Assassin's Honor (9781561648207) (46 page)

“An excellent idea!” I exclaimed, without adding that it removed a huge weight from my heart, for Maria and I had been terribly worried about the two of them living in Cuba. The incident at the Key West wharf had been a warning to the wise.

Maria put a hand to her heart in joy, rising to embrace them both. Rork slapped Mario on the shoulder in delight. “Good decision, lad.”

Useppa came over and sat in my lap and kissed my cheek, just like she did when a little girl. What she said next, I have cherished ever since. “Daddy, I've never been happier than right now. You and mother were the best parents anyone could ask for. Thank you for all you've done for me. And for
our
children, Mario and I want to be parents just like you and mother.”

“Well said, Useppa,” murmured Rork.

Maria saw that I was overcome, unable to utter a word in reply. She tenderly held my hand. “I am so proud to be your wife, Peter Wake. Thank you for asking me. I love you.”

I drank in the sight of my happy and healthy family. The scenery around us was fresh and alive with the promise of a new day's beginning. We could and would handle anything heading our way, for each of us had proven ourselves on the hard road to get there, at that time and place, together.

Later in the morning, while the others finished packing for the journey, I took a walk along the path of crushed shells that follows the little ridge line of the island. At the south end, I stopped to gaze out over the gumbo limbos and oranges and sabal palms, to the bay beyond. It is a beautiful vista, a balm for the eyes that I conjure when far away.

Maria arrived beside me and looked out over the scene. Our hands found each other. “Your mind seems to be a thousand
miles away, Peter. What are you thinking of?” she asked.

“Assassins,” I replied, omitting the rest of my thoughts—that that disreputable category had included me on occasion. It was something I rarely admitted to myself, and never to anyone else, certainly not the woman I wanted,
needed
, to love me. The darkest corners of one's past are best left in the shadows.

She was silent a while, then said, “Assassins? But you were smiling when I walked up.”

“Well, dear, I was thinking about what Martí whispered to me, just before the wedding got under way.”

“Yes, I remember that. I saw you with him in deep conversation and wondered about it at the time. Was it about the man who tried to assassinate him? What did he say?”

Martí's assassin. I had never told Maria the real story of the “new friend” she saw emerging from the box wagon the morning she left the Tampa Bay Hotel. I'd never told anyone about the man, now with a new name, quickly proving to be one of Martí's most trusted men inside Cuba. Only Martí and Rork knew.

The brief scene with José inside the church went through my mind. I'd just asked him how “our mutual friend” was doing. Martí leaned close and grasped my hand. His usually hard eyes had softened, for what he had to say didn't just apply to the man who tried to kill him. “Even assassins can redeem their honor and live in peace, Peter. Remember that, my friend.”

He was right. They can indeed.

Lt. Commander Sean Wake, U.S.N
.

U.S.S
. Brooklyn

European Squadron

26 June 1903

My dear son Sean
,

Well, now you know what actually happened from December 1892 to May 1893—a turbulent time in my life and career. You know of the great mistake in judgment that led me astray to Mexico, resulted in diplomatic contretemps with Germany, and nearly made me too late to warn Martí about the poisoning. And I have also been candid about the inexcusable lapse in discipline when I gave in to temptation and struck Norton Gardiner
.

I want you to learn from my mistakes. The lesson is simple: recognize your prejudices and do not allow them to cloud your assessment of conditions or men. I did, and was extremely lucky the terrible consequences were never realized
.

It is the inner man's mind and soul that ultimately determines the outer man's success and happiness. My mind and soul were in damned bad shape before I met Maria that summer of 1892. Her love enabled me to live again, not merely exist—something I thought lost forever when your mother died in '81. I hope someday you'll meet such a lady. Do not hesitate when you do
.

Now that you know what happened, you may wonder about the aftermath regarding some of the more intriguing figures. Captain Blau ended up retiring in 1898 after a disagreement with Tirpitz. His Kaiser has grown even more obnoxious in world affairs—bad things are ahead with him. Rear Admiral Walker retired in 1897 and became a leading proponent of the hot foreign policy topic of our day, an Isthmian canal project. I am glad to say that Gardiner ended up getting the better of us all—in 1896 he left the navy and became a “remittance man” in Pago Pago
.

The Cuban-Spanish connections turned out rather grimly. Boreau and Marrón have been dead for five years now, but that's another story for another time. There is good news regarding the
Pedrosos. They still live in the same house, are still active in exile affairs, and still make cigars during the day. Sadly, my friend Don Vicente Ybor died in back in 1896. He is still known as “the Great Benefactor” in Tampa
.

The night of our wedding party was the last time I saw my dear friend José Martí. You may recall that he was killed in action against Spanish troops in Oriente, Cuba, in May 1895. Of all my memories of him, I prefer to remember José the way he was that night, smiling and laughing as he danced with Maria. The world is so much poorer without him
.

And what of the assassin I tried so hard to thwart? He too was killed at Oriente in 1895, leading the Cuban liberation forces against the Spanish army in their fight for freedom. The man I saw nearly lynched as a criminal ended up dying with honor for a noble cause. Cuba is free
.

So what exactly did Martí say to the assassin when alone with him that night at the Pedrosos' house? No one knows for sure, but a moral lesson is there for each of us: we can all change from bad to good
.

I know I did in 1892
.

With the greatest love and respect from your father
,

Peter Wake

Rear Admiral, U.S.N
.

Presidential Naval Aide

The White House

Washington, D.C
.

In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt designated several islands in Charlotte Harbor and Pine Island Sound, including Patricio Island, as a wildlife refuge area. Today Patricio is off limits to the public.

U.S.S.
Bennington
was one of the earliest steel warships in the U.S. Navy. She was well known and respected for her design. Unfortunately, in July 1905, (twelve years after this story takes place) the ship suffered a catastrophic boiler explosion, killing sixty-six members of her crew and injuring almost fifty others. Eleven sailors earned the Medal of Honor for their heroism. The ship was removed from service afterward, sold in 1910 to the Matson Line, and used as a water barge at Honolulu until 1924, when she was scuttled offshore. At Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego there is a 1908 memorial obelisk to the ship.

U.S.S.
Chicago
was the largest of the first three steel ships commissioned in the U.S. Navy in the 1880s, and already obsolete by the mid-1890s. She served in various duties until 1923, when she was decommissioned and used as a receiving/supply ship at Pearl Harbor. She sank while under tow in 1936.

John Grimes Walker (1835–1907) served in the U.S. Navy from 1850 until 1897. He saw extensive combat with Admiral David Porter on the Mississippi River and in coastal North Carolina during the Civil War. A highly respected officer, he commanded the main operations bureau of the navy from 1881 to 1889, and had several important squadron commands in the 1890s. Wake served under him in ONI from its inception until 1889, before joining him in the North Atlantic Squadron in 1890.

Joaquín Crespo (1841–1898) was head of state for Venezuela from 1884 to 1886, and from 1892 to 1898, when he was killed in battle during another civil war. As president, he was known for his dictatorial style; ruining the foreign credit of the country; taking large loans from Germany which Venezuela could not repay; and for the 1895 dispute with Great Britain over the boundary with Guiana, which was arbitrated by President Grover Cleveland, who found in favor of the British.

The southern telegraph line from Key West stretched south to Havana, thence Jamaica and Mexico. The northern line stretched underwater to Sanibel Island, crossing the tip at Point Ybel, then across San Carlos Bay to Punta Rassa on the mainland. From there it went to Punta Gorda and up the Peace River Valley (along the rail line) to Bartow, Tampa, and to the east coast. The original brick cable station building can still be seen at Punta Rassa.

A copy of this German Naval Code Book is still in existence, inside the code archives vault at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. I have been privileged to have been granted access to it. For more detail on exactly how Wake captured the Germans' code book at Samoa, read
Honors Rendered
.

The Caste War of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, between the Mayan separatists and the federal government, smoldered and periodically erupted from 1847 to 1901, when the Mexican Army finally occupied Chan Santa Cruz with a large permanent garrison. The last armed skirmish was in 1935.

Porfirio Díaz (1830–1915) was president of Mexico three times: for two weeks in 1876, then from 1877 to 1880, and finally from 1884 to 1911, when he was forced into exile by the Mexican Revolution. He died in Paris in 1915 and is buried there.

Dzul was a charismatic leader of the Mayan independence movement in the 1880s and 1890s. Though there are many stories, not much detail is known about him by the outside world.

S.M.S.
Gneisenau
was commissioned in 1880. She served the Imperial German Navy around the world until 1900, when she sank in a storm when the engine failed and she struck a breakwater near Málaga, Spain. Forty men, including her captain, died.

Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941) was on the throne from 1888 (at age twenty-nine) until 1918, when he abdicated in disgrace at the end of World War I. He lived the rest of his life in exile in Doorn, Holland. He was buried there.

For details about how Rork lost his hand and a false replacement was fashioned, read the account of Wake and Rork's 1883 mission inside French Indo-China in
The Honored Dead
.

There are usually four hours in a naval watch, or working shift. The ship's bell is struck every half hour, thus there are eight times when the bell is struck, each one counting out an increasing number.

There was considerable call in the 1890s for a canal across Nicaragua, especially since the French canal debacle in Panama. Recently, this idea has resurfaced.

U.S. presidential inaugurations were held on the fourth day of March after the election from the beginning of Washington's first term in 1789 until the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt's first term in 1933. This meant the outgoing president was a “lame duck” for five months. The Twentieth Amendment (ratified in 1933) changed the date to the twenty-first day of January.

The Monroe Doctrine was a foreign policy statement by President James Monroe in 1823 and reiterated by succeeding presidents after that. It was periodically ignored by various European countries, most notably when France occupied Mexico and Spain occupied the Dominican Republic during the U.S. Civil War. In the 1895 Venezuelan Crisis between that country and Great Britain, the British recognized the Monroe Doctrine's validity. Soon afterward, most European countries followed suit. Germany was the last to recognize it—after their crisis with Venezuela in 1902 and Theodore Roosevelt's thinly veiled threat to defend Venezuela from them.

Enrique Dupuy de Lomé became the Spanish ambassador to the United States on 30 September 1892. He remained in that office until he left under American political pressure in the spring of 1898, due to a letter he'd written in February to the foreign
minister in Madrid, in which he called President McKinley weak and catering to the rabble, among other things. Cubans intercepted the letter and leaked it to the
New York Journal
, which published it—right after the battleship
Maine
blew up in Havana harbor.