Paul Christopher - Valley of the Templars

He glanced at Holliday, his eyes squinting upward. “I catch at the river mouth this morning, when I am coming in from the sea,” he said in English. His voice was as rough as his cigar and his mouth was missing a few teeth here and there. He turned to Eddie. “Su amigo pirata hablaba nada de espanol?”

“His pirate friend speaks enough Spanish to get by,” said Holliday.

“Then we get along okay,” said the old man, and spit into the water again. As he gutted the fish he tossed the already flyblown trails of slimy offal into the water and then began cutting the giant fish into large fist-sized pieces and throwing them into a pair of old foam coolers beside him. “ Cebo, ” he grunted. “Bait.” He nodded toward the boat clewed to the wharf a few yards behind him.

The boat looked almost as old as Arango. Once upon a time the hull had been white with a light blue superstructure, but sometime in its life it had been painted deep blue fading up to gray. On the horizon she would disappear against the sea and the sky, and Holliday had a fairly good idea why.

She was filthy, paint peeling everywhere. The stem was battered with its varnish worn off down to the bare wood from decades of turbulent passages, and the canvas sunshade on the flybridge above the cabin was gray and torn. To Holliday’s eye she looked to be about thirty-five or forty feet long and lay squat in the water as though she was bottom heavy. For a wooden boat of that weight, it was odd that the whole side of the hull for two feet above the waterline was so beaten up and scratched. That kind of wear and tear usually meant the boat was used to traveling at brutally high speeds. The name on her transom was in red picked out in black:

TIBURON BLANCO

Even his basic Spanish was good enough to translate that: White Shark.

Arango sucked on his cigar, gave Eddie a look and picked up the first of the foam containers, the sinews on his wiry sun-blackened arms leaping out like stretched cables. He hauled the cooler back to the boat and heaved it over the gunwale and into the cockpit at the stern. Taking the hint, Eddie picked up the second bait box and followed suit.

The old man straightened, arching his back. He took a long puff on the cigar, the pull making a dry, crackling sound. He looked up at the sky and blew the smoke upward. Lady Gaga had been replaced by Pittbull doing “Ay Chico.” Arango looked down at Eddie again. He hawked and this time the blob of nicotine-colored phlegm landed within an inch of Eddie’s feet.

“ Que quieres, cabron? What you want with a poor old man like me?”

Eddie took out a Romeo y Julieta Short Churchill he’d purchased at the hotel tobacconist’s and lit it with his old Zippo.

“Because I want your boat, cabron - quiero alquilar su barco maldito, maldito el hombre de cerdo .”

“How much you pay me? Dollars.”

“How much do you want?” Holliday asked.

“Two hundred a day.”

“Fine.”

“Three hundred?”

“A hundred and fifty,” answered Holliday.

“No, no, two hundred,” said Arango hastily.

“Si,” said Eddie.

“Plus diesel.”

“Si.”

“And food.”

“Si.”

“Ron.”

“One bottle a day.”

“Cerveza, asi.”

“Fijado.”

“And cigars like those?” Arango said, pointing a bony finger at the Short Churchill Eddie had just fired up.

Eddie grinned, turned to Holliday and winked again. He turned back to Arango and handed him the already lit cigar. The old man carefully took the juicy stub of the cigar from his mouth, stuck a fat tongue on the end to make sure it was dead and stuck the thing behind his ear. He put the Churchill into his mouth, chewed happily and wiped his hand on his undershirt before extending it to Holliday. A little apprehensively Holliday shook the man’s hand, surprised at its strength.

“We got a deal, American. You drive a hard bargain.”

“ Vete a la mierda, viejo. Let’s get aboard.”

Oak Lawn Farm is a two-hundred-acre secluded estate at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Covesville, Virginia, and about a two-hour drive south of Washington, D.C. The home sits on a gentle knoll, surrounded by elegant hardwoods and ancient boxwoods overlooking pastoral and mountain views in every direction. The main house was constructed in 1780 and added onto throughout the 1800s. It has four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a powder room, five working fireplaces, a country kitchen, an upstairs sun porch and greenhouse, a wraparound porch and a pergola on the main floor, a three-bedroom guest cottage and a smaller two-bedroom studio. The whole thing had been picked up by the CIA for $3.2 million. At most it is used three times a year, usually for high-level management conferences with allied agencies and the occasional off-the-books Fourth of July picnic or barbecue.

William Black sat on the wooden bench under the two-hundred-year-old oak tree that had given the estate its name, and smoked a cigarette. He remembered his father telling him about the old OSS training school he’d gone to just before the Americans fell pell-mell into World War Two. He was with some woman other than his mother then, and not for the first time Will Black found himself thinking about the fact that children never really knew their parents, nor the parents their children. It was one of those timeless conundrums, like why is there war.

He’d been in the States for five days now, all of them spent with dear Dr. Eugenio Selman-Housein here at Oak Lawn. So far there hadn’t been any time to see his son, Gabriel, or even spend an hour with him at the school. Selman-Housein had to be encouraged for taking every small step closer to revealing what he knew, like an infant child being potty-trained. Not only was the task frustrating and time-consuming, but it was also boring.

The MI6 officer sighed. Maybe Dick Cheney, bless his evil, black heart, had the best idea-pour water down the irritating bastard’s throat until he coughed up what you wanted him to tell you.

So far the skittish and extremely irritating little Cuban had told Black, Kingman and the Pilkington girl they’d been lumbered with very little. According to Selman-Housein, Fidel was on his deathbed, but Castro had been on his deathbed ever since Juan Orta, a corrupt government official who often had lunch with El Comandante and his cronies, tried on six occasions to poison the Bearded One’s favorite midday meal, his perrito caliente -hot dogs. Black shook his head-hot dogs! The useless twaddle you learned working for MI6. Military intelligence indeed. Spying reduced to bureaucratic folderol and nitpicking.

Black heard footsteps behind him and turned, expecting to see Kingman. It was Pilkington.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t see you there. I came out for a smoke, as well.”

“Feel free,” said Black, shifting down the bench. The young woman took out a package of Marlboros and shook one out. Black lit it with his father’s old World War One Imco foxhole lighter.

She took a deep lungful of smoke and then blew it out gratefully. “Very politically incorrect of me, I know,” she said. “Drinking makes me dizzy, smoking pot is kind of boring after a while and I get sleepy reading Nicholas Sparks. I have no other vices.”

“What about sex?” Black asked pleasantly.

“I thought the Brits didn’t have sex,” she said.

“Only members of the royal family,” answered Black. “Answer the question; I’m a professional interrogator. I’ll wheedle it out of you eventually.”

“To be honest,” said the Pilkington girl, “I can’t remember.”

“First rule of interrogation-when a person begins a sentence with the phrase ‘to be honest,’ it’s odds on she’s lying.”