“Of course.” The boy’s indignation inquired Don’t you know anything about this game?

After that, Tomlinson would have adopted the kid, would have given him anything—money, his bicycle, even his boat—but was required, philosophically, to spread the wealth. He tossed him the glove, saying, “From now on, you’re in charge of this, but you have to share with your teammates. Understand?”

“For how long?”

“How long can you keep it? When you’re too old to play, ask me then.”

Christmas morning. It was in the kid’s eyes until he put the glove on. “Mother of God—it’s soaked. Why did you leave this in the rain? It needs oil. I will oil the glove and sleep with it until it forgets such shitty treatment.”

Adopt him, hell, Tomlinson thought. I’ll steal the kid and take him home if he doesn’t have parents.

When the equipment bag was empty, he pitched a couple of innings, then struck up a conversation with a fisherman, who asked about the condition of No Más.

Tomlinson went through the list of repairs. “Can you help? I know it’s Friday, but I’m eager to get started.”

“For a man who gives baseballs to children, of course. My grandfather taught me how to fix anything that floats, and a few things that shouldn’t.” He was Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway’s fishing captain.

Cuba was like that, a time warp linked to the 1950s.

“I’m honored,” Tomlinson said. “The difficulty is, I lost my dinghy. No way to get back and forth from shore.”

“I have a skiff with a motor you can use.”

“That’s very kind, but”—Tomlinson lowered his voice—“I don’t want to get you into trouble. I’m being watched. They would know the skiff belongs to you. Even at night if I wanted to go somewhere . . . well, let’s say, leave the harbor for some reason . . . they would hear the motor.”

The fisherman confirmed his understanding with an exchange of looks, then a shrug. “You plan to search for your missing dinghy. I would do the same.”

“Exactly,” Tomlinson said. “And the funny thing is? That happens to be true.”

The fisherman didn’t believe him. “The less you say, the better. Come with me.”

Twenty minutes later, a little before two, they were standing in mangroves near a bridge that separated Cojimar Bay from the river where fishermen kept their boats. “Would this work?”

Hidden in the bushes was a dugout canoe and a paddle, hand-carved.

“Perfect,” Tomlinson said. “Now . . . I don’t suppose you’d be willing to draw me a little chart? In case I get restless and, you know, decide to look for my dinghy.”

Thursday afternoon, after landing at José Martí International, the Russian drove Vernum Quick to a party on a ship recently docked in Mariel. Vodka-crazed men in uniforms and chingas from the bowels of Havana. The chingas only made Vernum hungrier because his damaged face disgusted even them. So he drank too much and passed out in Kostikov’s old Mercedes that, the next morning, delivered him to the farming village of Plobacho.

Home: fifty square kilometers of even smaller villages, bananas, thatched huts, tobacco, valleys between cliffs, cane fields, dull women, and roads dotted with oxen shit.

I can’t survive here much longer, Vernum thought—not for the first time. For five years, rumors about a demon in the cane fields had been spreading.

At two p.m., Kostikov texted via a satellite phone he had provided Vernum—but not in Spanish, of course. Translation required an old textbook from the Fidelista days.

The pizda arrived Cojimar, told police defector dead. Briefcase drowned. Stay your home.

Figuerito Casanova was the defector, so pizda had to mean “hippie”—or did it? Nor was it likely a briefcase could drown.

Vernum pumped cold water over his head, then drove his 1972 Russian Lada past the wooden baseball stadium to the square, where chickens scratched under tamarind trees. In the park, three old men sat on the rim of a fountain that hadn’t worked in years, a marble bust of José Martí nearby.

“Pizda?” Vernum inquired as he approached. “You speak Russian. What does it mean?”

“‘Kiss my ass,’” one of the men replied, then tried to ignore him.

“That’s the translation? ‘Kiss my ass’?”

The men laughed, but one grumbled, “Leave us in peace, you evil turd. If a Russian called you a pussy, he’s smarter than most of those savages.”

Pizda—it made sense, then, but a Santero couldn’t ignore an insult like that, even from an old pig who still wore his medals from the Angola war. “Do you know what this is, Oleg?” Vernum produced a leather pouch from under his white guayabera. “It’s what will be left of your balls if you don’t apologize to the saints, especially Changó . . . Oh, and an offering of twenty pesos for my trouble.”

Oleg just grinned. “Pizda—I bet Vernum swallowed the Russian’s cigar to earn a name so sweet. Look at how his face was beaten when they made hot oil.”

More laughter. The men returned to their gossip while sweat beaded on Vernum’s forehead. From the pouch, he mixed a gram of powdered bluestone with turpentine gum and coconut, indifferent to their discussion until he heard the name Marta Esteban, then something about Marta’s daughters. To which Oleg insisted, “They returned early this morning, but it can’t be true. No Americano would do a good deed, then disappear. Set cats on fire to burn our fields, the CIA, yes. Then leave in a fast boat—but not after rescuing children.”

Vernum looked up, wanted to ask Rescued the daughters from what? but decided it was better to wait.

Nothing more to be learned, though, when the men realized he was eavesdropping, so he carried his act through: dabbed a pigeon feather in the goo and placed it on the head of José Martí with the quill pointed at Oleg. “In the morning, your pinga will be soft like an oyster and your piss will burn. I warn you for the last time . . .”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Oleg roared. “Vernum must have watched through my toilet window. I thought he only peeped at schoolgirls.”

Hilarious.

“Vernum-ita, instead of defacing General Martí, why not stick that feather up your ass?”

It went on like that, the three men trading jokes, each trying to top the other, while Vernum stalked away. One option was to go to his room and return with the last drop or two of poison he’d harvested from the Montblanc pen. Instead, he relied on Kostikov’s bad temper and sent a text: A gossip saw me in your car. Russian savage, he called you. I want to kill him.

The response was in Spanish, thank god: He suspects?

Vernum typed: Old man, big mouth.

Response: Close mouth, do not kill.

Vernum felt a glow in his abdomen. He approached Oleg from behind, snatched his cane, and broke it over his shoulder, then hammered him in the face when he was on the ground. Lots of blood, and teeth scattered among the tamarind leaves, as well as a war medal that had pulled free of its ribbon.

Vernum retrieved the medal and lobbed it toward the old man’s legs. “If anyone asks, a savage Russian ordered me to punish you,” he said, and left in his ’72 Lada, with its dents and broken antenna, red paint peeling.