“Castro proclaimed the victory of the Cuban revolution from this town’s city hall balcony,” Tre said.
They were climbing into a Range Rover that had been waiting at the airport. Béne had arranged for the vehicle through contacts he maintained for his export businesses.
“Columbus landed here on his first voyage in October 1492,” Tre said. “He thought he was in Asia, on a new continent, so he searched for the Grand Khan. He had on board a man named Luis de Torres, who served as the ship’s translator. He could speak Hebrew and some Arabic. Columbus sent de Torres and another man inland to find the Khan. Of course, all they found were half-naked natives, living simply. But de Torres did discover one thing.” Tre paused. “The locals showed him how to roll leaves into what they called tabacos. They would light one end and draw a few drags. He watched as they took the firebrands with them on hunting journeys, halting every hour or so for more drags. They were able to travel great distances thanks to those drags. We call them cigars today, and the leaves tobacco. De Torres could have been the first European to ever smoke. But within a hundred years, tobacco had spread throughout Europe.”
Béne drove as they left the airport, heading for a small community west of town. Tre had told him the archive’s location and a map had been waiting in the vehicle.
“De Torres never returned to Spain,” Tre said. “He stayed in the New World and eventually settled here, in Cuba. He started a plantation and was the first European to cultivate tobacco. This island, more than Hispaniola, became the Spanish headquarters in the New World. So it makes sense that this is where the majority of documents from that time can be found.”
Which probably saved them, Béne thought. As a socialist state, Cuba had been closed to most of the world since 1959. Only in the past few years had that changed.
“I’ve been told,” Tre said, “that this archive is contained within a small museum about the Spanish time in Cuba.”
“I despise Columbus.” He was comfortable enough with Halliburton to express himself openly, at least on this topic.
“You’re not alone. October 12, Columbus Day in America, is hardly celebrated anywhere else. In Mexico it’s called the day of one race, Raza, with hardly a mention of Columbus. In Uruguay the natives commemorate it as their last day of freedom. Many other South and Central American nations feel the same. What happened in 1492 definitely changed the world, but it has created an era of unparalleled genocide, cruelty, and slavery.”
They rode in silence for a while through kilometers of palm-lined cane fields. Béne thought about the information Simon had offered, which wasn’t much. He’d not shared anything with Halliburton about the Austrian’s existence. That was his alone to know. But what Tre had said about Luis de Torres, a Hebrew translator, stuck in his brain.
“Why was there a person speaking Hebrew on Columbus’ ship?”
“Nobody knows, Béne. There are some who think Columbus was a Jew and that he was searching for some promised land where Jews lived in peace.”
Which was what Simon believed. “Is that possible?”
Tre shrugged. “Who the hell knows? We know so little about Columbus that anything is possible. It’s a fact that he brought no priests with him on the first voyage, which is odd in and of itself. Columbus was an enigma then, and remains so today. Who would have thought he found some lost Tainos gold mine? But maybe he did.”
The highway led them into a small hamlet with colonial-style buildings, a place where things seemed reused, mended, and recycled time and again. Three feed-and-supply stores catered to farmers, but there was also a tinsmith, tobacco shop, and what appeared to be a church. He parked the Range Rover near a cobbled square surrounded by more colonial-era buildings. The hot air reeked of ripe fruit and toiling humanity. Little breeze, just a trapped and boiling stew of conflicting smells. They’d passed their destination just down the street, a sign indicating MUSEO DE AMBIENTE HISTÓRICO CUBANO and that it was open until 4:00 P.M. He’d not come unprepared. A semiautomatic was tucked snugly beneath a thin jacket. Cuba, for all its supposed innocence, remained a hostile place, one where he’d learned to be cautious. Only a few people were in sight. A mangy-haired dog ambled over to investigate them. Some Cuban jazz leaked from one of the cafés.
He faced Tre. “You said this place was privately owned. By whom?”
“The Jews of Cuba.”
That information piqued his interest.
“Surprised me, too,” Tre said. “Once there were tens of thousands of Jews here. They came after Columbus. Then they fled here for Brazil in the 17th century because of the Inquisition. They came back after 1898, when the island gained its independence from Spain. Now only about 1,500 are left. Amazingly, Castro left them alone. Over the past decade they’ve made a name for themselves by preserving the island’s history. Some of them are distant descendants from the conversos who immigrated here in the early 16th century with de Torres. They’ve spent a good deal of time and money gathering up documents and artifacts from that period and storing them away. Thank goodness they have a generous benefactor. Like with you and the Maroons.”
He stepped away from the vehicle and wished for a cold drink. “I didn’t know there were rich people in Cuba. The ones I deal with all claim poverty.”
“This one’s from overseas. A foundation. It’s funded by a wealthy Austrian named Zachariah Simon.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
TOM LAY ON THE FLOOR AND WATCHED THE SHADOW APPROACH. He decided to wait until whoever it was came close before firing. He angled the gun toward a set of bars in a niche twenty feet away. His right elbow brushed the bones stacked to his right and he instantly drew it away. Then he saw something on the wall to his left, four feet off the ground, inside the niche, hidden from view of the passageway.
A switch.
Steel conduit ran up the stonework, then paralleled where wall met ceiling. Offshoots from that conduit led to light fixtures that illuminated the niches. A quick scan and he saw this switch shut off every light in the niches from one end to the other.
He sprang to his feet and raked his right hand across the switch, plunging his side of the cavern into darkness. Light still spilled from niches across the center passageway, beyond the bars, but there was enough darkness for him to make an escape.
He stayed low and moved toward the end where he hoped another iron gate within an archway would be open and he could escape.
Two pops startled him.
But the rounds smacked into bones behind him.
His assailant was searching, but he’d managed to skip ahead.
He came to the end.
The iron gate within the arch opened. He carefully peered to his right, back down the semi-darkened main passage. No one was there. He wondered if his pursuer had entered the niches, just as he’d done. Not wanting to stay around and find out, he ran down the corridor, toward the exit Inna had told him was there.
He came to the base of a stairway and glanced back.
No one was following.
He climbed the risers two at a time and, at the top, turned left, racing down a short hall toward daylight.
Two darkened forms waited.
Inna and Alle.
“What happened?” Inna asked him.
“No time. We have to go.”
Alle looked shaken, but he was, too.
They stepped out into an alleyway between two rows of buildings. He estimated they were somewhere east of the cathedral, its tall spire blocked by the rooflines.
“Who was there?” Inna asked.