“Comrade, how you like that jerked pork?” Vernum asked. Interested because he’d added a few drops of special oil when he’d added more sauce.

“Ummm,” Kostikov grunted. “Ummm-huh.” The man chewed with his mouth open, red sauce all over his chin. “I tell you plan now.”

Vernum had been wondering about this return to Havana but preferred to look out the window while the man explained. Figuerito had escaped from Key West in a sailboat, the Russian told him. They knew the boat’s name: No More.

“No Más?”

The Russian nodded. “Scarecrow man we saw last night is captain. I still laugh the way he talk so tough. Hah! This hippie boy-girl threatening me, Kostikov.”

Maybe that really was the big guy’s name. It was painful to smile with thirty-three stitches, but Vernum managed. “Yeah, he’s nuts. That’s what I was thinking at the time. But if they’re in a boat, why didn’t we just rent a faster boat and catch them?”

“You question orders?”

Orders? Vernum hadn’t heard any orders. “No, man,” he said, “just asking.”

“The scarecrow likes hear himself talk to women, tells them everything. Don’t worry, we have plan.” The Russian balled up his napkin and lobbed it forward, where a woman sat alone behind the pilot, one of the blondes Vernum recognized from last night. She was lighting a cigarette in a noisy plane that had a rattling door and wasn’t pressurized.

Vernum said, “I didn’t realize there was a connection, but—” He stopped himself before inquiring how the Russian had found time to locate her. At the ER, they’d wasted two hours, counting the cops and the stitches.

“Many sources,” Kostikov said. “Now you go home and wait. That’s all now.” He turned around, his big butt taking up two seats.

Huh? Vernum slipped across the aisle. “Whoa! man. You mean my job is done? You haven’t interrogated Casanova yet. And what about the briefcase?”

The Russian had more hair on his eyebrows than his head, so looking him in the face was like confronting two cornered animals. Lots of vodka and violence and ruptured veins stared back. “You claim used device on defector, yes?”

The Montblanc pen, he meant. Yes, Vernum had tried to use that bad boy, but said, “Well, I think so, but, man, we was punching the hell out of each other. You know how that goes. Those two probably left for a day sail and they’re back in Key West right now.”

The Russian motioned to the overhead bin. “You still have device?”

Uh-oh. He hadn’t expected that but stayed cool, got to his feet and bluffed, saying, “Of course. Issued by my government. I’ll get it for you.”

“No!” The big man didn’t relax until Vernum was seated again. “We have many sources. Information no need for so many people to share. You understand meaning?”

Yes and no—the Russian was a pig and couldn’t speak Spanish but apparently knew where Figuerito and the hippie were headed.

“Sorry I doubted you.”

“No, is good you want this defector so strongly. I see this in you even after so much stupid coward shit you do last night. But”—Kostikov pushed closer—“I think you be fast at learning this trade. You would like?”

Had the Russian attempted a fatherly tone?

“Yeah,” Vernum replied, “I’ll do whatever it takes, man.”

“Oh?”

“An opportunity to serve my country, of course.”

“A patriot, eh?” The Russian’s tone said Bullshit. “I am told you are criminal. A deviant who buys girls with opium of religion. As patriot, you have read Karl Marx, yes?”

“Uh . . . I’d have to think back. What do you mean?”

“God, all your gods, are shit. That was truth Comrade Marx wrote. Your Santería is more shit than even Papist shit.”

Vernum thought, Dude, you are playing with fire, but changed his approach. “Man, you’d have to experience where I live. It’s all dirt roads and oxcarts, the same tired village women every goddamn day. So I—”

“Your women are superstitious fools,” the Russian said. “They fear stupid fears—even a devil in the cane fields, I hear. Is true?”

Vernum shrugged, thinking, Uh-oh.

“Your DGI say some hide their children, or defect on rafts, because of you. See? Religion total shit. Is large difference between devils and a man who is deviant, huh?”

That question, in an odd way, disapproved of superstition but not deviants. Vernum felt a tad better. “As long as you understand what I’m dealing with. Think what you want, but, as a respected Santero, I’ve gotta, well”—he risked a man-to-man wink—“restrain my interests in things that Havana, Key West—name any city—can offer men like us.”

Two bloodshot eyes stared through him, then swiveled toward the blonde or the pilot, who wore a headset and was also smoking. The Russian looked out the window—blue ocean a mile below—then asked, “You have phone with camera?”

DGI agents had given Vernum a cheap one, but what did that have to do with anything?

The Russian used a finger to wag him closer, then leaned his nose an inch from Vernum’s face. “No more your coward bullshit. I give order, you obey. I say truth, you obey. You want learn trade, you obey. Is clear?”

This was more than Kostikov had spoken in three days. “Sure . . . yeah, never question your orders. Damn clear . . . comrade.”

“Come. I want you take video.” The plane listed slightly when the Russian stood and he pulled himself seat to seat past the German blonde to the pilot, who he tapped on the shoulder, the pilot not surprised, more like I’m ready when you are, sir. Then put out his cigarette and fastened his shoulder harness.

Vernum, standing in the aisle with his phone ready, noticed and thought, We’re either landing or he’s trying to scare the shit out of me.

He looked out the window—nothing but water down there, José Martí International still twenty minutes away.

The Russian turned and spoke to the blonde, not loud enough to hear but congenial in manner. The blonde had been subdued but suddenly smiled and said, with her grating accent, “Yah. I have camera. Anything, comrade, for you.” Unsnapped her seat belt and stood, the cigarette in her mouth, and dangled her white breasts when she leaned to dig through her purse.

Why did Kostikov need both of their cameras?

Vernum thought, Fat pig, he’s screwing with me, and was sure of it when the Russian laced a wrist through some cargo netting near the door and ordered, “Come, hit video button. You ready?”

It was the way Kostikov grinned that warned what was coming—his assassin’s grin from the KGB video—but Vernum was so goddamn scared, he crept a few seats closer anyway and watched it happen through the viewfinder.

Kostikov saying to the blonde, “Ah . . . such beauty, your necklace,” which she took as a compliment to her tits. She smiled, aiming her camera, but used a free hand to tease her blouse open, just a flash of nipple, before scolding him, “You are very, very bad man.”

That grin again. “Yah. Bad.” Kostikov reached as if to touch her tits but ripped the necklace off.

The way the blonde’s face paled, from sunburned to dead white, Vernum found himself breathing heavier, hungry, very hungry, the demon inside him demanding to be fed. He called to the Russian, “Wait . . . let me change angles,” and ducked in two rows behind the woman, swung his legs over an armrest for a better view, which Kostikov confirmed, before he forced the door open and lifted the woman by her hair while wind roared, debris scattering as if they’d flown into a sandstorm.

“Don’t stop,” the Russian ordered, “use camera!”

Vernum, deafened by the noise, realized those orders were for the blonde, who already looked dead, her eyes so wide and still, but rallied and did exactly as she’d been told while Kostikov looked into her lens and spoke Russian as if addressing future KGB agents.