Once every ninety days the submarine would leave the safety of its iron nest, follow the Old Bahamas Channel northwest to the Florida Straits, and take up a position at the thirty-fathom line between Old Man Key and Key West. It was the previous mission to the tap that had provided the initial red flag for a DEA-Coast Guard sweep, and that in turn had led to Arkady’s unscheduled visit to the SS Angela Harrison.
Cruz eased back even more on the Panda’s throttle as he slipped in through the gaping hole in the old ship’s side. His eyes adjusted quickly to the sudden dimming of the light as he passed into the cavernous hold. The B-510, all 299 feet of her, was snugged up against the concrete berth that had been constructed to accommodate her on the leeward side of the Angela Harrison’s hull. Like most of the old Russian cold-water submarines, she’d been originally painted a dull gray-black. Operating in Caribbean waters, she had wisely been painted over with a high-quality nonreflective and much lighter blue. Surfaced, even in broad daylight, the B-510 was almost invisible from anything more than five hundred yards.
Cruz gazed fondly up at his sinister-looking command, her squat conning tower studded with periscopes and snorkel equipment, her bows, now at low tide, revealing the torpedo tubes carved the same way as an old Buick Roadmaster, like the taxi his cousin Pascual drove in Havana. Unlike most of the modern nuclear-powered missile submarines, the B-510 retained the narrow, fleet look of her immediate ancestor, the German Type XXI of the Kriegsmarine developed at the end of World War II. The B-510’s hull configuration, basic design, and even her diesel and electric engines were much the same as the old Nazi boat’s, probably because they’d been conceived by the same engineers. The biggest difference was the lack of deck armament. The Type XXI had carried two antiaircraft guns, fore and aft; the B-510 had no weaponry at all beyond a few personal small arms on board and the six forward torpedo tubes and the two tubes aft: Pedo y Pinga, as the crew called them—the fart and the dick. Not that it mattered much; there wasn’t much an antiaircraft gun could do against an F-18. Unlike most submarines and other vessels in what had once been the Soviet navy and the remnants of the Cuban navy, the B-510 had been given a name, Babaloo, written in bold black letters on her bow. On the conning tower there was a cartoon of Desi Arnaz playing the congas and, in English, the words ‘‘Honey, I’m Home!’’ The name and the cartoon, surprisingly enough, had been laughingly confirmed by the Great One himself.
Arkady switched off the Panda’s engine and let the small boat slide through the inky, oily water until it bumped against the old truck tires arranged as fenders along the concrete dock. His first officer, Enrico Ramirez, was supervising the loading of the Babaloo’s cargo: a dozen 65-76 ‘‘Whale’’ torpedoes, each one packed with 921 pounds of high-grade heroin where there normally would have been an explosive charge. The heroin was manufactured from the highest-grade Afghani opium, which was shipped to a government pharmaceutical lab in Zengcheng, China, where it was processed first into morphine and then into heroin. From there it was sent to the Pearl River port of Xintang, where it was loaded onto any one of a number of China Ocean Shipping Company vessels scheduled for off-loading in Cuba, generally bulk carriers of grain or smaller break-bulk carriers of mixed cargo. Arriving in the port of Manzanillo on the south coast of Cuba, the heroin was then packed into the old Soviet torpedoes for loading onto Babaloo. The grain and the heroin were paid in barter for sugar, and the heroin was then transshipped to the Yucatán aboard the Foxtrot for final delivery across the border into the United States. With the early-warning system provided by the regular phone taps in Key West, the system was foolproof. No Coast Guard ship would dare to stop a Chinese government vessel on the high seas, and since the Cuban navy no longer had any submarines, nobody was looking for one. Like any criminal activity of that size, there had been leaks every now and again, but the conspiracy was so involved and far-fetched that even the wildly paranoid Drug Enforcement Agency dismissed the rumors as addle-brained myths. If six-thousand-pound shipments of heroin really were regularly chugging their way underwater across the Caribbean like so much dirty laundry, they might as well hang up their badges and go home. Even if it was happening they didn’t want to think about it. Neither did Arkady Cruz. He’d never seen himself as a drug dealer, and his involvement with a madman like the megalomaniac Angel Guzman was repulsive. On the other hand, it was Guzman’s hard cash that kept the old Foxtrot seaworthy, and Arkady Tomas Cruz was willing to play Faust to Guzman’s Lucifer if it meant keeping the Babaloo afloat.
He tied off the Panda and went up the stained concrete steps to the pier. He paused to light yet another Popular, then crossed to the winch, where Ramirez was watching as the big gray torpedoes were being loaded through the forward hatch.
‘‘How goes it, Rico?’’
‘‘Well enough. Not much warning. These weren’t supposed to go out for another two weeks.’’
‘‘Don’t complain. We get to go for an unexpected cruise.’’
‘‘Muy bueno, I get to listen for AWACS and Coast Guard sonar pings for thirty-six hours in a boat full of the stink of fifty men sharing two showers and three toilets.’’ He paused, thinking for a moment, then shook his head. ‘‘Make that two toilets. The forward one isn’t flushing again.’’
Arkady Tomas laughed. ‘‘Put Payo on toilet paper rations. The sargento is the one who plugs it all the time.’’ The truth of course was that the Babaloo was old, getting close to thirty, and was never intended to cruise the tropics. She was a cold-water boat and she was aging quickly. ‘‘When can we get under way?’’ he asked, pinching out the Popular and flicking the butt into the black oily water lapping against the concrete pier.
‘‘Call it three hours,’’ said Ramirez. ‘‘Just after dark. The tide will be at its highest and it will be dark enough.’’
‘‘There is no darkness anymore,’’ grumbled Arkady. ‘‘They fly those Predator drones like mosquitoes with infrared eyes. I want you to dive the boat as soon as we’re over the reef.’’
‘‘Aye aye, Amiral,’’ said Ramirez.
‘‘Amiral, my ass,’’ said Arkady Tomas, grinning back at his old friend.
6
"Tell me again why we’re driving down the M1-11 in the fog on a visit to a theological college in Cambridge,’’ said Billy, squinting through the windshield of the Renault Laguna they’d rented at Heathrow. ‘‘Something about a Jewish Franciscan monk from Switzerland who was friends with a typewriter salesman during World War Two, wasn’t it?’’
‘‘He wasn’t a typewriter salesman. His name was Olivetti. He made typewriters. Millions of them.’’
‘‘But the Franciscan monk was Jewish, right? And a spy as well?’’
‘‘You’re teasing me,’’ said Finn.
‘‘I’m in awe of you,’’ said Billy Pilgrim. ‘‘To the undiscerning eye you appear to be an attractive woman in her late twenties with a pleasant disposition and a lovely smile, when in fact you are a time bomb, ticking away toward your next explosion. Your life appears to be an endless game of hares and hounds and one is never quite sure which is the hare and which is the hound.’’
‘‘But I’m not boring—you have to admit that,’’ she said and smiled at her friend.
‘‘Boring? No. Quite exciting, actually. One minute we’re being shot at in the middle of London and the next minute we’re battling Malay pirates side by side with a modern-day Robinson Crusoe obsessed with cheese.’’
‘‘You’re making it sound crazy on purpose,’’ said Finn. ‘‘It wasn’t that strange.’’
‘‘No, no,’’ said Billy airily, ‘‘just another day at the office for our girl Fiona.’’ He squinted. ‘‘What does that sign say?’’
‘‘A-1134,’’ answered Finn.
‘‘Bloody hell,’’ said Billy, throwing the wheel to the right. The big Renault rose to the occasion and they lurched onto the exit ramp.
They made their way through the foggy, rather narrow streets of Cambridge, stud
ents in little groups appearing through the mist like ghostly flitting bats in their academic gowns. The occasional car went by, its headlights like the glowing yellow eyes of an owl surprised in flight. ‘‘The whole place seems deserted,’’ commented Finn. ‘‘No people, no traffic. It’s like a ghost town.’’
‘‘Mid-June,’’ explained Billy. ‘‘End of term. Everyone’s going home for the hols except for the swots.’’
‘‘Swots?’’
‘‘Nose-to-the-grindstone suck-ups, brownnosers who’ve offered to do scut work for their professors.’’
‘‘Just like Columbus, Ohio,’’ said Finn with a smile.
‘‘Tush and pish, Miss Ryan. I bet you were a swot yourself.’’
‘‘Never. If I wasn’t off on a dig with my parents I was working at Mickey-D’s, just like the rest of my friends, and getting tanked on Saturday night.’’
‘‘Fiona Ryan as a bad girl,’’ said Billy. ‘‘Hard to imagine.’’ He squinted through the windscreen. ‘‘Bloody hell,’’ he muttered again.
‘‘It’s on a street called Ridley Hall Road,’’ said Finn, looking down at the map of Cambridge in the Blue Guide. They reached the end of the Fen Causeway, then turned right. ‘‘Off Malting Lane.’’
‘‘That’s not far from the old Granta Pub,’’ said Billy. ‘‘Good shepherd’s pie if I remember my school days.’’
‘‘I thought you went to Oxford.’’
‘‘But I had a lady friend in Cambridge.’’
‘‘What happened to her?’’
‘‘Sadly she couldn’t abide boats. She married a doctor and moved to New Zealand. Rather a rich gynecologist’s wife than an impoverished duchess, I suppose.’’
‘‘Turn here,’’ said Finn, pointing to the left. A street appeared, wisps of fog caught in the branches of a row of ancient alder trees. ‘‘Right this time,’’ she said a few seconds later. And then they were on Ridley Hall Road.
‘‘Hardly rates as a road,’’ said Billy, pulling the car to a stop. ‘‘Only a block long.’’ On their left was a big slate-roofed institutional building, added to over the decades in varying shades and styles of brickwork that went from dark red to pale yellow, windows from Victorian arched through midcentury sash and modern thermopane.
‘‘That has to be Ridley Hall,’’ said Finn.
‘‘Which makes that the residence of our mysterious Franciscan,’’ said Billy, nodding to his right. ‘‘Poplar Cottage.’’
‘‘I don’t see any poplars,’’ said Finn, ducking down to look through Billy’s window. ‘‘And I wouldn’t call that a cottage.’’ The house opposite Ridley Hall was a large, slightly sooty-looking place with half a dozen eaves and at least that many chimney pots sprouting up from every corner. It was two and a half stories, covered in a nicotine-colored stucco, the windows tall, arched, and covered with what appeared to be heavy drapes. It was the sort of place where the upstanding citizenry in Sherlock Holmes stories lived, or a suspicious-looking clergyman in an Agatha Christie tale. As though to offset the building’s slightly dowdy outward appearance, the narrow front garden was a riot of color, flowers blooming everywhere.
Finn and Billy climbed out of the car and went up the flagstone path. The arched, planked oak doorway had huge wrought-iron hinges and a lion’s-head knocker. Below the knocker was a worn-looking brass plate that read: Br. Luca Pacioli.
‘‘Doesn’t sound very Jewish to me,’’ said Billy.
After a moment the door swung open and an old man in a cardigan and twill trousers peered out at them over the lenses of a pair of bright red reading glasses. The man had long, snow white hair and a Vandyke beard, neatly trimmed. He looked like Santa Claus on a diet for the summer. He appeared to be in his eighties, but fit enough. In one hand he held an old briar pipe.
‘‘Martin Kerzner?’’ Finn asked.
The man’s eyes widened. ‘‘I haven’t been called that since the war,’’ he said. ‘‘How extraordinary!’’
‘‘Matthew Penner from Lausanne sends his regards,’’ said Finn. ‘‘My name is Finn Ryan and this is my associate, Billy Pilgrim.’’
‘‘Brother Matthew. Dear me, I thought he was long dead.’’
‘‘He said you might be able to answer some questions we had about Friar Bartolome de las Casas and the Order of the Black Knights.’’
‘‘Well,’’ said the old man, ‘‘I know Friar Bartolome is long in his grave, spinning merrily I have no doubt, but the knights are something else altogether.’’ He stepped aside. ‘‘Do come in. I’ll fix us some tea and biscuits and tell you all about it, if you like.’’
The interior of the cottage had the same Agatha Christie feel as the exterior. The hallway was dark, paneled wainscoting rising waist-high, the wall above done in a small flower print that had faded to almost nothing. There was a bay-windowed dining room immediately to the left, a kitchen and scullery to the right, and then a dark set of winding stairs leading to the second floor. Beyond the stairs were two more rooms, a drawing room to the left and a library to the right. More wainscoting and wallpaper.
Both the drawing room and the library had small fires burning in the grate and both rooms looked out onto a long narrow garden laid out with half a dozen flower beds with several enormous oaks that looked centuries old. The fog was beginning to break up and patches of blue sky could be seen.
The library had bookcases on three of the four walls, stuffed to overflowing. There were piles of books and papers on every horizontal surface, including stacks of them on the carpet. There was an old desk in front of the window, paper cascading across the scarred surface like drifts of snow. Finn immediately felt at home; her father’s study had looked a lot like this.
There were two leather armchairs in front of the desk. The old man unceremoniously swept the stacks of books and papers off them and gestured for Finn and Billy to sit down. ‘‘Back in a jif,’’ the old man said and disappeared.
‘‘Nice old sort,’’ said Billy, looking around the warm, chaotic room.
‘‘According to my information he locked a man into a cabin on a burning ship in the Caribbean. He was an assassin for Israeli intelligence. ’’
‘‘Where do you manage to find these people? ’’ Billy said. ‘‘He certainly had me fooled.’’
A few minutes later the old man appeared with a tray of tea things, including a small plate piled high with an assortment of fancy cookies. He put the tray down on the desk, fixed the tea according to their various preferences, then plucked a bourbon crème biscuit off the plate, sat down in the chair on the far side of the desk, dipped his cookie briefly into his teacup and took a soggy bite.
‘‘Teeth aren’t what they used to be,’’ he explained, munching happily. He took a sip of his tea, made a contented sound of appreciation, and sat back against the creaking old leather of his chair. ‘‘If you know me as Martin Kerzner then you must have known Abramo Vergadora at one time or another.’’
Vergadora was an Italian historian Finn had met two years before while investigating the Lost Legion of Luciferus Africanus and the disappearance of the so-called Lucifer Gospel.
‘‘Yes, briefly,’’ answered Finn.
‘‘If memory serves, Miss Ryan, you were involved in his murder.’’
‘‘I was with him shortly before he was killed, yes,’’ she answered tightly.
‘‘In the end responsibility for his death was laid at the feet of Terza Positione, the Third Position, a radical terrorist cell in Italy,’’ said the old man.
‘‘You’re well-informed for a retired theology teacher,’’ said Finn.
‘‘Have you ever heard of an organization called P-Two, also Italian?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘It stands for Propaganda Due. It was a secret society allied with the Vatican with the intent of fighting Communism by the creation of a paramilitary ‘authoritarian’ democracy in Italy. At one time they had infiltrated every level of Italian society, from university
professors and policemen to the prime minster himself. Terza Positione was one of its front groups. P-Two was supposedly outlawed after its discovery during the Vatican bank scandal in 1981 and dissolved.’’
‘‘You’re saying it wasn’t?’’
"Yes. It simply reinvented itself under another name."
‘‘Cavallo Nero, the Order of the Black Knights,’’ said Billy.
‘‘Quite right, Lord Pilgrim,’’ the old man answered.
Billy looked stunned. ‘‘You know who I am?’’
‘‘Certainly, and Miss Ryan as well. I am old, my lord, but I am not a fool. My friends in Lausanne gave me ample warning, not to mention the fact that both of you were all over the news last year after your somewhat dramatic escapades in the South China Sea.’’
‘‘I’d prefer it if you just called me Billy.’’
‘‘Not William?’’
‘‘William was my father. Billy is better.’’
‘‘As you wish.’’
‘‘Cavallo Nero,’’ reminded Finn. ‘‘Friar Bartolome de las Casas.’’
‘‘Ah, yes,’’ murmured the old man. ‘‘The Aztec Heresy of Hernán Cortéz. And the fate of the Nuestra Señora de las Angustias off Key West, Florida.’’
‘‘From which virtually all the treasure was recovered the following year, 1522, and Bartolome de las Casas rescued. That much was in the records in Seville,’’ said Billy.
The old man laughed and chose another biscuit. ‘‘Seville. The Archives of Broken Dreams. A thousand plans hatched, ten thousand treasure maps described. Did you know that Tomás de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor, held the original tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition in the very building that houses the Archives of the Indies today? If those walls could speak you’d hear nothing but the screams of the damned.’’
The Aztec Heresy Page 4
