Valley of the Templars

Hermandad. It has to mean something. We just don’t have enough letters.”

“Letters?” Black asked, confused.

“As in a crossword puzzle. We find the missing letters to fill in the blank squares and we’ll have our answer.”

“You really are an impressive woman, Miss Pilkington.” Black smiled.

“Call me Carrie.”

“Like the Stephen King story?”

“That’s me.” She stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “Shall we go back and start waterboarding the doctor so we can fill in the blanks?”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Black, standing as well. “But alas, that world has gone the way of the dodo.”

“Darn,” said Carrie.

11

The man in the tropical camouflage battle dress adjusted his headset and stared at the portable control- panel-in-a-suitcase on the ground in front of him. He was surrounded by banks of ferns and undergrowth, the shadows of the tall pines and eucalyptus trees turning the rain forest floor into a complex pattern of contrasting light and shadow that swallowed up the man in battle dress and made him close to invisible.

The air was full of the soft, gentle scent of butterfly lilies and the sweeter odors of jasmine and ginger mixed with the rot smell of overripe bananas and plantains that had fallen from the trees above to lie on the dark, rich earth below. Everywhere around the man the elegant song of the tocororo could be heard and the harsher telegraphing of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Before he’d slipped the headset on, the man had even heard the furious whisper of hummingbird wings nearby and the twittering of the tiny green and red cartacuba. This was the Topes de Collantes, the highest point in the Sierra del Escambray, a mountain twenty-six hundred feet above sea level, its flanks covered in a smothering blanket of almost impenetrable jungle foliage. What few roads existed were unpaved and dangerous for anything but high-wheeled military vehicles and sturdy four-by-fours. This place had come close to defeating Fidel more than fifty years ago, and it was no place for casual visitors now.

The man in the tropical battle dress saw none of this beauty now, nor did he hear anything beyond the empty cycling hum in his headset. He reached down with his right hand and picked up the Vectronix laser range finder. He put the small device up to his eye and looked out through the stand of trees in front of him to the brightly sunlit meadow beyond. It was empty, sloping downward gently, the tall yellow rattle grass shivering in the gentle breeze. By autumn the seed pods of the grass would be mature and the field would sound as if it were home to a million rattlesnakes as the pods shook in the wind.

“Go, One,” he said softly into the microphone.

A figure rose out of the grass fifty yards ahead. He looked as if he was carrying a large foam children’s glider. Lifting the model airplane high, he took a few running steps and launched it downhill. As he did so the man with the control panel pushed a toggle switch and the almost invisible propeller behind the wings of the aircraft began to spin. The man with the portable unit picked up the handheld game controller and began to work the controls with both thumbs. The glider, with its silent electrical motor, began to climb into the sky until it was invisible. On the screen of the portable control unit, the surveillance package began sending video and data.

The device was a Desert Hawk III mini-drone. It was thirty-six inches long with a fifty-four-inch wingspan and an interchangeable payload package of up to 2.2 pounds—one kilogram. The Hawk could fly at altitudes that ranged from nap of the earth to eleven hundred feet. It even had an infrared package for night sorties. It had a hundred- minute endurance time and could be controlled portably or by a remote operator thousands of miles away. The images could also be satellite-linked to anywhere in the world, and the man with the portable unit lying in the jungle was well aware that what he was seeing on the screen was also being watched at the Blackhawk Security Systems headquarters at the Compound in Mount Carroll, Illinois. Screw up and he’d be dead meat or at the very least unemployed. Thank God and the people for all those hours he’d spent playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

“What’s he supposed to be looking at?” Major General Atwood Swann asked, seated in the Big Chair in Blackhawk Security Systems Compound War Room. He was watching the giant flat-screen monitor showing the Desert Hawk Display from Topes de Collantes seventeen hundred miles away.

“Nothing in particular,” replied his second in command, Colonel Paul Axeworthy. “This is the afternoon recon run. The Hawk’s got a range of about ten miles or so; in that kind of terrain that’s at least half a day’s march. Put up the Hawk for an hour or so and you can make sure nobody’s sneaking up on you. Not likely, but it’s a prudent precaution under the circumstances.”

“It’s going well?”

“The men and equipment are deployed. Nobody’s made any mistakes and the only contact with the locals has been with Ruiz,” said Axeworthy.

“Our man in the hotel?”

“Yes, sir.” The colonel paused. “Any word yet, sir?”

“They picked up the doctor. It’s just a matter of time now.”

Dr. Eugenio Selman-Housein sat in his chair at the head of the George Wythe Jeffersonian table in Oak Lawn’s dining room. He was enjoying a second helping of prime rib, roasted potatoes and asparagus along with a vintage Laboure-Roi Cote de Nuits Villages burgundy that he was drinking at an alarming rate for a man of his slight build, not to mention his age.

Will Black watched him from the other side of the table and wondered if the good doctor had a tapeworm. One way or another, a man who drank that much without showing the slightest effect had to have a liver the size of a Volkswagen.

The doctor put down his knife and fork, took a sip of wine and smiled pleasantly at Black and Carrie Pilkington. “In truth, mi amigo y mi amiga, I must say, the Central Intelligence Agency feeds its defectors well, and in such a delightful environment.” He paused. “I do miss Senor Kingman, though; he was muy divertido…entertaining?”

Kingman had returned to Washington after the first three days of the doctor’s filibustering. His excuse for leaving was to make a personal report on the situation to Joseph Patchin, but all the telephones at Oak Farm were secure and encrypted and there was also a video link.

Black was reasonably sure the real reason the deputy director had left was that he thought the Cuban’s constant beating around the bush was because he had nothing of value to disclose and was simply looking for a free ride. Consequently the doctor wasn’t worth his valuable time. Both Black and Carrie had tried to convince him about Carrie’s theory that Selman-Housein was stalling because he was on some sort of prearranged schedule, but Kingman dismissed the whole idea out of hand.

“This isn’t some fanciful story about Masonic treasures buried under the streets of New York, Miss Pilkington,” he’d chided. “This is serious business.” Kingman had laughed, jeering. “If there was a secret society of ancient knights running Cuba, don’t you think the CIA would know about it?”

Black had to stop himself from reminding Kingman that, among other things, the CIA hadn’t seen the collapse of the entire Soviet Union coming, had backed the nascent groups that became al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and that both the CIA and MI6 consistently ignored the Iraqi threat to Kuwait going back to the 1960s, despite all the James Bond films or Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. In the final analysis, neither agency was very good at winkling out the secrets of other countries.

In the Oak Farm dining room, Selman-Housein picked up his knife and fork again and began slicing up a roast potato. He speared a morsel with his fork, popped it into his mouth and chewed happily for a moment.