Paul Christopher - The Templar Legion

“Not the most hospitable place in the world,” Doc said.

“It looks like the Lord’s Resistance Army has been through here,” said Peggy. “They take all the children over eight or nine and the able-bodied men. All in the name of God. Rape, murder, mutilation.”

“I thought they were in Uganda?” Rafi said.

“They’re spreading all over central Africa now. Here and the Congo as well.”

“I’ve seen enough of Umm Rawq,” said Holliday. They returned to the dock just in time to see Osman before he headed back toward Khartoum. The crocodile beaters had landed their long, narrow dugouts and were busy taking supplies from the Catalina on board Pevensey .

“I had a talk with Eddie,” said Osman. “He was only going as far as Am Dafok this trip but he’s willing to take you as far as the first cataract.”

“Eddie’s the captain?”

“Edimburgo Vladimir Cabrera Alfonso, to be precise,” said Osman with a smile.

“Edimburgo Vladimir?” Peggy said.

“He’s Cuban. His mother liked the name Edinburgh, as in Scotland, so she called him Edimburgo, but when she went down to the registry office the official said Edimburgo was an ‘enemy’ name, so she had to tack something revolutionary on to balance things out-hence the Vladimir. Cabrera is the father’s name. Alfonso is the mother’s, which is how they do it in Cuba. His friends call him Eddie. He was over here as an ‘adviser’ during the Angola crisis in the nineteen seventies and he defected. He’s been here ever since.”

Eddie turned out to be six-foot-six, coal black, completely bald and as muscular as a stevedore. He flashed a million-dollar smile, and the twinkle in his eye made Holliday like him immediately. Eddie moved with the grace of a dancer, which as it turned out was how he’d been trained-ten years with the Cuban National Ballet, then off to Angola. He wore a black KA-BAR bowie knife the size of a short sword in a sheath on his hip.

The interior of the Pevensey was as ramshackle as the outside of the boat. Two passenger cabins were tucked behind the engine room, both the size of confessionals, and there was a “lounge” behind the wheelhouse with a grimy porthole on either side. A carpet the color of mold sat atop the worn decking, accented by a red velvet couch that had turned pale pink over time and that obviously doubled as the captain’s bed.

While the croc beaters loaded all their supplies on deck, Captain Eddie ushered them into the lounge and offered them drinks, which turned out to be a choice of either Mamba malt liquor or 112-proof Red Star Chinese vodka. Holliday, Rafi and Peggy chose the malt liquor as the lesser of two evils. Eddie lit a long Cohiba cigar with a battered Zippo and poured himself a generous tumbler of vodka, then settled himself into an old wooden office chair. Along with a homemade chart table and the couch, the office chair was the only furniture in the little room. Behind the tall Cuban’s head, resting on three pegs in the wall was an old, well-used-looking AK-47. The room was lit by a large window covered with a pair of grimy, tacked-on homemade cardboard shutters.

“Memories of better times?” Holliday asked.

“Old times, not necessarily better ones, senor.” He turned away and addressed his other guests in the crowded little room. “So, mis comandantes , Donny tells me you wish to travel into Senor Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.”

“Something like that,” said Rafi.

“That would make of me the Helmsman.” Eddie smiled.

“A literate Cuban,” said Peggy with a brittle tone in her voice. Holliday knew that Celia Cruz, one of Peggy’s best friends in high school, had come over on the Mariel boatlift and had lost her mother and her father in the process.

Eddie slid the cigar from his mouth and gave Peggy a baleful look. “There are many things that Fidel did badly, senorita, but educating his people was not one of them. The country of my birth has a ninety-nine-point-eight percent literacy rate; your country cannot say the same, I’m afraid. There are also no student loans-university in Cuba is free.”

Peggy frowned and took a pull at her bottle of Mamba.

“My cousin sometimes has strong opinions,” said Holliday.

“Perhaps your cousin should judge the man in front of her and not the nation’s politics. I am not Fidel.” Captain Eddie stuck the cigar back into his mouth and once again Holliday saw the twinkle in his eye. “I have a much better tan, yes?”

Even Peggy couldn’t help laughing.

“You must not take life so seriously, amorcita ,” said Eddie. “After half a century of Fidel, Cubans would have all slit their wrists by now if life was a serious thing. Havana is a city where the flushing of toilets is rationed and it is all the fault of ‘embargo.’ Everything is the fault of ‘embargo.’ Cockroaches are the fault of ‘embargo.’ ” Eddie grinned broadly. “But our prostitutes on the beach at Veradero all have university educations.” Holliday laughed along with the others, but he could see the evening disintegrating into tipsy stories about the ills of the Castro regime.

“How long will it take us to get to the first cataract?” Holliday asked, getting down to business.

“A night, a day and another night,” said Captain Eddie, taking a big swallow of the Chinese vodka. “ Pevensey is not as swift as she once was.”

“And from there?” Rafi asked.

“From there I do not go,” said Captain Eddie. “Beyond the first cataract is the province of the Lord’s Resistance Army and Joseph Kony, their madman leader.” He smiled and sucked on his cigar, then blew a huge cloud of smoke into the air. “It is also said the ghost of Dr. Amobe Barthelemy Limbani walks there as well.”

“You don’t seem to be the kind of man who’d believe in ghosts,” said Holliday.

“Travel up and down this river long enough, senor, and you find yourself able to believe anything.”

“How soon can we get going?” Rafi asked.

Captain Eddie puffed his cigar thoughtfully and then emptied his glass of vodka. “Give me time to get steam up. An hour.”

“You travel the river at night?” Holliday asked, surprised.

Eddie smiled. “It is the best time,” he said. “Sometimes the safest. What you can’t see cannot see you in return. Mostly.”

True to his word Eddie had the Pevensey fully loaded, boiler hissing, and pulling into the downstream current of the river almost exactly an hour later. Two crew members kept the boiler fueled, while the third member of the crew stood in the bow using a long pole to check for clearance. Peggy and Rafi had taken one of the two cabins, and Holliday stood beside Captain Eddie at the wheel. There was a simple marine telegraph to the right of the wheel with settings for “full ahead,” “dead slow” and “stop,” and a chain dangling down from the ceiling that was connected to the steam whistle on the roof of the wheelhouse. Night had fallen and the only light came from the red glow of Captain Eddie’s ever-present cigar.

“You’re like Churchill with that cigar,” said Holliday, looking out onto the dark river ahead.

“He was a connoisseur, that man,” said Eddie. “A man of muy good taste. He smoked La Aroma de Cuba and when they stopped making those he smoked Romeo y Julieta.”

“You know a lot about Churchill?”

“I know a lot about cigars. My father ran one of the biggest Habanos factories until the day he died. He knew Churchill personally.” Eddie reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and handed a cigar across to Holliday. “Please, senor, have one. It is a Montecristo No. 3.”

“I’m afraid I quit smoking many years ago.” Holliday sighed. “Although it’s very tempting.”