Pacheco and Luz Stella were alone in the  bubbling hot tub, only their heads above water.The recent bullet wounds were plugged with scar tissue but the pain lingered, especially in the shoulder. They sat on the upper deck, level eight, of the Marco Polo Cruise ship currently transiting the 50-mile long Kiel Canal which sliced through the flat dairy country of Germany’s northernmost province, Schleswig Holstein, connecting the fresh water Baltic Sea with the very salty North Sea.

It was early September, the cows were in the meadows, an odd sight from an ocean-going vessel,  and the late Summer sun out of a cloudless sky lighted Luz Stella’s spirits and fueled her hopes. She wished it would do the same for Pacheco. Luz Stella knew how to relax; she had mastered the art of letting go of the world’s problems, to say nothing of her own; Pacheco was working on it, but not very successfully, the law man in him seemed not to allow it. “Let it go, B.P., she said. “It will be there when we get back to it.”

            Pacheco was Inspector Bismark Pacheco, on rehabilitation leave from the Costa Rican Ministry of Justice, recovering from wounds sustained in the recently concluded bloody investigation of  terrorist attacks in Birmingham, Alabama.  “I’m trying, Cielito Lindo,” he said, “but . . . I . . .”

            Luz Stella  took his hand and held it against her cheek. “You can do this, my love . . . you must do this . . . at least until we reach Rome.”

            They were on a 19-city, 30-day cruise called The Great Cities of Europe tour but included a stop at the North African port of Tangier, Morocco. The cruise began in Copenhagen, Denmark and was scheduled to end in Rome, Italy.

 

            Pacheco and Luz Stella were alone in the bubbling hot tub, only their heads above water. Luz Stella wore a wide-brimmed floppy sun hat, Pacheco a blue canvas bucket hat to cover his baldness. Both wore dark glasses to protect their eyes from the bright afternoon sun. Pacheco’s recent bullet wounds were plugged with scar tissue but the pain lingered, especially in the shoulder. They sat on the upper deck, level eight, of the Marco Polo Cruise ship currently transiting the 50-mile long Kiel Canal which sliced through the flat dairy country of Germany’s northernmost province, Schleswig Holstein, connecting the fresh water Baltic Sea with the very salty North Sea. It was early September, the cows were in the meadows, an odd sight from an ocean-going vessel,  and the late Summer sun out of a cloudless sky lighted Luz Stella’s spirits and fueled her hopes. She wished it would do the same for Pacheco. Luz Stella knew how to relax; she had mastered the art of letting go of the world’s problems, to say nothing of her own; Pacheco was working on it, but not very successfully, the law-man in him seemed not to allow it. “Let it go, B.P., she said. “It will be there when we get back to it.”

            Pacheco was Inspector Bismark Pacheco, on rehabilitation leave from the Costa Rican Ministry of Justice, recovering from wounds sustained in the recently concluded bloody investigation of  terrorist attacks in Birmingham, Alabama.  “I’m trying, Cielito Lindo,” he said, “but . . . I . . .”

            Luz Stella  took his hand and held it against her cheek. “You can do this, my love . . . you must do this . . . at least until we reach Rome.”

            They were on a 19-city, 30-day cruise called The Great Cities of Europe tour, not withstanding it included a stop at the North African port of Tangier, Morocco. The cruise began in Copenhagen, Denmark and was scheduled to end in Rome, Italy.

            “Rome . . .” Pacheco mused. “Can we trust that guy? What’s his name?”

            “Guido Garranzo,” said Luz Stella.

            “The Mafia don,” Pacheco remembered that.

            “Doctor Stern in Birmingham said he had the power, and that everything would be explained at the Rome conference,” Luz Stella recalled.

            “He twists the law for his own purposes, Luz, I don’t . . .”

            “Dr. Stern will be there also, I think she is the one with the power, surely you noted how Garranzo deferred to her.”

            “Who controls water, controls the world, she said, why did I think it was oil?” Pacheco mused.

            “Try not to think about it, B.P.,” Luz Stella urged, “the world is out there, I am here . . .”

             Pacheco sighed and turned toward Luz Stella, “Without you, I . . .” his voice trailed off. He removed his sunglasses and tried to engage Luz Stella’ eyes, also shaded by tinted glass.

             Eye contact was a new thing for the prematurely bald Pacheco and the softly lovely Luz Stella. She quickly removed her shades and locked eyes with the ruggedly handsome Inspector, wondering if this was a way of getting inside his head. If it was, she was prepared to search him out with a view to understanding what this guy was really all about. She found herself swimming in a fast-running river of traits: courage, integrity, honesty, principle, duty . . . all there as she well knew . . . where was love? 

            For his part, Pacheco was navigating uncharted water; prolonged eye contact was as alien to him as a mot-mot looking for a handout. This woman, this Luz Stella, had seized him in a fierce grip that had left him confused and struggling to understand the nature of the hold she had on him. He was Pacheco . . . tough, ironic, cynical, independent. Right. Independent. And yet . . . here was Luz Stella. What was it about this woman that left him with the need to keep her close? Her killer instinct? He had seen her do things he had never done, and indeed was not sure he could ever do – he had seen her kill a human being, more than one, in fact. She had saved his life by strangling an assassin on the deck of the Starlight Casino cruise ship out of Cape Canaveral, Florida. He was there when she coldly executed a pair of Colombian terrorists on the University of Florida campus with well-placed bullets to the brain. She had slashed the carotid artery of the beastly Bobby Sanchez, the guy who had drilled him in the chest. Was that it? He needed her to protect him? Perhaps. Perhaps not. He savored her softness and her beauty. Maybe that was it . . . the beast and the beauty, all rolled into one inscrutable, irresistible package. Did she bring purpose to his life? He had long ago committed to saving the world from bandits and villains, a slow and maddeningly uncertain process at best; if he could save Luz Stella from the world . . . the gravelly voice of the man with the nose, Jimmy Durante, floated into his head . . . “Make someone happy, make just that one someone happy  . . . and you, will be happy, too.”

             The spell was broken by loud and excited voices rising from the sundeck, a short three steps down from the hot tub elevation where Luz Stella and Pacheco rested. There were just over 800 passengers on the Marco Polo, a large majority retired United States military personnel with wives and husbands, and the ex GI’s were angry about something. Pacheco was well versed in American scatology since his boyhood time with CIA operatives near the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border, and his four years at West Point-on-the-Hudson where he also learned discipline and doggedness. The air was thick with shouted obscenities, which became background in an other-worldly sense to Pacheco’s fully engaged brain.

            “What is it, B.P.?” Luz Stella asked after reluctantly breaking eye contact just when she sensed a profound insight approaching.

            Pacheco, mesmerized like Luz Stella, held his gaze above the rising tumult until shaken clear by Luz Stella’s question. “What?” he asked.

            “What’s happening?” Luz Stella questioned, “Why are they shouting?”

            A slim, wiry man wearing an alternating red and blue horizontally striped cotton jersey, and a U.S. Navy enlisted man’s white hat, skipped up the three steps to the hot tub deck, eager to spread the news. “They attacked the World Trade Center in Manhattan,” he cried, his voice cracking in shocked disbelief. “Thousands have died!”

            Pacheco and Luz Stella stared at the man dumbly, trying to digest the report, wondering why a total stranger felt an urgency to inform them.

             “Who attacked?” Luz Stella asked  

            “How did they attack?” Pacheco wanted to know.

            “It’s on CNN,” the man said and leaped down the three steps motioning for them to follow.

            Pacheco and Luz Stella donned white terrycloth robes and followed the man into a lounge packed with people watching a large television screen positioned high over a shiny mahogany bar. They watched in morbid fascination and full Technicolor as a 747 Jetliner traced an arrow- straight path to the top floors of the World Trade Center South Tower on Manhattan’s lower east side. A woman screamed, “Noooooo!”