Valley of the Templars

military. It is supposed to be for tourism and rentals to foreign businessmen, but it is actually there to provide air support in case of insurrection.”

“Also there was Ramiro Valdes,” said Mama Oya darkly. “A devil, truly.”

“Minister of Informatics and Communications, also minister of the Interior—the Secret Police, also the minister of Agriculture. He is Adolf Hitler, this man. He went to a conference in Venezuela, and the joke in Havana was that he’d gone there to fix their silla electrica, their electric chair. He is a sadist and a murderer, amigo, and very dangerous.”

“Were you here on the night when Eddie’s brother disappeared?” Holliday asked.

“Buy something from Mama Oya and perhaps I’ll tell you.”

Holliday took a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet, laid it on the card table and picked up a freezing-cold Coca-Cola from the cooler. He used the metal bottle opener hanging from a string threaded through a hole high on the side of the container and took a sip.

He was surprised. It tasted exactly like the five-cent bottles he’d bought as a child from Pop Mercier’s grocery store down the street from Uncle Henry’s house in Fredonia, New York. You’d drop a nickel into the slot and it would allow you to drag your drink through a maze of metal tubes until it was free, dripping water and wonderfully chilled on a hot summer’s day.

“It is the same as you remember, isn’t it, gringo?” Mama Oya said. “The Mexicans use sugar instead of corn syrup.”

“Is that so?” Holliday said, trying to be calm in the face of a tiny old woman who seemed to be able to read his mind and then some. He took another long pull on the Coke. She was right; the taste was lighter and sweeter than the heavy goop they sold in cans now. It was like stepping into the past.

“That is so, gringo.” The old woman smiled. “And yes, I was here on the night that Eddie disappeared.”

“Did he speak with you?” Eddie asked.

“Yes.”

“You were still here so late at night?”

“The Plaza des Armas is my home, gringo. I have no other. Domingo knew where I go to dream.”

“What did he tell you, Mama Oya?”

The old woman turned over the top card in her large deck and laid it out on the table. It was a tarot card, but unlike any Holliday had ever seen. It showed a dancing man, his belt hung with skulls, a machete in one hand, a severed head in the other and the face of the devil. The colors of the card were green and black, and the number 7 was printed above the image, as was the name Ogun printed in heavy, dark ink.

“Ogun oko dara obaniche aguanile ichegun ire,” the old woman hissed. “He told me that if Eddie came, to tell him that he had gone to the Valle del Muerte. The Valley of Death.”

Other than looking a little silly, like Mr. Spock in the old Star Trek series, having a Bluetooth screwed into your earhole had a great number of advantages for the average intelligence agent—you no longer looked like a complete idiot talking to yourself in virtually any situation or environment and you could keep in touch with anyone else on your surveillance team. William Copeland Black sat on a stool in the Insomnia Coffee Shop on Grafton Street and kept an eye on Fusilier’s Gate, the main entrance to St. Stephen’s Green. It was a gray day, threatening rain, but there were still lots of people on the pedestrian mall just outside the big picture window of the coffee shop.

Dr. Eugenio Selman-Housein, Fidel’s personal physician, was in play. After an afternoon of shopping on Grafton Street, he was supposed to enter the Green through the Fusilier’s Gate on his way back to the Shelburne. So far he was almost twenty minutes late. Black wasn’t worried—yet—but he was beginning to get that familiar stiffness in the back of his neck that meant something was going wrong.

“Anything?” he said. There was a series of responding clicks in his ear. One click for no, two for yes. Where was the doctor?

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 & 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 CO₂ delivery 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 CO₂ pen 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.”