Black wanted to tell the nasal little twit to get on with it, but Carrie was right. To go to Cuba blind was to invite failure. Smith continued with his pedantic little lecture. “At first Velázquez de Cuéllar wanted to take some of his small boats up the river, perhaps with an eye to seeing if it was a navigable way to reach the opposite shore, but his local Indio guides said that much of the river was occupied by evil spirits that brought on sickness and sometimes death. The symptoms the Indios displayed were close to what the Spaniards knew as vómito negro, black vomit, which we now know was—”
“Yellow fever,” supplied Black, staring at the blank screen in front of him, waiting for something to appear on it.
“Indeed,” said Smith with another sniff. “Yellow fever. At any rate, the Indios called the whole place the Valley of Death.”
“And this was when?” Carrie asked.
“The early sixteenth century.”
“Anything more current?” Black said.
“During the War of the Bandits between 1959 and 1965, the Agabama River Valley was also known as the Valley of Death. Probably because of the number of bodies floating down it as Castro’s teenage army wiped out the last of the Batistinados.”
“Show us the river…whatever you called it,” said Black.
“The Ag-A-Bam-A,” said Smith, enunciating with painful, condescending care. Suddenly an image appeared on the screen of a topographical map and a river running through it, winding like some enormous twisting worm. From what Black could see, there was a narrow plain, foothills and then the mountains themselves. The topographical map was now overlaid with a satellite shot of the same area. The mountains were covered in dense jungle foliage and there were virtually no population centers beyond a scattering of small villages.
“Anything else?” Black asked.
“This was flagged for interest about two weeks ago,” said Smith. The images were overlain again, this time by an infrared night shot. There were several bright blobs of color high in the mountains. “It was interesting enough for an RQ-170 Flying Wing to be deployed from Creech in Nevada to take a look.”
“And what did it see?” Black asked.
“This,” said Smith. The image changed again. This time it was a daylight shot. While the huge ninety-foot-wingspan stealth drone flew at fifty thousand feet, it could give imagery close enough to see the dirt under a man’s fingernails. It was video data from an RQ-170 that gave the president and his friends the overall shots of the late and unlamented Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani pied-à-terre.
The image on the screen showed a collection of large camouflaged tents, what appeared to be a line of four-wheeled ATVs under more camouflage material and a number of men walking back and forth across a compound that had obviously been cleared from the jungle slopes around it. The image then tightened in on a single figure. He was wearing the black beret and camo gear of the Cuban Tropas Especiales, their version of Delta Force.
“Company strength,” said Smith. “We found a few others like it scattered through the area.”
“Who are they?” Black asked.
“They look like Cuban Special Forces on exercise. That’s the general consensus here.”
“They could be something else,” said Carrie, her voice hesitant and thoughtful.
“Who?” Smith asked, obviously irritated. “The army of Haiti invading Cuba?”
“I’m fairly sure I’ve seen those uniforms before.” She paused. “You can’t get any more detail, can you?”
“A great many countries use black berets and that elm leaf camouflage. And no, I cannot get any more detail,” snapped Smith. “The image is at maximum resolution. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Black was about to say no when Carrie spoke up again. “Has there been any recent activity on the Agabama River?”
Smith sighed and began to enter the query on his keyboard. He had the answer a few seconds later. “River pirates operating close to the mouth of the river. Apparently they go after tourists on sportfishing boats.”
“Can we get real-time coverage on that area?” Carrie asked.
“River pirates?” Smith said. “Hardly a matter of national security, Miss Pilkington. You’re trying my patience.”
“And you’re trying mine,” snapped Black in response. “Bear in mind where the request for your cooperation came from.”
Smith’s small mouth opened for a moment as though he was about to speak, then snapped shut, the thin mustache above his upper lip quivering like a frightened caterpillar. He bent over his console and began tapping keys.
“This is from a low-orbit NROL-49 satellite in geostationary orbit over the Caribbean.” Smith hit a key and an image appeared on the screen. It was a high-angle view of a broad river. “From twenty miles up.”
“Can it look for anomalies?” Black asked. MI6 had its own version of the NROL, so he knew a little about the satellite’s performance.
“Yes.”
“Is it picking anything up?”
“There’s a large oil slick about eight miles upriver.”
“Can we see that?”
“It’s four in the afternoon, Mr. Black. Shadows might present some difficulty.”
“Try.”
“As you wish.”
The image fogged out, shifted and then resolved itself.
“One thousand feet,” said Smith. There was definitely a rainbow-hued slick of oil fanning out on the water trailing off as the current pulled it toward the sea.
“Follow it to the apex of the slick,” Black ordered, any pretense of politeness stripped from his voice. Smith did as he was told. The apex of the slick was two miles upriver.
“There,” said Smith. “Two hundred feet.”
“What could have caused that?” Carrie asked.
“I have no idea,” said Smith primly.
“Either someone spilled a large can of outboard motor fuel or a boat sank,” said Black. “Take us upriver please.” Smith zoomed out and the image angled upriver. The man was right; long shadows fell across the river now. “Check for anomalies,” ordered Black.
“Here,” Smith answered shortly after fingering his console. “Five hundred feet.”
“It looks like a boat,” said Carrie, squinting.
“It is a boat,” said Black. “It looks as though it’s tied up to a tree.” He turned back to Smith. “Closer, please.”
“Fifty feet.”
“There’s someone sitting in the stern,” said Carrie. “And there’s something in front of him on the transom.”
“Closer,” said Black.
The image refocused and resolved again. “Twenty-five feet,” said Smith.
“What is that thing in front of him and what is he doing?” Carrie asked.
“That thing, as you call it, is a Browning fifty-caliber machine gun and he’s cleaning it.” He paused. “Closer please, Mr. Smith.”
The image zoomed in. “Ten feet,” said Smith.
“Are we close enough to use that facial recognition program of yours?”
“No need,” said Carrie, staring at the enormous image on the screen. “I recognize him from his file. “That’s Lieutenant Colonel John ‘Doc’ Holliday.”
After dropping off Animatronics Andy back at the security gate, they headed out onto the highway, Carrie at the wheel of the agency Ford. She hadn’t said a word after identifying Holliday.
“That place gives me the willies,” she said as they moved north against the evening traffic. “So does Mr. Smith.”
“He’s a bureaucrat, Carrie.”
“He’s also a liar.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m no military expert, but I know enough about the state of the Cuban army to know that they don’t waste time sending their Special Forces into the jungle for exercises. The Tropas Especiales are almost completely an urban force used to put down dissident demonstrations. Not to mention the fact that their weapon of choice is the AK-47. The men in those images
were carrying MK-17 SCAR assault rifles; that’s U.S. Special Forces and most of the private armies like Blackhawk, KBR, Obelisk, Dyncor in the States and Control Risk and Blue Hackle in the U.K. I also know I saw more stacks of ammunition boxes than probably exist in the entire Cuban army inventory. The worst of it is that Smith lied.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea, but I know it means one thing—something’s going on and we don’t know a damn thing about it.”
14
The papal nunciate in Havana is located on a wide treelined boulevard in the Miramar District of Havana a short walk from the beach. It is a large two-story brick mansion with a turret on one side and a green tile roof. The entire front of the building is surrounded by a piazza-style porch.
The office of the papal nuncio himself, Bruno, Cardinal Musaro, was in a large bright room on the main floor that looked out onto a small orchard of orange and lemon trees. The office was lavishly furnished with Persian carpets, a seventeenth-century Spanish lacquered and gold-inlaid desk, several armchairs and floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two walls. The third wall behind the desk was taken up by a huge bow window and the fourth wall was hung with a number of priceless icons on the left and held a floral-patterned vestments cupboard on the right. The room was finished off with a nineteenth-century antique floor globe by W. & A. K. Johnston of Edinburgh to the right of the desk.
Cardinal Musaro, a gray-haired man with a broad, handsome face, took off his reading glasses as the semiretired archbishop of Havana entered the room, escorted by one of the nuncio’s priest attendants. The priest withdrew and Musaro gestured toward a chair in front of his desk. Both men were dressed in ordinary priestly garb that made no reference to their status.
Jaime Cardinal Lucas Ortega y Alamino, a slightly pudgy man with gold-rimmed glasses and thinning hair he regularly dyed black, sat down with a heartfelt sigh. Although Ortega was seventy-five years old— Musaro’s senior by almost ten years—both men had been elevated to Cardinal Pius II and both men wore identical solid gold Crucifixion rings on the third fingers of their right hands. They were of equal status in the eyes of the Church, so there was very little small talk between them.
“You have just returned from the Holy See?” Ortega asked.
“Yes, a few meetings.”
“How are the politics there, Bruno, as complicated as ever?”
“As complicated as ever, Jaime.”
“You spoke with Spada and his imp?”
“Brennan, you mean? Yes, I met with both of them, as we discussed earlier.”
“And?”
In answer Musaro opened his desk drawer and took out a small purple velvet box. On the top of the box, in gold, were the crossed keys and mitre that was the symbol of the pope. Musaro opened the box and put it down on the desk, facing Ortega. The former archbishop of Havana looked at it the same way he would look at a venomous snake. Inside the box was a ring identical to the one both he and Musaro wore—the Cardinal’s Ring.
“It is an exact duplicate, Jaime; no one will know the difference. I took the venom supplied by Selman-Housein to Rome and Brennan’s people did the rest. The ring contains the full venom load of eight Brazilian wandering spiders. The ring is made like a jet injector for diabetes. All it takes to fire is the pressure required to shake hands. That much venom will induce death within a few hours. There will be shortness of breath, paralysis and eventually asphyxiation.”
“Dear God,” whispered Ortega.
“God has nothing to do with it, Jaime; it is simple pragmatism. With Castro dead, the strongest independent body in Cuba will be the Catholic Church. We can control the country’s future, guide it down the appropriate path.”
“You know how many times this has been attempted before?”
“According to El Jefe, six hundred and thirty-eight, although I doubt the number is accurate.”
“Whatever the number, Fidel is still here and the assassins who made attempts on his life are not,” said Ortega.
“Most of the attempts were by the CIA or their proxies. This is not the same.”
“Why?”
“Because we have God on our side, of course,” said Musaro, folding his hands across his chest.
“You wouldn’t be the first to think that,” said Ortega, a note of bitterness in his voice. “The German soldiers in World War Two had it stamped on their belt buckles: Gott mit uns.”
“In this case, however, Jaime, it is true.”
“You’ll have to explain that.”
“We are men of the world, Jaime. I am aware of your sexual proclivities, as is the Vatican. To us it is irrelevant.”
Ortega flushed crimson. “Then why do you mention these spurious allegations of my ‘proclivities,’ as you refer to them?”
“Because Castro knows about them, too. The disappearance of the gold chalice, censer and pyx from the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception of Havana, for instance.”
Ortega’s flush darkened even more. “That was a common thief; he broke into the cathedral at night. He was never caught.”
“All thieves in Cuba are caught, Jaime; that’s why Cuba has so many prisons. No, it was a ‘special friend’ of yours, Jaime, one of the assistant priests. I believe his name was Domenico Montera. You had him transferred to your alma mater in Quebec.”
“That’s a lie!”
“True or false, Fidel knows about it, too. He holds it over your head like a Damocles sword.”
“For the love of Christ, Musaro! You’re giving me a motive to assassinate the man, not an alibi!”
“On the contrary, Ortega, it is the perfect alibi.”
“How so?”
“Fidel hates you, you hate Fidel, but you spread his theories of the people’s revolution with almost as much fervor as he does. You are his creature, Jaime, and everyone knows it from the highest to the lowest, and everyone knows something else, as well.”
“What is that, Cardinal Musaro?” Ortega asked sullenly.
Musaro answered, something close to pity in his voice, “Que no tienen el coraje de matarlo. You would not have the courage to kill him, Jaime.” Musaro paused. “And that makes you the perfect candidate.”
“Because no one would believe such a coward would do such a thing?”
“Your words, not mine, Jaime.”
Ortega eyed the box on the table and the heavy, solid gold rectangular ring inside it. “Will he feel pain?”
“Not initially. As you know, Castro has suffered from diabetes for a number of years and has peripheral neuropathy in both his hands and feet and has considerable nerve damage as well. He will feel nothing as you shake his hand.”
“He will feel pain eventually, though?”
“Excruciating,” answered Musaro. “It will look very much like a stroke. He will be unable to talk, but essentially his entire body will be suffering from severe inflammation. His lungs will fill with fluid, and he will suffer extreme pain in all his joints. Eventually he will be unable to draw breath and he will die of asphyxiation.”
Ortega reached out and snapped the box shut, then slipped it into the pocket. “Good. I will do it.”
“You know when it is to be done?”
“The feast of St. Lazarus. It has been his favorite saint’s day since his diverticulitis. I am always invited to give the blessing. The older he gets, the more Catholic he becomes.”
“A common trait among old men,” said Musaro. He sat forward in his chair, placing his hands flat upon the polished inlaid desk. “The Feast Day of St. Lazarus is on the twenty-first day of the month. The deed must be done on that day. A great many people are counting on it, Jaime. A great many people are counting on you, Jaime.”
“And my reward for committing murder?”
“On the night of his death, you and I will be flown to Rome on an Air Canada 777. On the day after your arrival, the cardinal electors will meet to select a new dean since the ever-controversial Cardinal Soldano is over
eighty and no longer eligible to vote in any future conclaves. You will become the next dean of the College of Cardinals.”
“It is an elected position. How can you guarantee such a thing?”
“There are currently ninety-four cardinal electors. I am owed favors of one kind or another by seventy-six of them, more than enough to obtain a two-thirds majority of sixty-two.”
“You’ve taken care of everything,” said Ortega.
“I am the apostolic nuncio, the envoy of the pope and therefore the envoy of God to this country.” Musaro lifted his shoulders and smiled, the light from the big bow window behind him turning his hair into a halo with a tropical Garden of Gethsemane at his back. His voice was soft but filled with the power of a man saying Mass in a cathedral. “‘Deos enim religuos accepimus, Caesares dedimus’: The gods were handed down to us, but we created this terrible Caesar ourselves, Jaime, and having created him, we have the responsibility of removing him from this world. Alea iacta est, Jaime. For Fidel the die has been cast and you have been chosen to be his Brutus. Deus animae tuae misereatur. May God have mercy on your soul.”
It took another three days for the Tiburon Blanco to make its way up the broad valley of the Agabama to the small town of Condado, once a rail center for agricultural goods from the small surrounding farms. The rail line that had once served the town had died with the revolution, the tracks overgrown with weeds, an ancient steam engine enduring a humiliating and rusting demise, the single glass eye of its enormous headlamp pointing the way down a track that was no longer there. Mountains rose on three sides, and only a few miles ahead the valley narrowed to its end. Ahead lay the much narrower Valley of Death, the river winding and curling deep into the heart of the Sierra del Escambray.
In the time that had passed since his arrival in Cuba, Holliday had developed a deep mahogany tan. In a pair of grease-covered cotton pants, rubber tire sandals and an old Bruce Springsteen Darkness Tour T-shirt, he almost looked like a local. It was Eddie who suggested that he wear a bandanna low over his fresh scar and his ruined eye. The bandanna looked a little odd, but the scar was too terrible to miss and too easy to describe. If they didn’t need supplies for the boat, the prudent thing would have been for him to stay behind. They had filled the boat’s huge hidden tanks at the little harbor in Tunas de Zaza just before reaching La Boca and the mouth of the river, so at least fuel was no problem.
Valley of the Templars ts-7 Page 11