Paul Christopher - Red Templar

“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.