Valley of the Templars

26

“This shit is not going down quite the way we thought it would,” said Max Kingman, taking a large bite out of his foie-gras-topped Kobe beef cheeseburger. Chewing, then swallowing, he nibbled at a fresh-cut French fry, first dipping its end into a silver salver of Dijon mayonnaise.

He took a sip of his Chateau de Malleret, Haut Medoc, and leaned back in his buttery-soft leather armchair. Somewhere behind him the twin engines of the Gulfstream G560 purred. Across the table from him, Joseph Patchin took a tentative bite of his own burger. Kingman smiled. “If God had a wife, that’s what her ass would taste like,” he said.

The CIA deputy director took another bite of the admittedly tasty burger and tried not to think about Kingman’s somewhat blasphemous description. Mirroring Kingman, Patchin took a sip of the extremely smooth red wine. “Exactly what shit are we referring to?” Patchin asked. He glanced out the window. The sun was setting behind them and there was nothing but water below them, so he assumed they were somewhere over the Atlantic. Kingman hadn’t mentioned a destination so far.

“The Cuban shit, of course,” snapped Kingman. He picked up half a dozen French fries in a bunch, dunked them into the yellowish mayonnaise and stuffed all of them into his mouth.

“Any particular part?” Patchin asked.

“Your part.”

“How is that?”

“I’ve had one of my best teams hung out to dry by this ex-army officer of yours and his nigger Cuban commie fucking pal. Not to mention the fact that those two have apparently managed to fuck things up further by rescuing your analyst bitch and that limey you sent in for a look-see. And if that wasn’t bad enough, our people are getting some hard intel that this fucking Housein-Sosa character was a goddamn, son-of-a-bitching Trojan horse.”

“What sort of Trojan horse?”

“The kind that’s a plant,” said Kingman. He took another swallow of wine. “They let you have the stupid bastard in Dublin. They gave him to you on a silver fucking platter.”

“I don’t believe it. He wasn’t a walk-in. He wasn’t even one of ours-he was a gift from MI6.”

“Yeah, like they’ve never had a few fucking commies hiding in the woodwork. Jesus! Talk about moles! You’ve got nothing on those guys, yet you took the doctor at face value.”

“What did he have to gain?”

“He gets to go and live in Miami or wherever the hell he’s been squirreling away money for the past fifty years. He passes on the message he’s supposed to and then he gets his get-out-of-jail-free card.”

The two bites of foie-gras burger were sitting in Patchin’s gut like ball bearings. He was getting raked over the coals by a fat, blasphemous bastard and he didn’t understand what the man was talking about. “I’m not sure I’m understanding all this,” said the deputy director.

“Christ on a crutch, man, are you that dumb? The doctor was a signal flare that said ‘we’re just about open for business.’ It’s a palace coup d’etat, my friend. Castro’s going to be offed, Raul’s going to get in that jet he’s got permanently fueled and ready to go at Libertad Airfield and head for the hills and the generals will be running the show.

“The way we’re hearing it, Raul’s son Alejandro will be top dog, at least as long as he can fight off the competition.” He grinned. “It’s going to be the biggest fire sale since they brought down the Berlin wall.”

Kingman paused, took another big bite of his cheeseburger and washed it down with more wine. “Setting the doctor loose was a red flag, Mr. Patchin. Get your bets down and get them down early. If I was you, boy, I’d start selling sugar futures short and tobacco futures high. The only thing in the way of it now is this guy Holliday and your two employees.” He paused, gesturing toward Patchin’s plate. “Eat up your burger, boy. That thing would cost you fifty bucks at any decent restaurant inside the Beltway and you’re going to need a full stomach by the time we get there.”

“Get where, exactly?”

“Geneva. Talks with Mrs. Kate Sinclair, our own big jefe. And you got a lot of ’splainin’ to do, my friend; the old bitch is not at all happy with the way this is all going down.”

Holliday heard the deep, resonant buzzing before he saw anything. A sound like the humming of an industrious swarm of bees around a hive. But it wasn’t bees and it wasn’t a hive. He was on Eddie’s heels within a few moments of his friend leaving his brother, but it had taken him more than an hour of fighting his way through the jungle to catch up with him.

Throughout the chase he’d expected to hear bursts of gunfire, but there was nothing but the raucous sounds of the birds in the trees and the faint, distant thunder of what seemed like a summer storm approaching.

The scene he came upon abruptly in the small clearing was like something out of Lord of the Flies. The three men were arranged in a triangle, their headless naked bodies impaled upside down on long bamboo stakes pounded into the ground, the sawn-off heads thrust onto the tops of the poles, eyelids slashed off, dead eyes covered with crawling flies.

Their tongues and genitals had also been hacked off and rested together at the base of each pole. All three of the men’s bellies had been slashed open, the bloody purple coils of intestine cascading onto the ground. Kneeling in the middle of the triangle, stripped to the waist, his face covered in streaks of blood, was Eddie, chanting softly but clearly, his hands, also bloody, held outstretched and palms up. His eyes were closed and his head was tilted back as the flies swarmed all around him and his terrible trophies.

Ochosi Ode mata oba akofa aye o unso ire o wa mi Ochosi omode ache.

Ochosi Ode mata oba akofa aye o unso ire o wa mi Ochosi omode ache.

Ochosi Ode mata oba akofa aye o unso ire o wa mi Ochosi omode ache.

He kept repeating the long phrase a dozen more times and then stood. His head came forward and his eyes opened, looking at the three dead men around him. Then he noticed Holliday standing silently at the edge of the clearing and came toward him.

“I was saying a prayer to Ochosi, the Orisha of Justice, the justice which these men have been given. They killed my brother and the pilot, Pete, the way you would kill an animal. There is no honor in that, so they died without honor themselves, and animals can eat them where they stand. Let the flies use them as nests for their maggots, for that is all they are worth.” He turned back to the grim assembly of dead flesh behind him. “There were four of them, but one escaped. His time will come, though, companero, I promise it.”

“These men died hard,” said Holliday, his voice soft.

“Does it offend you?” Eddie asked.

“No, your brother died hard, as well, but at least he died with great honor. He was trying to save Pete’s life.”

“Thank you,” said Eddie. He looked at the dead men and spit in their direction, then turned back to Holliday. “Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.”

Holliday had no answer for that. He put out his hand and touched Eddie’s bare shoulder. “Time to leave here, amigo, and get back to the others. What your brother said before he died makes it even more important that we get away from here.” His brother’s secret was America’s worst nightmare, the code above all codes that would send a shiver up the spine of any military figure or president who heard it, no matter how battle-hardened that military figure was or how stalwart and valiant the president: PINNACLE-NUCFLASH. The detonation or possible detonation of a nuclear weapon that creates the risk of an outbreak of nuclear war.

The man moved slowly through the deep mangroves of the Everglades, guiding the lightweight fiberglass kayak through the dark green tunnels of foliage. A mile or so behind him, his partner was waiting patiently on the airboat, ready to whisk them both back to civilization.

When the man reached the optimum distance according to his GPS unit, he backwatered with his double-bladed paddle and stopped. Reaching down between his legs, he hauled out the sixty-pound rucksack containing the RA-115-01 submersible device and dropped it over the side. The device could last for years underwater, so the man had no fear for its safety. With the bundle safely out of sight, he backpedaled out of the mangrove tunnel and headed back to the airboat.