Paul Christopher - Valley of the Templars

He’d loved both his parents very much and had been devastated when both died within a year of each other when he was in his late twenties, but they’d left him with an enduring affection for both the United States and England, an Oxford education, dual citizenship and a legacy’s introduction to the intelligence establishment of both countries. For that very reason he’d spent the last ten years as Washington liaison between MI6 and the CIA. Ireland was just a respite and he knew it-he had too many contacts in the agency not to be posted back there rather than the normally benign intelligence backwater Dublin had become. He could hardly wait. His estranged wife, Chelsea, lived in Anacortes, Washington, quite successfully working on her third marriage, but at least he’d convinced her to let their young teenage son, Gabe, go to the British School of Washington in Georgetown. If he was posted back to the States, he’d be able to see his son on weekends. Whoever said that spies shouldn’t have families was right-there was no doubt that his marriage had been broken into matchsticks on the jagged rocks of his uncommunicative work as an intelligence officer, but in the end his son had been worth it. He sent up a silent prayer that the kid wouldn’t want to get into the spying business-sheet-metal work or refrigerator technician would be a better career.

The government jet landed at Northolt, a queen’s messenger in an armored Range Rover picked up the diplomatic bag and Black climbed into the waiting Augusta Westland helicopter that would take him to the London Heliport on the banks of the Thames. After that it would be a quick ride upriver in a Targa 31 Marine Unit cruiser, which would drop him off at the Thames security gate of the ziggurat-like headquarters of MI6.

Almost exactly three hours after leaving the embassy in Ballsbridge, Dublin, he was sitting in the expansive office of Sir John Sawyers, pronounced “Saws,” the fifty-six-year-old, dashing James Bond-ish director of the Secret Intelligence Services. He even looked like Pierce Brosnan: dark hair, blue-green eyes with a hundred-dollar haircut, square jaw, square face, six-two or so and dressed by his own tailor on Savile Row. Also in attendance was James Wormold, the gray-haired, overweight and slightly slovenly old guard Section officer who had eventually come to head the Caribbean Section simply by attrition.

Sawyers had been educated at the University of Nottingham, St. Andrews, in Scotland and at Harvard. He spoke with a clearly upper-crust accent, but not plummy enough to be offensive. He and his wife, Shelley, had three children, including the twenty-three-year-old Connie, who was famous for posing with a gold-plated Kalashnikov in front of the family Christmas tree on her Facebook page.

Black had been surprised that his call to the Caribbean Section earlier in the day had been taken seriously enough for a meeting with Sawyers, but nevertheless, here he was.

“You confirmed that the man was actually Dr. Eugenio Selman-Housein Sosa?” Wormold asked. The Section head had the accent and attitude of a fifth-form English grammar teacher.

“Yes, sir.” Black nodded. “I checked with the Shelburne and he is registered there. He’s also registered at the Trinity convention. Just to make sure, I had one of our people take a file photograph over to the registration clerk at the Shelburne and he confirmed it, as well.”

“Why do you think he wants to defect?” Sawyers asked mildly.

“I think it’s probably a case of shoot the messenger, Sir John. If Castro is dying I think he’s afraid that he’s going to be blamed. In Cuba that means a bullet in the head, a plane crash or a ‘sudden heart attack.’”

“Mr. Wormold?” Sawyers asked.

“It’s quite possible.”

Sawyers sat back in his expensive-looking leather chair and surveyed the George Stubbs painting hanging there- Mares and Foals in a Landscape . One of the perks of the job was to pick paintings for your office. Finally he spoke.

“Do we really want him?”

“I beg your pardon?” Wormold said, his eyes wide with surprise.

“Do we really want him?” Sawyers repeated. “If that’s all he’s got to offer, it doesn’t really amount to much-everyone knows Castro is ailing; he’s had cancer and a bout of divirticulitis that almost killed him. He’s frail and he probably has some sort of dementia.”

“And his mother was something like a hundred and three when she died,” said Wormold sourly. “The man could live forever.”

“His mother was barely sixty when she died,” corrected Black. “And his father was eighty. The whole Castro family longevity story is a myth.”

“So, what do you suggest?” Wormold said, a vague suggestion of a sneer in his tone.

“Call Younger Brother and tell them what we’ve got. They’re probably more interested than we are,” Black answered promptly. For intelligence purposes during World War Two, Younger Brother had been the code name for the United States, while Older Brother was England.

“I like it.” Sawyers nodded. “We’ll let him defect, then send him off to Washington for interrogation.” He smiled. “With you in tow, of course, just to keep them honest.”

“As Caribbean Section head, don’t you think-” began Wormold.

“No, I don’t,” said Sawyers. “Set it up, Black. I’ll make the necessary calls to Langley.”

El Templete is located close to Havana Harbor on Avenue Carlos Manuel Cespedes, sometimes called the Avenida del Puerto. The neoclassical building constructed in 1828 is situated exactly in front of the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales, which today is the City Museum of Havana. Across the street is the Hotel Santa Isabel, the grandest of the old hotels in Havana and in the 1700s the home of the counts of Santovenia.

La Templete is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and looks out onto the Plaza des Armas, a sixteenth-century square once used to assemble and inspect troops and that dates back to the original settlement of San Cristobal de Habana by Don Diego Velazquez.

The cut-stone frieze below the simple peaked-roof cornice of the building is decorated with arcane symbols of skulls, crosses and intersecting circles that are usually associated with the Holy Trinity. One symbol, exactly in the center of the frieze and directly above the heavy bronze doors of the building, shows four triangles, points facing inward-a Templar cross separated into four distinct parts.

Most of the detail of the frieze is covered by two hundred years of lichen, mold and city grime. Alongside El Templete stands a beautiful and thick ceiba tree in the place where on November 16, 1519, the Villa de San Cristobal was founded. The tree was highly revered by the natives, who attributed it with great magical-religious powers.

On November 16 each year, Habaneros and people from all over Cuba line up for their chance to take three turns around the magic tree and leave offerings between her huge bulbous roots. For the Indio natives who were here long before Columbus set sail for the New World, this was the Mother Tree, a virtual god that solved all problems and healed all wounds.

Eddie drove the old motorcycle up onto the curb and switched off the engine. On their left was the low wrought-iron fence that surrounded the tree-shrouded Plaza des Armas. On their right, across the broad street, was El Templete, so small it looked more like a mausoleum than a temple. It, too, was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, this one much higher. Between the fence and the building was a tall, heavy-trunked tree with widespread branches spread like a protective umbrella; this had to be the ceiba tree, the devil tree Eddie’s mother had mentioned. There was also something that looked like a ticket booth on the pathway leading to the old building.