Valley of the Templars

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.”

“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 impossible.

“You believe that?”

“No, sir.”

“Then what?”

“The CIA?”

“The Americans?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The weaponry was American made. They have history in those hills.”

“It’s good that you read your history, Orozco, but that was half a century ago. I know. I fought in the Bandit War when I was a young man.”

“Who else could it be?”

“Why don’t you go and find out?”

“That is why I came, General.”

Frias’s adjutant, Juan-Carlos, appeared, properly outfitted in a white steward’s jacket. He carried a tray in his hand. On it was a bowl with half a large avocado, seasoned with lemon to keep it fresh, lightly salted the way Frias liked it, then filled with an ice cream scoop of shredded crab, shrimp and rock lobster meat mixed with finely chopped celery, crumbled bacon and mayonnaise.

Juan-Carlos set the tray down on the side table and then disappeared back into the main house. Frias crushed out the cigarette and picked up the bowl. He took a spoonful and slid it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.

“Exquisite,” said General Frias. “Would you like Juan-Carlos to prepare some for you?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

“Then tell me what you want before my digestion is completely ruined, Orozco.”

“I need six MiL 8s and a dozen MRAPs.” MiL 8s were transport helicopters and an MRAP was a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle. The Black Wasps used a Polish-made AMZ Dzik.

“The entire air force only has ten MiL 8s, and you want six of them?”

“Yes, sir. I need transport for one hundred and eighty men. They’ll rendezvous with the MRAPs in Aserradero and head into the jungle from there.”

“Have your troops take trucks to Aserradero.”

“The MiLs can have them there in an hour and a half. Trucks would take at least two days. We need a presence on the ground right now.”

It made sense. Frias took another spoonful of the avocado mixture and ate it, thinking. After a few moments he nodded. Orozco was smart, he was young and he was tough. And not someone you wanted in Havana when el mierda golpeo el ventilador.

“Good thinking, Colonel Orozco. Do it, and may you have great success.”

“Thank you, sir.” Orozco clicked his heels, saluted, then turned on his heels and left the pool enclosure. Frias went back to his avocado. He finished his snack, then took a cell phone out of the pocket of his robe and punched in a number. It only rang once before it was answered.

“Done,” said Frias. He hung up the phone and lit another cigarette. With a little bit of luck, Orozco and his men would be corpses rotting in the jungle by St. Lazarus Day.