Red Templar

32

Cardinal Antonio Niccolo Spada, Vatican secretary of state through three popes, one of them assassinated, sat at his permanently reserved table in the dining room of Capricci Siciliani, the remains of his roulade of baked anchovies with its wonderful citrus-seafood tang on the plate in front of him. He sipped from his glass of pale Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi and gave a slightly melodramatic sigh as he set the glass down beside his plate.

“Father Brennan, you are no aid to a man’s digestion.” The cardinal shook his head. “I have an office, as you well know; I keep regular hours. Why can’t we save our discussions for those times?” In the distance the blaring of horns from the nighttime traffic on the Lungotevere Tor di Nona could be heard, and beyond that the never-ending rumble of the city of Rome.

For Spada a meal in the peaceful old section of the city was an escape from the complex responsibilities and intrigues of his occupation in the Vatican, but even now, late in the evening, those responsibilities and intrigues reached out and found him. The fact that they took the form of the disheveled, chain-smoking and foulmouthed head of the Vatican Secret Service just made the intrusion that much more distasteful.

“Sorry to be bothering Your Eminence’s evening meal, but some things just won’t wait. Even for a man such as yourself and his plate of sardines.”

“Anchovies, Father Brennan, cooked in garlic butter with parsley and tomato sauce with the juice of a lemon. It is a classic dish from Sicily, where I had the great fortune to be born.”

Brennan frowned. “Anchovies? Salty things they put on pizza pies, aren’t they, Your Eminence? Couldn’t be good for the blood pressure, could they?” Like most Irish the cardinal had ever met, Brennan never made a statement without making it a question.

“Anchovies aren’t born salty, Brennan-these are fresh.”

“Is that right? Well, you could knock me over with a feather now, couldn’t you?”

Spada had known Brennan long enough to recognize when the Irish priest was needling him. “Get on with it, Father Brennan; what ill wind is it that blew you to my table tonight?”

“Pesek was to call me with a report tonight.”

“And?” Spada said, sipping his wine.

“He has not done so.”

“Perhaps you should call him then.”

“It’s not in the way of how he does things, Your Eminence.” The priest paused, gauging whether the cardinal’s meal was actually over and whether or not it was diplomatic to light a cigarette. It had been almost twenty minutes since his last and he decided to chance it. He took a dark blue flip-top pack of Richmond Superkings and lit one from the store of kitchen matches he kept in his jacket pocket. The cardinal frowned. A busboy appeared and cleared away the dinner plate, and a few seconds later a waiter arrived with Spada’s dessert, Cassatella di Sant’Agata, literally the Breasts of Saint Agatha, a delicate layer of shortbread in the shape of a breast, then stuffed with chopped pistachios and custard. Finally it was covered in pink icing and each mound was topped with a maraschino cherry.

Realizing he’d made a mistake, Brennan pinched out the tip of the cigarette with a stained and calloused thumb and forefinger, then dropped the butt in his other pocket.

“Certainly a way to test your vows of celibacy,” said Brennan, looking at the mildly obscene dessert.

Spada smiled and plucked one of the cherries from the tip of one of the sugar-icing breasts. He popped it into his mouth. “Saint Agatha was tortured cruelly; the eating of her breasts is an act of fealty to her passionate faith in Jesus Christ.”

“Patron saint of bell founders and bakers, too, as I recall, yes?”

“As you know perfectly well, Father Brennan.” Spada ate the other cherry. “Now get on with it.”

“As I said, Pesek hasn’t called and he’s long past due.”

“Some context for all of this would be nice,” said Spada, sticking a fork in the left breast, breaking through to the oozing custard-and-chopped-nut center.

Brennan flinched a little; had the cardinal been in his full red cassock and biretta it would have been something out of an old Fellini movie. He looked up at the ceiling of the dining room and spoke. “Pesek had traced them to their hotel in Moscow. He somehow learned they were to meet with Genrikhovich later that evening. He was going to deal with the situation for us then.”

“Does Pesek have any idea who Genrikhovich really is?”

“I doubt it. He would have been in his late teens at the time, and it was not the name by which he was generally known. It was his patronymic, and he generally went by his mother’s name, even inside Russia.”

“What about Holliday?”

“Almost certainly not; in the first place, if he knew he would have run like an Irishman from a temperance meeting.”

“He’s a historian.”

“He’s an American historian, Your Eminence. In the history books of the United States the name Genrikhovich probably doesn’t even rate a footnote. Besides, his specialty is medieval history, not the Cold War.”

“All right, assuming that is so, why do you think Pesek has not called?”

“Either he’s forgotten, lost them somehow, or Holliday has killed him instead of the other way around.”

“Which do you think is the most likely?”

“If Pesek hasn’t called me within the next couple of hours I’d put my money on Holliday. He almost killed Pesek in Venice; maybe the bugger succeeded this time. He’s got the skills.”

“If Pesek is dead, do we have any other options?”

“Do you mean does Mother Church have any more assassini up its holy sleeves?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I mean,” said the cardinal stiffly, the dessert and the wine in front of him forgotten. Brennan lit the butt of his cigarette and puffed on it gratefully.

“None that I know of, not of Pesek’s stature.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“I know one of the people who work for Pezzi in the archbishop’s office in Moscow; perhaps he knows of a few thugs in the archdiocese.”

“Paolo Pezzi is no friend of mine,” said Spada, his voice sour. “He wanted my job more than I did, but there were too many rumors about his sexual proclivities. He considers Russia to be a banishment.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to take our friends where we find them, Your Eminence. I’ll call my connection in Moscow.”

“Holliday cannot be allowed to get his hands on the book. It would ruin us,” said the cardinal.

Brennan smiled. “The Church has lasted these one thousand, nine hundred and seventy years, Your Eminence. One man isn’t about to bring it down.”

“I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong, Father Brennan; one man is precisely what it would take.”

Their ride on the grease-slicked, unholy river of Moscow’s sewage was an hour-long nightmare. On the voyage they saw every conceivable type of waste that a city of eleven and a half million people could produce, animal, vegetable and even mineral. To make things worse, the high-arched tunnel was thick with stalactites of lime that had clearly been forming for centuries, and these pendulous horrors hanging from the stone of the ceiling had become roosts for generations of bats, who dropped their guano where they roosted and fed on whatever had the misfortune to float or fly past them. Fortunately the filters in their respirator masks removed the majority of the odors, but the ammonia-fumes emanation from the bat feces was eye-wateringly dense.

“Where are we?” Holliday asked, raising his voice over the glutinous blender sound of the little outboard.

“Close now,” called back Ivanov, checking the GPS on the seat beside him. “We are beneath the old Zaryadye district. The same place they found the bunker of illegals. We must move carefully now.”

“Why so careful here?” Holliday asked.

“Spetsnaz,” said Genrikhovich. “Although we are below the levels of the special Kremlin telecommunications conduits, we are very close.”

“We’re below them?” Holliday asked.

“Certainly,” said Ivanov. “Moscow today is not the Moscow of a thousand years ago. There have been many cities here, one built atop the next, like the ancient city of Troy. Each in its turn had its own way of dealing with its waste. According to Father Stelletskii, there are seventeen distinct levels under Moscow’s streets, each with its own secret passages, tunnels, dungeons and bunkers.”

Ivanov eased off on the throttle and guided the rubber dinghy to “shore.” Holliday twisted around in his seat and saw an outflow channel on their left. A mountain climber’s piton had been driven into a crack in the concrete. As they bumped into the walkway Eddie took the forward line and threaded it through the piton’s eyelet.

“This like the character Arne Saknussemm,” said Eddie, tying them up and stepping up out of the little boat. He held out a hand to Holliday and pulled him up.

“Who?” Holliday asked.

“You have never read this story?” Eddie said, surprised.

“What story?” Holliday asked. Genrikhovich clambered awkwardly out of the dinghy, almost losing his footing, and Ivanov climbed up onto the concrete walkway.

“It is very popular in Cuba, oh, my, yes,” said the Cuban. “Viaje al Centro de la Tierra by the writer Jules Verne, no?”

“Journey to the Center of the Earth,” said Holliday.

“Yes.” Eddie nodded. “Arne Saknussemm left behind A.K. to guide the people who came after; the padre leaves these,” said Eddie, nudging the piton.

“Eddie, you never cease to amaze me.”

“Thank you. . I think.”

Once again Ivanov led the way up the outfall passage. The effluent in the narrow, downward-sloping channel was different from anything else Holliday had seen so far on their odorous journey beneath the streets of Moscow; it was dark, almost black, and it flowed thickly, like molasses. Even through the respirator Holliday could tell the smell was different, too: richer, a sweet-rotten scent, like potatoes left too long in a root cellar.

After traveling along the outfall for a little more than two hundred yards they stepped out into an enormous circular domed room at least three hundred feet in diameter. The room was made entirely of brick, and very old. At least a hundred broad, troughlike spigots had been inserted into the sloping walls of the dome, one spigot every few yards, and from each one there was a steady trickling flow of the tarry goop.

From the spigots the thick fluid fell over the edge of an iron walkway that surrounded the base of the black, shallow lake that filled the middle of the room like some enormous tar pit. There were a dozen outfall channels ranged around the enclosure, just like the one they came up. The fumes rising off the artificial lake were thick, choking and easily identifiable. In the center of the lake greasy bubbles rose and broke lazily.

“That’s alcohol!” Holliday said.

“Indeed,” said Ivanov. “As I mentioned, we are traveling underneath the old Zaryadye district. The fruit and vegetable markets have been there for more than three centuries. At market’s closing each day the spoiled or rotten fruit and vegetables are tossed into a central refuse area and forgotten. The produce rots further, of course, and over time, the heat created by the rotting began a fermentation process. By the mid-nineteenth century the fumes created became both a health and fire hazard, so this collecting pond was created. Essentially what you see in front of you is a lake of vodka. Poisonous, but vodka nevertheless.”

“Good thing the local drunkard population hasn’t found it,” Holliday commented. His lamp shone out over the glass-smooth surface of the pool.

“They have,” said Genrikhovich, laughing behind his mask. “That’s why it’s so poisonous; several of them have fallen in and added their decomposing corpses to the brew.”

They moved off to the left, following Ivanov’s lead. He paused again at the fifth archway and turned into the passage beyond. They left the dark fuming lake behind them in the enclosing darkness. The thought that the only way to get back to the surface was by retracing their steps began to prey on Holliday’s thoughts; in the Rangers you always left yourself with at least one line of safe withdrawal, but he saw none here. As they walked along the side corridor leading away from the lake he asked Ivanov about it.

“There are several escape routes, none of them easy, all of them mapped out by Father Stelletskii through the years. They lead upward to sewer grates and storm sewer passageways. Most of them are very dangerous: straight up and terribly narrow. Rungs on ladders rusted through.”

A few minutes later they reached another tunnel running at a right angle to theirs. Ivanov stopped just inside the entrance and held up one hand. He listened for what seemed a very long time, then turned and whispered.

“We are within reach of our goal now. This passage leads under the Kremlin Wall but it is guarded by Spetsnaz patrols almost constantly. We must not speak at any time.”

The others nodded and Ivanov stepped into the passageway, followed by the others. It was barely wide enough for a man to move through without brushing the sides, and the ceiling was so low that both Eddie and Holliday had to stoop slightly. There was a troughlike channel on either side of the tunnel about three feet wide and about as deep, presumably for runoff during heavy rains.

There were bundles of cable stapled to the side walls above the troughs and even heavier conduits overhead. The wire bundles and conduits were all stamped with Cyrillic lettering. One stenciled notation was clear even to Holliday: ФСБ, FSB, the post-Soviet version of the KGB. They were in one of the telecommunications tunnels Ivanov had mentioned. They had been walking along the corridor for ten minutes when Ivanov suddenly stopped dead and raised his hand. “The lamps! Turn them off!”

They did as Ivanov instructed and they were instantly bound by complete darkness. In the far distance Holliday could faintly hear people speaking. A few seconds later he saw the bobbing of lights flickering off the walls ahead of them.

“Spetsnaz!” Ivanov hissed. “Into the runoff channels, and keep absolutely quiet!”

Holliday dropped down and rolled into the runoff trough on his right. He could hear the equipment rattling on his work belt and prayed that the Spetsnaz patrol was either too far away or talking too loudly to hear it.

They all held their breath as the patrol approached and the voices got louder. Eventually they appeared, five of them walking in file, each with a miner’s light like the one Holliday carried, but brighter and attached to simple plastic headbands. In the bobbing illumination of their lights Holliday could see that they were heavily armed.

Each man carried an assault rifle at port arms, and each had a sidearm holstered at his side. Stun grenades were clipped to a bandolier strapped diagonally across each man’s chest. Each was protected by a black Kevlar bulletproof vest, and they were all wearing heavy black combat boots. The men were all big, Holliday’s height or better. Hell on wheels in any kind of fight.

They finally passed by, the sound of their boots echoing in the distance. Holliday stood and switched on his lamp. All around him the others rose up from the runoff channels and did the same.

“Close call,” said Holliday.

“There may be others,” said the priest. “We must hurry.” He took out the GPS unit, checked it and continued down the passageway. A hundred yards on, he stopped and turned, letting his light sweep over the left-hand wall. There was a narrow archway and another short passage that ended in a concrete wall. At the base of the wall the concrete facing had been chipped away in a rough, two-foot circular patch to reveal a brick wall behind.

“I believe that the way to Ivan the Terrible’s library lies behind this wall,” said Ivanov.

Together, working in two-man shifts, the four worked away at the wall with their climbing axes and Ivanov’s folding spade. Eventually they knocked out enough of the old brickwork for a man to pass through. A wash of pale light came through the hole, which was surprising, but when Holliday wiggled through the small aperture what he found beyond the wall was even more stunning.

“Incredible,” he whispered. “The old stories were true!”

“?Donde estamos?” Eddie asked, looking around.

“Amazing!” Holliday said. “A metro station. This is Stalin’s secret subway!”