Paul Christopher - Valley of the Templars

And suddenly there he was, walking right by the Insomnia’s window and stopping for the light at Grafton and King streets, a shopping bag in each hand, his expression clearly nervous. He was wearing a hideous Marks amp; Spencer green cardigan, gray trousers and brown shoes. He looked like a thin, badly dressed owl behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. The doctor crossed King Street to the shopping center on the corner, then crossed again to Fusilier’s Gate and walked into the park.

“Got him. Target is in the park.” Two shopping bags. A black-and-gold one from Zara and a red-on-white one from H and M.”

There was a voice in Black’s ear. “Three. I see him.”

Black started silently counting to himself. At twenty-five, there was nothing; at forty-five, a man in his thirties wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket and a pale green Gucci T-shirt crossed to Fusilier’s Gate from the far side of Grafton Street. He had slicked-back black hair, tanned skin and a single earbud line running down to his T-shirt and then under it.

“Three, he’s got a shadow. Black leather jacket, green T-shirt, cream-colored linen pants.”

“Three. Got him.”

“Three, give him a ten-second lead and then follow him. I’m coming in now. You know what to do,” Black said.

“Yes, sir. Three out.”

“The rest of you keep your eyes open. He’s got ears on. There’s going to be others around.” Once again there was a series of clicks.

Black swallowed the last of his cold coffee, left the store and walked across Grafton Street, thick with tourists even this early in the season, especially with everything in the country being on sale these days. He crossed over to Fusilier’s Gate and quickened his pace. He spotted Major a hundred feet behind Leather Jacket. Major was wearing a London Fog belted raincoat and a gray fedora, looking like something out of a Humphrey Bogart movie. Black spoke quietly. “Three, start the ball rolling.”

Major began walking faster and so did Black. By the time Major had drawn even with the man in the leather jacket, Black was only twenty feet behind them both. Major drew ahead of the man and Black saw the shadow’s shoulders visibly relax. The man slowed his pace, letting Major get even farther ahead. Black put his hand into the right-hand pocket of his suit jacket and popped the top off the fountain-pen-like device he was carrying. In fact, it was a modified version of an insulin pen filled with a light dose of dihydroetorphine.

In high concentrations the Chinese drug is used by zoos to tranquilize rhinoceroses. He laid his thumb across the CO 2delivery button and lengthened his stride. Ahead of the man in the leather jacket, Major veered slightly and kept walking. He was now directly ahead of the shadow. The shadow dropped back a little, which in turn brought Black almost beside him to the left. Sensing someone behind him, the shadow turned. Black smiled and nodded pleasantly.

The shadow turned again just as Major dropped to one knee and began fiddling with a shoelace. The man in the leather jacket stumbled, trying to get out of Major’s way, and barged into Black, who already had the CO 2pen in his hand. As the shadow bumped into him, Black jabbed the end of the pen into the man’s thigh and hit the button. The timing was perfect. In the five seconds it took for the drug to take effect, Black and Major managed to get the shadow to a bench and get him seated. Oddly, in the distance he could hear a brass band playing the theme song to SpongeBob SquarePants .

Black took a few extra seconds to go through his jacket pockets. He came up with a billfold and a blue Cuban passport with the words Pasaporte Dimplomatico in gold across the bottom. According to the passport the shadow’s name was Rudolfo Suarez and he was an assistant attache at the Cuban embassy on Adelaide Court. Not likely. Black put the passport back into the unconscious man’s pocket.

“This is Four. I’ve got a Hispanic couple at the run from the Shelburne entrance to the Green. Something’s up.”

“Fucking hell,” said Black softly. The doctor had been told to wait at the fountain in the center of the park. If he saw two Secret Police coming after him, he was bound to panic. He was pretty shaky as it was. “Stop them, Four.”

“How?”

“How the bloody hell should I know? Arrest them, shout fire, tackle them. Shout out Viva Fidel! Just stop them!” Black turned to Major. “Come on, double time.”

The two men began to stride quickly down the wide paved pathway. A hundred yards ahead of them, they could see the fountain and the bewildered-looking figure of the doctor. Suddenly the skies overhead opened and it began to pour. People in the park began to run for cover. Dr. Eugenio Selman-Housein vanished behind a silvery curtain of rain.

“Goddamn bloody Ireland and its bloody weather,” said Black. He and Major began to run. The brass band was playing “Tonight’s the Night” from the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour .

They reached the fountain and at first Black thought the doctor had rabbited, but then he saw him slouched on a bench a few yards away getting whatever slight protection he could from the large oak tree spreading its branches above him.

“Give him your coat and hat,” Black said to Major.

“But…,” said Major.

“Do it!”

Major did as he was told. Gripping the doctor by the arm, Black led the frightened man down the narrower southern path away from the fountain. Behind them Black could hear raised voices, at least one of then in Spanish.

“ Lo que esta pasando? ” The doctor asked, getting more upset with each passing second.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” soothed Black. He jerked his head and Major peeled off and headed back toward the fountain.

Hunched over against the pounding rain, Black and Selman-Housein moved quickly down the pathway. It was the Garda Band playing under cover of the bandstand’s conical Victorian roof, the brass buttons on their policemen’s uniforms as shiny as their instruments.

They were playing “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” now, much to the delight of their audience, a giggling flock of young children all dressed in yellow slickers, boots and rain hats, just like the children in the Madeleine books his mother had read to Black as a child.

Far behind them now Black heard the frantic wailing of a police car on the far side of the Green.

“I have changed my mind!” Selman-Housein moaned. “Let me go!” The doctor tried to pull away from him, struggling against Black’s grip, but Black held on ever harder, almost lifting the older man off his feet.

“Too late, amigo,” said Black harshly. “You made your bed and now you’re damn well going to lie in it.”

Four was waiting at the open gate exiting onto the street. Four was a man in his fifties named Tommy Thompson, an ex-SAS Special Forces master sergeant with a face like granite and biceps like steel.

“The doctor’s having pangs of homesickness, Tommy,” said Black.

“Not a problem, sir,” replied the hard-faced sergeant. He gripped Selman-Housein by his other arm and together he and Black propelled the smaller man through the gate and across the rain-soaked road to the opposite side. They piloted the Cuban fifty feet south to the front door of Staunton’s on the Green, two Georgian houses joined to make a small boutique hotel.

They lifted him up the single step, pulled open the door, then marched him straight down the main hallway and out the rear patio exit. They stepped back out into the sheeting rain and followed the narrow brick pathway to a small gate. Holding the doctor firmly, Tommy Thompson lifted the latch and the three men stepped out into Iveagh Gardens.

The Gardens, a smaller version of St. Stephen’s Green, was hidden from sight on three sides by buildings and on the fourth by a high brick wall and a screening stand of trees. The gardens had been a gift from Benjamin Guinness of the beer dynasty and named for his son, Edward, the first Earl of Iveagh.