Valley of the Templars

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.

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 CO₂-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.”

9

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.