Templar Conspiracy Read online

  Holliday laughed.

  “That, madam,” said Lloyd the waiter, “is the Disney Magic.”

  “Which is?”

  “A ship, madam. A rather large one,” replied Lloyd. “It warns us of its arrival by sounding its wretched horn that way. You can hear it on the other side of New Providence. Its passengers rarely come here.”

  “I thought ships were always feminine,” said Holliday.

  “There are exceptions, sir,” intoned Lloyd. He made a little shivering gesture. “The Disney Magic is most certainly one of them. They have their own private island where Captain Hook takes you on tours in full costume.”

  “It sound awful,” said Peggy.

  “It is well past awful, madam. ‘Appalling’ is a somewhat better word, I think.” Lloyd went off to find more scones.

  “Where exactly is this place, Lyford Cay?” Peggy asked.

  “The western tip of the island.”

  “On the plane you said it was a gated community,” said Peggy. “We don’t even know which house is his, let alone how to get past security.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Holliday.

  “In other words, you don’t have the faintest idea,” said Peggy.

  “That about sums it up,” said Holliday.

  Mary Breau Luxury Real Estate was located on the floor above the Bank of Nova Scotia at 404 West Bay Street, deep in the heart of Nassau, roughly equidistant from both the harbor and Government House. People often remarked that most of the banking in the Bahamas seemed to be divided between the three major Canadian banks: Nova Scotia, Royal and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

  There was no mystery about this. During prohibition the majority of bootleggers and smugglers, including the legendary rum runner Bill McCoy, purchased much of their product from Canadian distilleries, ferried it from Nassau to Bimini and then across the narrow fifty-mile strait to Florida. At one point there was so much cash stored in the fortresslike Royal Bank just down the street that people began to worry about the structural integrity of the building.

  Mary Breau herself ran a one-woman show, and hers was the only real estate ad in the local yellow pages that had the gall to say that she specialized in Lyford Cay houses. She was coal black, spoke with a faintly British accent, wore floral-print dresses and had enormous breasts that dominated her physical presence almost as much as her charming, broad smile.

  “What can I do for you nice people?” Mary asked, looking at them, one to the other. Holliday could see that she didn’t know how Brennan fit into the structure of their relationship, but instead of being suspicious she was curious. A smart woman and a shrewd judge of character. They had to watch their step with this one.

  “We’re looking for a place at Lyford Cay,” Holliday replied, after making the introductions.

  “Rent or buy?” Mary asked crisply.

  Holliday gave her the answer he knew she wanted.

  “Buy,” he said. The real estate agent brightened visibly, her eyes shining with the prospect of a fat commission. Holliday threw in the kicker. “Bill Tritt recommended you.”

  “You know Mr. Tritt?” Mary Breau asked, her voice softening.

  “Sure, known him for years. We’ve visited him a few times and we all love the place.”

  “Any reason you’re buying now?” Mary asked, jotting the information down on a yellow pad.

  Holliday nodded in Brennan’s direction. “Uncle Thomas has decided to step down from his chairmanship at the bank and put things into the hands of someone a little younger. Me.” Holliday beamed proudly.

  “Bank?” Mary asked.

  “Texas Oilman’s Trust,” said Holliday without a pause. “Mainly we finance wells and invest the profits.”

  “Well,” said Mary, her chest heaving a little with excitement. “I’m sure we can find something to suit your needs.”

  “A pool,” said Brennan. “We’ll want a pool, and perhaps some grounds. We’ll be giving some garden parties, I expect.”

  “And a dock,” put in Peggy.

  “Yes, a dock,” said Brennan. “We have a boat, you see.”

  “How big?” Mary asked, jotting away on her pad.

  “Sixty-two feet,” said Holliday.

  “Nice,” said Mary, nodding approvingly.

  “Maybe you could take us by Bill’s place. I’d like to drop in and tell him we’re going to be neighbors,” said Holliday.

  “Is he there?” Mary asked. “He’s often gone on business.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Holliday, shrugging as offhandedly as he could manage.

  “Why don’t we call him?” Mary beamed. She pulled out a bulging Rolodex and began skimming through it.

  “Let’s make it a surprise,” said Holliday. “We’re probably the last people he’d expect to drop in out of the blue.” True enough, he thought.

  “All right.” She smiled. The cardinal rule of real estate: please the buyer when you’re with the buyer and the seller when you’re with the seller. “You’re car or mine?”

  “We left our rental back at the hotel and walked,” said Peggy, playing her part in the little script. “Your office is only a few blocks from the Royal Bahamian.”

  “Nothing’s very far from anything in Nassau,” Mary said with a laugh. She turned up the wattage on her smile even more. “I’ve got the Land Rover parked in the back. Why don’t you meet me out front?”

  The Land Rover looked brand-new, silver paint gleaming. It projected confidence, success and good taste, and hinted at adventure and imagination. A surgeon driving a Mercedes usually elicited thoughts of greed and gouging, but a vehicle like Mary’s was a mark of her success.

  The real estate agent wheeled the big car around, narrowly missing one of the little, privately owned jitney buses and headed west down Bay Street. At the corner of Charlotte Street they stopped for a horde of adults and children wearing Mickey Mouse ears and led by a tall, young, black man dressed as Captain Hook and looking terribly embarrassed about it.

  The Mickey cluster was taking digital snapshots of everything they could see and clogging up the sidewalks. Nobody seemed to mind, which wasn’t surprising, since according to Mary a single cruise ship in harbor for twenty-four hours could leave behind as much as half a million dollars, not including docking fees.

  They drove down Bay Street past the low, yellow building that housed the U.S. Embassy, then turned sharply and passed by the Royal Bahamian. After the big hotel the town quickly disappeared, replaced by dense, lush foliage on one side and the ocean on the other, the inshore water an impossible translucent green.

  They continued past fish-fry shacks and scattered stucco residences, past low-rise condominiums, corner stores, gas stations and liquor outlets, Saunders Beach, one of the few public beaches for native Bahamians and finally reaching the “golden mile” of the major hotels on Cable Beach, just past Goodman’s Bay.

  In the middle distance, standing on one heavy leg in the shallow water like a stork, was a building that looked as though it came right off The Jetsons cartoon show. According to Mary it was a defunct tourist attraction meant be an underwater fish observatory.

  Past the hotel, restaurants, clubs and open-air native markets they went around the long, sweeping curve that took them toward the south or “hurricane” side of the island. The farther along Bay Street they went the more the landscape changed. The houses grew larger, were set back farther from the road and had more junglelike foliage and coconut palm groves between them.

  Just as the street curved again, they turned left off Bay Street and headed for the coast along Clifton Bay Drive to a long, narrow peninsula with the ocean visible on both sides. There had been a security booth at the Clifton Bay Drive entrance to the community, but Mary had barely paused as the man in the bright white uniform with the old-fashioned, white English bobby’s helmet had waved them through with a smile as wide as Mary’s own.

  Mary Breau turned the Land Rover to the left and
they followed the road toward the end of the peninsula. The houses here were much smaller than the others, more like the kind of neat cottagelike structures you found in suburban Dublin or Galway.

  “E. P. Taylor Drive,” said Mary. “Taylor was a Canadian billionaire who originated the idea of the gated community. At one time he owned and developed all of Lyford Cay. Just for fun he bred racehorses. Northern Dancer, the greatest sire in the history of thoroughbred racing, was his.”

  “You sound like a fan,” said Brennan.

  “I get over to Hialeah every chance I get.” She smiled. “My not-so-secret vice.” They pulled up in front of a neat, yellow stucco bungalow with a short, crushed-stone drive. Through the palms they could see the open ocean and a small stretch of private beach. “Here we are,” said Mary.

  Holliday, Peggy and Brennan climbed down from the Land Rover and made a show of knocking on the glass-paned double doors. Holliday cupped his hands and peered through the glass. No telltale blinking red light of a security system visible, but that didn’t mean much. The alarm panel could just as easily be in the closet to the left of the door. He turned back to Mary, who was waiting patiently in the Rover.

  “Maybe he’s round the back,” he called out. Mary nodded.

  They all trooped around the side of the house to the back lawn and the patch of white sand beach. He checked the back door. It was much like the front except here it was a single door, not a double. It would be a snap to open. There was a small lanai with lawn chairs and a round table, a furled umbrella rising out of the center of it.

  “You better have some sort of plan, Doc,” warned Peggy. “Or we’re in big trouble. That security guard isn’t going to have a big smile for us the way he did for Mary.”

  Holliday looked from the open ocean, then back to the house. No more than 150 feet from the house on the left of the beach with a pile of old paving stones that might have been a breakwater or a private pier once upon a time.

  “No problem,” said Holliday. “I’ve got a perfect plan.”

  “Famous last words again,” answered Peggy.

  8

  “Are you sure you really know how to drive one of these?” Peggy asked, obviously nervous and clutching the nylon rope handholds on either side of the inflatable. The boat was a twenty-one-foot Zodiac powered by a fifty-horsepower Evinrude outboard engine, and it was skipping easily over the calm waters offshore from Cable Beach, sending up a salt-tanged burst of spray every few seconds.

  To their left the long line of hotels and an unbroken strip of pure white sand stretched into the distance along the curve of Delaport Bay. It was getting close to sunset and the western horizon was on fire in a spectacular pyrotechnic display of yellow, red and orange.

  Driving out of Nassau past the fish-fry shacks with Mary Breau, Holliday had seen a sign that read ARAWAK CAY BOAT RENTALS with an arrow pointing down a packed-earth road, but at the time he’d thought nothing of it. After spending a couple of hours with the real estate agent for the sake of appearances, they had her drop them off at the hotel. A few minutes later they were in their rental driving back along West Bay Street to the dirt road.

  The road led to a roughly made combination seawall and causeway, which led onto Arawak Cay, a messy, industrial wasteland with the Conch fleet of fishing boats in the protected, shallow harbor of the inner bay and larger ships, including the barges shipping the big casks of bottled water from the mainland, since Nassau had no fresh water of its own. Conch, the familiar, large pink shellfish, was protected in most parts of the world, but here the stony beaches of Arawak Cay were littered with literally thousands of them, tossed aside after their meat had been removed. Conch—pronounced “konk” by the natives—was used for almost everything: conch salad, conch chowder, deep-fried conch, breaded conch, grilled conch, conch burgers, barbecued conch, even smoked conch. There weren’t many restaurants along the Cable Beach strip that didn’t have it on the menu somewhere. One of the more successful conch fishermen, a big Sumo wrestler type who went by the nickname Big Bambu, had branched out into renting Zodiacs and selling conch burgers as well as Kalik and Red Stripe beer to people who wanted to have a picnic and explore.

  No experience was necessary to pilot the boat, just the name of your hotel and your passport left behind for security. After listening to Big Bambu giving Holliday firm instructions about bringing the inflatable back before dark they set out for Lyford Cay, this time approaching from the sea. The only equipment they carried with them was the jack from their rental.

  “Yes,” said Holliday, “I really know how to drive this thing.”

  Peggy didn’t look convinced, but Brennan was thoroughly enjoying himself, sitting happily in the bow, the spray hitting him squarely in the face, and reveling in the sensation. Holliday suddenly had a brief, compassionate vision of a young, unhappy Irish boy with very little childhood, raised by stern Jesuit priests who frowned on simple pleasures like boat rides.

  “How about in the dark?” Peggy asked sourly. “Because no matter what you told that Big Bambu character, there’s no way were getting back before nightfall.”

  Holliday smiled. “I’ve had a little experience in Zodiacs at night,” he said, remembering making landfall on the wide beaches of Mogadishu in Somalia for a little surgical payback after the Black Hawk Down incident. Twenty-two miles from the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to landfall, and all done in darkness as black as tar.

  By the time they reached the old breakwater marking Tritt’s unpretentious little house, the sun had almost disappeared, leaving nothing but a streak of crimson bleeding over the glimmering sea. Holliday cut the engine to a soft putter and scanned the area. The neighboring cottages were hidden by jungle foliage, and what could be seen was much closer to the road than Tritt’s. Somehow Holliday got the feeling they were used more as vacation homes than as full-time residences.

  As the sun set completely Holliday guided the Zodiac to shore, keeping his course straight, aiming for the almost luminescent strip of beach at the foot of the assassin’s property. The boat slid up onto the beach, sand grinding under the hull, and Brennan jumped out, mooring rope in hand. He held the rope while the other two got out of the Zodiac, and all three of them dragged the inflatable well up the beach. Holliday carried the jack.

  He checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes, in and out,” he said. “That’s probably the response time for the cops. It’s a pretty small force.”

  They went up the slightly sloping lawn to the back door. Holliday took the jack, positioned it across the doorframe horizontally and began to crank. After a few moments the ends of the jack were tight against the wood. He kept cranking. Slowly but surely the wood of the doorframe began to bow out left and right; then finally the bolt on the lock mechanism popped and the door came open.

  “I’m impressed,” said Brennan, lifting an eyebrow. “A scholar with the skills of a burglar.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” reminded Holliday.

  They ducked under the jack and stepped into the cottage. They found themselves in a kitchen-dining area simply furnished with a teak dining table, four chairs and a buffet containing silverware and table linens. The furniture was neither new nor antique and had probably been sold to Tritt along with the rest of the house.

  There were two small bedrooms at the end of a short hallway as well as two bathrooms, one a powder room or WC and the other a full en suite bathroom leading to the third and largest of the bedrooms. The master bedroom was as anonymous as the kitchen-dining area. There was a queen-sized bed, end tables, a chest of drawers and a walk-in closet full of folded shirts, a variety of sportswear and shoes, plus a row of suits still in dry cleaning bags. The bags read New Oriental Laundry and Cleaners Ltd: Looking Good Is Our Pride and Joy. The suits were all expensive, mainly Brioni and Zegna. There was a single painting on the bedroom wall above the bed, depicting a pot of flowers on a windowsill with palm trees and a Caribbean beach done in shades of blue and white and pink. Without a word, Peggy and Bren
nan split up and began searching the spare bedrooms and the bathrooms. Holliday went down the hallway to a pair of pocket doors and slid them back.

  The front room of the cottage was a living room, though it was outfitted as an office rather than a place to relax at the end of a busy day. There was a desk in front of a brick-lined fireplace that looked as though it hadn’t been used for a very long time. The floors were hardwood, possibly cherry, and looked freshly waxed and polished. There wasn’t a spot of dust anywhere.

  On one corner of the desk was a black, high-intensity Tensor lamp; in the other corner a complicated-looking desk phone. There was a Wi-Fi box connected to a cable outlet, but no computer visible. Tritt was no fool when it came to security. The reason there was no alarm system was there was nothing to hide and no incriminating evidence of any kind.

  Facing the desk on the opposite wall was a flat-screen TV. There was a high-backed leather swivel chair behind the desk and an upholstered chair with a pole lamp beside it next to the front window. Holliday crossed the room in the gloomy half-light of dusk and pulled the drapes closed. He went back to the desk and switched on the Tensor light.

  The desk was utilitarian and made of dark blond oak. It was a pedestal style, probably bought a long time ago as government surplus. There were three drawers in each pedestal and one drawer in the middle. There was nothing in any of the drawers except the center one, which contained some loose drawing paper, a few Rapidograph drafting pens, a CD-ROM in a clear plastic case with no label and a neat stack of bills held together by a big paper clip.

  Without even pausing Holliday slipped the CD case into his pocket, took out the bills and removed the paper clip. There was nothing very interesting. A Cable Bahamas receipt for both his Internet and television service, another receipt from Vonage but no actual bill listing calls, and a receipt for home delivery of Chelsea’s Choice drinking water.

  He rechecked the other drawers and again found nothing inside. Why have a desk with six useless drawers? Was it simply that the desk had been here when he bought the house, or was there another reason the drawers were empty? He thought about it for a moment. The desk hadn’t been in this room when he bought it—it wasn’t the kind of furniture you wanted in your living room, which meant Tritt had placed it here, either bringing it from another room or perhaps even farther afield.