Valley of the Templars

“Fine. I’ll meet you at the boat in an hour.”

“Good enough. Slip thirty-four.”

Smith’s Mudslide arrived—something dark brown in a martini glass with whipped cream on the top.

“What exactly is that?” Sheehan asked, climbing off his stool.

“Baileys, Kahlua and chocolate syrup over crushed ice. Good for a hangover.”

“Sounds revolting.”

“It is,” said Smith with that same thin smile. “I’m doing penance for my sins.”

“You must have a lot of sins under your belt to drink something like that.”

“You have no idea,” said Smith, taking a sip of his drink.

“I think I do actually,” said Sheehan. “See you in an hour.”

Sandpiper turned out to be a forty-three-foot Hatteras Express—easily capable of making the trip to Cuba. Smith was loading groceries and supplies on board when Sheehan appeared, his single overnight bag in his hand. Smith gave Sheehan a hand up and then showed him around the boat.

There was a master cabin with a queen-sized bed, a salon, an ensuite head, crew bunks and a guest stateroom forward. When they were done with the tour, Sheehan handed Smith a certified check for twenty thousand dollars drawn on the Bank of Nova Scotia on Bay Street.

Smith took the check, thanked Sheehan, then folded the slip of paper and put it into his shirt pocket. Sheehan went down to his stateroom to unpack. Des Smith cast off the lines and then went up to the flybridge to pilot Sandpiper out of the marina and into the channel. By the time Sheehan joined Smith, they were beyond the harbor, heading west along the length of the island.

They finally passed the stony beach at Clifton Point and turned south into New Providence Channel. Sheehan waited for an interminable hour after that listening to Smith prattle on about his life and his drunken escapades until he reached his limit. The water was a dark, almost sinister blue here and Smith was quick to tell him why.

“This is the Tongue of the Ocean. The water drops off from a hundred and fifty feet to more than a mile—six thousand feet in some places.”

“Really?” Sheehan answered. “That’s interesting. Any sharks in these waters?”

“Silkys, bulls, tigers, all kinds. Bulls especially out here in the deep water. Why? You looking to catch one?”

“Not really,” said Sheehan. “I think you might, though.” He took the homemade four-inch trench knife out of his pocket, holding it between the knuckles of his left hand, and stabbed it hard between the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae of Des Smith’s spine. The man twisted once, the vertebrae separated and Des Smith died.

Sheehan withdrew the knife, wiped the small amount of blood onto Smith’s jeans, then reached forward and eased the throttles for the two big engines into neutral. It wasn’t all that different from his da’s trawler Pixie back home. The Sandpiper began to slow.

Sheehan unceremoniously grabbed Smith by the collar and his belt, dragged him to the edge of the flybridge, then dumped him down onto the main deck. Sheehan came down the ladder, then rolled Smith over. He removed the certified check from the man’s pocket and opened his shirt.

The Irish priest heaved the dead man up onto the transom, hanging the front half of his body over the gunwale. With one expert slice he opened up Smith’s torso from waist to rib cage. Entrails slithered out in a slurping gush and hit the water with a splash. Grabbing Smith by the feet, Sheehan tipped the rest of the body over.

It sank immediately, pulling the sausage links of the intestines down with it. Sheehan doubted that the body would reach the seabed a mile below the Sandpiper’s hull before one or more hungry predators snacked on Desperate Smith’s remains. Desperate no more.

“Ave atque vale, hail and farewell,” said Sheehan, staring down at the dark water and quoting his favorite Roman poet, Catullus.

Sheehan went back up to the flybridge, pushed the throttles forward and continued south down the deep water channel toward the Grand Bahamas Bank and then Cuba.

Standing at the helm, the sun bright in his eyes and his heart glad to be back on the sea as it was when he was a child, Sheehan began to hum and then sing the song his late mother had sung to him so many years ago. Somehow it seemed fitting considering what he’d done and what he was about to do.

Over in Killarney

Many years ago,

Me mither sang a song to me

In tones so sweet and low.

Just a simple little ditty,

In her good ould Irish way,

And l’d give the world if she could sing

That song to me this day.

“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don’t you cry!

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,

Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that’s an Irish lullaby.

General Leopoldo Cintra Frias, the new Cuban minister of defense, did slow, methodical lengths of his sixty- by-twenty-foot pool in the Atabay District of Havana. At seventy-one, the husky, muscular Frias was determined to outlive a host of enemies, not the least of whom was a whole collection of Castros, Raul’s children in particular and specifically Alejandro. He had too much power within the Ministry of the Interior, and like Shakespeare’s Cassius, Colonel Alejandro Castro Espin had a lean and hungry look about him.

The swinging door to the pool enclosure squeaked open just as Frias reached the shallow end of the pool. It was Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Marquez Orozco, head of the Special Forces, the Tropas Especiales. He was clearly here on official business; he wore full uniform including red beret and black wasp—avispa negras—shoulder flash. He stood at the end of the pool like a stone statue. His expression was unreadable behind mirrored aviator sunglasses. If it wasn’t for the red beret and the holstered Stechkin APS and a pair of twenty-round magazines on his belt, he would have looked like a California Highway patrolman.

Frias climbed out of the pool, took his white terry-cloth robe off the back of a lawn chair and then sat down. “It is Sunday, Colonel Orozco. What brings you here dressed for war? Are they rioting on the streets of Havana? Is Mexico attacking us, Canada perhaps?” Frias knew perfectly well that Orozco had no sense of humor, but he liked sticking pins in the man from time to time. “Perhaps they’re just arguing about real-estate deals they’re making with fat tourists with fatter wallets.” Since Comrade Raul’s bread-and-circuses change in the law making it legal for Cubans to trade in their own properties, even with foreigners, the trade in run-down fincas in the countryside and even more run-down apartments in Havana had been fierce. Apparently brother Raul’s idea of maintaining order was by buying it. “Well,” he said. “Is it any of those?”

Frias picked up a package of Marlboros from the table beside his chair and lit one with a gold Dunhill lighter he’d picked up for himself the last time he was in Spain checking up on his properties there.

“No, sir,” Orozco said.

“Then what is it?”

“A checkpoint in the Escambray has been attacked. Twelve men killed, a barracks and a minibus destroyed. There was a message left on the barracks—Viva Zapata.”

“The idiot who starved himself to death?”

“Presumably.”

“Locals?”

“No, sir. The weaponry was far too sophisticated. A LAWS rocket, snipers, automatic weapons.”

“What are you thinking?”

“FAN softening us up?”

FAN was the Fuerza Armada Nacional, the combined armed forces of Venezuela. Since Chavez’s cancer had first been announced, there had been rumors of an agreement with both Fidel and Raul that in the event of serious civil unrest in Cuba, FAN would be called in to quell it. There had also been more sinister rumors of a complete takeover of the nation at its weakest moment. A moment that clearly wasn’t far off. Far-fetched, but not