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who just that day had been sworn into the militia and issued a rifle, and had thought only to threaten the man who had insulted him and the entire revolution. Francisca had disappeared at the time of the killing. Only much later it was learned what had happened to her. Crazed with grief and anger at the slaying of her father, she had run into the street with a tiny silver-plated woman’s pistol and punched two bee-sting wounds into the nearest uniformed peasant flesh. They had taken her away and placed her in the stockade at a provisional military barracks outside Havana at Rancho Luna.
    Raoul knew that Enrique would never be convinced that those village boys were innocent of any depravity, any bestial intent. The new day had dawned, and here was this lithe and lovely and rebellious little upper class chicken, a bonus from the benign gods of revolution. Now that all were equal, she could be given her chance to labor for the glory of the people’s republic, to scrub and wash and cook and serve and carry and, inevitably perhaps, share the bunks of those young heroes of the revolution who, in turn, had the force to quell her and take her.
    Once she was found, it was not difficult to arrange to have her brought out. The new Cuban Government was not eager for that kind of publicity. But there would be certain fees—and somehow they knew almost to a penny how much Enrique had managed to escape with, after everything else had been confiscated.
    She was taken directly from Miami International to the hospital, dangerously thin, anemic, pregnant, alarmingly docile and submissive, and running a high fever of unknown origin. A bad reaction to the antibiotics they gave her caused her to miscarry. Old friends of the family competed for the chance to take her in and care for her. Perhaps conscience had something to do with it. During the final months of the Batista rule, they had been busily liquidating holdings and quietly and shrewdly shipping the money out of Cuba, investing it elsewhere. ’Cisca had nothing left, poor child, and she was a symbol of the brutality of the new order. And she is no trouble at all, really. Hardly says a word. The little thing just sits with her head bowed, sewing and knitting, and has that shy little smile when you speak to her.
    During training Enrique had taken Raoul with him when he had made the last visit to his younger sister. He did not think she even glanced at him, or was more than remotely aware of another person present. It seemed to him then that the psychic damage had made her withdraw so far she would never return.
    Apparently Enrique thought so too, because before the landing he asked Raoul to sort of watch out for ’Cisca should anything happen to him. Something happened. In the fumbled, sickening chaos of the Bay of Pigs, Raoul, diving for cover, saw Enrique run into a hammering rain that stopped him abruptly, then drove him back, emptied him, spilled him in a loose, wet, ragged ruin.
    Raoul Kelly survived the invasion and survived the imprisonment on the Isle of Pines, and was exchanged for medicines, and could not find Francisca. After she had heard of Enrique’s death, she had packed and gone away. They thought she was working somewhere.
    He found her working as a waitress in a café in Homestead, Florida, merry and grinning and quick at her work, popular with the owners and the customers. To his surprise she remembered him atonce, but she did not care to talk to him. He lost her, and then found her again, working as a live-in maid for an elderly couple in Miami Shores. She was friendlier to him than before, but not quite enough to make him feel welcome.
    Six months ago he had looked her up again, and had traced her to this place. And, by now, she had been working for Crissy Harkinson for almost a year. She greeted him warmly, and he had fallen into the habit of coming to see her whenever he could.
    She seemed always in good spirits, but he learned that it was forbidden to talk about