"And they always guess 'not a day over fifty,' sir," she said, suddenly transformed into a young girl amused at her grandfather's antics.
"The next question, at least to any young man who sees the two of us together, is where did she get her height and her looks?" Jensen said, apparently reading Valentine's mind again. "Maria-my daughter-was even shorter than I was, may she rest in peace. It's her father's doing. Tall, handsome Cuban man he was, hair like yours-Mr., Mr.-"
"Valentine," Carrasca supplied.
"That's the problem with age, my son, and it's a real bugger. What happened thirty years ago is bright as the island's sun, but what you talked about just this morning disappears into a fog. But there was more to Eduardo than looks. As brave and as sharp as they come. Also dead, by the way. Should fair fortune be with you and you see long service, Valentine, you'll see too many of the best ones die."
Valentine's memory, always too ready to parade the faces of the women and men he had known and lost, rose to the occasion. Jensen gathered as much from the expression on his guest, and he changed the subject.
"Let's eat, the cold dishes are already served," the commodore said, moving to a chair. "Come down by me, you two, no sense shouting at each other over twelve feet of
table. That American President Eisenhower used to take dignitaries out on his back porch and talk to them, said he 'got a better measure of the man' or some such. I do the same thing over the dinner table. Cook tells me the chicken turned out well, and no one does a glazed ham like he does. Cook!" Jensen bellowed through the wall. "We're ready when you are."
By the time they were seated, one of the picture-framelike carved panels on the wall opened, and the sweating cook appeared with a tray. He began to arrange dishes before the three: chicken swimming in orange sauce, some kind of peppery-smelling stew, corn and potatoes surgically carved and neatly arranged. A second man followed, bearing a thick ham glazed with slices of pineapple and something that looked like black cherries.
The three began to help each other to servings from the varied dishes, as the cook poured wine into glass goblets, the only matching dinnerware on the table.
"Captain Utari doesn't know what he's missing. I invited him, but then he hates this sort of thing. There's no sailor like him, but he refuses to do anything with shoes on, or eat anything that can't be bitten off the tip of his knife. Or maybe he just has a superior sense for the ridiculous. But as I'm fond of saying, this Port wasn't just founded to preserve life, but to-"
"-preserve a way of life," Carrasca finished, reaching across the table to pat the commodore's hand.
Valentine sipped lightly from the wine.
"Don't like it? It's a bit harsh, I know, but I get tired of rum and brandy," Jensen apologized. "Jamaica's a second Eden as far as I'm concerned, except for the wine. Don't know enough about it to tell you why. Years ago we had some pretty fair stuff from the old hotels and resorts, but it's been used up over time."
"I wouldn't know. Haven't had many chances to drink it. What I've had has been from dandelions or blackberries. This is rather good-in comparison."
They spent a few minutes eating under the anxious eye of the cook. He hovered like a teacher watching his pupils take a make-or-break exam. Valentine, who usually disliked the feeling of having too much of anything: alcohol, food, or even leisure, ate heartily until he heard his innards groan in discomfort.
Valentine raised his glass. "May I offer a toast? To the bounty of Jamaica, my hosts, and especially to the author of the best dinner I've had in years," he said, dipping the goblet in the cook's direction.
"I second the motion," Carrasca said, eyes reflecting flickers of the candlelit room.
"Hear hear," added the commodore through a full mouth.
Fresh fruits and a sweet, milky pudding identified as flan finished the meal. The commodore enjoyed a private dessert, a toasted marrow bone. He went to work on the contents with a miniature fork, and Carrasca turned to him expectantly.
"Young man," Jensen began, sucking unabashedly at the bone, "my granddaughter tells me you tried to take the gunboat."
"Had matters taken a better turn, we would have gone straight to Haiti."
"Valentine, there's nothing on Hispaniola but death. Are you looking for allies in the islands? You wouldn't find any on Haiti who'll help you up north. They have miseries enough."
"Or here," Carrasca said, her eyes turning hard. "We had a group of you Freeholders arrive before, when I was sixteen. Marched them through town and everyone cheered. They gave us lots of talk about guerrilla cadres and hit-and-run raids. Uniting the different parts of the island to go after Kingston. All they managed to do was get some of our inland people killed and a lot of families on the other side of the Blue Mountains hanged. There wasn't any cheering when they left. If you think the people of Jayport-"
"Nothing like that," Valentine said, startled at her sudden turn in temper. "I'm looking for a weapon, not allies. I'm not asking you or anyone to fight Reapers."
"Malia," her grandfather said, "the reprisals weren't Mr. Valentine's fault any more than they were Major Hawthorne's.
"Forgive my granddaughter," Jensen added, turning to Valentine. "After the aborted uprising, they wiped out one of our settlements up in the mountains. That's where her mother died," he said, clamping his mouth firmly shut and looking at Carrasca. "My great mistake."
"Not yours, Granddad," she said. "You saw the uniforms, counted the guns, heard Hawthorne's promises. Believed in him. He knew the kind of words to use. Even on Mum. She was a widow, Mr. Valentine, and-"
"Let's not bore our guest with family business," Jensen said. He looked at his granddaughter for a moment, as if trying to summon her mother's features from Carrasca's shapely face, then turned back to Valentine. "You need that ship you were on, the gunboat, to get this weapon?"
"Get it and get it back to the mainland. We needed something big enough to carry it, a ship that could anchor off the coast long enough for me to find it and load it, then be able to go back unchallenged. The Thunderbolt is as large as they come in the Caribbean these days."
"You're wrong," Jensen said. "The Dutchmen down south have an old cruiser still working, God knows how. I think it used to be an American ship, too. It could blow the Thunderbolt in half, but the Dutchmen are on our side. In fact, I was planning on feeding your gunboat with their diesel fuel."