It was five-fifteen a.m. For more than an hour, No Más had been allowed free rein to drift and settle low in the water while a mild Bahamas breeze did its work. Tomlinson stood and stretched. Cuba, yes. A few twinkling lights up there in the hills, a whiff of woodsmoke beneath a cavern of stars. More convincing was the knot on his head.

Better luck next time, big fella. Guess I’ll hop back on Your crazy carousel.

He climbed aft over the broken mast and a tangle of cables, tangs, and turnbuckles that he’d done his best to secure. No Más’s little diesel, still warm after twelve hours of constant work, started at the touch of a button. Almost no fuel in the tank, however, thus the wisdom of drifting.

After a glance astern—no dinghy there either—Tomlinson throttled toward land, and then a distant navigation tower that, hopefully, marked the entrance to a fishing village, but certainly wasn’t Havana.

When the gunboats stop me, he thought, I’ll know for sure.

•   •   •

THE CUBAN MILITARY was ever on alert for vessels that strayed within the twelve-mile limit, yet No Más, waddling like an injured duck, went unchallenged as Tomlinson rounded a point and motored into one of the prettiest little harbors he’d ever seen. No yachts or crotch rockets here, just a few fishing dories beached amid garbage, and a guard tower built in the time of the Conquistadors. Bougainvillea, hibiscus, and roofs of red tile. Dogs yapped; people stared, then looked away.

Weird, Tomlinson thought. Almost like they’re expecting me. Or maybe they’re always afraid.

On the other hand, maybe it was because he was naked except for a red bandana tied around his head. He was surprised when he realized that.

Damn—a couple of cops watching, too, and someone else inside a car parked with one door open. A woman in uniform, it looked like.

Well . . . shit-oh-dear.

He swung down into the cabin and reappeared wearing jeans and a tank top that were sodden and stunk of diesel fuel. Ahead was a cement pier, but most of it had collapsed. The only other place to tie up was built over the water, an ornate structure with French doors that might have once been a restaurant or, with luck, might still be a restaurant.

Was that coffee he smelled?

Yes, it was. Twenty minutes later, he sat at the bar of La Terraza with an espresso, a cold Cristal beer, and a papaya he’d bought from a vendor in the street. No food available from the kitchen at seven-thirty a.m., but the manager seemed eager to have the tall gringo stick around.

Interesting.

Tomlinson’s suspicions were confirmed when the two cops he’d seen arrived with a woman from the customs department; the woman in a uniform of blue, the cops in gray.

“We’ve heard reports of this incident you described,” the woman said after listening to his story. “Did you see the name of the vessel, any identifying marks? Or, perhaps, it all happened too fast.”

What Tomlinson had seen were military goons laughing down at them from the cruise ship’s fantail, but the way the woman glanced at the cops put him on alert. She had intentionally provided him with an out. Why? Or was this a subtle warning?

Possibly. Figueroa had identified the goons by their Russian uniforms—something the Cuban government wouldn’t want confirmed by an eyewitness.

“It’s hard for me to think straight,” he replied, “so I’m glad you speak English.” He lifted the bandana to show the knot on his head, then straightened it and smiled at her necklace of white and blue beads. “I’m just getting into Santería. Those colors, they honor Yemayá, correct? Goddess of the sea and sensuality. Wasn’t she Changó the war god’s first lover?”

A slight nod from the woman as she tugged at her collar. “Please answer the question.”

“It’s all a blur,” he replied, because that’s what she wanted to hear.

No Más’s documents, along with his passport, were in a waterproof bag, which she opened and went through one by one while the cops stood at the door and glowered. The woman asked several more questions: Did he have money? How much? Could he arrange for more money if allowed to stay while his boat was repaired?

A small van arrived. A team of four clomped down the steps to the quay. “They’re going to search everything,” the woman said. “Experts, the best at what they do. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

Another warning.

That goddamn Russian grizzly narced us out, Tomlinson thought. Figgy was right about him.

He said, “Yes. They’ll find two baggies of very good ganja. And something else—it’s hard to talk about. I didn’t mention there was someone traveling with me.”

The relief on the woman’s face was visible. She gentled him along, saying, “Better me than a judge in Havana. Where is this person?”

“Swept overboard. Yesterday by that ship or freighter or whatever it was. I was knocked unconscious, so maybe I dreamed that he survived, that he somehow got back to the boat and helped me. I want to believe that, but when I woke up—this was before sunrise—I knew he was gone.”

“Drowned,” the woman said. “That’s the last you saw of this person? When the wave knocked you both into the water.”

Tomlinson sniffed and looked through the amber bottle in his hand. “On my boat, you won’t find his papers. He told me he didn’t even have a birth certificate. Last night, that really got to me for some reason. Like he’d never been born, so I searched through all that mess wondering if I’d imagined the whole damn thing. But I didn’t. Kind of a strange little guy but a hell of a shortstop. His name was Figueroa Casanova.”

The woman, who was stocky but had a good face and warm eyes, recognized the name but tried to pretend otherwise. “Are you sure he didn’t wait until you were close to shore, then jumped?”

Tomlinson had to smile at that. “He couldn’t swim. Even if he could, all your people will find is his shoe, a baseball shoe. You know, spikes? That was enough for me.”

“To you, this shoe proves he existed? Or that he’s dead?”

“A size eight,” Tomlinson replied, “take your pick. You saw me on the boat naked, so it sure as hell doesn’t belong to me.”

•   •   •

HE HAD LANDED in the village of Cojimar, a name that was familiar, but he didn’t remember why until a man with curly hair and a beard entered and sat at the bar. Ordered a demitasse, black, lit a cigarette, and struck up a conversation about photos on the wall. There were many: portraits of leathered fishermen, close-ups of their hands, a cast net beaded with sunlight, and fish, blue marlin and sharks, all black-and-white gothics from the 1950s.

“The great photographer Raúl Corrales made these images,” the man said. “He lived here, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.”

Tomlinson, browsing as if in a museum, listened for a while. “These are timeless. None of this photoshopped, digital crap. Yeah . . . a true artist. Did you know him?”

“Very well, before he died. I’m Raúl Corrales Junior.”

Tomlinson grinned and shook the man’s hand. “Buy you a beer?”

It was almost noon.

“Another coffee,” Raúl said. This time, he spooned in raw sugar, the granules big and brown like salt. “There are images you haven’t seen in the next room. One in particular that Americans like—a giant shark we still call El Monstruo.”

The Monster of Cojimar, Tomlinson realized.

In 1945, four local fishermen, drifting outside the harbor, caught the largest great white shark in history, which took hours to land, and several more hours to tow home. The entire village turned out, an event captured in black-and-white and framed on the wall: men, women, children sitting atop a shark that was twenty-one feet long and weighed seven thousand pounds.

“The Monster had been stealing blue marlin and swordfish from their lines, so our fishermen had to do something or go broke,” Corrales explained.