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  One little old man in a gown stood at a window in the Astarse. He was in the second floor. He had wisps of white hair, Corazon noticed, as he looked more closely. His arms were folded over themselves. And Corazon saw it was not a robe he wore but a light blue garment from the Orient. He had seen them before.

  Corazon made out the features in the fast-failing light. The old man was an Oriental. He looked up the

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  street and smiled, and then down the street and smiled.

  He was smiling at the Russians. And it was the smile of a man who had just been offered an interesting dessert.

  And then with horror Corazon realized the full meaning of that smile. The Oriental thought of Russia's major attacking forces as mere amusement. The calm look was not the ignorance of an old man but contentment, the confidence of a melon chopper who had chopped melon all day and was not about to be excited by a few more.

  The Oriental looked up, across the street into the presidential palace, and caught Corazon's eyes. And very quietly, he smiled again.

  Corazon ducked behind the Venetian blinds. In his own palace, in his own country, he was afraid to look out of his own window. He knew what would happen.

  "Juanita," he muttered to the soul of the dead. "If you are around, I acknowledge your Tightness."

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  CHAPTER FIVE

  Major Manuel Estrada broke relations with America as well as he could. But first he had to get rid of the Englishman's body, then get one of the cleaning people to clean up the blood in the Generalissimo's receiving room, then find some people to bury the body, and, of course, to share the knowledge of these heavy burdens with his friends at the cantina.

  Somehow the cantina got into the work mix before some of the other duties, and when he left the cantina, it was dark and someone was lying drunk in the middle of Route 1. Estrada kicked the man.

  "Get up, drunken man," said Estrada. "You foolish drunken thing. Do you not have things to do? Foolish drunken man."

  Estrada tripped over him from a standing position. Then he felt the man's face. It was cold. The man of course was dead."Estrada apologized to the man for calling him a drunkard. Then Estrada noticed the

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  blue blazer and the head wound. It was Dr. Jameson, the Englishman.

  Estrada pushed his hands at air. While others might not understand what this meant, Estrada did. He was abandoning this job for now. He had more important things to do.

  Let the dead bury the dead, someone had once said. He knew that man who said that was a pretty smart man. It was Jesus in the Bible. And Jesus was God. Therefore, it would be a sin for Major Manuel Estrada, the living, to bury the dead. It would be a sin against Jesus. And it was not good to be a sinful man.

  So let Dr. Jameson lie.

  The American Embassy was a modern sprawling aluminum and concrete structure that someone once told Major Estrada represented an Indian prayer in tangible form. It was to show America's and Baqia's common Indian heritage. Two peoples, one future.

  Now Manuel Estrada might not be the smartest man on the island. But he knew that when someone told you that you and he had something in common, he wanted something.

  Estrada was always waiting for the Americans to ask for something. He did not trust their generosity. Never had. They never asked for anything, so he resented them. That resentment was going to make the evening's job easier.

  He careened to the front door of the embassy and banged on it. A well-dressed American marine in formal blue pants and khaki shirt festooned with medals opened the door.

  Estrada demanded to see the ambassador. He had a message from El Presidente, Generalissimo Sacristo

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  Corazon himself, for the ambassador himself. The ambassador rushed to the door.

  The ambassador, no slouch at island politics, had monitored the Russian buildup. He knew they had made some sort of deal with Corazon.

  "You," said Estrada.

  "Yes?" said the ambassador. He was in his bathrobe and slippers.

  "Get out this country now. Get out here. Go. We no like you. This breaks the sex."

  "What?" asked the ambassador. "Oh, you mean break relations."

  "Yeah. That's the thing. Do it and go. Now. Good. Thank you. Very much thank you," said Estrada. "That's the word. Break relations. Broken. Broke. Done. Forever. We don't want see you round here forever. But don't worry, American. These things never last. Hasta luego. Let us drink to our separation. You leave the embassy liquor. We watch it for you."

  In America, the news was received solemnly. There could be little doubt any longer that the Russians had gotten hold of the secret machine that could make a major war an easy victory.

  The national commentator who had earlier seen Baqia's wavering as a sign of an absence of moral leadership by America now said this was further evidence "that if we're going to rely on ships and guns we're not going to make it."

  The commentator appeared on national television several nights a week and did not know what an army was, did not know how things got done, and still believed America had kept a foreign country out of a war by slipping one of the leaders a million dollars.

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  Which was like stopping a Mafia hit by offering the button man a gift of milk and cookies. In any other country at any other time, the commentator would have been politely humored. In America he was heard by multimillions.

  The President listened to him. He did not, like anyone else who knew what was going on in the world, respect the man. But he did know that the commentator, while never being a good newsman, was an excellent propagandist.

  Something had gone wrong in Baqia. The President waited for the proper time and was at his room with the special red telephone to CURE.

  "What is going on in Baqia?" the President asked.

  "I don't know, sir," came back the acid voice of Dr. Harold W. Smith.

  "We're getting our heads handed to us. Those boys are supposed to be good. And they haven't done anything. Call 'em off."

  "You assigned them, sir," Smith reminded him.

  "I don't need an I-told-you-so at this point."

  "I was not being sarcastic, sir. You have made an arrangement with Sinanju, sir. They are not like civil servants. Before Rome existed as a city, sir, Sinanju already had an elaborate procedure for ending service to an emperor."

  "What is it?"

  "I am not exactly sure," said Smith.

  "You mean you took it upon yourself to hire a killer and can't get rid of? Because you don't know the correct procedure?"

  "No, sir, we did not. Emphatically we did not. Sinanju was entered into contract to train one of our men. We never agreed to unleash the Master of

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  Sinanju. We have never done it. You did it. For the first time."

  "Well, what happens now?"

  "I would advise you to let that person work out what he is going to work out. Surprisingly, in international politics not much has changed since the Ming dynasty. It may go wrong. But I would bet that it will probably go right down there."

  "I don't bet. Give me guarantees."

  "There are none," Smith said.

  "Thanks for nothing," said the President. He rammed the red telephone into the back of the bureau drawer. He stormed out of the bedroom and down to his business offices in the White House. He wanted the Central Intelligence Agency and wanted them now and he would cut any orders the CIA wanted. He wanted CIA presence in Baqia. Now.

  Delicately, the CIA director explained that he had fourteen bound volumes in his office that would prove that the CIA couldn't do what the President wanted. His message, in essence, was "Don't ask." We may not know what's going on in the world and we may embarrass you often and we may rarely succeed in foreign adventures, but baby, back here in Washington where it counts, we know how to play it safe, and nobody messes with us.

  The President's response, in essence, was "Do it or I'll have your ass."

  "But our image, Mr. Pr
esident."

  "To hell with your image. Protect the country."

  "Which one, sir?"

  "The one you work for, you idiot. Now do it."

  Til need it in writing."

  Now, since it was a direct order and since the President was going to commit himself in writing,

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  and since the CIA could always explain later to columnists and congressmen that they had not gone into this thing on their own but were pushed, it was somewhat safe to go ahead.

  Times like these were dangerous. First, they must not be accused of using illegal force, even though those who were most likely to make the charge were America's enemies. Secondly and probably equally important, the CIA must not be accused of discrimination.

  Thus, after careful analysis, it came down to one agent as the only person who could safely protect the CIA in times like these.

  "Hey, Ruby. It fo' you. It some Washington fella."

  Ruby Jackson Gonzalez looked up from a bill of lading. She had opened this small wig factory in Norfolk, Virginia, because that was where she could buy human hair cheapest. The sailors off the ships brought her duffel bags of it from around the world. The business was thriving.

  She also had a very healthy government check each month-$2,283.53-which came to more than $25,000 a year clear for just signing the checks.

  At twenty-two, Ruby had enough smarts to know the government didn't pay her all that money for a smile. She had gotten the smarts despite going to New York City public schools.

  During Afro-pride classes she smuggled In a McGuffey reader her grandmother had given her and hid it inside the cover of a Malcolm X coloring book given to high school students. She taught herself to write by copying over and over the neatest script she could find. When the school discarded the old mathematics books in favor of new "relevant texts" that concentrated on the complicated concepts of "many"

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  and "not so many," she dug into the big garbage bags and collected a whole set. With those, she taught herself to add, subtract, multiply, and divide and for $5 a week she got some boy from a private school in Riverdale to teach her about equations and logarithms and the calculus.

  Thus, at graduation from high school, it was she who was chosen to read each classmate what his or her diploma said.

  "Them big words," said one boy. "Ah hope Dart-muff don' speck us to know all them big words."

  Ruby had killed a man by the time she was sixteen. In the ghetto there was a horror for young girls that was not spoken of outside. Grown men would sometimes wrestle them into a room for a mass rape. It was called "pulling the train."

  Ruby, whose smooth skin looked like light chocolate cream and who had a sharp sudden smile like the opening of a box of candy surprises, could make most men do pleasant double takes. She was attractive and, as her body filled out and she became a woman, she could sense men looking at her in that way. In a different place, it would have been a stroke to one's ego. But in the ghetto of Bedford-Stuyvesant, it could mean finding yourself kidnaped in a room for a day or two and only possibly being able to get out alive.

  She carried a small gun. And they got her in school.

  She had been so careful, yet it was a girlfriend who tricked her. She was in love with one of the boys, but he fancied Ruby and her lighter skin. So Ruby's friend asked her to come into an empty gym to help her with some work. Ruby moved through the big doors, reinforced to shield the outside from the sound of cheering crowds and grunting players.

  A big black hand was over her mouth immediately

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  and someone was telling her to relax and enjoy it, because if she didn't she'd only hurt herself.

  She worked her hand into her panties just before someone ripped them off and had her hand -on the little pistol her brother had given her.

  She fired once in front and the young man behind her head squeezed harder till she saw blackness and light sparkles. She put the gun right behind her ear and fired. She felt herself fall to the floor. She had been released. She saw a big young man walking, stooped over, holding his right cheek with his hand. Blood flowed down his arm. He was wounded in the cheek. Panicked, he ran into her. And, panicking, Ruby unloaded the gun into his belly. It was small-caliber, but five shots made his intestines into pulp and he died from loss of blood at the hospital. The other boys fled.

  Thereafter Ruby Jackson Gonzalez walked the halls as if she went to school in a place where girls were protected.

  The boy's death was one of eight shootings that year in the school, down 50 percent from the year before. By this reduction in classroom homicide the principal won a pilot study grant to determine why his school was better able to control crime this year than last. The conclusion of the study group, led by a man who had gotten his Ph.D. in intergroup dynamics, was that the school had better intergroup dynamics that year.

  Meanwhile Ruby graduated and when this government job at a phenomenal salary came along she took it. The elaborate CIA cover lasted an hour and a half with her. She knew that the CIA was the only outfit in the country that paid so much for so little, except the Mafia, and she wasn't Italian.

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  She also had a pretty solid idea of why the CIA would want her. As a woman, a black, and carrying a Spanish surname, she was an entire equal opportunity program for them. She made them look good on the statistics.

  It was three wonderful years just collecting checks, but all the while Ruby knew it had to end sometime. There was nothing really free in the world, she knew, and only idiots expected it.

  The end came with an afternoon visit by a naval officer familiar enough with her salary scale and employment record to be accepted for what he was, her superior in the organization.

  He wanted to talk to her at greater length but they couldn't do it here in her factory on Granby Street in Norfolk, Virginia. Could she come to the naval base that afternoon?

  She could, and she didn't return. Like the encounter in the gym back in high school, she had been ambushed. This time by a bureaucracy.

  She could, if she wanted, refuse the assignment. No one was forcing her. No one was forcing her, either, to accept those healthy checks each month, the naval officer said. When he explained that the assignment wasn't especially dangerous, something in Ruby told her that her chances were no more than 50-50.

  And when he explained that "an American undercover presence must be maintained at a minimal level," she knew it meant that she'd be going in alone. If she got into trouble, don't call them, they'll call you.

  That was no matter. She had known all her life that it was her responsibility to protect her own life and that all the help this very good-looking officer

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  promised her wouldn't be worth two spits in a hurricane.

  She had never heard of Baqia before. On the plane there, America's intelligence presence at a minimal level asked the passenger in the next seat what Baqia was like.

  "It's awful."

  The plane landed and Baqia was a madhouse. There was one hotel in the country, called the-Astarse. "If you be a spy," said the hotel clerk, "you be right at home here."

  And, he said, they had recently had a vacancy because all the occupants in the room had been killed. There were more bodies lying around unburied in this hotel than in a big city morgue.

  There was no room service and there was a very big lump in the bed. The lump was a dying man. He spoke Russian.

  "How can I use that bed?" demanded Ruby. "There's a man dying in it."

  "He be dead," said the clerk. "You wait. We see lot of lung wounds. They always kill. Don't worry you pretty little head."

  Ruby went to the window and looked out into the street. Across the dusty road was the presidential palace. In the window directly opposite her was a fat black man looking like an overdressed doorman at a white hotel. He had a lot of medals. He grinned at her and waved.

  "Congratulations, sweetheart, chiquita. You now selected as the lover of our sacred l
eader, Generalissimo Sacristo Corazon, praise his wonderfulness forever. He is the greatest lover of all time."

  "He look like a turkey," Ruby said.

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  "Shut you eyes and pretend you getting a tooth drilled down below. He be over very fast, you don' even know how fast. Then you come back to me for some real loving."

  Ruby sensed her survival depended on submitting. She could endure any man, provided it was just one man. And maybe she would luck out, steal Corazon's machine, and be on the next plane home before he knew it was missing.

  There was no forma! greeting from El Presidente when Ruby entered his sleeping rooms. Corazon was nude except for his pistol belt. He kept a velvet-covered box near the side of his bed.

  He acknowledged that he might not be up to par. He had grievous problems. He might have backed the wrong side in an international matter.

  Would the beautiful lady, he asked, possibly accept only the second greatest lover in the world, which he was when he was not the greatest, that being when he was not worried about international politics.

  "Sure. Go ahead. Get it over with," Ruby said.

  "He is over with," said Corazon. He was putting on his riding boots.

  "Oh, wonderful," said Ruby. "You're the greatest. My main man. Wowee. That is doing the do. Wow. Some lover."

  "You really think so?" asked Corazon.

  "Sure," said Ruby. One thing you had to say for the man. He was neat. He didn't even leave moisture.

  "You like the Astarse Hotel?" asked Corazon.

  "No," said Ruby. "But it will do."

  "You meet anybody there? Like an old yellow man?"

  Ruby shook her head.

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  "Or a white man with him who does strange things?"

  Ruby shook her head again. She noticed he stayed very close to the velvet-covered box. It was like an old wooden table model television set. She saw a few dials underneath one folded-back flap of the blue velvet. Corazon put his body between her and the box and Ruby knew that it was the secret weapon she'd been sent to find.

  "Sweetheart, how you like to be rich?" Corazon said.

  "No." Ruby shook her head. This whole job had more bad omens than a flock of ravens flying over a torture chamber. "Ever since I been a baby, I think money's just too much trouble. And what I need money for? With a big beautiful man like you, Generalissimo." Ruby smiled. She knew her smile did things to men, but it did nothing to this man.