Paul Christopher: Red Templar

And now this-Ferrum Polaris, Sword of the North. The third Damascus blade of the quartet supposedly made by Alberic, the mythical and magical dwarf blacksmith common to the mystical cultures of a dozen empires and nations. To Holliday it somehow seemed that the ghosts of those four Templar Knights from eight hundred years ago were haunting him, forcing him to discover their final secrets before their souls could finally rest.

The seat belt sign flashed on and the intercom crackled as the heavily accented voice of the pilot announced that they were making their final approach to Istanbul Ataturk Airport. Holliday sighed. He stared up at a loose, rattling rivet in the roof of the old aircraft and hoped for the best.

The Tupolev 154 landed without incident and eventually the three men made their way through customs and immigration. Genrikhovich’s tattered Russian Federation passport, as well as Eddie’s pale blue Republica de Cuba passport, raised a few eyebrows among the bored customs staff, especially since the two were in company with an American identified as a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, but they were allowed to proceed.

They stepped out into the modern concourse and Genrikhovich immediately spoke to Eddie in Russian, casting worried glances in Holliday’s direction every few moments. Finally he stopped talking and began scuttling down the concourse, heading for the car rental agencies.

“Now what?” Holliday asked as he and Eddie followed the Russian down the long, echoing corridor.

“The monk, it seems, is not in Istanbul. We must rent a car.”

Holliday sighed wearily. “So where is he?” His patience with Genrikhovich was rapidly running thin.

“Bulgaria,” said Eddie.

Holliday stopped in his tracks. “You’re kidding me.”

“I am afraid not, mi coronel ,” the Cuban answered. “The monk is in a place called Ahtopol. Our Russian friend says it is about a hundred and fifty kilometers from here. Perhaps ninety of your miles.”

“You’re sure there really is a monk?”

“According to tovarich Genrikhovich there is.”

“So what was this about a restaurant in Istanbul?”

“Tovarich Genrikhovich is extremely hungry. He has not eaten since leaving St. Petersburg two days ago, except for the sandwiches on the aircraft.”

Orange rubber between pieces of white cardboard. Holliday had taken one bite and stuffed the remainder of his into the seat’s barf bag.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” said Holliday, setting out after Genrikhovich again.

“?Como??Que dijiste?” Eddie asked quizzically.

“We’re a day late and a dollar short-we’ve gone too far to back off now.”

“Ah.” Eddie nodded. “In Spanish we say, ‘Faltan cinco para el peso.’ ”

Genrikhovich stopped at the Terra Car booth at the far end of the terminal and had a discussion with the man behind the counter. They spoke in neither Russian nor Turkish as far as Holliday could tell. He asked Eddie, but the Cuban only shrugged. Finally Genrikhovich turned, chattered away to Eddie, and then turned and looked expectantly toward Holliday.

“It is difficult to rent a car that you can take across borders,” explained Eddie, translating. “He needs your credit card to get approval.”

The rental car turned out to be a Moskvich Aleko of roughly the same vintage as the Tupolev on which they’d flown into Turkey. Not only did Holliday have to pay the rental fee, insurance and security deposit; he had to drive as well, since he was the only one with an international driver’s license.

With the car dealt with they went in search of food for Genrikhovich. His choice, bizarrely, was one of three Burger Kings at the airport, where he inhaled a Quad Stacker and fries. Holliday settled for a Whopper Jr., and Eddie begged off entirely, refusing to eat what he referred to as la carne de la calle -“street meat.”

They finally set off, the four-cylinder sewing-machine engine in the Moskvich grinding and banging, barely making fifty miles an hour on the surprisingly good highway leading northeast. Within ten minutes of leaving the airport, Genrikhovich was groaning, his stomach gurgling, and he muttered, “Prash-chayn-ya,” every few seconds for the inevitable and gaseous results of a Quad Stacker on an empty stomach. Eddie rolled the window down and smiled, enjoying the early-fall scenery.

For the first hour the roads were smooth-modern freeways with good signage, even if it was in an incomprehensible language. Foreign traffic signs never bothered Holliday, though; there were invariably rest stops and roadside food and lodging turn-ins where a traveler could always find someone willing to give directions, even if it was half in broken English and half in sign language. As a soldier, Holliday had done a lot of traveling, and in his opinion most people were proud of their country and proud of their innate hospitality-with the possible exception of the Asmat people of New Guinea, who would sooner eat you than feed you.

By the second hour they’d veered even farther north toward the coast, and the roads went from good to bad very quickly. Soon they were traveling on old concrete pavement that kept throwing up stones that sounded like machine-gun bullets whacking into the underbelly and the side panels of the car. Scrubby cedars and pines edged both sides of the two-lane road. By then Eddie had rolled up the window because of the dust and Genrikhovich’s incessant “prash-chayn-ya” apologies for the state of his bowels. The noxious effect of a half pound of meat, four slices of rubbery cheese and six strips of fatty bacon had turned the air in the small, hot and noisy car into a fetid soup.

There turned out to be several border crossings. The first was a modern arrangement of buildings, flags and poles, which they got through with a minimum of fuss and lots of smiles. They quickly filled out visa forms and had their passports duly stamped, and Holliday used one of his credit cards to purchase a walletful of smallish pink and blue twenty-lev notes from the border post’s ATM.

The second border crossing was a slightly tougher-looking but abandoned version of the first that dated back to perestroika. The last one, small, overgrown and choked with underbrush, was a plain, one-man hut with a broken barrier that was probably World War II vintage. It was the off-season, so there wasn’t much traffic.

A few minutes later the two lanes became one, with a mysterious dotted white line where the shoulder should have been. Off to the right the Black Sea appeared, hazy in the distance. To Holliday it looked like every other ocean he had ever seen, and he’d seen a lot of them through the years. Maybe too many. He’d thought about that a lot since the horrors he’d witnessed recently, deep in the African jungle. Maybe it was time to quit. Maybe it was time to do what old soldiers were supposed to do, just fade away. It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed his mind in the last few years.

Dust or not, Holliday and Eddie rolled down their windows. In the backseat, Genrikhovich just moaned.

“You never talk to me about the ladies, mi compadre . You never talk about you make sex like other men,” said Eddie.

Holliday burst out laughing. He turned toward Eddie, whose deep brown eyes were twinkling like an Irishman’s. The big black Cuban was grinning. He reached out and poked a forefinger into Holliday’s ribs.

“You not uncomepinga , are you, a maricon ?”

“No, not if that’s what I’m pretty sure I think it means.”

“You have a lady, a wife?”

“I did, a long time ago.”

“Where is she now?”

“She died. Cancer. More than ten years ago now.”