I couldn’t argue with her. Especially now that we’d spent the night together. Especially now that I was planning to do the same again, just as soon as we were installed in a nice hotel. I’d heard that Le Refuge in the holiday resort of Kenscoff, six miles outside of Port-au-Prince, might be just the kind of place I was looking for. Kenscoff is four thousand feet above sea level and the climate there is fine all year round. Which is almost as long as I was planning to stay. Of course, Haiti had its problems, just like Cuba, but they weren’t my problems. So what did I care? I had other things to worry about, such as what I was going to do when my Argentine passport expired. And now there was the small problem of taking a small boat safely through the Windward Passage. I probably shouldn’t have been drinking, but even with La Guajaba’s running lights there was something about driving a boat across the sea in darkness that I found unnerving. And fearing that we might hit something—a reef, or a whale—I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax until it was light again, by which time I hoped we would be halfway across the ocean to Hispaniola.

And then there was something more tangible to worry about. Another vessel was approaching quickly from the north. It was moving too fast to be a fishing boat, and the big searchlight picking us out of the darkness was too powerful for it to belong to anything but a U.S. Navy patrol boat.

“Who are they?” asked Melba.

“The American navy, I imagine.”

Even above our twin Chrysler engines I heard Melba swallow. She still looked beautiful, only now she looked worried as well. She turned suddenly and stared at me with wide brown eyes.

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “That boat can probably outrun us and certainly outgun us. The best thing you can do is go below, climb into bed, and stay there. I’ll handle things up here.”

She shook her head. “I won’t let them arrest me,” she said. “They’d hand me over to the police and—”

“No one’s going to arrest you,” I said, touching her cheek in an effort to reassure her. “My guess is that they’re just going to look us over. So do as I say and we’ll be okay.”

I throttled back and put the gearshift in neutral. When I came out of the wheelhouse, the blinding searchlight was in my face. I felt like a giant gorilla on a skyscraper with the patrol boat circling me at a distance. I went to the gently pitching stern, had another drink, and coolly awaited their pleasure.

A minute passed and then an officer wearing whites came to the starboard side of the gunboat with a bullhorn in his hand.