Valley of the Templars

encased in the heavy clay, he pushed each one deep into the base of the small fire Domingo had built.

“Que estara listo en treinta minutos,” said Enrique. He squatted down on his heels, took a stick from the small pile of remaining kindling and used it to pile hot coals against the clay-covered birds.

“They will be done in half an hour,” translated Eddie. “My mother used to call it Faisan de Mendigo, Beggar’s Pheasant. It is a very old-country recipe.”

“I’m sure it will taste wonderful,” said Holliday, “but what does it have to do with getting out of here?”

“Enrique is an Italero, a priest of the Santeria religion. Later he will use the entrails of the three birds to give us knowledge of our future.”

“You must be kidding,” said Holliday

“Enrique is also the best guide and hunter in the mountains. If we want to get out of the Escambray, he must show us the way. Without him we are dead men.”

Holliday stared at the leathery old man squatting by the fire, poking at it with a stick. He was muttering to himself now, something that sounded like a prayer or incantation.

“Oshun ogoao mi inle oshun…igua iya mio…igua iko bo s…i iya mi guasi iya mi omo…y alorde oguo mi inl, ashe Oshun.”

“Go, Enrique,” muttered Holliday, wondering if Beggar’s Pheasant would turn out to be his Last Supper.

21

Father Ronan Patrick Sheehan arrived in Nassau on the Eastern Airlines early-morning flight and he was dead tired. It had been a long trip, beginning in Rome’s Fumincino Airport, then transferring to another aircraft at Heathrow and yet another in Miami. The things he did for God…and for Thomas Brennan.

Sheehan was a long-faced man in his fifties, jug-eared with grizzled, short gray hair and pale green eyes. He had a wide mouth and a long nose to suit his long face and a strong, square chin. He wore no collar; instead he was dressed in an open sport shirt, cream-colored chinos and worn-looking Nikes.

He traveled on a dark red Irish passport, and nowhere on the document was he identified as a priest. He was simply Nicholas Patrick Sheehan of Fethard-on-Sea, County Wexford, born there on November the sixteenth in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-three. There was no mention of the Jesuits getting him at twelve years old for the greater glory of God and beginning the journey that inevitably brought him to this place and on this day.

The priest in sheep’s clothing picked up his single bag from the carousel, then stepped out into the overheated and unconditioned air outside the Lynden Pindling Terminal. He was immediately accosted by a man named Sidney who drove a beaten-up, rusted and off-white Toyota Corolla taxi.

“Good mornin’, good mornin’, how are you this mornin’?” said Sidney, opening the rear door of the old car with a flourish.

“To be honest I feel like hell,” answered Sheehan, handing the cabdriver his one small suitcase.

“You do look like somethin’ unhappy the kitty cat put in the sandbox,” said Sidney. He shut the door, went around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel, putting the suitcase on the seat beside him. The meter on the dashboard was an old Argo that must have weighed ten pounds. The last time Sheehan had seen one had been when he was on assignment in Bombay before they started calling it Mumbai.

In the front seat Sidney shook his gray head sorrowfully. “This be what worl’ travelin’ does for you, then I want no part of it,” he said. “Where we going today, boss?”

“Harbour Resort Paradise Island,” answered the incognito priest. Sidney cranked down the meter and it began to tick like a cartoon time bomb.

They drove away from the airport and around briny Lake Killarney, then turned onto West Bay Street with the beach on their left. They drove by the forest of hotels on Cable Beach, past Saunders Beach, which was open to the public, and past the fish shacks at the entrance to Arawak Key. Finally they reached Nassau itself, navigating through the jitney buses, past the banks and souvenir shops and restaurants until they reached the turnoff for Paradise Island, stopping to pay the dollar toll, then coming onto the island itself.

When they reached the resort, Sheehan paid the thirty-dollar fare with a fifty without taking change, took his one bag, then went inside and booked in. The Harbour Resort was on the channel side of the island, and his view was of a forest of masts from the marina on the opposite side. He pulled the curtains closed, turned off the lights and was asleep almost instantly.

Sheehan woke up just after eleven the following morning, showered, shaved and then went down to the main entrance. The concierge gave him directions and he walked around the Hurricane Hole Marina to the Green Parrot cabana-style restaurant beside the marina pool. He sat down at a barstool under the high-peaked canopy, looking across the bar and toward the pool. Beyond the pool was the arc of the marina.

The menu was enough to harden your arteries simply by looking at it, but he finally decided on a conch po’boy and a local Kalik beer. Twenty dollars for a sandwich and a beer. The Bahamas wasn’t cheap.

He was halfway through the sandwich when the man sat down beside him. He was in his sixties, gaunt as a scarecrow with a long face, high cheekbones and a pointy chin. There were bags under his sad gray eyes.

Smith was either an insomniac or a drunk and, according to the file Sheehan had been given, hungover seemed the most likely. He took off his old blue captain’s cap and set it on the bar. What was left of his thinning hair had once been surfer-boy blond but was now a dirty gray, and any visible skin was burned to a reddish brown from half a lifetime in the tropic sun. He was wearing a gaudy yellow black and green Hawaiian shirt, sun-bleached jeans and what looked suspiciously like Birkenstock sandals.

“Des Smith?” Sheehan asked.

“That’s right,” said the man. “How did you know?”

“Good guess,” said Sheehan. In point of fact, he’d seen Smith’s photograph in the dossier Brennan had given him. The bartender came round and Smith ordered something called a Mudslide. “Des short for Desmond?”

“Desperate,” answered Smith with a thin smile.

“Why’s that?”

“No good with money, no good with business, no good with booze, no good with broads.”

“Bad combination.”

“What the hell?” said Smith. “I’ve got no one to answer to. Won the boat in a poker game from some rich writer thirty years ago. Chartering ever since.”

“No objections to Cuba?”

“Good fishing in Cuban waters this time of year. Marlin, bluefin, mahimahi. Sandpiper’s registered in the Bahamas and I’ve got a Bahamian passport.”

“You sound like an American.”

“Nassau, born and bred. Went to school in Florida and had a family there, but that didn’t work, so I came home.”

“Any family here?”

“Not anymore. All dead and buried.”

“Your ad said fifteen hundred a day, plus fuel and food.”

“That’s right.”

“How about two weeks?”

“Twelve hundred a day plus any moorage fees.”

“Good enough. Twenty thousand cover it, all in?”

“Sure.” Smith nodded.

“How do you want it?”

“Certified check’ll do. Any downtown bank.”

“Made out to?”

“Sandpiper Charters Limited.”