Valley of the Templars by Paul Christopher Page A

varnish worn off down to the bare wood from decades of turbulent passages, and the canvas sunshade on the flybridge above the cabinwas gray and torn. To Holliday’s eye she looked to be about thirty-five or forty feet long and lay squat in the water as though she was bottom heavy. For a wooden boat of that weight, it was odd that the whole side of the hull for two feet above the waterline was so beaten up and scratched. That kind of wear and tear usually meant the boat was used to traveling at brutally high speeds. The name on her transom was in red picked out in black:
    TIBURON BLANCO
    Even his basic Spanish was good enough to translate that:
White Shark.
    Arango sucked on his cigar, gave Eddie a look and picked up the first of the foam containers, the sinews on his wiry sun-blackened arms leaping out like stretched cables. He hauled the cooler back to the boat and heaved it over the gunwale and into the cockpit at the stern. Taking the hint, Eddie picked up the second bait box and followed suit.
    The old man straightened, arching his back. He took a long puff on the cigar, the pull making a dry, crackling sound. He looked up at the sky and blew the smoke upward. Lady Gaga had been replaced by Pittbull doing “Ay Chico.” Arango looked down at Eddie again. He hawked and this time the blob of nicotine-colored phlegm landed within an inch of Eddie’s feet.
    “
Qué quieres, cabron?
What you want with a poor old man like me?”
    Eddie took out a Romeo y Julieta Short Churchill he’d purchased at the hotel tobacconist’s and lit it with his old Zippo.
    “Because I want your boat,
cabron
—
quiero alquilar su barco maldito, maldito el hombre de cerdo
.”
    “How much you pay me? Dollars.”
    “How much do you want?” Holliday asked.
    “Two hundred a day.”
    “Fine.”
    “Three hundred?”
    “A hundred and fifty,” answered Holliday.
    “No, no, two hundred,” said Arango hastily.
    “Sí,”
said Eddie.
    “Plus diesel.”
    “Sí.”
    “And food.”
    “Sí.”
    “Ron.”
    “One bottle a day.”
    “Cerveza, así.”
    “Fijado.”
    “And cigars like those?” Arango said, pointing a bony finger at the Short Churchill Eddie had just fired up.
    Eddie grinned, turned to Holliday and winked again. He turned back to Arango and handed himthe already lit cigar. The old man carefully took the juicy stub of the cigar from his mouth, stuck a fat tongue on the end to make sure it was dead and stuck the thing behind his ear. He put the Churchill into his mouth, chewed happily and wiped his hand on his undershirt before extending it to Holliday. A little apprehensively Holliday shook the man’s hand, surprised at its strength.
    “We got a deal, American. You drive a hard bargain.”
    “
Vete a la mierda, viejo.
Let’s get aboard.”
    Oak Lawn Farm is a two-hundred-acre secluded estate at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Covesville, Virginia, and about a two-hour drive south of Washington, D.C. The home sits on a gentle knoll, surrounded by elegant hardwoods and ancient boxwoods overlooking pastoral and mountain views in every direction. The main house was constructed in 1780 and added onto throughout the 1800s. It has four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a powder room, five working fireplaces, a country kitchen, an upstairs sun porch and greenhouse, a wraparound porch and a pergola on the main floor, a three-bedroom guest cottage and a smaller two-bedroom studio. The whole thing had been picked up by the CIA for $3.2 million. At most it is used three times ayear, usually for high-level management conferences with allied agencies and the occasional off-the-books Fourth of July picnic or barbecue.
    William Black sat on the wooden bench under the two-hundred-year-old oak tree that had given the estate its name, and smoked a cigarette. He remembered his father telling him about the old OSS training school he’d gone to just before the Americans fell pell-mell into World War Two. He was with some woman other