Eighth in a series of installments documenting my failed political ambitions, my warped sensibilities, and my Portland Trail Blazers.
Oh yes – this is the Queen’s land indeed, these beautiful Caribbean cays, and has been since the late 17th century. You didn’t know? Originally claimed by Spain by Christopher Columbus himself, the Caymans remained relatively uninhabited until the British took control. With control came settlers… and, of course, slaves. Emancipation came in the 1830s (many years before the United States, by the way), and the departure of many of the slave-owning upper class led to the interesting mix of native Caymanian hybrid stock that is defined today, and the lack of natural resources – mixed with very generous tax laws – has led the Queen to keep her grip strong and her enemies close… and when you consider the strange tales of the post-World-War-II era that kept popping up mysteriously during my tenure on the islands, that maxim becomes an altogether different beast, reveling in its predatory nature and rolling around in its own filth.
I contemplated the strange gathering at Yang’s on my ride back to the palace. Lost in thought, I sped through the one-horse towns that littered the south coast of Grand Cayman. Sure, I was indeed looking forward to seeing Ruth again, and my tentative plans for the evening were loosely based on the hope that, come sunrise, I would wake up lying naked next to her in my king sized bed. Frankly, it was a scenario that I had envisioned for many weeks up to that point, and our rendezvous at Yang’s reinforced the possibility of wild uninhibited palace sex – all under the watchful eyes of the Queen and her consorts.
Nice! Regardless of all the “bureaucratic problems” it might cause (as suggested to me by my good friend Kenny in one of his long, rambling emails), I was so overcome with boredom and apathy thus far into my tenure as the American ambassador that I treated the idea of sleeping with the Premier’s daughter with nonchalance. However, what I wanted most at that moment in time was to figure out what Yang and the Cubans were up to. I felt like turning right back around on my scooter and heading back towards Gun Bay, and I had a sneaking suspicion that Yang would spill the beans to me after a few hours of heavy drinking.
I stopped and parked my scooter near the Pedro St James museum on the south coast to mull it over. I walked towards the beach and sat down on the blustery bank. No, I thought. If I don’t make an appearance at the palace tomorrow, they might contact DC, if they haven’t already. I figured that I wanted to stretch my ambassadorship out as long as I could, and with my burgeoning relationship with Ruth occupying a large percentage of what used to be the part of my brain devoted to rational thinking, it served me well to take it slow – especially if I wanted to get back into Yang’s good graces. He might not clue me in on Bellybuster, but at least he might let me keep using the bungalow.
Mind resolved, I hopped back on my scooter and headed back into George Town, arriving at just past 11pm. I grabbed a pulled-pork sandwich from the palace cafeteria before digging around in my shoulder bag for my keys. I went up to my quarters on the seventh floor of the palace and opened the door, only to find Ruth waiting for me on the couch. She was writing in a journal, with the faint sound of an Ennio Morricone spaghetti western soundtrack emanating from the floor speakers. She set her journal on the coffee table and ran up to me at the door, and after a few quick pleasantries I carried her to the bedroom for a spirited round of acrobatic coitus.
When we finished, I got up to get a glass of water, and my post-climax hazy equilibrium led me to stumble and fall, hitting my head on the counter. Between fits of laughter, we decided to go for a swim in the palace pool to cool down, which clearly arose the suspicion of the palace nightwatchman as we approached him on our way to the pool. I had put a bandage on my forehead to suppress the bleeding, but the nightwatchman glared at me as he pointed out the single line of blood that had escaped the bandage and was slowly crawling down the left side of my face, towards the corner of my ever-present smile.
Ruth and I swam for three quarters of an hour and made our way back to my room on the seventh floor, where we brewed up a pot of tea to drink before we went to bed. She sat down at the dining room table and picked up a ballpoint pen to spin between her fingers lazily. “How were things after I left?” she asked.
“Oh, it was fine. Yang actually came back from Cuba today.” I poured two cups of tea and added milk. “He brought back some Cubans.”
“Cigars?”
“No, people. Actual Cubans.” I brought our cups over to the table and sat across from Ruth, my back to the window. “Just like the Seinfeld episode.”
Ruth smiled, but I don’t think she understood the Seinfeld reference. “Yang and the Cubans,” she muttered wistfully. “You know, my dad seems to think they’re entwined in some sort of sinister plot.”
“Maybe they are,” I replied, as I tested the tea. Ouch – too hot. I got up to replace the record on the turnstile, made sure the volume was still turned low, and sat back down. “You might think I’m crazy, but I think they’re involved somehow in Bellybuster.”
“Pardon?” Ruth exclaimed, suddenly alert and glaring at me with purposeful dark eyes.
“You know, Bellybuster. I showed you the documents at Yang’s. The ones with the maps and blueprints.”
“I remember that, but why did you call it ‘Bellybuster’?”
“I don’t know, that’s what it said on the front of the folder.”
Ruth obviously was somewhat shaken by this name, which came in itself as a shock to me, because she had been there with me only a few days ago, leafing through the suspicious documents on Yang’s kitchen table. She didn’t seem all that interested at the time.
“Do you know anything about this?” I finally asked her after a few moments of unsettling silence.
Ruth sighed as she looked up at the ceiling, deftly twirling one of her dark curly locks with her fingers. “Have you ever heard about what happened here on the island after the war, Ty?”
I shook my head slowly as she took a long sip of her tea. “Well, right after the war, and in some cases before the war ended, many of the high-ranking Nazis escaped to South America.”
“Oh, of course I know about that. Eichmann went to Argentina. Joe Mengele I think ended up in Paraguay or something.”
“You’re right,” Ruth said. “But did you know that some ended up in the Caribbean and the Antilles?”
I shrugged. “Let me guess – some ended up here in the Caymans?”
“Only one, but a big one: Thoralf Von Bauchbrecher. The literal translation’s ‘Belly Breaker’, but the Brits called him Bellybuster.”
“What??”
“I guess it rolled off the tongue better. Anyways, he was the avid director of Hitler’s eugenics program until the tail end of the Holocaust, when he slipped out of Europe and ended up here.”
“People knew he was here?” I asked.
Ruth quickly looked over both shoulders and leaned into the table conspiratorially, still warming her hands on the teacup. “Von Bauchbrecher knew a lot about social Darwinism, sure, but he didn’t have a clue about geography. He arrived here on a boat – likely from Cuba – thinking it was an independent nation. Of course, the Brits later determined he was here, around the mid-1950s, and made quick plans to kill him.”
“What about Nuremberg? Why didn’t they capture him and send him off to the tribunals?”
“It was too late. The trials ended in ’46. And even if they found him earlier, they would have been technically required to put him on trial, but you’ve got to realize that the English were thirsty for blood at that point. Churchill himself was reluctant to use trials – he outwardly supported summary execution for captured Nazis as early as 1944. So, ten years later, when they found him shacked up with a young Caymanian dancer in a little cabin on the north shore, they took care of him on their own, without any international guidance.”
“What did they do?”
Ruth laughed a bit too loudly at my question, breaking my sturdy glance. “They skinned him alive and tied him to a fig tree, and some British soldiers that were stationed here smashed him up with a splintered-up cricket bat until the life seeped out of him.”
I couldn’t believe she was telling me all this. “How do you know?” I asked.
She pretended to not hear my question, suddenly affected by the graphic nature of the discussion. I got up from the table, massaging my temples. Ruth sat silently as I prepared some cinnamon toast, which we ate quickly and headed off to bed. I had to ask her again, though. I needed answers.
“How do you know what happened to Doc Bellybuster?” I repeated.
“Because,” she replied, “my dad was one of those soldiers.”
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