Free Valley of the Templars by Paul Christopher

encased in a formless, faded print dress. Her face was a mass of wrinkles and the skin was stretched like leathery parchment over her bony arms. Her feet were bare and she was smoking a narrow cigar. On the table in front of her was a cooler, a large deck of cards, a few silvery trinkets and some strange-looking leather thong necklaces with small cloth bags hanging from them.
    “Who is this woman?” Holliday asked.
    “Mama Oya,” said Eddie.
    “Does she have a real name?”
    “If she ever had one, even she has forgotten it,” replied Eddie. They approached the woman behind the card table. Holliday was surprised to see whatappeared to be an old-fashioned six-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola lying on a bed of crushed ice in the cooler.
    “
Hekua hey Yansa,
” said Eddie, bowing slightly.
    “
Hekua hey
yourself, Eddie Cabrera, the child who used to be called
El Vampiro
.” She spoke almost perfect English.
    “
El Vampiro?
”
    “It is nothing, Doc,” said Eddie.
    The old woman gave a brief cackling laugh as she looked up at Holliday. Her eyes were ice blue and clear with no hint of age. They could have been the eyes of a young girl. “When he was a little boy Eddie would take off all his clothes and walk around the streets of Old Havana in the middle of the night,” said Mama Oya, grinning around her cigar. She turned back to Eddie. “You come about your brother, the white-haired one.”
    “You knew this?”
    “Mama Oya knows everything. Just like I know your friend is American and was once a soldier.”
    “Canadian,” said Holliday.
    “
No mientas a Mamá Oya, gringo,
” said the old woman sharply. “You are an American, you were once a soldier and then you taught soldiers. You hated your father and love your wife still even though she has been gone for many years.”
    My God, thought Holliday, literally taking a step back. The wizened creature in front of him couldn’thave known all that. Unless Eddie had somehow managed to tell her. He turned and looked at his friend, the question clear in his expression. Eddie shook his head slowly.
    “I know this in the same way as I know that Eddie has crossed an ocean to search for his brother, Domingo, so he might ease his mother’s pain. I know because Mama Oya sits here and sees many things.”
    “You have seen Domingo?” Eddie asked.
    “I saw him driving Raul’s daughter, the one married to Espin. They came to this place more than once for their meetings in the night.”
    “Who came, Mama?” Eddie asked.
    “Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez Callejas, Luis Perez Rospide, Lieutenant Colonel Rojas.”
    “The man who runs Tecnotex SA,” explained Eddie. “They import anything technological…computers, satellite phones—all for the top people only.” He turned to Mama Oya. “Any others, Mama?”
    “Jesus Bermudez Cutiño,” said the old woman.
    “Director of Military Intelligence.”
    “Juan Almeida Bosque.”
    “He oversees all real estate transactions and builds hotels exclusively for the use of foreigners.”
    “Colonel Brito.”
    “CEO of Aerogaviota. It has its own fleet of helicopter based at Baracoa Air Base. The personnel are all military. It is supposed to be for tourism andrentals to foreign businessmen, but it is actually there to provide air support in case of insurrection.”
    “Also there was Ramiro Valdés,” said Mama Oya darkly. “A devil, truly.”
    “Minister of Informatics and Communications, also minister of the Interior—the Secret Police, also the minister of Agriculture. He is Adolf Hitler, this man. He went to a conference in Venezuela, and the joke in Havana was that he’d gone there to fix their
silla eléctrica
, their electric chair. He is a sadist and a murderer, amigo, and very dangerous.”
    “Were you here on the night when Eddie’s brother disappeared?” Holliday asked.
    “Buy something from Mama Oya and perhaps I’ll tell you.”
    Holliday took a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet, laid it on the card table