Valley of the Templars

But even more than half a century later, lilacs spoke of her, and a grape fresh-picked from the vine burst with the flavor of her cool, soft mouth.

“Cardinal?” Brennan asked.

“Yes, Thomas, I beg your pardon. An old man’s mind wandering.”

“I was speaking of Cuba.”

“What about it?”

“It is becoming more and more like the last days of Rome in the times of Caesar, I’m afraid. It is not simply a case of betrayal but a question of who is betraying whom.”

“It sounds like the Vatican,” said Spada. “There are more sharpened daggers here than in any cutlery shop, I can assure you.” The cardinal secretary of state sighed, thoughts of Lucretia gone. “Is this about Ortega and Musaro?”

“There are faint rumors that our jet-setting nuncio Musaro will denounce you to the Holy Father as the man behind the assassination of Castro and will also quietly denounce Ortega to the Cuban Secret Police just before the event happens.

“Ortega will be ruined or perhaps worse. You will be removed as secretary of state, leaving the position open for Musaro. The Holy Father would have no real choice if he wanted to avoid a great bloody internal scandal. You’d just quietly go away to your estates in Tuscany and never be heard from again. I’d probably end up having a suitable ‘cardiac event’ in my bed one night.”

“You think he’d dare?”

“I do, indeed.”

“Then perhaps we should dare first, Father Brennan.”

“Which means?”

“You have your man in Havana now?”

“Yes. He’s waiting for orders.”

“Have him deal with Musaro before the event and Ortega afterward. That solves a multitude of problems, don’t you think?”

“You mean kill both of them?” Brennan asked, a little surprised at Spada’s ruthlessness. He was well aware of the cardinal’s illness and thought it might have softened him. Apparently it had not.

Spada reached down and plucked a few leaves from a knee-high plant on the edge of the path and crushed them between his fingers. He held the crushed leaves in his palm and breathed inward deeply, his eyes closed, then offered the palm to Brennan, who took a tentative sniff.

“Very nice,” said the Irish priest, being diplomatic since he couldn’t smell anything at all.

“Ocimum basilicum,” Spada said. “Sweet basil, the herb of Italy. Cloves, earth, sweet tomatoes, all the good things of the countryside.” He took a last sniff of the leaves in his cupped hand and then let them fall to the ground, crushed and forgotten. “There have been a great many holy events in gardens,” the cardinal said mildly. “Eve’s betrayal of Adam in Eden, Christ’s agonies in the Garden of Sorrows, his betrayal by Judas Iscariot in the Garden of Gethsemane.” Spada stared at the hillside gardens all around them. “I wonder how many betrayals there have been on this bloody soil in the past two thousand years.”

“Bloody soil?” Brennan said, looking down at the gravel beneath his scuffed old lace-up shoes.

“Oh yes.” The cardinal nodded, continuing down the pathway. “Long before the time of Christ, this place was a temple to Vaticanus. God only knows how many spring lambs and newborn calves bled to death in the light of the full moon for that unholy creature. The Vatican Hill on which we now stand was once the site of Nero’s Circus, the place where the first Christians were martyred. Somewhere near here St. Peter himself was crucified upside down by his own instruction. Historically the blood of the three crucifixions on Golgotha by St. Helena, as well. Truly a bloodstained place.” Spada smiled pleasantly at his companion.

Brennan, a man who had never quite given up the strange superstitious soul that is threaded into the DNA of every Irishman, despite a thousand canings by the Holy Ghost Fathers at Blackrock College, stared back at his master and suddenly had the queasy feeling that the dying old bastard could actually read his thoughts. Thank bloody feckin’ Jesus that he’d chosen Cardinal Moisint, the deaf old bugger, as his confessor and not Spada.

“Well, isn’t that an interesting bit of history?” said Brennan. “But I have my duties, so I should be off, if you’ll beg my pardon, Cardinal.”

“You have it, Father Brennan,” said Spada. “And may you go with God, for in Him the world is saved, man is reborn and the dead rise again to life.” The opening words of a Catholic funeral Mass, as Brennan well knew. Perhaps he’d heed the warning.

“Thank you for the blessing, Your Eminence, and if that’ll be all I’ll be on my way.”

“Certainly,” said Spada. Brennan hustled off, looking over his shoulder only once. Spada gave him a little three-fingered wave—a blessing at a distance, or perhaps a curse. He waited until the Irishman was out of sight before he took the encrypted cell phone from his pocket. He tapped a number on speed dial that was answered immediately.

“Luca? I want a watch put on Brennan, day and night. I think he has gone over to Musaro. The little bastardo worm has turned at last, just as I knew he would.”

Holliday and the others made good time through the dense forests of the Escambray during the night of their escape. Laframboise and Eddie had both studied celestial navigation academically for their work, and Holliday knew his stars, both above and below the equator, simply for the sake of survival: there is no moss growing on the north side of trees in the jungles of Vietnam, and the hills and valleys of Afghanistan look pretty much alike in the dark when the battery to your GPS has run out, your radio can’t get a signal and your compass needle keeps on whirling around with all that cobalt and nickel ore all around you. Knowing your ass from Polaris had helped all three men from time to time.

They kept moving, always a little east of north, hoping to reach the Atlantic coast of the country with a two or three days’ march. From there Eddie and Domingo were almost certain they could steal a boat or bribe a fisherman to take them either to the Dominican Republic or, better yet, the Bahamas.

Holliday and the others paused for a few hours of sleep just before dawn, and as early-morning light cut weakly through the ghostly, drifting mist, he thought he might have heard a small helicopter in the distance, but it could just as easily have been the remnants of a dream, so he put it out of his mind. He woke before the others and found a small stream tumbling through the forest. He drank his fill, then splashed his face and neck. Eddie joined him and knelt down by the stream.

“Arango has gone. El culo mierde took Domingo’s rifle.”

“I hope your brother hasn’t gone after him.”

“He wanted to,” said Eddie, “but I convinced him against the idea. We have the MP5s and the pistols we took from those men who tried to ambush us and two of those rather nice rifles we took from the guards at the airfield.”

“The M4s.”

“Yes, more than enough to start our own bandito war.” Eddie grinned.

“You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?” laughed Holliday.

“Goddamn too right, I am enjoying this, my friend, and so are you, Doc. Don’t lie to me about it!”

Eddie bent over the little stream and began scrubbing his face, singing as he splashed water:

When a man’s an empty kettle

He should be on his mettle

And yet I’m torn apart

Just because I’m presumin’

That I could be a human

If I only had a heart.

“What on earth was that?” Holliday laughed, stunned.

“It is from El Mago de Oz, of course,” said Eddie, coming up for air. “When it rained, El Hombre de Hojalata got rusty and could not move. That is us, compadre, tin men who are rusted. This is oil for our squeaking joints. No estamos en Kansas, Toto, esto es Cuba, mi amigo,” added Eddie.

“Edito! Venir aqui ahora!” Domingo’s voice rang out urgently. Eddie sprinted