Valley of the Templars ts-7

by Paul Christopher

  “Tell me,” said Spada.

  “There’s been a lot of back chatter about him in the halls these days. It’s getting louder by the day.”

  “Back chatter?”

  “Spy talk for gossip, Your Eminence. Cries and whispers, you might say.”

  “What kind of gossip?”

  “Nothing specific at this point. It’s merely that he’s the subject of a lot of conversations. I’ve had this from a number of sources. He’s like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter. Calling in favors. In politics it would be called maneuvering for position. In military terms he’s enlisted his forces.”

  “Against who?”

  “Not quite sure,” mused Brennan. “But a lot of the talk appears to be originating in the college. Your colleagues.”

  Spada nodded to himself. It made sense. There was no doubt that the most powerful man in the Vatican after the Holy Father was the secretary of state, but the position of dean of the College of Cardinals was a very close third. It was the dean, after all, who presided over the conclave to elect a new pope, and on a number of occasions—most recently Pope Benedict—the dean was elected to the position himself.

  “He wouldn’t be campaigning on his own behalf,” said Spada thoughtfully.

  Brennan nodded his agreement. “Not Musaro’s style. He much prefers to be the power behind the throne, not the power sitting on it.”

  “Quite so,” said Spada. “Is there any idea who is most favored?”

  “Not yet,” said Brennan. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Ortega.”

  Spada stared at the rumpled Irish priest seated beside the bed. He felt a chill run down his spine. “That would be insane! There’s far too much scandal attached to him, not to mention our present situation. The Church has enough troubles without a…”

  “A poof electing the Holy Father?” Brennan smiled.

  “Indeed,” replied Spada, gathering his dressing gown even more tightly around his sunken chest, suddenly embarrassed. The Cuban cardinal archbishop wore jeweled slippers in Havana Cathedral, used perfume, had no one over the age of twenty-five in his household or office and had posed for photo opportunities with Castro wearing a red velvet beret with a gold communist star on the front. Red velvet!

  Personally Spada had nothing against gays, but to have such an openly and flamboyantly effeminate man as Ortega in a position of power could be terribly damaging to the Church’s already tattered and battered image.

  “On the surface it looks mad, of course,” said Brennan. “But for Musaro it might be an excellent choice. Knowing what he knows would be enough to keep Ortega in line, and with Ortega as dean of the college it might provide Musaro with a way into the Vatican and into another seat of power for himself.”

  “Mine,” said Spada, his voice flat. That did make sense. The Holy Father was the voice of God on Earth, but the secretary of state was the stick in His hand. “Are you sure about this information?”

  “As I said, it’s only been gossip up to now, but if I was putting money on a pony to come in first at the sweepstakes, that’d be the one I’d choose.”

  “If this is what Musaro’s up to, it must be stopped.”

  Brennan stood up and Spada smiled briefly; the poor man’s desperate need for nicotine was almost palpable. “If you want it stopped, it only leaves you with one choice, I’m afraid,” said the Irish priest.

  “And what choice is that?”

  “The choice of which piece you want to have removed from the board: the bishop or the queen.” Brennan smiled at his pun.

  “Do you have someone who could complete the task on short notice?”

  “Certainly,” said Brennan. A small but vital group within the Vatican intelligence apparatus had been in existence since the middle of the thirteenth century when a French Templar grand master named Guillaume de Sonnac had organized the first secret society of Vatican assassini.

  “Let me think about this,” said Spada. “We don’t want to act precipitously.”

  “Don’t think too long,” warned Brennan, and with that he nodded, turned on his heel and left the cardinal’s bedroom.

  Joseph Patchin stood in the large living room of the house in Georgetown, D.C., and listened to the cocktail party chatter all around him. For a Georgetown soiree like this, it was surprisingly free of bureaucrats and politicians. Most of the guests were well-heeled supporters of the Athena Foundation, a philanthropic organization in the arcane and confusing business of supporting other, less connected and smaller charity groups around the world.

  So, why on earth was he standing here in a tux with a glass of Midleton Very Rare Irish in his hand? He wasn’t wealthy, he wasn’t particularly well connected politically, at least by most of the guests’ standards, and he was certainly no philanthropist. He was a divorced man in late middle age who’d taken a beating from his ex’s lawyers as well as the markets and was one administration away from being unemployed.

  The CIA operations director went through his mental address book and tried to remember the names of anyone he knew who was directly or indirectly involved with the Athena Foundation, but he came up empty. When he’d received the invitation, he’d asked Becky, his secretary, to discreetly find out if the invitation had been sent to him rather than to his ex-wife by some sort of oversight, but she’d struck out, as well. In the end he’d decided to attend the party just in case; turning down any social invitation in D.C. could be fatally dangerous to your career, while accepting cost nothing more than a wasted hour or two on a weekday evening and gave you the chance to drink someone else’s expensive booze.

  After an hour the only thing Patchin had discovered was that the house he was in was a Washington pied-à-terre belonging to the recently retired U.S. ambassador to Brazil and his wife, heiress to an old Florida sugar fortune as well as being on the board of directors for the Athena Foundation. From what Patchin had overheard at the party, the ambassador and his plump, dark-haired wife spent most of their time in Palm Beach or on their Mediterranean-based yacht in Monaco. None of it was ringing any bells in Patchin’s mind, but he assumed that if he stayed long enough he’d find out why he’d been invited.

  He was right; halfway through his second glass of the honey-smooth Irish whisky, he felt a light tap on his shoulder. He turned and found himself staring at the leonine, white-haired and statesmanlike figure of Max Kingman, CEO of the Pallas Group and father of Rufus Kingman, Patchin’s own deputy director.

  Max Kingman shook Patchin’s hand warmly in a solid grip and simultaneously squeezed his left biceps with the other hand. Kingman looked like a shanty-Irish version of the Godfather: white hair swept back from a broad forehead, mustache neatly trimmed, cheeks and jowls freshly shaven and rosy with the unhealthy glow of a little too much alcohol and blood pressure sneaking up into the dangerous numbers. He was bucking the trend wearing a decades-out-of-date but perfectly tailored three-piece, dark blue pin-striped suit, a Valentine red bow tie and old-fashioned wing-tip brogues.

  “The library is on your left at the end of the hall. Ten minutes,” said Kingman. He released Patchin’s hand and his arm, then turned, making his way though the crowd, glad-handing men and giving the women courtly little bows as he maneuvered his way across the room like a shark swimming through a swimming flock of penguins.

  Ten minutes later Patchin went down the hallway and stepped into the library of the ambassador’s house. It was a large room with a huge mullioned window looking out on a very private, stone-walled rose garden. The ceiling was high with plaster moldings and there were three walls of floor-to-ceiling bookcases crammed with volumes that appeared to have been actually read rather than purchased by the yard by an expensive Washington decorator who gets to spend other people’s money to give them good taste that his or her clients don’t have. There were a number of old, well-worn leather club chairs gathered around a glass-topped, wood-strapped steamer trunk, a small but elegant wood fireplace and an eighteenth-century Chippendale desk that w
as doubling as a bar. Kingman poured himself a drink as Patchin entered the room and closed the door behind him.

  “Get something for you?”

  “No, thanks,” said Patchin. Two drinks was his limit when there was business in the offing; anything more than that and he’d probably wind up on the short end of any bargain.

  “Sit,” said Kingman, gesturing to one of the leather armchairs. Patchin sat. The white-haired man dropped a trio of ice cubes into his amber-colored drink and sat down across from the CIA director. He sipped the drink, smacked his lips and set the glass down on the coffee table. He smiled at Patchin. “Canadian rye,” said the older man. “A weakness of my youth. Cheap duds, cheap broads, cheap booze.” Not likely. Kingman had been born with an oily Texas spoon in his mouth.

  Patchin smiled and kept his mouth shut.

  “How are things working out with Rufus?” Kingman asked. “I knew your man, Mike Harris. Not well, but we’d met on occasion. Drank too much and a bit unstable, frankly. We all thought Rufus would be a perfect fit to replace him and he was being wasted at Justice.”

  “He certainly knows what he’s doing,” answered Patchin, keeping his tone neutral. He didn’t ask who the “we” was in Kingman’s statement.

  “Surprised at being invited to this boring little get-together?”

  “More curious than surprised,” said Patchin.

  “More than the walls have ears these days,” sighed Kingman. “If we’d met in a civilized manner—in a restaurant, at your place of business or mine—it would be on everyone’s damnable Blueberry in five minutes.”

  Patchin smiled. He was reasonably sure that Kingman knew perfectly well that it was BlackBerry, not “Blueberry,” and he was just as sure that the sly old bastard liked to keep up the sleepy, simple country-boy facade as a way of catching his adversaries off guard. Once again he made no response.

  “But I do believe that old saw about there being safety in numbers.” The man who effectively managed the biggest private army in the United States paused for a moment and then continued. “Which is why I have the ambassador throw these little booze cruises every once in a while.”

  In other words, thought Patchin, you’re telling me you’ve got an ambassador and his billionaire wife in your hip pocket; a big stick wielded softly.

  It was time to wield his own stick.

  “Your corporation does business with the Pentagon and the agency all the time,” he said quietly. “Your son is my deputy director, which is certainly no secret. So, why the need for discretion? Your offices are closer to mine than this house is.”

  Kingman picked up his drink, swallowed two fingers of rye whiskey in a single gulp, then cracked an ice cube between his molars and chewed on the bits and pieces. “Some meetings require more discretion than others,” said the old man. “This is one of those meetings.” He rattled the remaining ice cubes in the glass. “The man my son replaced was a fucking cowboy. Ernest goddamn Hemingway on steroids. He made his bed with the wrong whore and he paid for it with his life. We’re hoping you don’t make the same mistake.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” answered Patchin.

  “You don’t know it yet, boy, but the whole world’s about to blow up in your face. It’s going to cost the man in the White House his second term unless he does exactly as he’s told, and whether he does or not you’re going to wind up being a sacrificial goat tied to a god-awful big stake. We’re offering you a way out.”

  That regal “we” again. “Do tell,” said Patchin mildly.

  “Well,” began Kingman, “we’ve got this little operation going on in Cuba….”

  19

  “The planes out there under the camouflage nets are Super Tucanos. I guarantee you they were provided by International Aviation Services, which is a subsidiary of Blackhawk Security,” said Carrie Pilkington, her voice firm with conviction. “I knew they weren’t Cuban Special Forces.”

  “They’re speaking Spanish,” said Laframboise, their pilot. “And they sure as hell aren’t Mexicans.”

  “Maybe it’s the Bay of Pigs again—Cuban exiles.”

  “Not with that kind of equipment,” said Carrie. “They’re Americans.”

  “We’ve been over this a hundred times since yesterday,” sighed the MI6 agent, Will Black. “Let’s give it a rest for a while, okay? I’m hungry, I’m thirsty and I am most definitely not in a good mood.”

  Carrie, Will Black, Arango and Pete Laframboise were seated with their backs to the walls in the ruins of a single-story wooden structure that must have been what once had passed for a control tower or communications shack back in the days when the private airstrip had been in operation.

  Over the years and decades since then, the jungle had grown up around the building, hiding it from the air. There was a walled outhouse-style toilet cubicle in one corner of the shack but no running water or any other kind of facility.

  “From what I saw, there are at least a hundred men bivouacked here,” said Laframboise.

  “There were enough crates of equipment stacked around under those camouflage nets for ten times that number of men,” murmured Carrie. “They’ve got brand-new turboprop fighter planes armed with Hellfire missiles. Whatever this is, it’s major league.”

  The old wooden door of the hut opened and four uniformed men appeared, silhouetted by the sunlight outside. Like every one else they’d seen so far, the men all wore mirrored aviator-style sunglasses and had no rank insignia on their battle fatigues or their Special Forces–style berets.

  The first two carried in a shaky-looking card table and the other two brought in five folding chairs. The men set up the table and chairs and then withdrew. Two more silent men brought four military-style covered trays and a carton of bottled water bottles, then withdrew themselves. They left the door open.

  Peering out, Will Black could see across the dirt strip to a small clearing carved out of the jungle and topped by yet another jungle-pattern camouflage net. Under the net was a large tent, flaps pulled open to reveal a sophisticated communications setup and manned by another half dozen soldiers, all of them wearing headsets and staring into computer screens and what appeared to be radar displays.

  From what he could make out squinting through the open door, they’d pulled the old Wilga off the end of the strip and halfway into the scrub brush beside the burnt-out DC3, then covered it with more of the jungle camouflage.

  “I guess there’s no point in making a run for it.” Laframboise grinned, getting to his feet and stretching. “They’ve got poor old Miroslava bound up in a girdle.”

  “No point at all,” agreed Black. He and Carrie stood up, as well. They went to the table and sat down. Arango joined them silently.

  “Even if they didn’t swat us down like flies, where would we go?” Carrie said sourly. “It really is a jungle out there.”

  They took the covers off the food trays. “Roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy, creamed corn, steamed spinach and green Jell-O,” said Laframboise, ripping open the little package of plastic utensils. “Pretty good grub for a prison cell.”

  They ate and drank and fifteen minutes later two men appeared and cleared away the trays, then disappeared. Two minutes after that a new figure appeared in the doorway. He turned away for a moment and barked an order in Spanish before he stepped into the old shack. He was tall, hawk-faced and visibly much older than any of the men Black had seen so far. Unlike any of those men, he also had a rank insignia on his beret—the single silver oak leaf of a bird colonel.

  “Su español es muy bueno,” said Black. “Pero usted no es Cubano.”

  “Your Spanish is pretty good, too, and you’re not Cuban, either,” said the lieutenant colonel.

  “Benefits of a classical education.” Black smiled.

  “Brit.”

  “Quite right.”

  “I’m from Brooklyn.”

  “Gee, I never would have guessed,” said Carrie.

  “My name is Frank Turturro.”
The lieutenant colonel smiled. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Carrie Pilkington. I’m an analyst in the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “I wouldn’t say that too loudly, Miss Pilkington,” said Turturro. “It’s the kind of thing that’ll get you in a lot of trouble in this country.”

  “And being a lieutenant colonel in a foreign mercenary army doesn’t?” Black snorted.

  “What foreign mercenary army would that be?” Turturro asked.

  “BSSI,” responded Carrie emphatically. “Blackhawk Security Services International. The Super Tucanos with all the firepower out there were provided by International Aviation Services, Blackhawk’s air force. Their headquarters is at the old Air Haven Airport in Alhambra, Arizona. You’ve even got half a dozen Lockheed Neptune bombers from the ’sixties that Blackhawk uses to ‘pacify’ natives in your South American operations.”

  “You’re very well informed, Miss Pilkington. I congratulate you,” said Turturro.

  “It’s my job,” said Carrie. “What’s yours?”

  “I follow orders, Miss Pilkington, no more, no less.”

  “Where have I heard that before? I wonder,” said Black.

  “A Brit who speaks excellent Spanish in the company of a CIA analyst. You must be MI6.”

  “Bond, James Bond,” said Black in a terrible Sean Connery brogue.

  Turturro smiled and leaned back in his chair. He stared at Pete Laframboise, then reached into the breast pocket of his fatigues and tossed over a package of unfiltered Camels with a matchbook tucked into the cellophane. Laframboise tapped one out of the pack and lit it, taking a deep drag, and then let it roll out from his nostrils and his mouth with a contented sigh.