“Fascinating,” said Black. “But hardly relevant.”
“I’ll get to that,” said the Pilkington woman. “At any rate, Braintree is an expat American who came up to Canada as a matter of conscience during the first Bush war in Iraq. I reminded Professor Braintree that despite now paying Canadian income tax he still has to file U.S. income tax each and every year, which of course he hadn’t been doing. I then asked him what he and Holliday had discussed during their meeting.”
“Do tell,” urged Black.
“Apparently there was a secret offshoot of the Templars in Cuba dating back to the sixteenth century called La Hermandad dos Cavaleiros de Cristo. The Brotherhood of the Knights of Christ, most often shortened to simply La Hermandad, the Brotherhood.”
“Once again, fascinating but hardly relevant.”
“There have been persistent rumors that La Hermandad still exists. A secret cabal of ten families that have been the real power in Cuba for five hundred years.”
“Persistent rumors,” murmured Black. “Not hard evidence.”
“Apparently the lineage of this cabal is matriarchal. One of the families is named Ruz, Castro’s mother’s maiden name. Another is Rodriguez, as in General Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez, head of Cuban intelligence. Do you known Selman-Housein’s full name?”
“Enlighten me.”
“Selman-Housein Sosa. Inside El Templete, a Templar chapel in Havana that is officially used only once a year, there is a painting by French painter Jean Baptiste Vermay showing the first town meeting held in Havana. First and foremost in the painting is a man in knight’s armor, a conquistador named Juan Ortega Sosa.
“Fidel Castro Ruz, General Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez and Selman-Housein Sosa—all members of La Hermandad. It has to mean something. We just don’t have enough letters.”
“Letters?” Black asked, confused.
“As in a crossword puzzle. We find the missing letters to fill in the blank squares and we’ll have our answer.”
“You really are an impressive woman, Miss Pilkington.” Black smiled.
“Call me Carrie.”
“Like the Stephen King story?”
“That’s me.” She stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “Shall we go back and start waterboarding the doctor so we can fill in the blanks?”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Black, standing as well. “But alas, that world has gone the way of the dodo.”
“Darn,” said Carrie.
11
The man in the tropical camouflage battle dress adjusted his headset and stared at the portable control-panel-in-a-suitcase on the ground in front of him. He was surrounded by banks of ferns and undergrowth, the shadows of the tall pines and eucalyptus trees turning the rain forest floor into a complex pattern of contrasting light and shadow that swallowed up the man in battle dress and made him close to invisible.
The air was full of the soft, gentle scent of butterfly lilies and the sweeter odors of jasmine and ginger mixed with the rot smell of overripe bananas and plantains that had fallen from the trees above to lie on the dark, rich earth below. Everywhere around the man the elegant song of the tocororo could be heard and the harsher telegraphing of the ivory-billed woodpecker.
Before he’d slipped the headset on, the man had even heard the furious whisper of hummingbird wings nearby and the twittering of the tiny green and red cartacuba. This was the Topes de Collantes, the highest point in the Sierra del Escambray, a mountain twenty-six hundred feet above sea level, its flanks covered in a smothering blanket of almost impenetrable jungle foliage. What few roads existed were unpaved and dangerous for anything but high-wheeled military vehicles and sturdy four-by-fours. This place had come close to defeating Fidel more than fifty years ago, and it was no place for casual visitors now.
The man in the tropical battle dress saw none of this beauty now, nor did he hear anything beyond the empty cycling hum in his headset. He reached down with his right hand and picked up the Vectronix laser range finder. He put the small device up to his eye and looked out through the stand of trees in front of him to the brightly sunlit meadow beyond. It was empty, sloping downward gently, the tall yellow rattle grass shivering in the gentle breeze. By autumn the seed pods of the grass would be mature and the field would sound as if it were home to a million rattlesnakes as the pods shook in the wind.
“Go, One,” he said softly into the microphone.
A figure rose out of the grass fifty yards ahead. He looked as if he was carrying a large foam children’s glider. Lifting the model airplane high, he took a few running steps and launched it downhill. As he did so the man with the control panel pushed a toggle switch and the almost invisible propeller behind the wings of the aircraft began to spin. The man with the portable unit picked up the handheld game controller and began to work the controls with both thumbs. The glider, with its silent electrical motor, began to climb into the sky until it was invisible. On the screen of the portable control unit, the surveillance package began sending video and data.
The device was a Desert Hawk III mini-drone. It was thirty-six inches long with a fifty-four-inch wingspan and an interchangeable payload package of up to 2.2 pounds—one kilogram. The Hawk could fly at altitudes that ranged from nap of the earth to eleven hundred feet. It even had an infrared package for night sorties. It had a hundred-minute endurance time and could be controlled portably or by a remote operator thousands of miles away. The images could also be satellite-linked to anywhere in the world, and the man with the portable unit lying in the jungle was well aware that what he was seeing on the screen was also being watched at the Blackhawk Security Systems headquarters at the Compound in Mount Carroll, Illinois. Screw up and he’d be dead meat or at the very least unemployed. Thank God and the people for all those hours he’d spent playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
“What’s he supposed to be looking at?” Major General Atwood Swann asked, seated in the Big Chair in Blackhawk Security Systems Compound War Room. He was watching the giant flat-screen monitor showing the Desert Hawk Display from Topes de Collantes seventeen hundred miles away.
“Nothing in particular,” replied his second in command, Colonel Paul Axeworthy. “This is the afternoon recon run. The Hawk’s got a range of about ten miles or so; in that kind of terrain that’s at least half a day’s march. Put up the Hawk for an hour or so and you can make sure nobody’s sneaking up on you. Not likely, but it’s a prudent precaution under the circumstances.”
“It’s going well?”
“The men and equipment are deployed. Nobody’s made any mistakes and the only contact with the locals has been with Ruiz,” said Axeworthy.
“Our man in the hotel?”
“Yes, sir.” The colonel paused. “Any word yet, sir?”
“They picked up the doctor. It’s just a matter of time now.”
Dr. Eugenio Selman-Housein sat in his chair at the head of the George Wythe Jeffersonian table in Oak Lawn’s dining room. He was enjoying a second helping of prime rib, roasted potatoes and asparagus along with a vintage Laboure-Roi Côte de Nuits Villages burgundy that he was drinking at an alarming rate for a man of his slight build, not to mention his age.