Red Templar (17 page)

“Good doing business with you again,” said Otrepyev.

Pesek nodded, smiling. “And you,” he replied. He checked his watch. Forty minutes had passed since he’d left the hotel on Lesnaya Ulitsa. He turned away from the booth, went to the taxi rank in front of the terminal and headed for 36 Sivtsev Vrazhek Lane.

29

Genrikhovich stared at them, chewing on the hamburger. Holliday stared back, feeling the taste of bile rising in his throat along with his anger. Genrikhovich swallowed and smiled.

“You find this amusing?” Holliday asked.

“You are here, aren’t you?” Genrikhovich said blithely, taking another bite of his Big Mac, the Russian version of special sauce oozing out of the bun and onto his fingers.

“Not for long, pal,” said Holliday, bitterness in his tone. “I went along with your goose chase because you mentioned the name of someone I admired and respected. I neither admire nor respect you, Mr. Genrikhovich; in fact, I have it on good authority that you’re something of a pathological liar.”

The Orthodox priest who had answered the door stared at Holliday.
“Patologicheskii’ lzhets,”
translated Eddie.

“I understand English quite well, thank you. I am just surprised he said it,” answered the priest.

Genrikhovich popped the last of the Big Mac into his mouth, chewed briefly, licked his fingers and swallowed noisily. He picked up a napkin from the coffee table in front of the couch, then wiped his mouth with it and cleared his throat. “Father Anatoliy Ivanov, may I introduce you to Colonel John Henry Holliday and his friend Eduardo Vladimir Cabrera Alfonso.”

“Edimburgo, not Eduardo,” said the Cuban.

“I beg your pardon,” Genrikhovich said.

“Why did you leave the train like that?” Holliday asked bluntly.

“I was afraid, of course,” said Genrikhovich with a languid shrug. “Why don’t you sit down and we’ll discuss the situation.” He gestured toward a pair of old, worn upholstered chairs.

“I’ll stand for now,” said Holliday. “What were you afraid of?”

“I live in Russia, Colonel Holliday, and in Russia fear is a way of life.”

“Don’t feed me that kind of old crap, and don’t try to change the subject. What were you afraid of?”

Genrikhovich sighed and then let out a little belch. “I overheard the
provodnitsa
on the train talking to the . . .
poezda,
the conductor, about you and your black friend. She was suspicious. They were going to have the police waiting for you in Perm.”

“But not you,” said Holliday bitterly.

“I had to save myself,” aid Genrikhovich. “I could not allow myself to be taken by the FSB. They would have tortured me, and I know too much.”

“About Rasputin and the rest of the crap you were feeding me? Don’t make me laugh,” said Holliday. “You’re a nutcase, plain and simple.”

“Would a nutcase, as you call me, have known of your relationship with Rodrigues the monk, or your position within the Templars? I think not, Colonel.”

“But you were willing to feed Eddie and me to the dogs,” said Holliday.

“It was a question of priorities.” The Russian shrugged again. “Besides, it doesn’t matter now. You are here, and now we can proceed.”

Holliday let out an exasperated sigh and dropped down into one of the upholstered chairs. He kept his hand on the automatic in the pocket of his jacket. Something was still bothering him about the Russian, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “Proceed with what?” he asked as Eddie sat down in the chair beside him.

“Our holy quest, of course.” Genrikhovich smiled. It occurred to Holliday that perhaps the Russian was more than just a nutcase and a liar; from the crazed look in his eyes he could well be completely, right-out-of-his-mind, barking insane. His expression made him look like a cross between a Bible-thumping evangelical preacher and a greed-mad Scrooge McDuck.

There was a soft clicking sound from the front door; somebody was slipping the lock with a credit card. Holliday turned his head sharply but it was too late; the door burst open and Anton Pesek appeared, an automatic pistol held in a two-handed grip, his sharp eyes scanning the living room of the apartment. Without turning, the Czech killer lifted his foot and kicked backward, closing the door behind him. He twitched the weapon toward Father Ivanov, who was still standing to the left of the couch occupied by Genrikhovich.

“Sidet’, svyashchennik,”
the Czech ordered. The priest did as he was told and sat down on the couch beside Genrikhovich.

Genrikhovich looked as though he were about to be sick. “FSB,” he whispered, gagging.

“No such luck,” said Holliday, recognizing the intruder. “Mr. Pesek here is just a run-of-the-mill contract killer.”

“You know this man?” Genrikhovich asked, goggle-eyed. His complexion had turned gray with terror, beads of sweat putting a sheen of moisture on his forehead.

“Of course he knows me,” said Pesek, smiling. “I saved his life not too long ago. We are the best of friends. Isn’t that right, Colonel?”

“Not anymore.” Holliday blindly squeezed the trigger of the Serdyukov in his pocket. The automatic made a sound like a loudly barking dog. A smoldering hole appeared in Holliday’s jacket, and the single round gouged a trough like a giant ice-cream scoop in the left side of Anton Pesek’s head from his eye socket to the back of his skull.

Blood and brains fountained, spraying the ceiling and the wall behind the assassin, spattering against the mounted icons. Pesek slipped to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Once upon a time Holliday had slit this man’s throat on a tossing boat in Venice Lagoon, but this time he was dead for good.

There was a long, stunned silence in the room. The only thing left of the gunshot was the ringing in Holliday’s ears. Bizarrely, a quote from
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
popped into his mind: “When you have to shoot, shoot—don’t talk.”

“You fool! You stupid American fool! You killed him!” Genrikhovich moaned.

“I could have let him kill you,” said Holliday. “Would you have liked that better?”

“He was coming for you, not for me!”

“You seem awfully sure of yourself.”

“I am sure!”

“Why?”

“Because your . . .” Genrikhovich stopped abruptly.

“Because why?” Holliday asked.

The Russian shook his head. “There is no reason, but you said you knew this man, and I have never seen him before. You must have been his target.” Genrikhovich folded his arms across his chest and closed his mouth firmly. The discussion was clearly over.

Ivanov the priest continued to stare at the crumpled corpse on the floor as though it were as hypnotic as a weaving cobra in a basket. Eddie sat in his chair for a moment, then stood and left the room.

Holliday got up from his chair, crossed to the body and squatted down, careful to keep out of the blood-and-muck puddle behind what was left of Pesek’s shattered skull. He quickly went through the man’s pockets and came up with a passport, a wallet stuffed with euros and a cell phone.

The phone was obviously a throwaway—it had only two numbers in its directory, one with a 420 country code and a 2 area code—Prague. The other had a country code and no area code: 39. There was only one country in the world with that prefix.

“He was working for the Vatican,” said Holliday.

“Why would he be doing such a thing?” asked Genrikhovich.

“The Vatican does not employ assassins,” said Ivanov, shocked.

“You are very naive if you believe that, Father,” said Holliday. “This man has tried to kill me before. The Vatican does whatever it needs to do to protect itself. They also have a long-standing quarrel with me.”

“The Vatican does not have people killed,” said the Orthodox priest firmly. “It goes against everything that any Christian faith stands for.”

“You have never heard of the Assassini? They date back to Pope Callixtus and the Borgias.”

“They are a myth,” said the priest.

“The man on your floor is no myth.” Holliday grunted, rolling the body over and taking the automatic out of Pesek’s hand.

“This is madness,” said Genrikhovich.

Eddie reappeared with a towel in one hand and a large plastic garbage bag in the other. “I have emptied the
frío
, the refrigerator,” said the Cuban.

“Good thinking.” Holliday nodded.

“Why have you emptied my refrigerator?” the priest asked, looking at the Cuban strangely.

Instead of answering, Eddie went and knelt down beside Holliday. He eased the towel around Pesek’s ruined head and wrapped the rest of the towel around the face and neck. He then spread out the plastic bag beside him, and together he and Holliday lifted the dead man’s shoulders onto it. Without speaking the two men each grabbed one of the dead man’s feet and dragged him out of the room, the towel and the plastic bag keeping too much mess from spreading across the old pinewood floor. Genrikhovich and the priest followed them as they dragged the body into the kitchen.

The door to Ivanov’s refrigerator was sagging open. Everything had been removed, including the shelves, and had been laid out on the narrow counters. Holliday and Eddie manhandled Pesek’s body in front of the refrigerator and then wrestled it into a sitting position.

“What are you doing!?” Ivanov asked, gazing at the piles of food stacked around the small room.

“Putting the body inside.” Holliday grunted as they lifted Pesek’s shoulders, pushing his ruined, towel-covered head and his upper body into the refrigerator. They pushed a little more until they’d folded the dead man’s legs underneath his buttocks and squeezed in the dangling left arm. Panting with the effort, Holliday and Eddie closed the door and leaned on it until the latch clicked.

“What have you done?” Genrikhovich whispered.

“We’ve bought ourselves some time,” said Holliday. There was a tea towel hanging over the bar of the stove and he wiped his hands on it. “It’s October. If you keep the heat off in the apartment and the refrigerator on, the body’s not going to start to stink for a while. It won’t stop decomposition forever, but maybe long enough for us to get away.”

“Get away?” Ivanov said. “This is where I live! We must call the police! It was self-defense; I will testify to it.”

“Really?” Holliday said. “As I understand it, you’re the son of one of the most infamous defectors in KGB history, and there’s a corpse with half its head blown off in your apartment. Do you really want to advertise that fact? Your friend Genrikhovich here is already wanted by the FSB, and so are Eddie and I. We’re both in this country on fake passports, which, by definition, makes us spies—you really want to call the Moscow police about this? The public prosecutor would hand you over to the ghouls in the Lubyanka within five seconds. Do you really want that, Father Ivanov?”

“I am afraid he’s right,” said Genrikhovich. “I am very sorry, Anatoliy.”

“But I was so close!” the priest said. “I’m sure I have it right this time. The coins prove it!”

“What coins?” Holliday asked.

“Come with me,” said the priest. He gave a last long look at the closed refrigerator and then turned back to the living room. There was a large gilt-and-silver icon on tin of the Virgin Mary and the Christ child hanging on the wall next to the couch. Ivanov took it down, revealing a strip coin holder taped to the back. He showed the strip of coins to Holliday and Eddie, his glance occasionally slipping toward the mess on the floor and the wall made by the exploded remains of Anton Pesek’s head.

There were ten coins, all gold, all the size of a quarter, all showing the profile of a man with long curling hair. “Who is he?” Holliday asked.

“Constantine the Eleventh, Dragases Palaiologos,” said the priest.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“He was the last emperor of the Byzantines,” said the priest. “When his daughter Sophia married Ivan the Terrible, Constantine gave him his great library as a gift so it would not fall into the hands of the Vatican.”

“And?”

“The great library was Sophia’s dowry. It was brought here.”

“Here as in Russia?”

“Moscow,” said the priest.

“According to experts it was buried in an underground chamber beneath the Kremlin.”

“And is hasn’t been found?”

“Stalin looked for it, Khrushchev looked for it and so did Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Now Putin searches for it,” said Genrikhovich. “If Putin and his cronies find it they will have the power to destroy the Western world.”

“Why?”

“It holds the secret of the fifth sword,” said the Russian. “Everything we have been looking for.”

“And you think you’ve found it?”

“Not yet,” said Genrikhovich. “But we are very close. We have found the final clue.”

“We have found the hidden maps of Ignatius Yakovlevich Stelletskii, of course,” said Ivanov.

“Oh, God,” muttered Holliday, “not another Russian name.”

30

“Okay,” said Holliday, “I’ll bite. Who the hell is Ignatius Yakovlevich Stelletskii?”

“
Father
Ignatius Stelletskii was a priest, like myself and like his father before him. He was born in 1878 in the Ukraine.”

“In 1878? Is this going to be a long story?” Holliday asked. “Because if it is, maybe you should tell it somewhere else; somebody may have heard the shot and called the police. We should be on our way out of here pretty soon; there’s blood all over the place and a body in the refrigerator.”

“Nobody actually
calls
the police in Moscow because they heard a gunshot, Colonel,” Genrikhovich said with a grunt. “Nobody wants to get involved in such things, believe me.”

“Keep it short anyway,” said Holliday.

Ivanov nodded, casting a wary glance at the mess on the floor and walls. “Father Stelletskii went to the Kiev Seminary. He was a brilliant scholar, especially in the subjects of history and scriptural archaeology. In 1906, less than a year after he graduated, he was teaching history and geography at the Russian-Arab Seminary in Nazareth. While he was there he became convinced from his studies that Christ himself had written his own gospel and that it had been secretly taken from Judea by Joseph of Arimathea.”

“The Grail myths,” said Holliday.

“Yes,” said Ivanov, enthusiasm creeping into his tone despite the gore all around him. “Father Stelletskii could never understand why any great significance should be attached to a cup Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. Why not a plate, a bowl, a jug or some other vessel? In Aramaic, the language both spoken and written during the time of Christ, the masculine word for ‘cup’ is
kas
. In its written form it is often confused with
kat,
or sometimes
ktaa,
meaning ‘book.’ According to Father Stelletskii, Joseph took the book to Constantinople, where it eventually came into the possession of the Latin patriarch of Constantinople. After the Byzantines recaptured the holy city, the book became part of the hoard of Constantine the Eleventh, the last Byzantine emperor. When the Turk Sultan Mahomet the Second attacked the city in 1481, Constantine packed up his great library, including the book, and dispatched it to Moscow in the care of his niece Sophia—who became the grandmother of Ivan the Terrible.” The priest paused. Eddie went to the front window of the apartment and peeled back the heavy velvet curtain slightly. He turned back to Holliday.

“I think we must hurry,
compañero
; I do not like the sound of things in the street.”

“What is it?” Holliday asked.

“There is nothing. That is what is making me nervous. I do not like it.”

“Hurry it up,” said Holliday to the priest.

“When Ivan built the Kremlin he made a special place for the books and treasures from Constantinople. As time went on, more and more rooms and passages were built beneath the Kremlin. The Kremlin itself changed from wood to brick and stone. The great library was lost. It has been lost for more than five hundred years, and everyone has looked for it.”

“Including your Father Stelletskii,” said Holliday.

“In 1912 Father Stelletskii organized the Commission for the Study of Underground Antiquities, which was built to study the underground tunnels of Moscow. He asked for permission to dig beneath the Kremlin, but he was not permitted to. In 1914 he discovered Dabelov’s catalog of the library of Ivan the Terrible, but further work was cut short by World War One and then the Russian Revolution. Father Stelletskii returned to the Ukraine and to Kiev. He continually petitioned the government to dig beneath the Kremlin, and finally in 1929 Stalin gave his permission—the thought of the richness of the hoard spurring his interest. The first dig began in 1933 but nothing was found. The Second World War stopped any further digs at the Kremlin, and Father Stelletskii fell ill. He died shortly after the war, but Stalin had the Moscow Archaeological Institute continue searching up until his death. Khrushchev continued the search, as did Yeltsin, Gorbachev and now Putin.”

“And found nothing,” said Holliday.

“And found nothing.” Ivanov nodded.

“Maybe because there was nothing to find,” Holliday said.

“Or maybe because they did not have Father Stelletskii’s maps to guide them,” said Genrikhovich.

“Señores, por favor,”
said Eddie, still standing by the window, the anxiety clear in his voice now.

“You have the maps?” Holliday said.

“They were hidden at the seminary in Kiev. I discovered them hidden there when I was a student. I took up the good father’s work.”

“Where are the maps?”

“Not here.” Genrikhovich smiled.

“Show me,” said Holliday.

“Señores, ¡os suplico!”
Eddie implored.

He could hear, muffled by the distance, the strange warbling of approaching sirens. Ivanov went back into the kitchen and filled a knapsack with bottled water and cans of food, then led them out of the apartment and down a long corridor leading to a rear exit. The exit opened onto Kaloshin Alley, the narrow side street running at right angles to Sivtsev Vrazhek Lane. Ivanov’s car, an old Lada, was parked in a small vacant lot behind his building. A few moments later, with the sirens coming closer, they were moving south through the crowded streets of nighttime Moscow, headed toward the Kremlin.

*  *  *

Brinsley Whitman Havers III, deputy assistant to the deputy national security adviser, deplaned at Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport on the afternoon United Airlines flight from Washington Dulles with only his briefcase and an overnight bag. He had spent the entire flight in his first-class seat touching his suit jacket, feeling the weight of his newly minted diplomatic passport in his inside pocket, his brain buzzing with the mental shock and awe of suddenly being thrust into the world of international intrigue, and trying to look cool and detached about his adventure at the same time, and failing miserably.

An embassy marine met him at customs, took him to a waiting Escalade and whisked him off to the walled blockhouse-style embassy in the Presnensky district in the city center. Thirty-five minutes after arriving in Moscow, Whit Havers, seated behind tinted bulletproof glass, was whisked through the gates of Bolshoy Deviatinsky Pereulok No. 8.

A check of his “mailbox” on the National Security Agency’s internal computer Web site showed that his contact had requested a face-to-face at some place called Coffee Mania in the Neglinnaya Plaza on Trubnaya Square at nine o’clock that evening. Whit, whose foreign travel outside of Jamaica and the D.C. area consisted of a two-day trip to Toronto for a G8 summit, was beside himself with excitement, but he managed to give the countersignal agreeing to the contact. Whit Havers was going to have a meeting with an “asset” that he was “running.” He called the transport pool, arranged for a driver and an unmarked car for later in the evening, and found his way to the embassy cafeteria for a celebratory banana muffin and a nonfat latte.

At seven forty-five the unmarked, a last year’s tan-colored Dodge Caravan that stood out like Donald Trump in a Yugo, took Whit across town to Trubnaya Square. Neglinnaya Plaza turned out to be that uniquely European invention, the vertical mall. A perfectly good eighteenth- or nineteenth-century building was demolished and something that was generally an architect’s version of a rocket ship or a seven-story twenty-fifth-century blender was raised into the cavity like a glittering tooth, generally created with a lot of brushed steel and glittering glass. Thirty or forty high-end, brand-name boutiques were crammed into the building, and the place began to print money. The real value of the property, of course, was the four levels of underground parking, which the plaza charged an arm and a leg for, parking in Moscow having a street value roughly on a par with high-grade cocaine.

Coffee Mania was half Starbucks, half tapas restaurant, with as many food choices as there were sizes of various coffees. There were at least thirty different sandwiches and twenty-odd desserts listed on the chalkboard menu hanging over the long zinc-and–black marble bar. The clientele were young, rich and dressed like they’d stepped out of an L.A. television show. The music droning through the speakers was some kind of Euro-trance that Whit didn’t recognize.

Even though Whit arrived at exactly eight, Bone was there before him, standing out for his drabness of dress as much as his age. He was wearing a gray wool overcoat, corduroy pants that would have looked better on someone weeding his garden and a pair of old brown shoes. There was a black sports bag at his feet. Whit, as usual, was head-to-toe Armani. Except for the dusky color of his skin he fit right into the Coffee Mania crowd. He sat down opposite Bone in the tiny booth at the back of the café.

“Black Tusk,” said Whit, giving the recognition code and feeling a little foolish.

“You’re the one running me?” Bone said, looking surprised. “A bit young, aren’t you, lad?”

“I’m old enough.”

“Why are you here? I would have thought they’d use someone local.”

“The powers that be decided they want this run closely.”

“I thought your people frowned on face-to-face meetings,” said Bone.

“They’ve gone back to old tradecraft; cell phones and computers are too easy to monitor.”

“Would you like some coffee?” Bone asked, gesturing toward the cup on the table in front of him. “It’s very good. Much better than the weasel’s pee we get at home.”

Whit had the feeling that the meeting was getting away from him. It was surreal enough for him to be sitting in a Moscow café discussing coffee with a professional assassin without feeling as though he had no business being there and that Bone was secretly laughing up his sleeve at him.

“You ask a lot of questions,” he said, trying to make his voice sound crisp and severe. It came out like a whining complaint.

“If you don’t ask questions you don’t get answers, and for a man in my line of work, not having answers when you need them can be fatal.”

“Well, it’s my turn to ask them,” said Whit.

“Fire away then, lad.”

“And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me ‘lad.’”

“All right, then, Agent X, whatever you like.”

“We haven’t heard from you since Amsterdam.”

“I had nothing to say.”

“And now?”

“Your intelligence is poor. There was nothing in Yekaterinburg. It was fluff and flummery. The real objective should have been the Russian, Genrikhovich. He got off the train early, leaving Holliday and the other to fend for themselves. I followed Genrikhovich rather than the American.”

“That wasn’t the protocol we established,” said Whit.

“It was the course of action I deemed would get the best results.”

“And has it?”

“I believe so.” Bone nodded. He took a sip of his coffee.

“Do you have any idea where Holliday is?”

“He should be here within the next half hour or so.”

“Here?”
Whit asked, bewildered.

“Look over my right shoulder. Across the square. There are the ruins of an old mansion. A few people park their cars there illegally. Once upon a time the mansion was owned by a member of the Russian nobility who was carrying on an affair with the princess who lived in the palace next door, which is now a department store. To facilitate the affair he dug a tunnel from the basement of the mansion to the palace.”

“What does this have to do with Holliday?” Whit asked.

“For the last four nights, between eight thirty and nine p.m., Genrikhovich and an Orthodox priest named Anatoliy Ivanov have parked a green 1995 Lada Niva Cossack in the lot of the remains of the mansion. They get out of the car and disappear into the ruins. I have ascertained that they shift a large slab of paving stone that leads down into the old passageway. From there they make their way into one of the original Trubnaya subway maintenance tunnels.”

“And why is this important?”

“I have no idea, except that according to my information the priest is also a member of the Moscow Archaeological Institute. More to the point, before I came here I watched Holliday and the black man go into the apartment where the priest lives.”

“You think Holliday will come here?”

“I’m almost certain of it. According to you, Holliday is searching for something; clearly so are Genrikhovich and the priest.”

Whit was staring over Bone’s shoulder. His eyes were on the ruins of the old building on the far side of the square. As he watched, a dark-colored Lada bumped up off the street and onto an empty patch of ground. “The car just pulled in,” Whit said, his voice low.

“Excellent,” said Bone, smiling pleasantly. He slid out of the booth and bent down to pick up the sports bag. “Care to join me?”

“No. I don’t think so,” said Whit.

“I thought not,” said Bone. “Ta-ta then. I’ll give you a ring when it’s all over, shall I?”

“Yes,” said Whit, suddenly feeling unaccountably ashamed of himself. “Please.”

“No bother,” said Bone. “No bother at all.”