The highway led them into a small hamlet with colonial-style buildings, a place where things seemed reused, mended, and recycled time and again. Three feed-and-supply stores catered to farmers, but there was also a tinsmith, tobacco shop, and what appeared to be a church. He parked the Range Rover near a cobbled square surrounded by more colonial-era buildings. The hot air reeked of ripe fruit and toiling humanity. Little breeze, just a trapped and boiling stew of conflicting smells. They’d passed their destination just down the street, a sign indicating MUSEO DE AMBIENTE HISTÓRICO CUBANO and that it was open until 4:00 P.M. He’d not come unprepared. A semiautomatic was tucked snugly beneath a thin jacket. Cuba, for all its supposed innocence, remained a hostile place, one where he’d learned to be cautious. Only a few people were in sight. A mangy-haired dog ambled over to investigate them. Some Cuban jazz leaked from one of the cafés.
He faced Tre. “You said this place was privately owned. By whom?”
“The Jews of Cuba.”
That information piqued his interest.
“Surprised me, too,” Tre said. “Once there were tens of thousands of Jews here. They came after Columbus. Then they fled here for Brazil in the 17th century because of the Inquisition. They came back after 1898, when the island gained its independence from Spain. Now only about 1,500 are left. Amazingly, Castro left them alone. Over the past decade they’ve made a name for themselves by preserving the island’s history. Some of them are distant descendants from the conversos who immigrated here in the early 16th century with de Torres. They’ve spent a good deal of time and money gathering up documents and artifacts from that period and storing them away. Thank goodness they have a generous benefactor. Like with you and the Maroons.”
He stepped away from the vehicle and wished for a cold drink. “I didn’t know there were rich people in Cuba. The ones I deal with all claim poverty.”
“This one’s from overseas. A foundation. It’s funded by a wealthy Austrian named Zachariah Simon.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
TOM LAY ON THE FLOOR AND WATCHED THE SHADOW APPROACH. He decided to wait until whoever it was came close before firing. He angled the gun toward a set of bars in a niche twenty feet away. His right elbow brushed the bones stacked to his right and he instantly drew it away. Then he saw something on the wall to his left, four feet off the ground, inside the niche, hidden from view of the passageway.
A switch.
Steel conduit ran up the stonework, then paralleled where wall met ceiling. Offshoots from that conduit led to light fixtures that illuminated the niches. A quick scan and he saw this switch shut off every light in the niches from one end to the other.
He sprang to his feet and raked his right hand across the switch, plunging his side of the cavern into darkness. Light still spilled from niches across the center passageway, beyond the bars, but there was enough darkness for him to make an escape.
He stayed low and moved toward the end where he hoped another iron gate within an archway would be open and he could escape.
Two pops startled him.
But the rounds smacked into bones behind him.
His assailant was searching, but he’d managed to skip ahead.
He came to the end.
The iron gate within the arch opened. He carefully peered to his right, back down the semi-darkened main passage. No one was there. He wondered if his pursuer had entered the niches, just as he’d done. Not wanting to stay around and find out, he ran down the corridor, toward the exit Inna had told him was there.
He came to the base of a stairway and glanced back.
No one was following.
He climbed the risers two at a time and, at the top, turned left, racing down a short hall toward daylight.
Two darkened forms waited.
Inna and Alle.
“What happened?” Inna asked him.
“No time. We have to go.”
Alle looked shaken, but he was, too.
They stepped out into an alleyway between two rows of buildings. He estimated they were somewhere east of the cathedral, its tall spire blocked by the rooflines.
“Who was there?” Inna asked.
“Uninvited guests.”
Inna seemed to understand, nodding and saying, “Follow me.”
———
ZACHARIAH CROUCHED DOWN AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, KEEPING watch on the doorway ten meters away, listening to Tom Sagan talk to another woman.
Rócha had joined him.
The exit door slammed shut.
Darkness and quiet returned.
They needed to leave. The shots could have been heard in the cathedral and he did not want to be around when anyone came to investigate. Thankfully, they’d garnered a few uninterrupted minutes that had turned productive. He could only hope Alle would do what he asked.
“Jamison dead?” he whispered.
“Yes. But there’s something you need to know.”
He listened as Rócha told him what Jamison had said before being shot, the same thing Alle had reported. He now wondered about Béne Rowe. Had everything and everybody been compromised?
But first, “Go get the body and clean up any mess.”
He waited a few minutes before Rócha returned with Jamison slung across one shoulder. He led the way to the exit and carefully opened the inside latch. Daylight was fading into shadows.
“Wait here.”
He stepped out and casually walked to where another street led away from the alley. A trash receptacle caught his gaze. Small, but large enough. He returned to the iron door and noticed no latch or lock on the outside. This was a one-way portal. Tom Sagan had thought ahead.
Again.
Which only reinforced the notion that Sagan had lied to him.
“I’m leaving. Dump the body in that container around that corner, then join me at the car.”
———
ALLE FOUND HERSELF SHAKING. WAS IT FEAR? DOUBT? CONFUSION? She wasn’t sure. The woman who’d introduced herself as Inna Tretyakova, apparently an acquaintance of her father’s, had led them to a nearby U-bahn station. They’d taken the subway across town to a residential area heavy with apartments. The St. Stephen’s spire loomed in the darkening sky a mile or so away. A clock in the station had told her it was approaching 7:00 P.M.
Her father had said nothing on the train, speaking only briefly to Inna. The woman appeared to be in her forties, attractive, with blue eyes that had apprised her with a penetrating gaze. She’d introduced herself as an editor for Der Kurier, which she knew to be one of Vienna’s daily newspapers.
She told herself to stay calm, but she could not rid her mind of the sight of Brian Jamison being shot. She’d never seen such a thing. He’d been a danger, a person she’d never accepted and never believed. He’d lied to her outside the cathedral about being alone. He spoke Hebrew, carried a gun—none of it made sense.
What was happening here?
She was a twenty-five-year-old graduate student with an interest in Columbus who wrote an article for a British periodical. One day she was in Seville wading through 500-year-old documents, the next she was in Austria involved with a man searching for the Temple treasure. Now she was on the run with her father, a man she deeply resented, acting as a spy.
Inna led them to a modest building and up to a third-floor apartment, not much bigger than the one Zachariah had provided her. This unit held Inna and her two children, both teenagers, whom she met. No husband, Inna explained, as they had divorced five years ago.
“You didn’t mention that earlier,” her father said.
“How was it important? You asked for my help and I gave it. Now tell me what happened back there.”
“A man was killed.”
Alle wanted to know, “What did you give Zachariah?”
“Do you have any idea the trauma you put me through?” her father asked. “I thought you were in danger. I watched while men—”
“That was real.”
And she meant
it. She could still feel their disgusting touches.
“I took a lot of chances for you,” her father said.
“I was told you were about to kill yourself.”
“A few more seconds and I would have never been a problem for you again.”
“I’m not sorry for what I did. It had to be done. There’s a lot at stake here.”
“Enlighten me.”
That she did not plan to do, especially in front of a stranger, whom she knew nothing about.
So she asked again, “What was it you found in Grandfather’s grave?”