Red Templar

37

Holliday and Eddie stumbled down the brick-lined tunnel, the way ahead lit only by the dimming lights of their helmet lamps. Each time they hit a crumbling brick on the floor and tripped, Eddie groaned with pain. There was almost no blood on the makeshift compress Holliday had applied to the wound, but Eddie seemed to be getting weaker with every step, and Holliday was beginning to worry about internal bleeding.

He also worried about their immediate future. Arrest by the Spetsnaz squad would be a death sentence. He’d had a brief encounter with one of their teams in Afghanistan back in the days when the United States was backing the Taliban as “freedom fighters,” and they were definitely of the “shoot first and don’t bother to ask questions at all” school of warfare.

A Russian hospital would be almost as bad. A Cuban with a bullet in his belly brought into one of their emergency wards by an American ex-military would have the FSB sniffing around within an hour, and then all hell would break loose. The book or whatever it was he was hauling around on his back only made things worse.

If the volume really was Christ’s own gospel and not an interpretation and transliteration of his words written years and perhaps centuries after his death, then it would be the equivalent of a hydrogen bomb going off in the world of religion. Evangelical churches whose entire existence was based on “decoding” and interpreting the words of Christ would collapse overnight. The fundamental tenets and faith of the Catholic Church would almost certainly be called into question, and the “deconstruction” of a figure seen as a god or even as “the Son of God” could send shock waves through all of Christendom. The actual content of the gospel would eventually tell the tale.

Were the gospels the considered, thoughtful religious philosophy of an enlightened, brilliantly intelligent mind, or the rants and raves of a roving holy man with wild delusions of grandeur, a revolutionary turn of phrase and an innate ability to irritate and anger the rich and powerful? Not that it mattered, really; right now the last thing anyone needed was more fuel to feed an already violent mistrust among the great religions of the world.

From somewhere behind them Holliday heard a distant, drawn-out scream and he smiled. At least one of the Spetsnaz team had been impaled on Ivan the Terrible’s tiger trap. One less for him to deal with.

As they moved on down the corridor, Eddie seemed to be leaning more and more heavily on him.

“What’s wrong, compadre?” Holliday asked.

“Muy cansado, mi amigo, muy cansado,” answered Eddie in a mumble.

“Cansado, tired?”

“Si, very tired.”

“We can rest for a minute,” offered Holliday.

“Just a little minute.” Eddie sighed, sinking down to the dusty brick floor. Seated, Holliday crouched down beside him and gently peeled back the rear of his jacket. There was no blood on the back of his shirt. No exit wound, which meant he was almost surely bleeding internally. Holliday grimaced. How far from the chamber to the Saint Boris cathedral? Two hundred yards, three. They’d gone less than half that in almost fifteen minutes, and he could hear footsteps echoing in the tunnel behind them now. Maybe it was time to stop and fight. What? Bricks against AK-47s?

“We gotta go, Eddie boy,” said Holliday, putting on his worst Irish accent.

“Leave me, tio,” muttered Eddie.

“?Tio? I’m not your uncle, and this isn’t some stupid Audie Murphy film where that round-faced little Mr. Perfect stays back to zap a hundred crazy Japs with his machine gun and when he runs out of bullets he starts whipping them over the head with the red-hot barrel. You’re coming with me and you’re coming right now, goddamn it!”

“?Que? Who is this Audie Murphy?” Eddie asked. Holliday dragged him to his feet, got his arm under his shoulder and stumbled forward. A few yards later the tunnel turned sharply to the left and then ended. Holliday would have fallen over the edge if his headlamp beam hadn’t dipped out of sight first.

“Shit,” said Holliday. He played the light from his lamp over the edge and realized where they were. A foot beneath him the pile of broken rubble drifted down to the old metro station with its waiting self-powered car. He suddenly realized he could see a faint light coming from the driver’s cab in the front of the car. There was someone inside. As calmly as he could he reached up, switched off his own lamp and eased Eddie downward until his legs were dangling over the edge of the opening.

“Remember the old metro station we saw with Genrikhovich and Ivanov, the priest?”

“Si,” said Eddie, his voice quavering with fatigue.

“It’s right under us. There’s somebody on the train. Some kind of guard, I think. I’m going to take him out, but I’m going to have to leave you here for a minute or two. You okay with that?”

“Si, Popo Tio.” Eddie smiled. He was in some kind of shock-driven la-la land now.

“Okay,” said Holliday.

“Okay.” Eddie nodded, his eyes half-closed in sleep. The footsteps behind them were much louder now.

“Shit,” said Holliday.

“Si, mierda.” Eddie grinned.

Holliday eased Eddie to one side, then lowered himself carefully down onto the pile of rubble. He made his way blindly down the pile, concentrating on the little square of weak light coming out of the front of the subway car. He finally reached the platform. The doors of the car were still open. He stepped quietly inside, gripped the door handle of the driver’s compartment tightly with one hand and rapped on the door with the knuckles of his other hand.

The door burst open and a belligerent bullet-headed figure appeared, iPod buds dangling from his ears. Holliday could distinctly hear Slayer’s “Angel of Death” playing at earsplitting volume.

“Kto yebat’ ty?!” Bullet Head grunted angrily. Holliday slammed the door in the man’s face as hard as he possibly could. Bullet Head dropped like a stone, heavy metal still pounding out of his ears.

“It’s me, the angel of death,” said Holliday, and began stripping the man of his weapons.