To Kill the Potemkin (22 page)

"Yep.
This is it."

"What're
you
gonna do?"

"I
got me a lunch
counter in Harlem.
I've had it for years. My boys run it. I'm gonna sit in the backroom
and watch
the dough roll in."

"Sounds
like
you're set up pretty
good."

"I
make out."

Cakes
rolled
another joint. Fogarty said,
"I can't get used to the idea I'm in Spain. It's like a foreign movie
with
no subtitles."

"This
isn't
Spain," Sorensen told
him. "This is Rota. This is just a pit stop for horny sailors. Spain is
over there across the bay."

Through
the
balcony doors they could see over
the rooftops and across the water to Cádiz, shimmering like a fantasy
five
miles away.

"Why
can't we go
to Cádiz?" Fogarty
asked.

"Ever
hear of
Palomares?"

"Palomares?
No."

Cakes
said, "It's
where the Air Force
lost an H-bomb."

"That's
right,"
Sorensen said,
"it's about a hundred miles from here. One day a couple of years ago a
B-52 loaded with hydrogen bombs collided with the tanker that was
refueling it
and dropped its load on this diddlysquat village named Palomares. One
of the
bombs fell in the ocean, and the Air Force couldn't find it—"

"Yeah,"
Cakes put
in, "it took
the Navy to save their ass. We found it with
Trieste
."

"Right,"
Sorensen
said.
"Before Palomares nobody in Spain ever heard of a hydrogen bomb. When
six
of them fell on a village and scattered hot plutonium all over the
school, the
marketplace, the church, the cows and the chickens they got educated.
Their
country had been turned into a nuclear arsenal. There were bombs all
over the
place, including Rota, on the boomers.
Vallejo
,
tied up to the dock down there on
the waterfront, has sixteen
Polaris missiles. Tick off the sixteen largest cities in the Soviet
Union and
that's what that one ship can do. The Spanish don't want any part of
it. The
Andalusians are not like the Neapolitans, who don't give a shit about
anything.
These people don't like being a target, and they don't like us. Over in
Cádiz
there've been demonstrations and a few scuffles. A white hat in Cádiz
is an
invitation to a fight. So it goes, so it goes. See, Fogarty, not
everybody is
like us, fearless nuclear warriors."

"I
think I'm
getting high."

"It's
decent
weed."

"Nuclear
warriors," Fogarty
repeated with a bland smile.

"
Fearless
nuclear warriors."

"Bum
ba bum bum.
We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all nukes are created equal. Boom ba boom boom.
Ain't
that right, Cakes?"

Cakes
stood up,
swaying to the music, holding
the joint with all his fingers like a big stogie.

"I,"
he said,
drawing out the word
in a deep baritone, "I am the nigger of the apocalypse. I am death in
the
deep. I am the end. I am your worst nightmare. I am General...
Electric!"

Fogarty
looked
amazed. Sorensen whooped and
hollered and rolled on the floor. Cakes sat down with a big chuckle and
sipped
his beer. They listened to Miles wail into the night.

"How
long you
been on
Barracuda
,
Cakes?" Fogarty asked.

"Same
as Jack,
here. Since before she
was commissioned, nine years."

"Oh,
yeah,
Fogarty, me and Cakes know
each other's dirty little secrets. Cakes was there the day we invented
Cowboys
and Cossacks."

"Oh,
baby, them
Ivans ain't never going
to forget us."

"What
happened?"

"It
was during
the Cuban missile crisis.
Barracuda
was on station in the Carribean when we got orders
to patrol one
sector during the blockade. The Russians were ninety miles from our
shores, and
the only thing between them and Miami Beach was us,
Barracuda.
Now, that
kind of situation shoots a lot of adrenaline into your blood. We had
this macho
president who was just like us. You want to talk about belief? We
believed
in John Kennedy, every last man. He left no doubt as to what would
happen if
the Russians didn't back down. Man, we had our tubes flooded and
guidance systems locked-on the whole time. We were ready to die."

Cakes
was nodding
his head in agreement.
Sorensen went on, "We would have died for Kennedy without a second
thought. As it was, nobody died. It was suddenly ridiculously easy to
kick the
Russians out of our ocean. We made these wild runs under the Russian
ships.
They had a couple of diesel-electric subs and we blew their ears out.
They took
one look at us and split. When we got back to Norfolk you'd have
thought we'd
just won the Battle of Midway. At that moment, Fogarty, I'm telling
you, the
world was perfect, as perfect as it will ever be. Hell, in March 1963,
I reenlisted.
Kennedy was in the White House, America was number one,
Barracuda
was
number one. We were invincible... And then the world fell apart. First,
the
Thresher
sank. It was like the
Titanic
all
over again. The perfect
invincible nuclear sub imploded during sea trials. That was a
mind-fuck. Then
Kennedy gets assassinated and the world turns upside down. On that day
I
learned about perfection. In the five years since Dallas the reality
has been
exploding in our faces. Race riots, Viet Nam, mass murderers, you name
it, we
got it. So next year my reenlistment comes up again and I'm thinking
maybe I've
had enough of this shit. But I ask you, Fogarty, how many civilian
sonar
operators do you know? The truth is, I don't know if I can live in the
real
world any more. I don't have a lunch counter in Harlem like Cakes. All
I have
is
Barracuda
,
so I just
do my job. I like my job. I'm very stoned."

Sorensen
walked
out on the balcony and looked
down into the dirty street. A pair of Guardia Civil policemen sauntered
past
the hotel, machine pistols slung over their backs. To his right he
could see
the sea wall and a slice of bay. A slice of an imperfect world. Dirty.
Radioactive. He looked up at the sky, hoping to see stars. He saw
clouds.

What
do whales
talk about? What is it like to
live on dry land and have kids?

Inside,
Fogarty
was saying to Cakes, "I
guess you've seen a lot of changes in the navy in twenty-five years."

Cakes
blew smoke
around the room. "Some
things are different, some ain't. Now we got white boys smokin' dope,
that's
different. We got crazy Stanley, that's a whole lot different. There
ain't
nobody shootin' at us no more. I like that part, but otherwise the navy
hasn't
changed in two hundred years. We got nuke boats and all that shit, but
it don't
mean nothin', nothin' at all. You go to sea and you come back to the
same place
you started. It's all one big circle. It's all right with me."

"What
do you
think of the
Russians?"

"Who
gives a
fuck? I don't never think
about them. I like their vodka."

"What
about the
sub that went
down?"

"You
mean them
dudes that sank?"

Sorensen
said
nothing. The Russian sub was
alive. She never sank, and he had the proof on tape. The torpedo wasn't
a
torpedo at all, it was the sub itself. The implosions were faked. Now
wasn't
the time to tell them...

"Yeah.
What do
you think about
them?"

"Nothin'.
There
ain't nothin' to think
about. It was their tough luck. I'm glad it was them and not us."

"Were
you scared?"

"Listen,
I'm
always scared. I'm scared
right now, smoking this dope with you, but that don't stop me none.
What are
you talkin', man? Scared. You don't know what scared is until you been
depth-charged." Cakes stood up. "I'm going back to the bar and screw
one
of them fat whores until she yells uncle. Uncle Sam, that is. How 'bout
you
boys?"

As
Cakes was
reaching for the door, there was
a knock.

Sorensen
opened
the door an inch. Rodrigo
stood outside. "He is down the stair to see you, a sailor Americano."

Stepping
into the
corridor, Sorensen saw
Willie Joe drunkenly climbing the stairs, a ten-gallon Stetson propped
on his
head.

"It's
okay,
Rodrigo. He's a
friend." He slipped the clerk a dollar. Willie Joe flopped on the bed.

"Anybody
got a
drink?"

Fogarty
passed
him a bottle of beer.

Finally
Cakes
said, "Well, I'm still
going to party."

"Let's
do it,"
said Sorensen.

They
stood up to
go back to the bar, all
except Willie Joe, who mumbled, "Battle stations, battle stations,
pussy
off the port bow..." closed his eyes and passed out on Sorensen's bed.
They left
him snoring in a dreamless sleep.

The
party in the
Farolito was still going
full blast. Buzz was pouring cognac for a dollar a shot.

"Straight
up, all
around," Sorensen
ordered. Buzz wrinkled his nose at Fogarty and poured three shots of
brandy.
Sorensen counted a dozen sailors passed out in the sawdust and was
tempted to
join them.

Cakes
walked down
the bar to speak to one of
the fat Gypsy whores. A few minutes later they left together.

In
the rear a
lone dancer went through the
motions of flamenco in slow motion. Fair and blond, the descendant of a
rampaging Vandal, she kicked the floor and snapped castanets to music
only she
could hear.

"See
you later,"
Sorensen said. He
carried his drink across the bar to the table nearest her, sat down and
began
to clap a rhythm to her dance.

At
first she
appeared not to notice him. Then
she slowly danced around his table. She was young, nineteen or twenty.

"Como
te
llamas?"
he asked.

"Rosa.
Y
tu?"

"Jack."

"Okay,
Zhack,"
she said, and sat
down on his lap, leaned against his chest and put her arms around his
neck.
Taking a Lucky from his pack, she lit it and stuck it in his mouth.

"You
got any
money, Zhack? These saylors
spended all their bugs on liquores and womans. You got any bugs left,
Zhack?"

"I
got enough."

Her
hand slipped
down to his crotch.
"You want to spend with me? I eat you."

"Let's
go."

He
waved at
Fogarty on the way out.

Fogarty
drank
alone for an hour, staring at
the whores in the mirror behind the bar. He wasn't sure about how to
approach
the women. He wasn't interested in fat Gypsies and was ready to stumble
back to
the hotel when one of the women sat down on the bar stool next to his.
Tight
jeans clung to her hips, and a peasant's blouse hung over bare
shoulders. On
her feet were expensive handcrafted sandals. She wasn't especially
pretty but
she had attractively strong and intelligent features. She looked older
by
several years, he thought. Guessed.

"Hello,
sailorboy. Buy me a drink?"

"Sure."

Fogarty
signaled
to Buzz for more brandy.

"And
I'd like a
cigarette."

He
lit a
Lucky and handed it to her. "Are you English? You sound English."

She
smiled. "Indeed I am. A bloody Brit, that's me. And you're a Yank."

"A
Yank? I never thought of myself as a Yank."

"None
of you ever does."

Her
smile
completely transformed her face and made her very pretty.

"What's
your name, Yank?"

"Fogarty."

"That's
it? Just Fogarty?"

"Mike
Fogarty."

"My
God, an Irish Yank. A mick."

"You
don't like the Irish?"

"Of
course not. They're bloody wogs, the whole grotty lot."

"Wogs?"

She
smiled, and in a precise Home Counties accent said, "A wog, my dear
boy,
is a westernized oriental gentleman, to wit, a person of color or one
who is
not English. That includes the Welsh, the Scots, the Irish, the French
and the
inhabitants of any country that ever was part of the British Empire, or
ever an
enemy of England."

"That's
everybody!"

"Precisely.
Some would extend the definition of wog to include members of the
Labour Party.
I'm afraid this is all too terribly English. Since we don't rule the
world
anymore, we have to make jokes about ourselves."

"I
think you're great. What's your name?"

"I'm
called Liz."

She
knocked a few ashes onto her chest and brushed them away. Fogarty saw
tiny
freckles under her collarbone.

"Are
you... what I mean is..."

"Am
I one of the whores?"

"Yeah."

"I
am." She smiled again. "Ten
dollars U.S. and I'm yours. For twenty dollars you can have me all
night."

Fogarty
was dazzled, but he was also so drunk he
could hardly walk. She helped him up the stairs and out of the bar. A
taxi
carried them the short distance to the hotel.

Sorensen
lay in bed listening to the sound of a maid slowly working up the
marble stairs
to the third floor. She lifted her pail of water one step at a time,
set it
down with a clang, dragged her heavy body after it, slowly mopped each
slab of
stone. She repeated the process two dozen times. When she reached the
third
floor she shuffled down the corridor, unlocked one of the rooms and
banged the
door behind her.

Somewhere
in the hotel a radio came to life and a muffled female voice sang a
slow
ballad.

A
pool of
blond hair lay across Sorensen's chest. Rosa stirred, sticky with
sleep, and
sat up with a groan.