“My taxi beat you. The general must have been delayed. Apparently your trade was the talk of the airport.” “You knew all along I was up to something?” “Peter, do you have any idea how transparent you are?” “If I’d simply agreed to lay low, you wouldn’t have believed me.” “I didn’t believe you anyway.
He sank back in his seat and shook his head. Women were indeed a superior species, he decided. “Don’t feel too badly, darling,” Beatrice said. “Elizabeth bought it.” “She hasn’t known me as long as you have.” He looked at her. “You left without telling her?” “Yup,” said Beatrice.
“Good. We’ve put her through enough. I do have to finish this, you know.” “I know,” she said with a sigh.
“After all, I started it.”
“We started it. And if you had known I had stowed away, you would have never taken off.” “Of course I would have,” he lied. She was asking him to tell her what they were doing was rational. “I love you, B.” “I love you, too, you old coot.” She nodded out the window at the Cuban fighters. “I assume those planes are all friendly or we would be a hole in the ground?” “Seems so.
“Will they escort us all the way to Vieques?” “That’s a little too much to hope for. Maybe to the edge of their air-space. After that, we’re on our own. Anyway, what’s that line from Dickens?” “It is a far, far better thing that I do-“‘ she said, and smiled. “-than I have ever done-before’? Or just done.’?” “Just done,’ I think.”
“You were always better at Bartlett’s.”
“My favorite right now is that one from Voltaire. God is a comedian playing to an audience who’s afraid to laugh.”‘ Peter laughed, realizing he was unafraid at last. “My favorite is A man’s trouble stems from his inability to sit quietly in his room,”‘ he said. “Pascal, right?”
“Very good.” He looked at her tenderly. “But we’ve spent most of our lives in quiet rooms, haven’t we? Maybe I should switch to Live by the sword, die by the sword,’ or something like that.” “The New Testament is always good,” she said. “Or maybe Woe unto you when all men speak well of you.’ Do you suppose they’ll speak well of us, Beatrice?” “I wouldn’t count on it, at this point.” “Then we must be doing the right thing,” he said. They smiled and fell silent. For more than a hundred miles the Cuban jets stayed with them, then peeled off over Haiti, shooting off like rockets into the cloud formations above. “Must be interesting to fly like that,” Beatrice remarked. “They say it smells of kerosene in the cockpits,” Peter said thoughtfully. “Can’t spit out the windows the way you can in these babies.” “True,” she said, reaching out and touching his hand. “And you can’t take the wife along with you.” He squeezed her hand as hard as she was squeezing his. Their thoughts flowed together. She knew what he had to do. His heart soared with love for her and for the whole godforsaken world. “That’s exactly right,” he said.
VIEQUES
In Wolfe’s operating theater, things had moved rapidly that morning, far too rapidly for Dr. Emilio Barrola’s taste. He was under the strictest orders from Wolfe to make the transfer no matter what happened. Wolfe had sweetened the deal by promising Barrola to clone him again as soon as he was back on his feet in his new body. But no one had bothered to tell Barrola what the damn rush was all about, and the rumors about Cuban terrorists or some such nonsense flying around the OR simply made his head hurt. Politics had always bored him silly, and that was not the state of mind he wished to be in. I should have learned to meditate, he reflected, watching his assistants transfer the subject, a man apparently named Phillip C. Kenner, from the gurney to the operating table. The name meant nothing to Barrola. As far as he was concerned, and certainly to all appearances, it was simply Wolfe’s body set back in time forty years or so. The young man’s eyes opened. He looked around groggily, scanning the lights, the gleaming equipment, the figures surrounding him in surgical gowns and masks. “Oh, shit,” said Kenner in a slurred voice. “This isn’t a Mafia thing at all, is it?” “Just relax, now,” said Barrola. “This will be over in a minute.” He gave a nod and a male nurse plunged a hypodermic needle into Kenner’s upper arm. Kenner felt himself go numb. He twisted around, and in one horrific moment thought he saw himself as an old man on a parallel gurney, staring back at himself with the most terrifying look of hunger imaginable. Then everything went black. Wolfe, who had insisted not only on being briefed about the situation outside the OR but on observing the procedure until the last possible moment, now began to mumble unwanted instructions, even as the Valium dripped into his veins. Barrola was reminded of his father, who had stood over his shoulder every time the family car had a flat, telling him to look out or the jack would crush his hand. It’s a wonder I’m able to dress myself, Barrola thought. In a matter of a few hours he had opened Kenner’s cranium and cut the nerve bundles behind the man’s throat. And with those moves- brilliantly done, in Barrola’s estimation, despite Wolfe’s constant carping-Phillip C. Kenner, thirty-three years from his birth and with a once promising career as a physics professor or professional gambler, ceased to exist. Shortly thereafter, to Barrola’s further annoyance, a uniformed aide of the lieutenant colonel now in charge of the project’s security entered the OR and relayed a message to Wolfe on the table. Barrola stood biting his tongue, eavesdropping. Apparently an unmarked DC-3 was being tracked moving toward them from Cuba. It had been escorted out of Cuban airspace by communist fighters and was thought to be piloted by Jance. The situation was politically tricky. If they knew for sure that Jance and only Jance was on board, they could simply shoot the plane down with impunity. But if he was with Cubans, who had every right to fly around the Caribbean legally. such action would be sticky indeed. And if Jance wasn’t on board at all, for all they knew they would be shooting a planeload of schoolchildren out of the sky, earning the wrath of the world and gaining nothing in the pursuit of Dr. Peter Jance. Wolfe muttered something fearful about Dr. Beatrice Jance when he heard orders had been given to harass and challenge the plane. He further mumbled that there was a good chance that if it failed to respond to radio transmissions, the U.S. would shoot it down. How I’m expected to work under these conditions is anybody’s guess, thought Barrola. He discreetly signaled for Wolfe’s anesthetic to be increased: soon the old man’s eyelids fluttered shut. Thank God. But then, to Barrola’s audible frustration, Wolfe’s eyes reopened one last time. They shone darkly, revealing what could be construed as wisdom. “It’s not the Communists,” he said, in a thick voice, whatever that meant. Then his eyes closed once again as Barrola bent to his task, and Frederick Wolfe dropped into a dreamless sleep.
DC-3
The plane swooped low over Haiti’s green hills, bridged the mountains midisland and passed over the Dominican Republic, dipping so low that they could see workers in the cane fields and bathers on the beaches, everything gilded in gold by the afternoon sun. They flew over open ocean for a while, marveling at the different shades of blue. “Nassau,” they said, nearly in unison.
“God,” said Beatrice, “remember how glad we were to get there?” What was the name of the ship?”
“The Homeric?”
“Did your father pay for the entire honeymoon? Or just the cruise?” Peter asked. “I think we bought the sherry”
“That’s right, we drank sherry in the stateroom,” Peter said. “It had bunk beds.” “Like being in jail, with a chance of drowning.” “Samuel Johnson. And a bathroom in the hall. Like our apartment on 31st Street, with the bathtub in the kitchen? That door that went over it, to form a counter?” “And that lady who used to bang on the ceiling with her broom?” Beatrice laughed. “Right. Every time we made love. She looked like her picture belonged on the onedollar bill.” They laughed at their memories until the coast of Puerto Rico passed below them, and then they grew quiet: the island of Vieques was coming up. For a long while they remained silent. Then, as though no time at all had passed, they picked up where they had left off. “Which was the apartment we got evicted from?” she asked. “The one on Fourth Street. You were in your third year of med school.” “No, wasn’t I still preclinical?”