Night Work by David C. Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

cool. The ceilings were high, the windows deeply recessed in the thick walls that displayed old photographs in frames of stern officers in elaborate uniforms, swords at their sides, artillery squads firing small field guns, soldiers on parade shouldering rifles from fifty years ago. The Commandant, General Castillo, was a happy round man, with a round head like a soccer ball painted with oiled black hair parted in the middle as if with a razor, a round belly, round wire-rimmed glasses. He was delighted by an excuse to show off his command. He greeted them with small cups of strong dark coffee and thimbles of brandy served by mess men in white uniforms, and gathered them around a large map of the fortress so he could explain its construction and history. Jack and his friend George, a senator from Florida, three aides, serious young men in seersucker suits with close-cropped hair and horn-rimmed glasses, all poured from the same mold. And two secretaries. Claire with Jack, tall, athletic, blond, with the high cheekbones of a model and long red fingernails that had never seen a typewriter. Alice with George, the pneumatic brunette from the plane from Miami, who swatted Cassidy on the shoulder in the lobby of the Nacional while they waited for the cars and said, “Ooh, I remember you. The kidder from the plane. What happened to the guy?”
    â€œI ate him.”
    She laughed and swatted him again and leaned a heavy breast against his arm for a moment. Perfume, musk, and body heat.
    General Castillo carried a riding crop and used it to proudly point out the interesting features of his fortress. His English was accented, clear and colloquial. “Started in 1763 and finished eleven years later under the reign of King Carlos III. The fort occupies nearly twenty-five acres and it could have housed six thousand men in time of war. However, the fort was never involved in a battle. Do you know why? Strength. It was clearly such a powerful fortress that no one ever had the courage to test it. To guarantee peace, you must have great strength. It is weakness that invites attack. There is a lesson here that America knows well. It is America’s strength that keeps the Communists quiet. Without that, they would be on our beaches and at our throats.” He slapped the map with the riding crop. “Now, we are here. Here are the barracks. Here are the stables, though we do not keep horses anymore. Here is the magazine where we still keep explosives and ammunition.” He turned to his audience and threw his arms wide. “Welcome to Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña. Now, let us go out, and we will walk, and you will ask me questions.”
    Sun-warmed stone. Well-clipped lawn around a sundial. Young soldiers, their uniform shirts off, suspenders over bare torsos, playing soccer on a strip of grass near freshly painted barracks. Squads doing close-ordered drills under the bark and lash of sergeants. Flower borders along the paths. No sign of prison, of condemned prisoners in rose-colored shirts. General Castillo was not going to spoil his visitors’ day by showing them that. He led them west, away from the area Cassidy had seen the day before when he had delivered Echevarria to the mercy of Colonel Fuentes. The sun was hot on his back, and his hand sweated on the plastic handle of the briefcase.
    He followed the tour for a look in the magazine to see the stacks of brass howitzer shells, crates of hand grenades, old wooden shelves packed with new cardboard boxes of small arms rounds. “Please, Señorita, it is best not to smoke in here. Boom!” A few minutes in the armory to admire the water-cooled .50 caliber machine guns on their tripods, the racks of M-1 rifles and Thompson submachine guns left over from World War II and supplied by the government across the straits for little more than their cost, an act of friendship. A trip to the battlements to inspect the black iron cannons that pointed out