Red Templar Page 9

  “We’re in Dan Brown territory now-seeing things that aren’t there, weaving conspiracies out of thin air,” scoffed Brennan.

  “He’s a storyteller; that’s his business,” answered Spada. “And he’s obviously doing something right, no matter what you think of his abilities.” The cardinal paused. “That’s hardly the point, though, Father Brennan.”

  “Well, what the hell is the point?” said the Irish priest and spymaster. He waved a hand at the stacks of ancient manuscripts and bound volumes all around them in the large, rectangular room. “This dry stuff is the past-our problems are in the present and in the future.”

  “This dry stuff, as you call it, Father Brennan, is history. Within the walls of the Vatican is every secret ever whispered from lips to ears or written down for the last two thousand years and even farther into the distant past. Almost everyone has heard the aphorism from George Santayana, who said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but very few heed his cautionary warning.” The cardinal paused for a moment, his eyes scanning the stacks. Finally he spoke again.

  “Alexander the Great could not conquer Afghanistan, but more than two thousand years later the Russians and the Americans tried and both failed. Napoleon invaded Russia, only to be defeated by winter, but Hitler thought he could do better, for some reason. Mussolini called himself caesar, and instead of being stabbed to death on the Ides of March he was hung upside down on an Esso station sign at the end of April.” Spada shook his head wearily.

  “Christ said: ‘He who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.’ But that didn’t stop people from building Pompeii under a volcano, or New Orleans on a swamp, where hurricanes were a yearly event.” The aging cardinal sighed. “History is not just who we were, Father Brennan; history is who we are.”

  “That’s all well and good, Your Eminence, but how does history help us with our problem with Kirill the First and all his nefarious pally-wallies in the bloody Kremlin?”

  Spada shrugged and closed the book in front of him, then slipped off the white gloves. A young priest came shimmering out of nowhere and gathered up the book on a special neutral-pH plastic tray and scurried off. When he had vanished again the cardinal spoke, his voice angry.

  “We barely have a foothold in Russia-less than three-quarters of a million people, only a few thousand more than the Jews. Putin has made the Orthodox metropolitans into political oligarchs, while our churches are stoned and shot at. He’s using the Church as a tool for expansion into foreign territories-our territories. The world has been fooled into thinking that the Russian bear is sleeping peacefully and that today’s problem is the Middle East or China, but it’s not. It was Russia before the Cold War, and it is still Russia. Russia and her schismatic, unholy, image-worshiping Mafia of a religion is still the problem. They have a stranglehold on Europe’s gas and oil, they bring more gold out of the ground than Canada and Africa combined and they still have twenty-two thousand tanks that are designed for the autobahns of Germany and the autoroutes of France and the rest of Europe. The Russian bear has one eye open even when it’s dozing.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?” Brennan asked.

  “You’ve had a watch on Holliday since Washington; am I right?”

  “Yes, not closely, but we’re aware of his movements.”

  “And?”

  “He was with his niece and her husband in Ethiopia and then vanished into the interior for several weeks. He reappeared in Khartoum nine days ago and flew to Istanbul. He had two others with him, one a Russian named Genrikhovich, a curator of documents at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the other a black man. We don’t know who he is.”

  “An African? American?”

  “Not unless Africans speak fluent Russian, as this one does.”

  “Cuban, perhaps?”

  “Could be. Anyway, after they crossed into Bulgaria we seem to have lost track of him.”

  “Find Holliday,” said Spada. “We know he is a formidable adversary and he may well be on the trail of Al Husam Min Warda. Find him and we may well find the Sword of the Rose and its secrets.”

  “But what secrets are we talking about?”

  “The rose is a potent symbol in many religions. To us it is representative of the early Christian martyrs and the Holy Mother. In other religions it is the symbol of silence. In Rome, a rose laid by the doorstep once indicated that there was a secret meeting in progress. There is the symbolism for the five petals-the five wounds of Christ and the five panes in the rose window of a cathedral.” The cardinal paused.

  “The fifth sword of the sorrow piercing the Holy Mother’s heart is mentioned in Matthew as the great darkness that fell upon the Earth as Christ was raised upon the cross.” Spada lifted his shoulders wearily. “It could mean a hundred different things or a hundred different places.”

  “The book in Arabic gave you no answers?” Brennan asked.

  “One,” said the cardinal, his voice thoughtful. “In the Koran there is a verse-‘If you wish to see the glory of God, contemplate a red rose.’” Spada pushed back his chair and stood. “There are also those who say that the rose is the symbol of the prophet’s blood.”

  Brennan nodded as though he understood, which Spada knew he did not. The Irishman patted the pockets of his frayed black priest’s jacket, no doubt assuring himself that cigarettes and a lighter were there and ready the moment he stepped outside the library’s ancient doors. He turned away, but the cardinal’s dark, forbidding words stopped him, and Brennan turned to listen.

  “Remember this, Thomas Brennan: that while you serve me, remora to the shark, so I in turn serve others much more powerful. More powerful than the Holy Father, more powerful than any president or king.

  “Memento puteus, sacerdotis,” Spada said in Latin. “Remember this well, priest.”

  More fatuous philosophy, Brennan thought. “I’ll remember, Eminence, if you tell me just what exactly it is that you want me to do.”

  “I want you to call the Peseks, for one thing. He’s a Czech who was brought up in the Communist era; he almost certainly speaks Russian. I don’t know about his psychopathic wife and her ghastly hatpin. Whatever the case, Holliday must be dealt with once and for all, and you must bring the Sword of the Rose out of Kirill’s grasp.”

  “And Kirill himself?”

  “If we are to survive this, Brennan, the Orthodox Church must be shattered to its core, its hegemony over the Russian people destroyed. To kill a serpent you do not cut off the tail, Father Brennan; you lop off the head.”

  “‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?’” the Irish priest quoted with a smile.

  “Why, Thomas,” said the cardinal. “You know your history after all.”

  16

  After ten minutes in the outfall vent, Holliday and the others reached a side passage. From the smell of it the narrower, brick-lined tunnel led to the sewers. Holliday stopped, turned and listened. So far there were no sounds of pursuit, but he knew it wouldn’t last. It was more than likely that the OMON squad would have at least one or two Spetsnaz special forces types on board, and those guys were relentless. They’d eventually spot the broken hasp on the vent in the boiler room and they’d come after them like baying hounds after a fox.

  There was a rusted grille over the tunnel just like the one at the outfall opening, but Holliday used the monkey wrench and levered it off, tearing the old hasp off completely. It didn’t matter; if the OMON squad got this far, trying to fake them out was a waste of time.

  “This way,” said Holliday.

  “It smells of. . excrement,” said Genrikhovich, balking and wrinkling his nose. Holliday was suddenly very tired of the Russian. He sighed.

  “The outfall almost certainly empties into the river, and they’ll be waiting for you. Personally I couldn’t care less whether y
ou come with us or not. It’s up to you: knee-deep in shit or a bullet in the brain.”

  Eddie handed Holliday the battery-powered lamp and the two men climbed up into the sewer tunnel. For a few seconds there was silence from behind them, but alone in the dark, reality set in, and Genrikhovich came after them. The deeper they went into the tunnel, the worse the smell became until it was almost overwhelming.

  “?Querido Dios!” said Eddie, gagging. “?Mierda Ruso huele mucho peor que la Cubana, creo que!”

  Holliday didn’t need a translation. “No kidding,” he said with a grunt. They pressed on, the walls and arched ceiling of the tunnel growing damp and mildewed as they continued deeper down the passageway. The bricks of the floor were crumbling with dampness, and every now and again there was a flash of dark shadow that skittered away, chittering sounds of irritation fleeing from the bright beam of light cast by the searching beam of the lamp.

  “Ratas,” grumbled Eddie. “Odio las ratas de mierda.”

  “We know,” said Holliday. Ten minutes after entering the side tunnel they reached what appeared to be a main channel. There was a raised concrete step on either side of a broad, sluggishly flowing stream of brown muck, the thick stew of effluent scattered with floating islands of things more solid that defied description.

  The concrete construction was old and crumbling, patched here and there with varying grades of cement. The raised sides of the trough were about three feet above the lavalike flow of the waste, which was flowing right to left. The sides were about two and a half feet wide, covered in sludge and treacherous-looking, the danger made worse by the fact that the walls curved upward, forcing anyone foolish enough to be here in the first place to walk in a half crouch.

  Genrikhovich stared, horrified. “Reka diaryei,” he said.

  “Reki Rossii diaryei,” corrected Eddie. A river of Russian diarrhea.

  Holliday grimaced at the revolting image and swallowed hard. “I’m lost,” he said. “Which way do we go, left or right?”

  Eddie spoke up immediately. “The flow of the mierda is from west to east, if that is any help. Perhaps un poco mas al nordeste as well.”

  “You’re sure?” Holliday asked.

  “Yes.” Eddie nodded firmly. “I have a thing. . una brujula, in my head,” explained the Cuban. Holliday frowned. Eddie turned to Genrikhovich. “Kompas?” he asked in Russian.

  “A compass?” Holliday said.

  “Si, companero, a compass. It never fails me.”

  “If this is true we should go east,” Genrikhovich suggested. “West is the Neva. East is the center of the city. Perhaps we could find a way to the metro.”

  “All right.” Holliday nodded. “Stay close and watch your step.” He ducked down and headed upstream along the slime-covered bank of the swirling river of sludge.

  Within minutes of entering the sewer tunnel all three men were filthy as they were forced to reach out and steady themselves against the walls, their clothing scraping the slime-covered bricks and their shoes caking with ancient excrement. As they continued down the passage, each at various times would slip and tumble into the stream of sewage. Finally, covered in filth, they gave up all attempts to keep themselves even partially free of the stinking, oozing effluent and walked along knee-deep in the stream, the footing more solid under them and with far more clearance for their heads. More than once Holliday had felt some strange sort of abnormal movement within the flow they pushed against, and he could have sworn something unthinkable had brushed against his sodden pants legs. Something swimming.

  After what seemed to be an eternity they reached some sort of two-story hub with sewers on the upper levels sending putrid waterfalls of effluent slopping down into a large pool, the pool itself having several even larger outlets.

  Holliday shook his head in amazement and disgust. Catwalks encrusted with filth and mold stretched over the pool-obviously people were actually meant to come to this horrible cathedral, complete with a cathedral organ of accreted matter that ran down the curved brick wall in pipelike stalactites.

  On the far side of the pool, reached by one of the catwalks, they found a small concrete chamber that was probably used as a rest stop by sewer workers. Eddie found it excruciatingly funny that the room came with its own toilet cubicle, and for a time he couldn’t stop laughing and muttering under his breath in Spanish. There was also a set of lockers in the room, which held complete sets of protective clothing, along with hard hats, oxygen tanks and masks.

  “We change,” said Holliday. “We can’t go back to the real world covered in crap. At least these will make us look official.”

  “We are above the metro station at Pushkinskaya,” said Genrikhovich.

  “How do you know that?” Holliday asked.

  Genrikhovich pointed to a metal sign half-obscured with old sludge.

  “We’re above the station?”

  “St. Petersburg metro lines had to be dug very deep to reach bedrock. The whole city is built on the Neva and the Fontanka estuaries.”

  “And if we go up?”

  “It is the Vitebsky railway station.”

  “Where do trains go from there?”

  “Mostly to Western Europe. Also to Kaliningrad and Smolensk, if I remember correctly.”

  Eddie shook his head. “They will have eyes at the train stations, even if they are only electronic.”

  “How far are we from the Hermitage?”

  “A mile. Perhaps a little more than that.”

  Eddie frowned. “It is not far enough, mis compadres. They will have a security cordon at least that far out by now.”

  Genrikhovich spoke up. “My sister Marina and I have a dacha in Novoye Devyatkino. It is the last stop on the number one metro line.”

  “I very much doubt your sister would appreciate a couple of fugitives as houseguests,” said Holliday.

  “Marina is rarely there. She works at the United Nations in New York. I am there more than she is.”

  “We need to get as far as we can, mi coronel.” Eddie shrugged. “I would like to have a wash of my body, too, I think.”

  “All right.” Holliday nodded. “The end of the line it is.”

  17

  Marina and Victor Genrikhovich’s dacha, or summer place, in Novoye Devyatkino looked like Hansel and Gretel’s gingerbread house in the middle of Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green public housing development. Once upon a time, Novoye Devyatkino had been pleasant countryside with scattered farms and the summer homes of the wealthy, set on the banks of streams and rivers, or the shores of the several lakes dotting the area.

  Large woodlots of ash and alder, birch and pine covered the landscape, interspersed with rolling hills and meadows bright with wildflowers. In the fifties, following Stalin’s brutal purges, Leningrad had seen something of a ghastly architectural renaissance, and a new kind of forest had grown in Novoye Devyatkino, a forest of blank-faced concrete apartment buildings that looked more like gray high-rise gulags than places for families to live.

  The quality of workmanship had been uniformly terrible, the landscaping and services nonexistent, and the day-to-day existence of people forced to live there simply to justify the terminus of the metro main line had been bleak. By the seventies the whole area was a semislum; by the fall of the Soviet Union it had become dangerous.

  With the disappearance of Communism, Novoye Devyatkino went through yet another transformation. The old high-rises were knocked down-at least most of them-and new apartment buildings were erected, these with elevators that actually worked, enough square footage to be livable, and enough schools, shopping, restaurants and recreational services to make the revived suburb an attractive, modern alternative to St. Petersburg’s enormous nineteenth-century apartment blocks, with their clanking plumbing, leaking faucets and drafty windows, not to mention their exorbitant rents.

  Through it all a few of the original family cottages had remained. The Genrikhovich dacha was a two-bedroom two-story with a board-and-batten sec
ond floor with brick facing and fieldstone below. The little house had a steeply sloping roof covered in split cedar shingles and trimmed in rustic gingerbread. There was a makeshift carport tacked onto one side with an old UAZ Buhanka parked beneath it. The Buhanka, or “loaf” in Russian, was a knockoff of the old VW bus. This one was covered in patches of primer paint and looked almost as old as Genrikhovich.

  The big living room had a large stone fireplace with a dining room and country kitchen in the rear. There was a floor-to-ceiling brick-and-board bookcase in the living room crammed with what turned out to be English-language crime novels going back to the nineteenth century.

  Marina had squeezed in a powder room where there had once been a pantry, and large windows in the dining room had been replaced with French doors leading out to a small deck. There were two bedrooms and a full bathroom separating them on the second floor.

  The furniture was old and mostly Victorian, with braided rag rugs and a few willow-twig armchairs that looked extremely uncomfortable and had probably come with the house.

  “It was part of my great-grandmother’s dowry when she married my great-grandfather,” said Genrikhovich. “She was the daughter of an admiral and he was a professor at the old Naval Guards Academy. He taught celestial navigation and mathematics. They kept him on after the revolution because, as he put it, ‘Even Stalin could not alter the course of the stars.’ He was good at his job, so they let him keep the dacha; it has remained in our family ever since.”