Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,88
truth. But after the meeting with Fidel, the game had gone from the merely abstract to the frighteningly concrete. Now people would die unless Jackie and Emiliano managed to locate the treasure in time and used it to barter for the safety of the captured rebels whose fates Colonel Sanchez was holding in his murderous hands.
After debating the meaning of the legend printed on the map, Jackie and Emiliano had decided that the leprosaria must be a reference to a leper colony, the campo santo to a cemetery within the colony, and the 57 AD to the date on a particular gravestone. Fortunately, as indicated on the map, there was only one leper colony along this section of Oriente Province’s southern coast.
The abandoned leprosarium was difficult to find at first because it had been reclaimed by nature long ago. The remains of the buildings were overgrown with vegetation so thick that it almost completely camouflaged the structures from view. Finally, after having driven past it three times, Emiliano spotted the entrance, recognizing that it wasn’t a natural rock formation at all, but something built by man that had surrendered itself to nature.
On the ground, partly obscured by jungle vines, was a fallen sign that read:
LA LEPROSARIA DE SAN JUDAS TADEO
Jackie looked at Emiliano. “San Judas Tadeo?”
“Yes. You perhaps know him better as St. Jude.”
Jackie smiled to herself. There were worse things you could name a leper colony after, she supposed, than Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. On impulse, she offered up a silent prayer to him that their mission here wouldn’t prove to be an equally lost cause.
Beyond the front gate, the grounds were impassable by vehicle so Emiliano parked the jeep directly outside. Moving to the back of the jeep, he picked up a rucksack containing everything they thought they might need to locate the treasure. Then he and Jackie passed under the gate and made their way through the undergrowth in search of the graveyard.
Emiliano said, “You have to hand it to your man, Metzger. Whatever this treasure is, he hid it where no one would ever dream to look for it. Think of two places people naturally try to avoid. Cemeteries and leper colonies. And he managed to hide Walker’s treasure in a cemetery inside a leper colony. It’s genius, really.”
“It is,” Jackie agreed. She wondered what this place was like when Metzger had arrived here with Maria Consuela and the buildings were whole and populated by lepers and their nurses. His diary was a total blank for this part of his life. Did Metzger and Maria Consuela work here serving the leper community, he out of his sense of idealism untarnished by his service under the corrupt William Walker, and she out of the values instilled in her as a young novitiate? Or was Metzger afraid that the forces opposed to Walker would come to Cuba looking for Maria Consuela and cleverly thought that the safest place for her would be inside the walls of a leper colony?
In the near darkness, it was easy to let one’s imagination run riot and catch fleeting glimpses of the ghosts of those who had suffered and died here almost one hundred years ago. Perhaps Jackie was walking in the very footsteps taken by Metzger and Maria Consuela back in 1857.
“Do you have any ideas for finding the right grave?” Emiliano asked, breaking into Jackie’s momentary reverie.
“The 57 AD on the map must be the year when Metzger and Maria Consuela landed here from Nicaragua—1857,” Jackie said, having brought her intelligence to bear on this very subject. “So I imagine he hid the treasure in a fake grave with that date on the headstone to make it easy to find. I expect the name on the headstone to be made up, so we should probably look for one with the last name of Walker or Metzger. After all, he wanted to make sure that someone would eventually make their way here and find the treasure.”
Emiliano nodded. “That makes a lot of sense.”
The overgrown grounds of the leprosarium and the growing dark made walking through the compound slow going. Emiliano gallantly held on to Jackie’s arm to make sure that she wouldn’t slip and fall.
They passed the crumbling, vine-choked remains of several large structures, probably buildings for administration or clinical facilities, as well as individual huts that must have been home to many of the lepers not immediately in need of medical treatment. There was also a small white