Valley of the Templars by Paul Christopher Page B

than his mother then, and not for the first time Will Black found himself thinking about the fact that children never really knew their parents, nor the parents their children. It was one of those timeless conundrums, like why is there war.
    He’d been in the States for five days now, all of them spent with dear Dr. Eugenio Selman-Housein here at Oak Lawn. So far there hadn’t been any time to see his son, Gabriel, or even spend an hour with him at the school. Selman-Housein had to be encouraged for taking every small step closer to revealing what he knew, like an infant child being potty-trained. Not only was the task frustrating and time-consuming, but it was also boring.
    The MI6 officer sighed. Maybe Dick Cheney, bless his evil, black heart, had the best idea—pour water down the irritating bastard’s throat until he coughed up what you wanted him to tell you.
    So far the skittish and extremely irritating littleCuban had told Black, Kingman and the Pilkington girl they’d been lumbered with very little. According to Selman-Housein, Fidel was on his deathbed, but Castro had been on his deathbed ever since Juan Orta, a corrupt government official who often had lunch with El Comandante and his cronies, tried on six occasions to poison the Bearded One’s favorite midday meal, his
perrito caliente
—hot dogs. Black shook his head—hot dogs! The useless twaddle you learned working for MI6. Military intelligence indeed. Spying reduced to bureaucratic folderol and nitpicking.
    Black heard footsteps behind him and turned, expecting to see Kingman. It was Pilkington.
    “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t see you there. I came out for a smoke, as well.”
    “Feel free,” said Black, shifting down the bench. The young woman took out a package of Marlboros and shook one out. Black lit it with his father’s old World War One Imco foxhole lighter.
    She took a deep lungful of smoke and then blew it out gratefully. “Very politically incorrect of me, I know,” she said. “Drinking makes me dizzy, smoking pot is kind of boring after a while and I get sleepy reading Nicholas Sparks. I have no other vices.”
    “What about sex?” Black asked pleasantly.
    “I thought the Brits didn’t have sex,” she said.
    “Only members of the royal family,” answeredBlack. “Answer the question; I’m a professional interrogator. I’ll wheedle it out of you eventually.”
    “To be honest,” said the Pilkington girl, “I can’t remember.”
    “First rule of interrogation—when a person begins a sentence with the phrase ‘to be honest,’ it’s odds on she’s lying.”
    The Pilkington girl gave him a long look, took another drag on her cigarette and let it spin out of her nostrils. “He’s stalling,” she said finally, changing the subject abruptly.
    “Pardon?”
    “Selman-Housein. He’s stalling.”
    “Why?”
    “He’s no dummy. He’s been Castro’s doctor since the first stroke in 1989. You manage to stay on Fidel’s A team for twenty years, you’ve got to know how to shuck and jive if you want to survive. Know too many of
El Comandante
’s secrets and you usually wind up in a car accident, a plane crash or having a massive heart attack for no good reason. Get
real
close like Che did and you wind up with the boss sending you on a hopeless mission to Bolivia and then siccing the CIA on you.”
    “You know your history,” said Black.
    The pretty young woman shrugged. “I read a lot and I do my homework.”
    “So, why did he defect?”
    “I don’t think he did,” she said quietly.
    “Then what’s he doing in a Virginia farmhouse eating chicken pot pie and apple brown Betty or whatever it is you Americans call bread pudding?”
    “I think he’s a messenger.”
    “I don’t understand,” said Black.
    “Think about it. The good doctor goes to conferences all over the world, all the time. Why now and why Ireland of all places? He was in Montreal a month and a half ago—it would have been a lot easier for