“This is from a low-orbit NROL-49 satellite in geostationary orbit over the Caribbean.” Smith hit a key and an image appeared on the screen. It was a high-angle view of a broad river. “From twenty miles up.”
“Can it look for anomalies?” Black asked. MI6 had its own version of the NROL, so he knew a little about the satellite’s performance.
“Yes.”
“Is it picking anything up?”
“There’s a large oil slick about eight miles upriver.”
“Can we see that?”
“It’s four in the afternoon, Mr. Black. Shadows might present some difficulty.”
“Try.”
“As you wish.”
The image fogged out, shifted and then resolved itself.
“One thousand feet,” said Smith. There was definitely a rainbow-hued slick of oil fanning out on the water trailing off as the current pulled it toward the sea.
“Follow it to the apex of the slick,” Black ordered, any pretense of politeness stripped from his voice. Smith did as he was told. The apex of the slick was two miles upriver.
“There,” said Smith. “Two hundred feet.”
“What could have caused that?” Carrie asked.
“I have no idea,” said Smith primly.
“Either someone spilled a large can of outboard motor fuel or a boat sank,” said Black. “Take us upriver please.” Smith zoomed out and the image angled upriver. The man was right; long shadows fell across the river now. “Check for anomalies,” ordered Black.
“Here,” Smith answered shortly after fingering his console. “Five hundred feet.”
“It looks like a boat,” said Carrie, squinting.
“It is a boat,” said Black. “It looks as though it’s tied up to a tree.” He turned back to Smith. “Closer, please.”
“Fifty feet.”
“There’s someone sitting in the stern,” said Carrie. “And there’s something in front of him on the transom.”
“Closer,” said Black.
The image refocused and resolved again. “Twenty-five feet,” said Smith.
“What is that thing in front of him and what is he doing?” Carrie asked.
“That thing, as you call it, is a Browning fifty-caliber machine gun and he’s cleaning it.” He paused. “Closer please, Mr. Smith.”
The image zoomed in. “Ten feet,” said Smith.
“Are we close enough to use that facial recognition program of yours?”
“No need,” said Carrie, staring at the enormous image on the screen. “I recognize him from his file. “That’s Lieutenant Colonel John ‘Doc’ Holliday.”
After dropping off Animatronics Andy back at the security gate, they headed out onto the highway, Carrie at the wheel of the agency Ford. She hadn’t said a word after identifying Holliday.
“That place gives me the willies,” she said as they moved north against the evening traffic. “So does Mr. Smith.”
“He’s a bureaucrat, Carrie.”
“He’s also a liar.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m no military expert, but I know enough about the state of the Cuban army to know that they don’t waste time sending their Special Forces into the jungle for exercises. The Tropas Especiales are almost completely an urban force used to put down dissident demonstrations. Not to mention the fact that their weapon of choice is the AK-47. The men in those images were carrying MK-17 SCAR assault rifles; that’s U.S. Special Forces and most of the private armies like Blackhawk, KBR, Obelisk, Dyncor in the States and Control Risk and Blue Hackle in the U.K. I also know I saw more stacks of ammunition boxes than probably exist in the entire Cuban army inventory. The worst of it is that Smith lied.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea, but I know it means one thing—something’s going on and we don’t know a damn thing about it.”
14
The papal nunciate in Havana is located on a wide treelined boulevard in the Miramar District of Havana a short walk from the beach. It is a large two-story brick mansion with a turret on one side and a green tile roof. The entire front of the building is surrounded by a piazza-style porch.
The office of the papal nuncio himself, Bruno, Cardinal Musaro, was in a large bright room on the main floor that looked out onto a small orchard of orange and lemon trees. The office was lavishly furnished with Persian carpets, a seventeenth-century Spanish lacquered and gold-inlaid desk, several armchairs and floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two walls. The third wall behind the desk was taken up by a huge bow window and the fourth wall was hung with a number of priceless icons on the left and held a floral-patterned vestments cupboard on the right. The room was finished off with a nineteenth-century antique floor globe by W. & A. K. Johnston of Edinburgh to the right of the desk.
Cardinal Musaro, a gray-haired man with a broad, handsome face, took off his reading glasses as the semiretired archbishop of Havana entered the room, escorted by one of the nuncio’s priest attendants. The priest withdrew and Musaro gestured toward a chair in front of his desk. Both men were dressed in ordinary priestly garb that made no reference to their status.
Jaime Cardinal Lucas Ortega y Alamino, a slightly pudgy man with gold-rimmed glasses and thinning hair he regularly dyed black, sat down with a heartfelt sigh. Although Ortega was seventy-five years old— Musaro’s senior by almost ten years—both men had been elevated to Cardinal Pius II and both men wore identical solid gold Crucifixion rings on the third fingers of their right hands. They were of equal status in the eyes of the Church, so there was very little small talk between them.
“You have just returned from the Holy See?” Ortega asked.
“Yes, a few meetings.”
“How are the politics there, Bruno, as complicated as ever?”
“As complicated as ever, Jaime.”
“You spoke with Spada and his imp?”
“Brennan, you mean? Yes, I met with both of them, as we discussed earlier.”
“And?”
In answer Musaro opened his desk drawer and took out a small purple velvet box. On the top of the box, in gold, were the crossed keys and mitre that was the symbol of the pope. Musaro opened the box and put it down on the desk, facing Ortega. The former archbishop of Havana looked at it the same way he would look at a venomous snake. Inside the box was a ring identical to the one both he and Musaro wore—the Cardinal’s Ring.
“It is an exact duplicate, Jaime; no one will know the difference. I took the venom supplied by Selman- Housein to Rome and Brennan’s people did the rest. The ring contains the full venom load of eight Brazilian wandering spiders. The ring is made like a jet injector for diabetes. All it takes to fire is the pressure required to shake hands. That much venom will induce death within a few hours. There will be shortness of breath, paralysis and eventually asphyxiation.”
“Dear God,” whispered Ortega.
