“Alamar,” responded the Cuban with a smile. Braintree laughed.
“Un cubano real, entonces,” said Braintree.
“Sí,” said Eddie.
According to Braintree, after the dissolution of the Templar order by Pope Clement in 1312, its remnants fled in all directions, some across the English Channel into England and Scotland, some—as Holliday well knew—to the Azores and some to Portugal and Spain. The ones who crossed the Pyrenees Mountains into the Catalonian Province of Spain enjoyed a brief life as the Christ Knights of Catalonia, but they were quickly rooted out by the Catholic king of Spain. Those who traveled by sea and landed in Portugal fared much better and came under the protection of King Diniz under the name the Order of Christ in 1319, which led directly to Emmanuel I and Christopher Columbus.
“That you’ll have to explain,” said Holliday.
Braintree did. Although virtually every school history text in North America identified Columbus as an Italian from Genoa, there was virtually no real evidence of this at all. It was far more likely that he was born in either Spain or, even likelier, Portugal.
By 1492, the year Columbus sailed west to what he thought was the Indies, both Columbus and Emmanuel I were members of the Ordem Militar de Cristo, or the Military Order of Christ, the present incarnation of the Knights Templar in Portugal at the time. Although Columbus soughts funds from Isabella of Spain for his voyage of discovery, he already had a secret pact with Emmanuel that any information about his voyage that he gave to Spain should also be given to Portugal. Columbus agreed and the Templar cross on the sails of his famous ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, were a signal to Emmanuel that their secret bond would be kept.
Columbus spent very little time on the island of Cuba before moving on to Hispaniola, or what is now known as Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. One of the crew members on the first voyage, a man in his midtwenties and of prominent birth, Diego Velázquez, caught Columbus’s eye and soon after they settled in Hispaniola, Columbus ritually made Velázquez an officer in the Ordem Militar de Cristo, an honor the young Spaniard took very seriously. Nineteen years later in 1511, Velázquez, now known as Don Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, was ordered by Diego Columbus, Christopher Columbus’s firstborn child and now viceroy of the West Indies, to occupy and conquer the island of Cuba. For the next five years Don Diego Velázquez established a number of settlements, including, most notably, Santiago de Cuba and San Cristóbal de Havana, a small town just west of present-day Havana. For these efforts Don Diego Velázquez was made governor of Cuba by Diego Columbus. To commemorate the discovery of Havana, Don Diego built La Templete, a small neoclassical temple, which would soon become the headquarters for Don Diego’s version of the Ordem Militar de Cristo, which he named the Brotherhood of the Knights of Christ, La Hermandad dos Cavaleiros de Cristo. Very soon after this, at least between its members it became known simply as La Hermandad or the Brotherhood.
“Does it still exist?” Holliday asked.
Braintree shrugged. “There’ve been all sorts of rumors over the years, just like the never-ending rumors of the original Templar, but soon after conquering Cuba, Velázquez fell out of favor with Diego Columbus during Cortez’s conquest of Mexixo, and stripped of authority, he died in Santiago de Cuba in 1524. Most probably the Brotherhood died with him.”
“Or maybe not,” said Eddie quietly.
4
The Air Canada A320 came in low over the sea, reaching land in the early afternoon. The gently rolling countryside below could just as easily have been rural France—fields, farms and small villages crouched in broad valleys or perched on low hills, all connected by country roads that led to broader highways.
“Mi patria precioso,” whispered Eddie with a choke in his voice as he stared down at the landscape from the window seat of the narrow-body jet.
“Let’s just hope we get out of the airport,” said Holliday.
“We will, mi colonel, but remember, after that you must listen very carefully to what I tell you about how things work in this place.”
“I promise to obey every command.” Holliday smiled. Eddie raised an expressive eyebrow. An instant later the slightly ominous whir and thump of the flaps lowering filled the interior of the aircraft and they began their final approach to Jose Marti International Airport.
Terminal 3 at Jose Marti was built specifically for international arrivals and departures, showcasing Cuba as a modern twenty-first-century country, which everybody, especially the Cubans, knows it is not. The architecture was slick: glass, steel and open-beam high ceilings with crisscrossing assemblies of pipe and I-beams, some of them hung with large versions of the world’s flags, including the Stars and Stripes. The Cuban government might hate American foreign policy and politicians, but they love American tourists. Although there have been no sanctioned flights to Cuba since 1960, the Cubans found ways around the problem almost immediately. Americans could reach Cuba by first going to Canada, Mexico or the Bahamas and flying onward from those countries. Instead of passport entry and exit stamps, Cuban customs provided the tourist with a small separate visa slipped into the passport on arrival and removed on departure. Although each tourist who visited Cuba from the United States could technically be arrested under the Trading with the Enemy Act, it didn’t stop more than one hundred and fifty thousand tourists a year from going there, although most of the guidebooks suggest that they shouldn’t announce their American citizenship too loudly and might even go so far as to wear a Canada pin, or a Canadian flag patch, on their knapsacks. On the other hand, there is a regular St. Patrick’s Day on O’Reilly Street in Havana, complete with a pipe band, green beer and a choir singing “Danny Boy” in a Spanish accent. After all, it was rumored that even Che Guevara had Irish-American roots, and of course, even Castro himself had an American connection—in the late 1940s Fidel had been offered a five-thousand-dollar signing bonus by the New York Giants.
Holliday shuffled toward customs in the big, noisy terminal trying to figure what the impact on the world would have been if Castro had signed with the team and had a career as a major league pitcher. Perhaps there would have been one Batista after another for the next fifty years, all with a cozy relationship with the United States. American sugar, fruit and tobacco interests would have flourished, and so would the Mafia. Cuba could have stayed as corrupt as any of its neighbors to the south, or its slightly wackier compatriots in North Africa and the Middle East. American servicemen from Guantánamo on leave in Havana, picking up hookers in the bars and clubs and gambling in the casinos like the Riviera, the Capri or the Sans Souci. Blacks still unemancipated, working as cane cutters or in the tobacco fields, the vast majority of the country illiterate and poor.
He reached the head of the line, put both bags on the big industrial scales and waited while the weight figure was computed, paying the fee in U.S. dollars. Then he was signaled to the customs counter.
“Passport, senor,” demanded the uniformed customs agent. Behind him sat two men in suits and dark glasses, both reading Granma, the official newspaper. These would be the airport police that Eddie had warned him about.
Holliday handed over the blue-covered Canadian passport identifying him as John Leeson, smiling pleasantly.