Chapter 23

BACK IN LIEUTENANT Tom Smith’s New York apartment, Pedrito Miraflores felt like a trapped animal. The place was offensively clean and neat. The air smelled of antiseptic fluids and air fresheners instead of sweat, liquor, bad food and cigarettes. How could Smith stand it?

Pedrito single-handedly engaged in a valiant attempt to make the place more livable.

First, he bought several rank cigars — not good Cuban cigars, unfortunately, and smoked them one after the other until the apartment air was laden with their stench. Though they were bad American cigars, it had been so long since he’d had a decent smoke, even these were tolerable.

Then Pedrito stalked about, tearing down the paintings of beautiful sunsets and big-eyed puppy dogs, leaving only crooked nails and dangling picture wires, which seemed to him more appropriate. He went into the bathroom and left the toilet seat up.

Now all the place needed were some cockroaches, a stray dog or two, some scorpions and a few chickens.

In the kitchen cupboards, Smith had neatly lined up all of the cans. The grocery list clipped to his freezer door had been typed. Pedrito didn’t find a single item of spoiled food in the refrigerator.

Shaking his head sadly, Pedrito couldn’t figure out how a man could live like this. It sickened him.

He flicked on the TV and saw that Smith had preset the cable box to the local public broadcasting station. Pedrito clicked from station to station until he finally settled on a series of bad movies, after which he watched an hour of all-star wrestling.

Finally, nursing his own bottle of tequila, he felt more relaxed.

He went into the bedroom, opened the closet and saw Smith’s Navy uniforms all hanging neatly, their creases crisply ironed, top buttons buttoned. With a mischievous smile, he shook the hangers, ruffling the clothes. He jostled the shoes lined up in ranks on the floor until the pairs were all mixed up. At this, he laughed out loud.

Hour by hour, this place seemed more and more like home. Smith would thank him when — or if — he ever came back. But that wasn’t part of the plan. Smith was the patsy, and he was the infiltrator. Once he had passed along all the secrets from Naval Intelligence, this identity would be useless, and Pedrito Miraflores would be free to become himself again.

If Smith happened to get himself killed down in Colodor in the meantime, then Pedrito’s legendary ability to escape death would be enhanced even more.

Pedrito rumpled the bed, tore off the bedspread and the mattress cover, grabbed a pillow and decided to sleep on the floor. He could feel the warm glow of tequila in his stomach, could smell the residual odor of cigar smoke in the air. Yet something was missing.

He went out to the dumpster, found someone else’s rotten trash, and brought it in and dumped it in the kitchen.

He curled up on a lumpy blanket on the hard floor, and smiled as he sank down into the pillow. This was more like it.

Now he felt he could face the rest of his mission.