“What is this?” Diaz said, his voice trembling. “I have nothing of value!”
“That’s where you are very wrong,” Carlos said, pistol whipping the man and knocking him clean out. He collapsed down onto an antique runner on his floorboards. “Very wrong indeed.”
“You think he’s all right?” Miguel asked.
“He’s fine. Check the street is clear then bring the Escalade up to the sidewalk. I’ll pick him up and take him out to the car.”
When his brother disappeared out of the front door, Carlos slipped his gun into his holster and reached down and heaved the unconscious man into a fireman’s lift. Then, when his brother told him the coast was clear from outside near the Cadillac, he walked briskly down the path with the professor and tumbled his body into the back of the SUV. He slammed the rear door shut and climbed into the front. Miguel was already at the wheel.
“Good,” Tarántula said. “You have done well.”
27
Diana sipped her coffee and opened the newspaper she had just bought at the local store. It was a bright, warm morning and the walk had been quiet and relaxing. Like the rest of the Avalon crew, the thought of Atticus’s kidnapping was weighing down heavily on her, so she followed her mother’s favorite advice and took a good, long walk to clear her mind and get some perspective.
Sitting in a beam of relaxing sunshine at Cade’s patio table in his back yard, she took another sip of the coffee and started to go through the newspaper. It relaxed her further, and took her mind away from the mission. But not for long. When she opened the front cover and looked inside, she saw a picture of a townhouse somewhere in Havana and, inset, a grainy black and white portrait photograph of an old, wiry man with a gray beard.
She read the story with interest and then said, “You get many kidnappings in Cuba?”
“Not at all,” Cade said. “It’s not Mexico.”
“In that case, I might have an idea why Danvers came here.”
Selena said, “You do?”
“Sure.” Diana folded her copy of Granma down and peered at Selena over the top of it. “It says in here that there was a kidnapping in the city last night.”
“Are you certain?” Selena asked.
She nodded. “It’s written in Spanish, not Portuguese, but I am fluent in Spanish. It’s clear enough. It says that last night, there was a break-in at the address of a Professor Salvador Diaz over in Habana Vieja.”
“The Old Town,” Cade said, scraping some butter over his toast. “It’s not far from here, just over the Canal de Entrada. You drove through it last night to get here.”
“Interesting,” Decker said. “Maybe this might speed things up a bit.”
Charlie sipped his freshly ground coffee and stretched his arms. “What else does it say?”
Diana dipped her head back into the newspaper. “Last night Professor Diaz was reported missing by his niece. She was supposed to be meeting him for a late dinner but when she got to his address she found the door open and signs of a struggle in the hallway. She reported it to the Havana Police Department straight away and they immediately travelled to the property, which they searched. They found no sign of him. Neighbors reported that they saw suspicious looking men parked outside his house.”
“Suspicious how?” Charlie asked. “Slightly suspicious, or like Riley?”
Riley laughed. “You’re a really funny bloke, Charlie.”
“Would police normally respond so fast?” Decker asked.
Cade shook his head. “I wouldn’t have thought so. Not unless he was someone pretty important.”
“He was,” Diana said. “The report ends by saying that he was the head of the Physics Faculty at the University of Havana, specializing in weather modification and a high-ranking member of the Communist Party of Cuba.”
“Muy importante,” Cade said with a chuckle, then took a large bite of his toast.
“Does it say anything else?” Selena asked. “What sort of car it was, for example?”
“A black SUV,” she said. “American. One of the neighbors said it might have been an Escalade. That’s it.”
“Is it enough to go on?” Decker asked.
“Maybe,” Charlie said. “My guys at MI5 aren’t magicians though. Having said that, they might be able to get hold of some satellite recon. Cuba is pretty heavily covered. Always has been, for all the obvious historical and strategic reasons.”
“It’s all we have,” Diana said.
Riley was lighting the biggest cigar any of them had ever seen. He leaned back on his chair and sucked on the enormous Partagas. Blowing out a big puff of blue smoke, he smiled broadly. “I predict a successful few hours here in Cuba.”
“Oh yeah?” Selena said.
Acosta waved the smoke away, coughing.
“Yeah,” Riley said. “The satellite data from Charlie’s mates will show us where they took old Diaz, and then we’ll go and get him and Atticus back before retrieving the capstone.”
“You think it’s going to be that easy?” Cade said.
The Australian shrugged and grinned and sucked on the cigar again. “Let’s just say, I can feel our plan coming together.”
28
The Snake King grabbed a fistful of the vinyl tarp covering the Stormbringer but hesitated before wrenching it away. The last time he had stared into its polished surfaces, back in the caves of Xibalba in the Lacandon Jungle, he had been given a vision of the future which had terrifyingly come almost perfectly true. Now, having had time to think about this ancient power more carefully, he grew nervous about whether or not he was truly ready to know more of what the future held.
He gazed around at his men, standing in a semi-circle
