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
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.”
The Pilkington girl gave him a long look, took another drag on her cigarette and let it spin out of her nostrils. “He’s stalling,” she said finally, changing the subject abruptly.
“Pardon?”
“Selman-Housein. He’s stalling.”
“Why?”
“He’s no dummy. He’s been Castro’s doctor since the first stroke in 1989. You manage to stay on Fidel’s A team for twenty years, you’ve got to know how to shuck and jive if you want to survive. Know too many of
“You know your history,” said Black.
The pretty young woman shrugged. “I read a lot and I do my homework.”
“So, why did he defect?”
“I don’t think he did,” she said quietly.
“Then what’s he doing in a Virginia farmhouse eating chicken pot pie and apple brown Betty or whatever it is you Americans call bread pudding?”
“I think he’s a messenger.”
“I don’t understand,” said Black.
“Think about it. The good doctor goes to conferences all over the world, all the time. Why now and why Ireland of all places? He was in Montreal a month and a half ago—it would have been a lot easier for him to defect from Canada, but he didn’t.”
“All right, why now and why Ireland?”
“The Direccion de Inteligencia has one of the best foreign intelligence operations in the world. They know who the CIA chiefs of station and the MI controllers are for each and every U.S. embassy and British embassy, as well. I think he defected in Ireland because of you, Mr. Black.”
“Why on earth would he do a thing like that?”
“Because I think it’s true. The DI in Havana probably has a file on you six inches thick. They know your mother was American, they know you have a special relationship with the agency and they knew if the doctor defected in Dublin you’d almost certainly rendition him to us, but he’d have MI6 as the middleman and he wouldn’t be ‘disappeared’ to some black site in Lithuania, pardon the pun.”
“You really have done your homework,” said Black, impressed. “But it’s all a bit fanciful, don’t you think?”
“Not really,” she said. She finished her cigarette and stubbed it out in the small glass ashtray between them on the bench. She took out another Marlboro and Black lit it for her.
“Go on,” he said.
“Well, we knew that Holliday and Cabrera left Toronto for Havana—we have them on surveillance video from Pearson International. Backtracking from there, I found out they’d been staying at the Park Hyatt in downtown Toronto. Holliday made one telephone call of consequence while he was there setting up an appointment with a man named Steven Braintree, a professor of medeival studies at the University of Toronto. Braintree’s office is a hundred yards from the Park Hyatt, by the way.”
“Fascinating,” said Black. “But hardly relevant.”
“I’ll get to that,” said the Pilkington woman. “At any rate, Braintree is an expat American who came up to Canada as a matter of conscience during the first Bush war in Iraq. I reminded Professor Braintree that despite now paying Canadian income tax he still has to file U.S. income tax each and every year, which of course he hadn’t been doing. I then asked him what he and Holliday had discussed during their meeting.”
“Do tell,” urged Black.
“Apparently there was a secret offshoot of the Templars in Cuba dating back to the sixteenth century called La Hermandad dos Cavaleiros de Cristo. The Brotherhood of the Knights of Christ, most often shortened to simply La Hermandad, the Brotherhood.”
“Once again, fascinating but hardly relevant.”
“There have been persistent rumors that La Hermandad still exists. A secret cabal of ten families that have been the real power in Cuba for five hundred years.”
“Persistent rumors,” murmured Black. “Not hard evidence.”
“Apparently the lineage of this cabal is matriarchal. One of the families is named Ruz, Castro’s mother’s maiden name. Another is Rodriguez, as in General Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez, head of Cuban intelligence. Do you known Selman-Housein’s full name?”
“Enlighten me.”
“Selman-Housein Sosa. Inside El Templete, a Templar chapel in Havana that is officially used only once a year, there is a painting by French painter Jean Baptiste Vermay showing the first town meeting held in Havana. First and foremost in the painting is a man in knight’s armor, a conquistador named Juan Ortega
“Fidel Castro Ruz, General Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez and Selman-Housein Sosa—all members of La
