Chapter 47

OBLIVIOUS TO THE MILITARY ASSAULT outside, Yaquita’s rage towered in the cathedral. “I knew it! You can’t toss me aside like a helpless flower, after you’ve had your way with me, Pedrito . . . or whoever you are!”

Smith tried to talk, backing away toward a small alcove, a stairway and escape — escape from Yaquita as well as from O’Halloran’s attack. He just wanted to get out of this crazy country.

At the altar, the hunchbacked priest tried to look very small and unobtrusive as he continued mumbling the marriage ceremony. He didn’t know what else to do.

Outside, the roar of the oncoming military truck grew louder, wheels clattering on the marble steps as it knocked the big flowerpots aside. The engine backfired, echoing like gunshots, then O’Halloran fired real shots.

Yaquita fumed, wondering how best to get back at Smith. With a sudden idea, she rushed to a stone slab on the floor and grabbed a heavy iron ring set in its center. Heaving and straining so hard that seams popped on her wedding dress, Yaquita lifted up the trapdoor to reveal the entrance to a crypt. With her white wedding dress billowing around her, Yaquita dropped into the dank tomb.

She knew exactly what to do now.

The hunchbacked priest looked up as O’Halloran’s truck crashed through the immense front doors of the cathedral, splintering wood and knocking candles aside. Its engine roaring full bore, O’Halloran drove headlong into the sanctuary.

Smith, his gold-filled backpack sagging on his shoulders, climbed the belfry rope, swinging back and forth, increasing his arc and preparing to dive out the balcony.

On the floor below, O’Halloran jumped from the driver’s seat and pointed his gun at Smith. Bullets ricocheted off the domes overhead, the confessionals, the holy water basins. The hunchbacked priest stumped forward and scolded O’Halloran for all the damage he had done in the house of God.

Smith continued to swing like Admiral Nelson in the rigging of a man-o’-war, watching the hay truck through the window and choosing his time carefully. Finally, he released his grip and sailed out through the open arched window.

The Model-T truck chugged just alongside the church. With a yelp, Smith landed feet-first in the piled hay and vanished from view, swallowed up in the dry bales. The Indian farmer drove complacently, chewing on a piece of straw, as if red-haired men leaped from cathedrals into his hay truck every day.

* * *

O’Halloran’s lorry wheezed in the church, cluttered with the remains of the splintered door and fallen beams. The CIA man stood next to the vehicle, frowning at his now empty pistol. “Pedrito got away. He got away!”

Peasants from the square swarmed into the church, carrying clubs and shaking their fists. The churro vendor set up his stand near the altar. The Colodoran general stood beside him. “Sacrilege in a church! Tsk, tsk, tsk. Now you’ll be cursed by God, Señor O’Halloran. You’ll never know what torment fate may have in store for you.”

* * *

Beneath the floor of the ancient cathedral, bones and skulls cluttered the crypt chambers. Tomb plaques hung on the walls, engraved with names now obscured by thick growths of mold.

By candlelight, Yaquita sat on a stool at a card table set up in the crypt. She hunched forward to a shiny radio and pulled headphones down over her wedding veil.

“Roger-Echo-Dog Eighteen to Havana, direct,” she said into the microphone, her voice trembling with fury. A bitter, cruel smile grew on her face. “Emergency message to report. Pedrito Miraflores is an enemy agent! He is a double agent!” After giving particulars, Yaquita sat back among the skulls and bones, hoping she never saw anyone who looked like Pedrito again.

On the other hand, she thought, that bandaged CIA chief looked somewhat attractive. He had seemed so powerful when he crashed into the cathedral after his quarry. At least O’Halloran had ambition, and connections. Besides, with his black eye and his injuries, the man would no doubt need some tender care.

Yaquita smiled. Perhaps she could catch him before he left the country.

* * *

Near Havana, in the Cuban operations room deep inside Morro Castle, Maria, the radio operator, busily wrote down a decoded message. Sweat glistened on her forehead as she scribbled, her hard eyes wide in disbelief. She yanked off her headset as she turned to rush away. She brought the message to another set of Russian and Cuban colonels, who had taken over the operation from their predecessors, Ivan and Enrique.

The Russian colonel read the message. “By the night light in Lenin’s tomb!” he said. “This explains why our missile site was blown up! We have a double agent in our midst!”

The Cuban colonel grabbed the message out of the Russian’s hand and began to read. “By all the saints whose names I can’t remember!”

Both raced to the center of the room. Paper flew in the commotion; aides dashed out of the way as the two colonels crossed to different radios, hammering at the operators in Spanish and Russian.

“Radio Moscow!” bellowed the Russian. “Comrade Pedrito Miraflores is a traitor!”

“Cuban Navy — get out an all-points on Pedrito Miraflores!” shouted the other colonel. “Kill him on sight!”