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He lay for a measureless instant on his plank bed, certain he had heard something unusualthe sound of a boat approaching the single pier and the guardhouse. It was not time yet to change the guards, who must have committed some serious military transgressions to be assigned to Cayo de las Doce Leguas. They were allowed to spend one day in ten on the big island, but never, Cabo Roberto assured Krasny, any nearer civilization than Jucaro or Tunas de Zaza, two villages miles off the beaten track to Cienfuegos. |
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Krasny had been confined on Twelve League Key for nearly a year. He had failed to keep accurate count of the days, because he hadfor the first five months, at leastbeen certain that Raul Castro would soon order his release. General Kondratiev had assured him that Fidel's brother was a Soyuz comrade. |
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But Raul Castro's messenger had never come, and now in late November, almost a year from the day the Soyuz missile was planted at the bottom of Hudson Bay, Captain Lieutenant Viktor Stepanovich Krasny, former political officer of the Soviet navy, still rotted on this miserable, piss-smelling rock between the Gulf of Ana Maria and the Caribbean Sea. The injustice of his situation was wearing his endurance thin. And lately, in the darkness he seemed to see shadowy figures stalking his cell as he tried to go to sleep, figures whose familiar faces mocked him. "Come join us," they whispered, "join us in hell" |
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He swung his naked legs off the plank on which he slept and heard the alarmed scorpions and roaches scuttle back to their crevices in the concrete walls. He stood, scratched himself awake, and grasped the bars of his single, narrow window facing the pier and the barracks. |
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There was a new boat at the pier, a small launch with the running lights still on. Soldiers of the garrison stood approximately to attention on the pier. Krasny had never seen the guardians of this military shit pile behave in so soldierly a fashion. Whoever had arrived on the launch must be important. |
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