up the phone and from memory dialed Beatrice’s lab number. He was so relieved to hear it ring that his teeth began to chatter. Beatrice, I’m still alive, do you care? There was no answer, and then came the little hiccup in the ring signaling that her voice mail was about to kick in. There was a good chance, he realized, that Henderson had installed a caller ID on the phone, so after listening to her outgoing message, simply to hear the sound of her voice, he put the phone back into its cradle. Her message had not been altered and that disappointed him. Idiot, he thought, what did you expect? Hi, if this is Peter calling, all is forgiven. Even if she were having second thoughts, she wouldn’t risk alerting Wolfe-she was too smart and cautious for that. He sat for a few moments staring at the floor, lost in guilt and conflicted love, then knocked on the door between his room and Elizabeth’s. A minute later she let him into her room. She had rinsed out her T-shirt and jeans and dried them with the hairdryer. “I need to do some shopping,” he said. “If you decide to take off, I only ask that you leave a note telling me that it was under your own steam. Not that you owe me such a consideration,” he admitted, “but if I thought you might be coming back, I would probably wait for you until-” “I’ll go shopping with you,” she said. Her mood was solemn and he sensed there was more she wanted to ask him. He hoped that somehow they would have time together again, but there wasn’t that much room to maneuver. He figured they had bought twenty-four hours at most. They took a cab through Coral Gables, past luxurious Mediterranean houses and manicured lawns. “One of America’s first planned communities,” the driver told them, mistaking them for tourists. “We do not speak much English,” Elizabeth replied in a preposterously thick Teutonic accent. Peter looked at her. She gave a faint shrug, as if to say “What the hell?” Then in perfect American English, she turned to Peter. “What’s your wife like, Peter?” He was so taken aback he didn’t reply at first. “I know that’s an industrial-size question,” she admitted more gently. His heart skipped a beat. “Beatrice is a force of nature,” he said. “A wonderful woman.” “A scientist?”
“Neuroscientist.”
“A doctor?”
“She has her M.D.” They were passing a freshwater coral lagoon, the Venetian Pool. The driver decided to keep the sightseeing information to himself. He had already concluded that his passengers were having an illicit affair, and he wanted nothing more to do with them. He was a Fundamentalist Baptist and took sin seriously. “What’s she look like?”