The Aztec Heresy (15 page)

‘‘I hope she is also aware that there are seven of them against four of us,’’ murmured Guido, looking at the gleaming machetes in the hands of the soldiers.

‘‘It’s good to know you are familiar with these things,’’ said Garza. ‘‘The Yucatán is not a place for naiveté. We’re a long way from Cancún and Cozumel.’’

‘‘And we’re a long way from our destinations, Doctor, so perhaps we should begin the journey.’’

‘‘Just so long as you know what you are getting into,’’ cautioned Garza.

‘‘This is a survey mission, Dr. Garza,’’ answered Finn. ‘‘We’re not here to raid tombs or steal artifacts. We have data that would indicate the existence of a major site, and the remote-sensing information, LANSAT satellite thermal imagery, and geophysics confirm it. We have GPS coordinates showing a hitherto unexplored anomaly seventy-three miles almost due north of here, thirty miles west of the old sisal plantation called Rancho Porvenir.’’

‘‘Hitherto unexplored anomaly?’’ Billy whispered. ‘‘That’s really quite good.’’

‘‘So,’’ said Garza. ‘‘Which way should we go?’’

Finn reached into the pack at her feet and took out a handheld Garmin GPS unit and switched it on. She looked at it, then pointed down the roadway that vanished into the jungle on the far side of the abandoned village.

‘‘That way.’’

Garza barked an order and the soldiers formed up into three pairs of two, two pairs in front, one pair in back with Garza, and Finn’s people in between. They moved off.

‘‘Why is the village empty?’’ Finn asked as they headed down the dusty track toward the darker jungle canopy.

‘‘They found employment elsewhere.’’

‘‘Farming?’’

‘‘Working for the
cocainistas
in the area. It pays better than growing a few stunted patches of maize. The curse of the Yucatán, I’m afraid.’’ He made an even uglier face than his usual one. ‘‘Not all of us can work serving mojitos to the gringo tourists at the Cancún Hilton.’’

Finn ignored the comment, although she sympathized. Cancún was to Mexico as Disney World was to the back alleys of downtown Detroit.

‘‘Are we likely to run into any of these
cocainistas,
as you call them?’’

Garza smiled. ‘‘My men certainly hope so,’’ he said and laughed.

‘‘I’m not looking for any trouble, Doctor.’’

‘‘Acocote nuevo, tlachiquero viejo,’’
said Garza.

‘‘Huh?’’ Eli said.

‘‘It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it,’’ translated Billy.

‘‘Very good, Your Lordship,’’ said Garza, his tone mocking.

‘‘
Muchas gracias, Catedrático
Garza,’’ replied Billy with an equally mocking bow.

Garza scowled.

Finn sighed. This wasn’t going the way she’d hoped.

They reached the end of the path and the huge ceiba trees that marked the edge of the village. Finn took a last look back. The yellow dog they’d seen when they arrived in the village was sitting on its skinny haunches in the middle of the deserted square, staring back at her. It barked once, then got up, shook itself, and wandered away. Finn stepped off the end of the track and the jungle swallowed her whole.

15

There were a thousand rooms within the Vatican where meetings could be held, each and every one of them under some kind of surveillance by the Servizio Informazioni del Vaticano, the Vatican Secret Service, best known for its embarrassing and completely false investigation of a religiously oriented UFO phenomenon, which later turned out to be a conspiracy theory launched by an Italian journalist living in Rome with too much time on his hands and his tongue firmly in his cheek.

By the time the laughter subsided the SIV had its cover blown for good, but no one took them very seriously. No one, that is, except the people inside the Vatican who knew better, Cardinal Enrico Rossi of the
Cavallo Nero
among them. As a consequence, any meetings of the secret group were held at a vacant convent just outside the small religious town of Subiaco, some twenty-five miles from Rome.

The town was best known for being the place where the Benedictine order was established, although interestingly enough some of its other famous one-time residents included Lucretia Borgia, the famed poisoner, and Gina Lollobrigida, the film star. While everyone’s activities within the Vatican were monitored, it was almost impossible to keep track of anyone in the crowded tourist town.

The group, known among themselves as the Twelve, came from all walks of life, from high-ranking members of the Church, like Rossi, to industrialists, politicians, communications moguls, and in one case a senior member of the Mafia. They had only two things in common: their fanatical devotion to the ancient form of Catholicism they espoused and an equally fanatical quest for ultimate power.

At this particular meeting there were only five members of the ruling council of the order present, the fewest number able to reach a command decision under the ancient bylaws of
Cavallo Nero.

The five men were Enrico Rossi; Karl Hoffer from the Banco Venizia, the firm used by the Twelve for their covert expenses; Michael Fabrizio, a New York businessman and a Knight of Malta as well as one of the Twelve, better known in the American press as Mickey Rice; Sean O’Keefe, a longtime armorer for the supposedly defunct Irish Republican Army and now an independent and perfectly legitimate arms dealer living in Rome; and finally, Father Manuel Pérez, once the head of the Colombian Ejército de Liberación Nacional, the ELN, or National Liberation Army of that country.

‘‘El Cura Pérez,’’ or Pérez the Priest, had supposedly died of hepatitis in 1998, but in reality he had been living in exile for the last decade acting as liaison between the forces of the Twelve and his colleagues in the ELN. Pérez was the Twelve’s central representative for all of South America and provided a great deal of financial aid to the organization.

They met in a cavernous room in the convent that had once been the refectory, empty of furniture except for a long monks table with bench seating accommodating up to twenty people.

‘‘The situation in Mexico has changed somewhat, ’’ said Rossi without preamble. He was seated at the head of the table. ‘‘Too many cooks are definitely spoiling the broth.’’

‘‘You’d better explain that, Eminence,’’ said Hoffer, the banker.

‘‘Guzman has become too greedy.’’

‘‘I told you he’d be trouble,’’ grunted Pérez, a thin gray-haired man in the garb of an ordinary priest.

‘‘He’s no trouble,’’ said O’Keefe with a laugh. ‘‘He’s just mad as a bloody hatter, he is.’’

‘‘Mad or greedy, it makes no difference. He must be dealt with,’’ said Rossi.

‘‘Exactly what form has this greed taken?’’ Mickey Rice asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.

‘‘He’s involved the Cubans.’’

‘‘Feck! He’s crazier than I thought,’’ breathed O’Keefe.

‘‘How does this affect our deal with the Nobles? ’’ Mickey Rice asked.

‘‘That’s another matter. The two are connected, clearly, and the younger Noble has decided to take on the Ryan woman and her friend on his own.’’

‘‘A little initiative, is it?’’ O’Keefe said.

Rossi frowned. ‘‘The Nobles are very high-profile. So is the Ryan woman. On two occasions now our paths have crossed, to our great loss, I might add.’’

‘‘So deal with them,’’ said Hoffer.

‘‘And if the Nobles interfere?’’ Rossi snorted. ‘‘Noble Pharmaceuticals represents a huge investment for us at the moment.’’

‘‘And I’ve got a lot riding on them myself,’’ said Rice.

‘‘We are in a very delicate position, playing Guzman off against the others. If we act precipitously we may wind up shooting ourselves in the foot,’’ said Rossi.

‘‘Then you’d better find a better shooter,’’ said O’Keefe.

‘‘My thoughts exactly.’’ Rossi nodded.

‘‘The young man you used in Paris?’’ Hoffer asked curiously.

‘‘No,’’ said Rossi. ‘‘Competent, but good only in urban situations, I would think.’’ The cardinal shook his head. ‘‘I have someone else in mind.’’ The cardinal smiled briefly. ‘‘An old soldier. One of our best.’’

His name was Francis Xavier Sears, just like the department stores. Born in 1949, Francis Sears volunteered for the United States Army on his eighteenth birthday. After basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was sent to Vietnam as a member of Charlie Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division.

Attached to several platoons during his first tour, Francis thrived. He was noted by several officers as being totally fearless and often volunteered for the most dangerous assignments and patrols. His first platoon leader, a captain named Rigby, was on record as saying that Francis seemed to have ‘‘a splendid appetite for killing.’’

Achieving the rank of sergeant, he was eventually noticed by a Special Forces recruiter named Wizner. Wizner in turn handed him over to a Central Intelligence advisor named Joe Currie, who introduced him to the Phoenix Program. Murder in Phoenix was a recreation, a way of life, a family tradition that had nothing at all to do with ideology, north or south. Heads were collected like bowling trophies.

There was another man after that, someone more remote than Wizner with the unlikely name of T. Fox Grimaldi. He said that he was a distant relation of Princess Grace’s husband, but Francis doubted that—more likely he was a descendant of a pizza chef from New Jersey. T. Fox Grimaldi had a club foot and a built-up shoe. He wore Brooks Brothers suits and thin suede ties. He looked like a rodent of some kind and had a five o’clock shadow that made him look like a liar, which he was. Francis discovered a long time later that his first name was Tim, and that was the reason he only ever used the initial.

T. Fox Grimaldi used Francis long after the end of the war. Grimaldi ran the infamous Blowback Boys, kept on in Saigon after the fall to take out old allies left behind who knew too much. Embarrassments. Blowback took its toll and by the end of it Francis was the only one left alive. Almost a legend, on his way to becoming a myth. By then even he was aware that he was something less than human, but at the same time something more. When Blowback was finally over, T. Fox Grimaldi brought Francis Sears home. Grimaldi retired from the CIA, or most likely was retired
by
them.

Whatever the case, he kept up his relationship with Sears and used him regularly for contract jobs with a number of clients in the private sector. One of those clients was
Cavallo Nero,
and on the sudden and somewhat mysterious death of Grimaldi in the late ’90s, Sears began to contract himself out. He had done more than satisfactory work for the Twelve in the past.

At the present he was in the main square of Scobie, Indiana, the capital of Duchess County in the extreme southern portion of the state. Scobie had a population of a little over twelve thousand, many of them of German descent. The main industry in the small city was the manufacture of wood furniture, as well as education, Scobie being the home of a campus of Duchess College. It was also the hometown of Bishop Terrence Boucher. The bishop, who normally lived in Fort Wayne, where he taught history and was the headmaster of a local prep school, was back in Scobie to care for his dying mother. The bishop was a pedophile.

Also in Scobie was a young man named William Huggins. Huggins, an ambulance driver and a devout Catholic, had privately mentioned his experiences with the bishop and announced his intention to make his abuse public. Unfortunately for Huggins, the ‘‘friend’’ he had mentioned the bishop’s predilections to was a low-level agent for
Cavallo Nero.
That agent had passed the information on to New York, which in turn had sent the information to Cardinal Rossi. The cardinal was already aware of Boucher’s sexual preferences. He was also aware that Boucher, who had once worked for the Vatican secretary of state’s office, a position Rossi had occupied at the time, knew of
Cavallo Nero
and would use that knowledge in an attempt to barter his way out of any charges brought against him. This, Rossi knew, could not be allowed to happen. Sears had been dispatched to deal with it.

Francis Xavier Sears sat on a bench in the town square, the Jeffersonian county courthouse at his back. He was doing one of his favorite things as he sat enjoying the midday sun. He was thinking about murder, something he knew a great deal about. Killing was easy, of course. You could do it effectively with everything from a long-range sniper rifle to a piece of broken brick.

Any hand tool on a carpenter’s bench had been used as a murder weapon once upon a time, as had every utensil in the average kitchen. But that kind of killing took no skill, had no style, and lacked finesse. Not to mention that most killers stupid enough to use a brick to bash someone’s brains were usually stupid enough to get caught.

On the other hand, with a moderate level of intelligence and skill, getting away with murder was relatively easy. Despite
CSI, Law and Order,
and all their various incarnations, television was not reality. A district attorney offered half a fingerprint and a scratch of paint from a passing car wasn’t likely to bring a case to trial. The truth about forensics had more to do with overworked departments and underpaid staff than it did with glossy labs and quirky bosses collecting bugs. All you had to do was remember the O.J. Simpson trial for proof of that. The prosecution of murder was a matter of money and bureaucracy. Avoid those and you were home free. The best way to commit murder, of course, was to give a cop even the vaguest opportunity to convince himself that the corpse in front of his face was caused either accidentally or by the corpse’s own hand.

There were fifteen members of the local Scobie Police Department, twelve members of the Duchess County Sheriff’s Department, and thirty-four members of the district office of the Indiana State Police. The nearest forensic lab was in Indianapolis. That came out to sixty-four law enforcement officers across three eight-hour shifts.

Of all of those there were only three full-time investigating officers. There was more money in the budget for trash burning violations than there was for violent crime. According to the statistics he’d read in the
Duchess County Leader Post
there had been only three murders in Duchess County in the last ten years, all of them a result of domestic violence. On the other hand, there had been more than two hundred and ninety accidental deaths in the same time period. It was more than likely that the bishop was about to become the victim of a tragic mishap. Either that or he was going to die suddenly from natural causes.