“Why do you think he wants to defect?” Sawyers asked mildly.
“I think it’s probably a case of shoot the messenger, Sir John. If Castro is dying I think he’s afraid that he’s going to be blamed. In Cuba that means a bullet in the head, a plane crash or a ‘sudden heart attack.’”
“Mr. Wormold?” Sawyers asked.
“It’s quite possible.”
Sawyers sat back in his expensive-looking leather chair and surveyed the George Stubbs painting hanging there—Mares and Foals in a Landscape. One of the perks of the job was to pick paintings for your office. Finally he spoke.
“Do we really want him?”
“I beg your pardon?” Wormold said, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Do we really want him?” Sawyers repeated. “If that’s all he’s got to offer, it doesn’t really amount to much—everyone knows Castro is ailing; he’s had cancer and a bout of divirticulitis that almost killed him. He’s frail and he probably has some sort of dementia.”
“And his mother was something like a hundred and three when she died,” said Wormold sourly. “The man could live forever.”
“His mother was barely sixty when she died,” corrected Black. “And his father was eighty. The whole Castro family longevity story is a myth.”
“So, what do you suggest?” Wormold said, a vague suggestion of a sneer in his tone.
“Call Younger Brother and tell them what we’ve got. They’re probably more interested than we are,” Black answered promptly. For intelligence purposes during World War Two, Younger Brother had been the code name for the United States, while Older Brother was England.
“I like it.” Sawyers nodded. “We’ll let him defect, then send him off to Washington for interrogation.” He smiled. “With you in tow, of course, just to keep them honest.”
“As Caribbean Section head, don’t you think—” began Wormold.
“No, I don’t,” said Sawyers. “Set it up, Black. I’ll make the necessary calls to Langley.”
8
El Templete is located close to Havana Harbor on Avenue Carlos Manuel Céspedes, sometimes called the Avenida del Puerto. The neoclassical building constructed in 1828 is situated exactly in front of the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales, which today is the City Museum of Havana. Across the street is the Hotel Santa Isabel, the grandest of the old hotels in Havana and in the 1700s the home of the counts of Santovenia.
La Templete is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and looks out onto the Plaza des Armas, a sixteenth-century square once used to assemble and inspect troops and that dates back to the original settlement of San Cristóbal de Habana by Don Diego Velázquez.
The cut-stone frieze below the simple peaked-roof cornice of the building is decorated with arcane symbols of skulls, crosses and intersecting circles that are usually associated with the Holy Trinity. One symbol, exactly in the center of the frieze and directly above the heavy bronze doors of the building, shows four triangles, points facing inward—a Templar cross separated into four distinct parts.
Most of the detail of the frieze is covered by two hundred years of lichen, mold and city grime. Alongside El Templete stands a beautiful and thick ceiba tree in the place where on November 16, 1519, the Villa de San Cristóbal was founded. The tree was highly revered by the natives, who attributed it with great magical-religious powers.
On November 16 each year, Habaneros and people from all over Cuba line up for their chance to take three turns around the magic tree and leave offerings between her huge bulbous roots. For the Indio natives who were here long before Columbus set sail for the New World, this was the Mother Tree, a virtual god that solved all problems and healed all wounds.
Eddie drove the old motorcycle up onto the curb and switched off the engine. On their left was the low wrought-iron fence that surrounded the tree-shrouded Plaza des Armas. On their right, across the broad street, was El Templete, so small it looked more like a mausoleum than a temple. It, too, was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, this one much higher. Between the fence and the building was a tall, heavy-trunked tree with widespread branches spread like a protective umbrella; this had to be the ceiba tree, the devil tree Eddie’s mother had mentioned. There was also something that looked like a ticket booth on the pathway leading to the old building.
There were tourists milling around inside the fence, some taking pictures of the huge shade tree while others roamed around the tiny windowless building. Other people went in and out of the Museum of Havana directly behind it, and more tourists stood and read the menu and the prices posted for the restaurant inside. Most turned away shaking their heads, but a few actually went in.
Directly in front of them, shaded by an umbrella of her own and seated behind a flimsy-looking card table on a padded stool, was an ancient black woman, her rake-thin body encased in a formless, faded print dress. Her face was a mass of wrinkles and the skin was stretched like leathery parchment over her bony arms. Her feet were bare and she was smoking a narrow cigar. On the table in front of her was a cooler, a large deck of cards, a few silvery trinkets and some strange-looking leather thong necklaces with small cloth bags hanging from them.
“Who is this woman?” Holliday asked.
“Mama Oya,” said Eddie.
“Does she have a real name?”
“If she ever had one, even she has forgotten it,” replied Eddie. They approached the woman behind the card table. Holliday was surprised to see what appeared to be an old-fashioned six-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola lying on a bed of crushed ice in the cooler.
“Hekua hey Yansa,” said Eddie, bowing slightly.
“Hekua hey yourself, Eddie Cabrera, the child who used to be called El Vampiro.” She spoke almost perfect English.
“El Vampiro?”
“It is nothing, Doc,” said Eddie.
The old woman gave a brief cackling laugh as she looked up at Holliday. Her eyes were ice blue and clear with no hint of age. They could have been the eyes of a young girl. “When he was a little boy Eddie would take off all his clothes and walk around the streets of Old Havana in the middle of the night,” said Mama Oya, grinning around her cigar. She turned back to Eddie. “You come about your brother, the white-haired one.”
“You knew this?”
“Mama Oya knows everything. Just like I know your friend is American and was once a soldier.”
“Canadian,” said Holliday.
“No mientas a Mamá Oya, gringo,” said the old woman sharply. “You are an American, you were once a soldier and then you taught soldiers. You hated your father and love your wife still even though she has been gone for many years.”
My God, thought Holliday, literally taking a step back. The wizened creature in front of him couldn’t have known all that. Unless Eddie had somehow managed to tell her. He turned and looked at his friend, the question clear in his expression. Eddie shook his head slowly.
“I know this in the same way as I know that Eddie has crossed an ocean to search for his brother, Domingo, so he might ease his mother’s pain. I know because Mama Oya sits here and sees many things.”
“You have seen Domingo?” Eddie asked.
“I saw him driving Raul’s daughter, the one married to Espin. They came to this place more than once for their meetings in the night.”
“Who came, Mama?” Eddie asked.