Santiago de Cuba, New Years' Eve 1650: as festivities and fireworks light up Cuba's second city on this night of revelry, all seems to be merriment and laughter. But through the revelers moves a single figure with more serious matters on her mind...
Carmen, a red-haired freelance spy who has been operating out of Santiago de Cuba for several months, is heading to the docks to receive a new assignment. She makes her way to a three-story tobacco warehouse with a makeshift tavern in the back. This is El Curatores de Humo, a well known site for those seeking to have meetings where privacy is of primary concern. There, she makes contact with Mercedes Delgado, her employer. Mercedes has a mission for Carmen, but she has also hired some outlaws from Havana to serve as her backup. We meet:
- Oman, a fugitive whose slight figure allows her to pass as a boy
- "Red Knife" Abrameu, a youthful Spanish adventurer loaded down with weapons
- Ilva, a resourceful castaway whose heavy cape conceals a trained monkey, and
- Scotch Pete, a burly mercenary with a taste for sweet wine and games of dexterity
Mercedes sketches the mission out to Carmen in the following terms: a visiting priest is staying at the enormous Castillo de San Pedro della Roca just outside town.
At midnight, he will be rowed out to a troopship at anchor in the bay to perform a mass for the soldiers on board. During the hour that he is away, Carmen and her team must enter his lodgings - a tent pitched on one of the castle terraces - and steal any correspondence bearing the seal of a local noble: Guzman Mendoza Diaz, the Conde de Fideo. To expedite matters, a servant is standing by to open a side gate of the fortress for them at exactly midnight. The correspondence is to be returned to Mercedes at the tobacco warehouse, at which time all will be paid for their efforts.
As it is still early in the evening, the adventurers split up to learn more about the mission while they still have time.
- Carmen flirts with Carlos, an off-duty soldier at the bar, learning that the priest is no simple friar but an official of the Holy Inquisition based in Cartagena; furthermore, that his tent is heavily guarded both by musketeers from the fort, and soldiers of the Inquisition. The soldier offers to tell more if Carmen will accompany him to his rented room, but with the aid of Scotch Pete and Oman she is able to extricate herself.
- Red Knife hooks an expensive handkerchief to his belt to serve as bait for a pickpocket. When he catches one - a fruit-seller's son called Alvaro - he interrogates him regarding the Conde de Fideo. He learns that the Conde is a hidalgo - a nobleman in title only, with no lands or wealth to speak of - but an ambitious and crafty one, nicknamed "the Snake" (ofidio) on account of his inquisitive and deadly reputation. The Conde has apparently been paying good money to all who will sell him information on heretics - Jews, Protestants, and witches - for several months.
- Ilva finds a religious procession waiting to bear a holy relic through the festive streets, and plays marbles with a cheeky altar boy called Filipo to find out more about the inquisitor, including his name - Fray Porfirio Cruz del Campo - and the fact that he recently drained the Mass supplies from Filipo's church and had them rowed out to his troopship. She also learns that the Conde added religious supplies from his own home to this shipment, such as an old family communion chalice. Perhaps he is attempting to win favor with the Inquisitor?
With midnight drawing near, the adventurers hire a coach to take them up to the fortress. They consider bypassing the possibly-dangerous interior of the fortress by coming in at the sea entrance, but the presence of sentries and many light sources seems to suggest that this would be even more risky. Accordingly, they stick to Mercedes' plan, meeting her assistant at a side door and slipping in unnoticed.
The interior of the fortress proves to be nearly deserted, with almost everyone having been granted leave to go into the town for the New Years Eve festivities. Proceeding cautiously and using Ilva's monkey as a scout, they surprise two porters carrying wine and a tray of roast chicken; Scotch Pete uses a barrel that he is carrying as a part of his disguise as a deliveryman to knock one of them unconscious, while Red Knife is able to subdue the other one by beating him senseless with a heavy wooden serving tray. The porters are stripped of their uniforms and locked in a storeroom, and the adventurers proceed with Carmen and Red Knife wearing the uniforms as disguises.
The next complication involves crossing the fortress' inner courtyard, where a clerk is conducting an inventory of one of the enormous supply vaults. The clerk is blocking their progress, but Red Knife and Carmen are able to successfully distract him with questions about who to deliver the roast chicken to, while Ilva, Pete and Oman slip by behind him.
The adventurers are almost to the long stairs leading down to the terrace on which the priest's tent is pitched, but a locked door with two guards behind it now blocks their path. A plan is hatched; Carmen and Red Knife will gain entrance by telling the guards that they have brought food and wine for them, the guards will be given drugged chicken to lull them into a doze, and then the rest of the group will rush the door to overpower the guards.
However, two things go wrong: first, the guards pointedly close the door once Red Knife and Carmen have been let in, making a rush from the corridor outside somewhat more risky; and second, it seems that either these men have a strange tolerance to intoxicants, or Carmen's opium supplier has been letting quality slip of late. Either way, things move to Plan B: on a prearranged signal ("¡Feliz año nuevo!", shouted by Red Knife) the door is kicked open and Oman fires a crossbow while the guards suddenly fight themselves under attack with concealed knives. In a few heartbeats both guards lie dead - stabbed and shot through the gaps in their heavy armor. Once again, the adventurers loot their fallen foes for disguises, hide the bodies (down a pit toilet this time), and proceed towards their final goal.
On the terrace below, the inquisitor's tent stands revealed, as do ten armed guards standing in stiff parade-ground attention in two parallel rows in front of it: five musketeers from the castle garrison, and five soldiers of the Inquisition. A frontal attack seems unthinkably risky, the area is too well-lit to consider stealth, and although Ilva's monkey could probably get in and out undetected, how would it know which papers to steal? Suddenly, Scotch Pete has a flash of insight: what if the small and limber Oman, with Ilva's monkey clasped to her chest, was hidden in an empty wine barrel which was then "delivered" to the inside of the tent?
In a few minutes, the plan is in motion. Ilva overcomes some initial skepticism from the captain of the musketeers by insisting that the wine, although not scheduled, is a personal gift from the Conde to the inquisitor, and although they are closely watched while they manhandle the barrel into the tent they are allowed to do so without further objections. A few minutes later, Oman emerges, silently locates two leather folios bearing the Conde's seal on the writing desk nearby, and then relocates their contents to a watertight bottle held by the monkey. The monkey sneaks back to Ilva, and once it has arrived safely Oman steels herself, slips out under the front of the tent, and dives into the inky waters of the bay without being noticed.
Reuniting on the coast some way away, the adventurers examine their haul. The papers from the first folio, which was labeled “El enemigo interno” (The Enemy Within), contain a list of 300 names and locations. Possibly these are the heretics that the hidalgo Conde has been investigating? The contents of the other folio, labeled "El Gallo contra el León" (The Rooster against the Lion), are more inscrutable: maps of a faraway coastline, lists of English and French names, and a roster of ships. Deciding that knowing more about the materials they have stolen for Mercedes would be a useful thing, Red Knife and Carmen memorize as many of the listed names from the first folio as they can, while Oman memorizes the maps and Scotch Pete copies the various lists and names from the second. Ilva, in the meantime, takes specific note of one name on the first folio lists and carefully memorizes its associated details before sitting alone with her thoughts...
Back at El Curatores de Humo, Mercedes exchanges the stolen papers for payment. Hearing that two soldiers were killed in the course of the mission, she suggests that the adventurers may wish to leave town for a while. People say that Tortuga is nice at this time of year...
