Red Templar

12

The metal steps seemed to go on forever, their feet clanging noisily as they headed downward. The stairwell itself was lit bleakly every ten steps or so by short flickering fluorescents protected behind wire cages. Holliday felt as though he were descending to a castle dungeon. He wondered whether every step downward was taking him closer and closer to some unseen disaster.

Genrikhovich led the way, chattering on as they descended. “The basements beneath the Winter Palace were extensively renovated between the wars. The Armenian was no fool-he knew there would be another war and he prepared for it, even though Stalin fought him at every turn.”

“The Armenian?”

“Joseph Orbeli, the director of the Hermitage from 1934 to 1951. He knew Hitler would come, so he turned the basements into concrete bunkers for the collections. The Winter Palace was bombarded dozens of times, but not a single artifact or object was ever damaged. A few people froze to death on the rooftop fire watches, but nothing was ever damaged and no one was hurt in the basement shelters.”

They finally reached the bottom of the stairs and found themselves in the cavernous rabbit warren of chambers and rooms beneath the Hermitage. There was no plan to any of it; the refitting of the basement area had clearly been done ad hoc as funds or time or material demanded. Everything was done in rough concrete, some gray and solid-looking, the wooden grain of the forms still visible on the stony surface, while other areas were old and crumbling, too much sand or too little lime in the mixture. Stalactites of dripping mineral exudates dripped from parts of the ceilings, and there were white salt stains on the walls.

Genrikhovich led them down a succession of zigzagging unmarked green-and-white corridors and through huge arch-ceilinged chambers fitted with wood and metal racks filled with sturdy crates of all sizes and shapes. There was little signage anywhere except for small wooden plaques here and there with stenciled letter-number combinations. Cats wandered everywhere. They were every size and type, but they all looked extremely well fed.

“The Hermitage cats.” Genrikhovich smiled. “A tradition here. Very useful too. Rats.”

The Russian finally stopped in front of a plain, numbered door, took out a ring of keys and flipped through them, looking for the one he wanted. He found it eventually, turned the key in the lock and opened the door, ushering Holliday and Eddie into his private inner sanctum. The room was large, twenty feet on a side and low ceilinged, and covered in sagging acoustic tile, lit by banks of fluorescent tubes hanging down on chains. Two walls were filled floor to ceiling with old-fashioned wooden plan drawers of the kind architects used for storing drawings. The third wall was fitted with a long worktable with its own high-intensity lighting and a section that acted as a light table. There were two armless drafting chairs on casters, as though Genrikhovich had once had assistants. Above the table were rows of metal racks and shelves stuffed with thick numbered and lettered binders, all in gray slipcases. The area to the right of the desk contained an institutional-looking metal desk and a wooden rolling office chair. There was an old PC on the desk sitting on a boxy hard drive.

“So, here we are,” said Genrikhovich, closing and locking the door behind him. He sat down in the chair in front of the desk. There was also a modem and a touch-tone multiline phone. The room was completely functional except for a small framed photograph on the desk. It showed a woman and a boy. The woman was wearing a drab, poorly fitted dress. She was holding the hand of a young boy of about ten. He was wearing a young pioneer’s uniform.

“You and your mother?” Holliday asked, nodding toward the picture.

“My wife and my son, Yuri. They were visiting my wife’s parents in Arzamas in the Gorky oblast. Her father was a retired machinist there. It was his eightieth birthday and he wanted to see his grandson. June fourth, 1988. A train carrying one hundred and eighteen tons of hexogen-you know hexogen?”

“RDX.” Holliday nodded. It was one of the best-known military explosives ever made.

“Yes, RDX. The tanks exploded. My wife’s family lived in a small block of flats next to the railway line. They were all killed, vaporized. There was no funeral. There was nothing to bury.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Holliday.

Genrikhovich shrugged and sighed. “It was a very long time ago. More than twenty years.” Even so the Russian’s eyes were welling up with barely contained tears.

Holliday nodded. He knew what that was like and knew that the sadness and the pain never really left you. He still dreamed of Fay sometimes, usually a Fay who was young and vibrant and healthy, but just as often he dreamed of her gaunt and dying, her eyes rimmed with the dark shadows that predicted her inevitable death. He often wondered now whether that kind of pain grew more painful as you became older and came closer to death yourself.

“So,” said Genrikhovich, regaining his composure. “We come to the beginning of it all.”

Genrikhovich took out his keys, found one and fitted it into the drawer of the desk. He took out a plain green file folder and took a single sheet from it, placing it delicately on the light table. He flicked a toggle switch and the milky sheet of glass making up the surface of the table glowed. Holliday swiveled in his drafting chair and stared.

“What is it?” Holliday asked, wondering what it was he’d come so far to see. In the end it was nothing more than a small rectangle of paper, obviously old, pressed between two sheets of celluloid, themselves yellowed with age. The document had a pale mimeographed bust of Stalin in three-quarter profile at the top, surrounded by flags. The lines and squares on the paper were filled with figures. There was a signature at the bottom, faded to a yellowed sepia and unquestionably done with a straight pen. The name was Boris Vasilyevich Legran. The date was June 7, 1933. There was a pale blue stamp-pad scrawl beneath Legran’s name.

“Who was Legran?”

“Briefly he was the director of the State Hermitage. More so he was a crony of Stalin’s.”

“What does it say?”

“It’s a purchase order made out to Torolf Prytz for the construction of a gold key two and one half inches long,” Genrikhovich said. He took another celluloid-enclosed document out of the file and laid it beside the first. The second document showed a diagram of an old-fashioned skeleton key with dimensions marked. “These are the specifications for the key.”

“This would seem to be true.” Eddie nodded, reading over Holliday’s shoulder.

“Who was Torolf Prytz?” Holliday asked. “It doesn’t sound like a Russian name to me.”

“There were few goldsmiths left in the new Soviet Russia after 1917, as I am sure you can understand,” answered Genrikhovich, his tone dry. “And none capable of the master craftsmanship to re-create the key. Torolf Prytz was a Norwegian master goldsmith. Legran commissioned the key from him, with Stalin’s countersignature below.” He pointed to the scrawl beneath Legran’s signature. “He always used a signature stamp except on documents he signed in public.”

“What is this supposed to prove?” Holliday asked.

“Nothing on its own,” said Genrikhovich. “It is merely the first piece in the puzzle.”

“And the next?”

Genrikhovich took something that looked like an old-fashioned photostat of a letter, written on CCCP or Soviet stationery with the words "НАРОДНЫЙ КОМИССАРИАТ ВНУТРЕННИХ ДЕЛ"

Below was the wreathed red sigil of the Soviet Union. It was dated March 1934. The letter was countersigned in a scrawl much like the signature stamp on the purchase order for the Norwegian goldsmith. Holliday pointed to the Cyrillic words on the letterhead. “Eddie?”

“Narodnyy komissariat vnutrennikh del, NKVD,” translated the Cuban.

Genrikhovich nodded. “It is a letter from Beria, the head of the NKVD, to Legran, the director, berating him because the key does not work and serves only to operate the music box within the 1906 Kremlin Egg. He asks for Legran’s resignation. The letter is countersigned in ink by Stalin and asks for the money spent on the gold key to be returned.” The Russian shrugged. “Of course, the operation of the music box was all the key was ever designed for in the first place.”

“Did Legran resign?”

“The following day.” Genrikhovich nodded.

“Where did the letter come from?”

“Legran put it into his personal correspondence file. Eventually all the official correspondence comes to the archives. I was adding the material to Legran’s general documentation file when I saw the letter, so I removed it.”

“I’m still not sure where all this is going,” said Holliday.

Genrikhovich picked up the phone on his desk and spoke in Russian for a moment. Holliday stiffened.

“He is asking for a file,” murmured Eddie, translating. “Nothing more than that.”

A few minutes later a young man appeared carrying a pale pink cardboard file case. He gave it to Genrikhovich, who signed a small chit in return, and then the boy left after a pleasant spasiba and that was that.

“Look,” said the Hermitage document curator. He took an item from the pink file case. This was an eight-by-eight transparency of the base of what appeared to be an octagonal piece of onyx covered by a green felt cover. Genrikhovich took out a second transparency, which he laid beside the first, and then a third. Both the second and third transparencies showed the same eight-sided onyx base with the green felt removed. The second transparency was black-and-white, while a third was in color. The second transparency had the date 1906 drawn on it in white ink. The date on the color transparency was digitally stamped August 12, 2012. The base of the second transparency had the appropriate Faberge hallmark stamped on it: БA

And so did the second, but with one small change: JVA

“I don’t get it,” said Holliday.

“By the 1880s Faberge was the imperial court jeweler. It was one of the functions for the Hermitage to document and photograph each of the Faberge eggs given to the empress by the czar. The first black-and-white transparency shows the base of the Kremlin Egg, also known as the Uspenski Cathedral Egg, made by Faberge in 1903, although it wasn’t given to Alexandra until 1906, for a variety of reasons. The bottom was covered with felt so it wouldn’t scratch delicate surfaces. The master goldsmith in charge of the Kremlin Egg was Johan Victor Aarne, a Finn who worked in the Faberge shop in St. Petersburg from 1891 to 1904, when he returned to Finland. The Cyrillic hallmark is his signature, the punch for making it his alone to use.” Genrikhovich paused. “Three months ago some of the Kremlin treasures were taken out of the collection for repairs and for cleaning. Included among them was the Kremlin Egg; the clockwork mechanisms had become clogged with dust and dirt over the decades, and several of the larger jewels had become loose in their settings.

“Since the Hermitage has the largest and best conservation unit in the Federation, the items were sent here. As chief archivist I was responsible for the documentation of the treasures as they came into the Hermitage, and our photographers took a series of comprehensive detailed exposures of each and every item. The second transparency of the Kremlin Egg was taken at that time.”

“Different marks on the base,” said Holliday.

“Precisely. The JVA mark from the second transparency is also that of Johan Victor Aarne, but it was not used by him until his return to Vyborg, Finland, in 1904. He used the mark between that date and his death in 1934.”

“So sometime in that thirty-year period he made a perfect copy of the egg.”

“Yes,” said Genrikhovich. “The one on display in the Kremlin Armoury is a fake.”