***
Jamal’s body was taken to the USA on a covert flight, along with the hysterical author Hasan Yasin. In Washington DC a grateful FBI Director rang Thames House to thank his MI5 counterpart for seconding a British operative to the Cuban arena and for running an operation that would have been logistically impossible for an American agency to carry out alone.
For her part, Sister Angelica would not say how she knew that Jamal had sisters who had passed on before him. All she would say was that, when God wanted you to know something that would bring comfort to a suffering soul, he would allow his servants to be his mouthpiece.
Later that day Sister Margaret Rose passed through the airport in full regalia, purportedly heading to Rome via Panama, but actually diverting to Heathrow to land in the UK as Gillian Davis.
Chapter 43
National Shrine, El Cobre. Cuba. Present Day, Thursday 9am.
When Gillian looked into the bathroom mirror she saw exactly what she had wanted her watchers to see. A pretty woman with long fair hair who had been overly enthusiastic when applying her make up. Her long dress covered her entire body and legs. Not even her feet were visible. In short she looked like a WAG or soap star on holiday.
With a deft move of her left hand she removed the wig, revealing a dark short bob hairstyle, one so beloved by women of the cloth. The difference it made to her appearance still shocked Gillian, even though she’d had eighteen hours to get used to her new look.
The day before in, the women’s spa at the hotel, the Cuban hairdresser had pleaded with her new client not to have her magnificent long mane of fair hair butchered, but Gil was insistent. The hairdresser muttered to herself in Spanish as she cut the hair short and coloured it with a French semi permanent crème which the chart described as being Noir: Nombre Une, or almost black. Two hours later the Hairdresser threw up her hands in despair and called Gil a “Mujer Loco”, or crazy woman, when Gil admired her new cut and then proceeded to take a long fair haired wig from her bag and place it over her new style, making herself look exactly the same as she had when she had walked in.
The Chameleon lived up to her nom de plume and minutes later she was clad from head to foot in black, with her face scrubbed clean of make-up. Gil did not need make-up to be pretty, but she looked very different from the heavily made up woman who had walked into the bathroom.
“They only ever see the uniform,” she said to her reflection.
Sister Margaret Rose, as she had now become, was dressed in a traditional habit with a pristine white coif covering her neck and head. She wore a plain silver ring on her left hand that denoted she was a Bride of Christ, and a large silver Crucifix hung from her neck on a black cord and rested on the pristine starched white coif. The outfit was completed by a black woven woollen belt which had her Rosary hanging from it and a pair of unfashionable spectacles glazed with plain glass. Once she had crammed her few belongings into the traditional, top opening, hand held black bag, the image would be complete. The passport and picture were now almost eight years old, but the hairstyle was identical and the picture was clearly a freshly scrubbed younger version of the Sister Margaret Rose who would fly to Nassau in the Bahamas very soon.
***
“Sister Angelica, I am so grateful for your help. I appreciate that seeing a worldly woman like myself wearing these sacred robes must be hard for you to bear,” Sister Margaret Rose pondered.
“Nonsense, my child, we will do whatever it takes to further the Holy Mother’s work under this godless communist regime. And in that regard I must thank you for your generous donation. I assure you, even without it I would have assisted you without any hesitation in return for your brave efforts on behalf of this order in 2005.”
Gillian Davis knew that her six figure donation would keep the nuns of El Cobre in funds for a year or more. Three more nuns of varying sizes and shapes gathered in the corridor as Sister Angelica hugged Sister Margaret Rose, blessed her and bid her a safe journey. The shortest and oldest nun, Sister Therese, took the bag and exited the dormitory with the three taller nuns.
***
Thom Passarell was already fed up of coffee, and the tourists had only been gone forty five minutes. He looked up to see four nuns exiting the building. It was a somewhat amusing sight; three were tall and had their hands concealed in their capacious sleeves, their arms in a cradling position. They were giggling. The last nun was about four feet six inches tall and she scurried behind the others with a stern look on her aged face that spoke volumes about her disapproval of her younger sisters’ public behaviour.
Light relief over, Passarell ordered another coffee and resumed his observation of the Basilica’s sole public entrance.
***
Inside the Basilica, Sister Angelica examined her handiwork and smiled at her finished product.
“I feel a little vulnerable dressed like this, Sister Angelica,” the novice nun admitted, temporarily concealing her Novice’s calf length work habit under Gillian Davis’s flowing summer dress, and replacing her veil with a flowing wig of fair hair.
Sister Angelica looked at the heavily made up face of the young woman and worried that she looked a little too much like a dancer at the Copa Cubana, but that was how her predecessor had arrived. Handing the novice a pair of Gillian Davis’s oversized sunglasses, she gave final instructions.
“Your veil is in the handbag. When you get to the Ducal Hotel restaurant, eat the set lunch and sit in the back, well away from the window. When the bus arrives to take the tourists to their next destination, go into the hotel restrooms, discard the dress, wig, hat and sunglasses, scrub your face and replace your veil. Wearing the habit under the dress will be warm, but it is the only way.”
The older nun paused for thought. “After you have done that, walk straight to the front desk and ask the concierge to order you a taxi. I want you back here in three hours.”
The novice was excited and nervous in equal measures as she passed an hour waiting for the bus.
***
When the tourist bus arrived, Thom Passarell looked over to ensure that his quarry was in the throng. He need not have worried; the sun hat, the glasses and the flowing summer dress stood out from the scantily dressed crowd who clambered aboard the bus, which then headed for the old city and lunch. Thom paid his bill. He was in no hurry. He knew exactly where the bus was headed.
***
At 10:30am Sister Margaret Rose presented her passport and boarding card to the uniformed customs official. He glanced at it with little interest before making a joke.
“The Bahamas, Sister? Perhaps you will be getting a nice tan.” He laughed at his own joke as the nun glared at him, only her face and hands visible. In a broad Irish accent the nun rebuked him, using the name on his badge.
“Christos, how would your mother feel if she knew how you treated the servants of the Saviour whose name you bear?”
The man visibly blanched, then offered a subdued apology as he quickly stamped her exit visa into her passport.
Gillian Davis smiled as she headed to gate 107 and her seventy minute flight to Nassau in the Bahamas. If everything worked out according to plan it would be almost 2pm when her followers realised that they had lost her, by which time she would be on a casino cruise ship bound for Fort Lauderdale.
***
Thom Passarell was annoyed with himself when he lost contact with his quarry. For almost an hour he searched high and low in the hotel, but she was nowhere to be seen. Passarell knew that she had not climbed aboard the bus, which had waited an extra ten minutes for her to show.
Nonetheless, he wasn’t worried. Some time later that night she would return to her hotel room and to her belongings, and when she did his team would be waiting.