legs were stiff after sitting tense for so long. Gina turned away from the vista ahead with large homes and the huge main university building beyond, leading them toward a run-down-looking place that must have once been beautiful.
Heck turned back to tell them, “Gina says she can take me later to see the small hotel and hacienda my grandfather owned. She said not to get my hopes up that they look like my family said.”
Which, Nick saw, was the name of the game in this area where Gina lived, in what he would call student housing—cheap student housing. Her building must have once been grand but it was falling apart. The broken back gate they went in took them past a long-empty swimming pool with a broken diving board. They had to duck around tropical plants, no doubt once tended, now run rampant like a jungle. They walked in on the ground floor and followed her up three flights of dusty, partly crumbling stairs.
Jace carried Lexi now. She was always clinging to one of them, and Nick could see why. If he was nerved up and Claire looked it too, what must this child be thinking?
“This the old servants’ stairs,” Gina told them. “Wider ones in front, but we not need to see people if they not on canvas.”
“Campus,” Heck corrected her. “You said to tell you if you use a wrong word.”
“Campus, campus,” Gina recited. “I was even thinking for one momentito it might be circus.”
Claire said, “But your English is quite good.”
“I learn most of it from my Russian professor of anatomy couple years ago. English from a Russian, a good joke, yes?”
Nick saw Claire nod. He knew she was relieved to hear the explanation for the girl’s unusual accent. Like him, Claire’s brain had been running wild with suspicions about Russian spies and Cubans following them. That was ridiculous, of course, at least so far, but she had good instincts and she’d whispered to him more than once on the bus that the back of her neck was prickling with her woman’s intuition that they were being watched. He’d just forced a smile and shook his head at her. Of course they were being watched, but just because they stood out on the rural bus.
“No one should be here in my apartment, so no worry,” Gina assured them again as she had when she’d laid out her plan last night at her parents’ house. “My two girlfriends busy with their—their admirers, and Eduardo, he is away until late tomorrow, so you be gone by then, be taken care of.”
Claire’s stare collided with Nick’s. There were two ways to interpret what Gina had just said. But, right now, they had no choice but to trust her.
* * *
Claire nearly collapsed onto the sunken settee in the main room of the apartment Gina shared with two other women and one man. The antique piece was covered with faded and worn red velvet, probably a survivor of the good old days. A few other dark wood furniture pieces looked patched together from somewhere grand, a ball-footed table and five mismatched chairs, a cubbyhole desk that boasted a laptop. Heck hovered over that as if it was a magnet.
“Berto,” Gina said, “I tell you, it only go to university sites unless Eduardo connects to the wires we have to string outside, along rooftops. Under that pillowcase, our telemundo.” She pointed. “But unless he left the packet for the week here, sorry, but little Meggie can’t watch old TV shows today.”
“The packet?” Heck said.
“We pool some money, he take our hard drive to a secret location and get it loaded with mostly American TV. We see game shows, watch things like Homeland, about spies and secret agents, so don’t think we don’t know American things. I told you, I love America.
“Okay, now,” she went on, shrugging off her backpack and disappearing into one of the three doors that must lead to sleeping quarters—and, hopefully, a bathroom. “Here some suitcases you can use, look like you flew into Havana.”
She dragged out three, two of which looked presentable, despite their scuffed surface and small size. “You have to pretend they are heavy—tourists always come and go with heavy ones—but you won’t have much in them. How about I take Lorena and Berto, and we try buy a change of clothes for all of you, then you try look like European or Canadian or something.”
“Or something is right,” Bronco spoke up, though he hadn’t been saying much.
“Berto,” Nick said with a stare at Heck, “we’ll all go out later to see your family’s places, so keep to business now, okay?”
“Oh, sure, boss. I waited my whole life to see those places, wishing I could get them back, so I can stand it a little longer.”
Nick gave Heck two fifty-dollar bills he’d taken out from his plastic money belt this morning and had stuck in the front pocket of his pants. Gina’s eyes widened when she saw them. “Oh, I hope they have money give us back. Maybe we best go into a real shop, not somewhere on the street. We’ll bring back food too, not be gone long. You want nap, is okay to use my friends’ beds. Jenna looking like she can sleep right there,” she said with a nod at Claire. “So—you not answer the door. This plan, it will work. If it does, you think your friends who come get you in a boat will mind one more person? It would kill my parents if I go, but I got to look ahead—just kidding, I think. All of us got to keep our eyes ahead, even if it is a dark road at times.”
* * *
Jace thought things were looking up when their Spanish-speaking trio were back in an hour with a change of clothes for everyone and hot tamales. Gina hauled out cans of a soft drink called TuKola from a tiny refrigerator in the corner. The girl had a good eye for clothing sizes. His jeans fit pretty well, though they were beige. Ironically, they’d got Nick the same outfit, which made them look more like the brothers they were pretending to be. Lexi liked her yellow-and-white-striped dress and kept saying Lily would like it, so she must be remembering some friend of hers from home he hadn’t met. Claire’s outfit was white tennis shoes with a turquoise three-piece slacks outfit, though the blue kind of clashed with her red hair.
With Bronco bringing up the rear and Gina leading, they set out in separate groups, walking a few yards apart to see Heck’s Cuban family’s past property. All wore sunglasses Gina had bought from the man on the bus. Nick carried a map of this area called El Vedado that Heck had bought. “El Vedado, that means ‘the forbidden,’” Heck whispered to Jace, “but don’t know why.”
“Let’s just hope we don’t find out and don’t like the answer,” Jace told him.
* * *
As tired and wary as she was, Claire thought the Vedado was lovely. Some of the mansions dated back to the 1860s, but most were from the 1920s. Many were still kept up, though some were in total disrepair. It was hilly and windy up here, a lovely day that partly lifted her spirits.
Heck, though, she noted, was a mess. He was finally so close to his heritage, one he shared with the now-deceased grandfather he still cherished. Gina was as good as a tour guide—that was, until she led them to a break in an iron fence behind a bougainvillea bush and said, “We cut through here. Good shortcut and beautiful inside. We never stop to pay at the gate—too much.”
Heck said, “But it’s a cemetery. What if we get caught without a ticket? We don’t need to be reported.”
“Is okay,” Gina said with a quick downward slice of her hand. “We cut through here all the time, to university.
