Red Templar

7

In the late afternoon they stopped in a place called Golden Sands, a resort town about fifteen miles outside the city of Varna. Like most off-season summer destinations, there was an empty, abandoned air to the town, the neon signs on the strip bars and the sex stores dark, the soft-ice-cream stands boarded up for the season and almost no traffic, pedestrian or otherwise.

They found a hotel called the Grifid Arabella that was still open for business, booked a suite and put an exhausted Genrikhovich to bed. The Russian had become apoplectic at discovering that they’d been involved with the deaths of the secret police thugs they’d left in the ditch, and it had taken them more than an hour to calm him down with a combination of violent threats from Eddie and reassurances from Holliday.

All three restaurants in the high-rise hotel were closed, but they eventually found a place on the main street of the town called the Happy Bar and Grill that looked like it was part of a chain. The logo showed a smiling man, in a tall white hat and a mustache, who looked remarkably like Chef Boyardee from the spaghetti cans, and the interior decor was a combination maritime/rock-and-roll theme, with neon guitars, real saxophones and ships in bottles.

The Happy menu offered everything from sushi to skewers to something dreadful-looking called “Happy Bits,” which appeared to be crinkle-cut home fries and chicken nuggets covered in a congealed grayish gravy that gleamed in the harsh overhead lighting. They also offered something suspiciously called “Krispy Loins,” which Holliday didn’t even want to think about. Virtually everything on the menu was served with an ice-cream scoop of potato salad and sour cream.

“Genrikhovich would love this place,” commented Holliday. He ordered a “Slavic Salad” and a chicken skewer from the pleasant, English-speaking waiter, whose name was Viktor. Eddie ordered the same thing.

“Let him sleep,” said the Cuban. “I’ve had enough of his peos for one day.”

“Agreed.” Holliday nodded. Their food arrived quickly and they began to eat. Slavic Salad turned out to be a mixture of peeled tomatoes, roasted peppers, garlic, black pepper, olives, olive oil, cottage cheese, yogurt and fresh parsley, and it wasn’t half-bad.

“They will have discovered those men by now,” said Eddie, looking suspiciously at the lump of cottage cheese in the middle of his colorful paper plate. He took a small taste on the end of his fork, made a face and nodded. “Ah, es requeson.” He speared a piece of tomato on the end of his plastic fork and chewed thoughtfully. “They will be watching the airport, I think.”

“Train station and bus station as well.” Holliday nodded. “Not to mention the fact that neither you nor I have visas for entering Russia.”

“If we stay here they will find us sooner or later. They will check the Turkish border crossing, I think. I am the very handsome man, I am sure, but I am also very black, and I don’t think they would be seeing too many pasaportes from Cuba.”

“So what do we do?”

Eddie shrugged. “There must be places where the border is easier to cross.”

“Into Serbia, maybe, but not into Russia.”

Viktor the waiter shimmered up and asked them if they needed anything else. . fresh-squeezed pomegranate and tangerine juice, perhaps, dessert, coffee, anything. . Holliday took out his wallet and counted out ten twenty-lev notes and set them on the table. By his calculations two hundred leva was about a hundred and fifty bucks. Viktor didn’t even blink. He swept up the bills, folded them neatly and tucked them into the pocket of his black-and-red vest.

“Dobar wecher! What I can do for the gospoda today?”

Holliday smiled pleasantly. “My friend and I are looking for a bit of an adventure,” he said. Viktor’s left eyebrow crept up and he glanced toward Eddie, but he remained silent.

“What kind adventure the gospoda look for? Small-type adventure, bigging adventure, or very serious adventure?”

“Very serious,” answered Holliday.

Viktor stared at the spot where the money had been. Holliday took out ten more bills. Viktor didn’t look happy. Holliday laid out an additional ten. At that point they disappeared into Viktor’s vest pocket again.

“You look for what adventure, exact?”

“We were thinking there must be an adventurous way to get into Russia.”

“Definite, sure.” Viktor nodded, giving his patented stare down at the table again.

“Two hundred more when you give us directions.”

“Easy,” said Viktor, grinning. “My friends, we do it all the time. Easy-peasy.”

“How?” Holliday asked.

“The ferry.”

“There is no ferry.”

“Not people ferry, ferry for the trains. Hero of Sevastopol. Leave tonight, nine o’clock, thirteen hours after, pssht! You have achieved Russia at port of Illichivsk.”

“Where is Illichivsk?”

“Maybe ten mile Odessa. Very nearby. I have girl there. Marinoska. Blondie-type girl. Nice.”

“I’m sure she is, Viktor. How do we get on the ferry?”

“Two hundred leva, I show you, another five hundred, I take you there.”

“To the ferry?”

“No, no.” Viktor grinned. “I take you Illichivsk and then Odessa to meet with Marinoska. Viktor give the best service in Varna, no doubt!”

“Okay,” said Holliday. “When do we leave?”

“Seven thirty o’clock. You have car, of course?”

“Of course.”

“In parking lot of hotel then,” said Viktor. “Seven thirty o’clock we meet. I bring food and some nice beers. You pay me then. We have good time, okay?”

“It’s a deal,” said Holliday.

* * *

The ferry terminal at the port of Varna was south of the main port and the naval base. After the fall of the Soviet Union, trade between Bulgaria and the Ukraine had collapsed, but UKR ferries had recently revived the trade in moving railcars back and forth between Varna and Odessa.

There was a crane arrangement where the wider-gauge bogies on the Russian cars were switched to the narrower European gauge, a large multitrack holding facility for waiting railcars, and a dock and hydraulic ramp system capable of handling two ships at a time, usually one just arrived and one just leaving.

Each four-hundred-foot-long ship was capable of taking a total of one hundred and eight freight cars on the main deck and the two decks below. The trick was to know which cars were going on the top deck and which were going below, and to make sure you didn’t try to hop a freight car that had just been unloaded. Empty freight cars were easy to spot, since they weren’t padlocked. Incoming cars were chalked with the capital letter, B for Bulgaria, and outgoing were marked with a U, for Ukraine. Tonight it was Hero of Sevastopol outgoing and Hero of Pleven incoming.

Viktor told them all of this on the twenty-minute drive from the Golden Sands to the outskirts of the ferry terminal, a pool of sickly yellow sodium lights in the dusky October evening. Holliday and Eddie had brought Genrikhovich a taco plate from the Happy Bar and Grill, a late-night dinner they knew might have the same kind of repercussions as the Burger King Quad Stacker, but the old man had to eat something, and an open freight car was much airier than a cramped little Moskvich.

Viktor turned out to be a full-service guide on their “very serious” adventure, turning up at the Grifid Arabella’s parking lot right on time and bringing four sleeping bags and a knapsack full of sandwiches, apples, two pomegranates, eight bottles of Zagorka beer and two rolls of toilet paper.

“Do they patrol the rail yard?” Holliday asked as they abandoned the rental halfway down a gravel side road.

“Sometimes. They have dogs but I have never been caught.”

“I do not like dogs,” said Eddie.

“Shtaw?” Genrikhovich said nervously.

“Saabaka,” translated Eddie. “Awchen Gnevny Saabaka.”

Genrikhovich went pale but he kept his mouth shut.

“What did you say to him?” Holliday asked.

“I told him there were dogs. Very big dogs,” said Eddie.

“You sure that was the right thing to do?”

“It will keep him. . ?paralizado por el miedo?”

“Paralyzed with fear?”

“Si, we will be much happier.” Eddie grinned. “Your Cuban is getting muy bueno.”

“Muchas gracias, mi companero,” answered Holliday, bowing gravely forward.

“?Ay, cono!” Eddie laughed. “Soon I take you back to my family in Habana.” He clamped a hand on Genrikhovich’s narrow shoulder as Viktor the waiter led the way down between the railway tracks. Viktor found the appropriate chalk marking on one of the cars and rolled back the door. The Bulgarian boosted himself up, then helped Holliday and Eddie up. Genrikhovich came last.

The interior of the empty boxcar was half-solid and half-slatted. The lingering smell suggested that some kind of root vegetable like rutabagas had been the last cargo. Viktor rumbled the door shut and set up the bedrolls in one corner of the car, and they all settled in. Holliday had one of the bottles of beer Viktor offered and then lay down on his bedroll.

Ten minutes after finishing the beer he was fast asleep. He woke once to the thumping and banging as the boxcar was loaded onto the ferry, and woke briefly again, feeling the odd, almost comforting sensation of being rocked on the sea. He fell asleep again and didn’t wake until the ship docked at the Ukrainian port city of Illichivsk at noon the following day. For the first time in twenty years Lieutenant Colonel John “Doc” Holliday, United States Army Ranger (retired), was back in what had once been enemy territory.