Paul Christopher - Valley of the Templars

Empty now because of the downpour, the Gardens had a sinister, brooding look like something from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Ignoring the feeling of imminent doom creeping down his neck along with the rain, Black pointed the doctor down the path to the only public entrance to the Gardens on Clonmel Street, halfway down the park.

“Listen to me! Listen to me!” Selman-Housein screamed. “I must go back to the hotel! I have left important documents there!”

“Come along, then, Doctor-there’s a good fellow,” said Tommy Thompson. “I wouldn’t like to hurt you, now, would I, sir?”

“ Me cago en tus muertos! ” Selman-Housein screeched. He turned his head and spit in the sergeant’s face.

“Whatever you say, sir,” Thompson said quietly. He wiped the spit and rain from his face, then slapped the Cuban hard across the back of the head.

Clonmel was less a street than a broad alley between two buildings on Harcourt Street. Reaching the open gates of the park, Black saw that the yellow and red fire brigade ambulance was already in place.

“What is this!” the Cuban said, balking, eyes widening at the sight of the ambulance, its rear doors already open and waiting.

“It’s a fucking trolley bus,” said Tommy Thompson. “What did you expect, an embassy limousine, mate?”

“I will not get in this thing.”

“Oh yes, you bloody will,” said Tommy. He grabbed the little man under the armpits and heaved him headfirst into the rear of the ambulance, following close behind. Black stepped up into the ambulance, as well, and together he and the sergeant managed to get the Cuban strapped down onto the gurney inside.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Selman-Housein moaned beseechingly, his eyes filling with tears.

“Verisimilitude,” said Black.

“Que?”

“To make it look real,” explained Black, slapping a slab of sticking plaster over the man’s mouth, followed by an oxygen mask. That done, Black rapped on the driver’s partition wall with his knuckles. The siren started and they hurtled up Clonmel to Harcourt Street and began to weave through the streets of Dublin at rush hour in the pouring rain. Twenty minutes later, siren still wailing, they reached the N4 and headed west toward the Lujan Bypass and the countryside beyond. Five minutes later, the siren silent, they turned in at Weston Executive Airport and the waiting, unmarked white Gulfstream 5.

Without removing either the mask or the tape, they got Selman-Housein down off the ambulance and up into the sleek white jet. One of the leather couches had been removed from the rear of the aircraft and the gurney fit perfectly, clipping solidly onto the two U-shaped bolts in the fuselage wall. The door closed with a hiss and the pilot and the copilot began to spool up the Gulfstream’s twin Rolls-Royce engines. A few moments later they taxied out to the runway and then hurtled down it, finally leaping into the air and heading southwest, climbing steadily, finally getting out of the rain and into the fading blue sky beyond. Far to the west the sun was already heading downward into the night.

Black finally took off the mask and ripped off the tape from Selman-Housein’s mouth. “Get me down from here,” snapped the Cuban doctor angrily.

“Not a chance,” answered Black. The thought of listening to the man’s complaints for the next six hours was intolerable. He took out his CO 2-powered syringe and recocked the arming lever. He pushed the syringe tip against the bulge of the older man’s fatty love handles and hit the FIRE button. The doctor was unconscious almost instantly. The shot would keep Selman-Housein deep under all the way to Washington. Black smiled. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Render unto Joseph Patchin’s that which is Joseph Patchin’s.”

Back at the hotel, Holliday took his National Geographic map of Cuba out of his suitcase and spread it out on one of the beds.

“Show me,” he said quietly. Eddie shook his head.

“Not here,” said the Cuban. He pointed to the French doors leading out to the balcony. Holliday nodded. Eddie opened the doors and Holliday stepped out into the cool evening air.

A table and chairs sat facing out toward the sea and the Malecon far below. The tide was in and people were promenading along the famous seawall, half of them tourists and the rest predatory prostitutes. A breeze was blowing. From the balcony it was a vision of paradise, but Eddie ignored it. He was too busy checking the table and chairs and even the candle lamp in the middle of the table for bugs. He found what he was looking for under the third chair, an old-fashioned radio microphone that belonged in a Cold War museum. Eddie pointed it to it, carefully carried the chair back into the sitting room of the suite and then came back out onto the balcony again, closing the French doors behind him.

“I turned on the radio so the microphone will not be lonely. They are playing an old speech of Fidel’s-it will go on for hours.”

“They really bug hotel rooms?”

“Certainly.” Eddie smiled. “They must give the last few Chinese at Bejucal something to listen to.”

Holliday spread out the map again, anchoring it with the candle lamp. There was enough light from the French doors to see the map clearly. “Show me,” he said again.

Eddie ran a large black forefinger through a gently curving arc in the center of the island. “These are the mountains of Escambray. They run like a spine down the middle of Cuba, not high, but mostly covered with jungle. The roads are still dirt and the only way in or out is in military trucks. This is where the War of the Bandits was fought.”

“War of the Bandits?” Holliday asked.

“It is an old story in Cuba, once taught to schoolchildren, but heard of very little in the United States.”

“So tell me,” said Holliday.

Eddie lit a cigar with his old Zippo, something that Holliday hadn’t seen him do in a very long time. Being back in Cuba and the loss of his brother were clearly taking their toll.

“There are two versions-the bedtime story CIA agents tell their grandchildren and the one Fidel tells. The only one that I know to be true is the one from 1962 in which my brother at fifteen years old fought in the Sierra del Escambray with an old Springfield rifle and almost died.”

“Who was he fighting?”

“The remains of Batista’s army-the truly corrupt one who had so much to lose-control of drugs, prostitution, gambling, other criminals, some right-wing anticommunists and of course the CIA. Fidel spent three years trying to get them out with the regular army, but his losses were too high; fighting in the Sierra del Escambray is like fighting your own shadows, and the Batistanados were better armed-by the CIA.

“Eventually Fidel had a better idea; he gathered together everyone and anyone he could think of-young people especially. He soon had fifteen thousand volunteers. They walked, almost arm in arm, through the jungle like when you search for a lost child, a cordon ?”

“Cordon.” Holliday nodded.

“Anyway, like this they enclosed the banditos like fish in a net and then they killed them all. My brother was wounded badly in the leg. He almost lost it and walks with a limp still, and Fidel lost many people, but eventually all the banditos were gone. It took almost three years. By the second year the CIA saw there was no hope, so they withdrew their support.”

“And the Valley of Death?”

“The Sierra del Escambray is divided into two parts, the Sierra Guamuhaya and the Sierra de Sancti Spiritus. Between them flows the Agabama River. This is the Valley of Death.”

“You think this is where he has gone to hide himself?”