Paul Christopher - Red Templar

“It’s the D-six,” said Holliday, fascinated by seeing something he always thought of as a Cold War urban myth.

“?Que?” Eddie asked.

“It was called Metro-two,” replied Holliday. “The KGB code-named it D-six. An escape route for high-ranking members of the Kremlin. It was supposed to lead to several underground command posts and bunkers and even an underground city. Stalin was even supposed to have used it to get to his dacha in Kuntsevo, which is where he spent most of World War Two.”

“We have no time for this,” said Ivanov irritably. He checked the GPS. “We are three hundred and eleven meters below the surface; this puts us in the time period of Ivan the Terrible. We must continue.”

“Continue where?” Holliday asked.

“There,” answered the priest, pointing. Under the broad lip of the platform above, Holliday could see a square of brickwork almost lost in the shadows. When the tunnel was dug for the train they must have simply cut through the passageway he and the others had come though, then sealed it up again when they were finished building the underground station.

“Hurry, please,” said Ivanov. “The Spetsnaz must patrol here regularly.” He scuttled across the tracks and ducked below the platform, crawling on his hands and knees to reach the rough patch of brickwork. The rest followed quickly behind him. This time it took them less than fifteen minutes to break through to the other side. They were instantly assailed by an odor that even their respirator masks failed to dull. Not the smell of human waste in all its forms, but something much worse, a thick stench of rot and mold and death.

The passageway narrowed almost immediately, and within fifteen yards the four were on their bellies, Ivanov in the lead.

“ Dios mio, what is that stink?” Eddie groaned. “It is much worse than before, this smell.”

They crept forward slowly until Ivanov stopped. “What is it?” Holliday asked, his lamp lighting up the man’s boots. There was no brickwork here, only an amalgam of broken stone and dank, dark earth.

“A grating of some kind. Pass me up the pry bar.”

Holliday slipped the eighteen-inch crowbar off his workman’s belt and passed it up to the priest. A moment later there was a grunt and the sound of metal on metal and then the sound of crumbling masonry.

“How many bars?” Holliday called out.

“Five. I’ll have to remove them all, and even then it will be a tight squeeze, especially for someone as large as you and your companion.”

The sound of straining metal continued for a long ten minutes and then stopped. There was a series of sounds from Ivanov as he slithered forward, his feet scrabbling for purchase and throwing back dirt into Holliday’s face. Finally the boots disappeared altogether and Holliday crawled forward, his lamp illuminating the grate Ivanov had been working on.

Ahead lay a letterbox-shaped opening perhaps four feet wide and two feet high. Holliday could see the ancient cement frame that had held the iron bars in place. The bars were gone, leaving nothing but gaping holes like the sockets of rotting teeth. He could see almost nothing beyond except a wall of pitted, dressed stone, the blocks fitted so tightly together there had been no need for mortar.

Struggling, Holliday dug his feet in and pushed himself forward, eventually reaching the opening. He put his arms above his head and slithered forward, finally pushing his shoulders through and then his hips. Halfway through the opening he rolled over and pushed hard with his heels, finally popping completely out of the rectangular opening.

Standing, Holliday saw that Ivanov was shining his lamp down a long, dark corridor about four feet wide, the arched ceiling not much more than six feet overhead. There were low, riveted iron doors with massive hinges every five feet on both sides of the passage. The doors were solid, each equipped with a heavy iron bar set onto massive iron brackets.

Holliday shone his own light down at the opening he’d just come through and watched as Eddie struggled to free himself. From the looks of it, the grated opening had been some sort of overflow channel for water. Eddie, cursing resoundingly in Spanish with every inch gained, finally pulled his big muscular frame through the hole and stood up. A few moments later Genrikhovich appeared, coughing and choking and spitting out dirt.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” Holliday asked Ivanov.

The priest nodded. “If I’m not mistaken, these are the dungeons of Ivan Chetvyorty Vasilyevich the Fourth, better known to the world as Ivan the Terrible.”

They moved off down the dark, stone-walled passage. The silence was something you could almost taste, heavy and oppressive, with a tart tang of blood-soaked earth. History was alive down here in the worst of all possible ways, like writhing worms and ancient nightmares. Holliday stopped at the first door they came to and lifted the heavy wooden bar. He pulled on the rivet-studded door and it eventually moved, groaning as he manhandled it open. He shone his light into the interior of the cell.

The chamber was ten feet on a side, and lying in tumbled heaps were the skeletons of at least a dozen men, tossed like so many broken marionettes into a dark corner of a child’s cupboard. There was no obvious facility for hygiene, not even a hole in the floor, which was mostly covered with a thick layer of black earth no doubt made from their own waste. The limbs on some of the skeletons had been torn away, the dead feeding the living for a little while longer.

Holliday shivered; the sounds from this place would have been like the moaning of some hellish choir, the sounds fading with each passing day until there was only silence. There would have been no hope here: no hope of redemption, no hope of food or water, only a slow, hideous death. The cell Holliday stared into was the very definition of horror and evil personified, and the man who ordered its construction had been without compassion and had no love in his cold heart for any living thing on the planet. Reflexively, from an almost forgotten past, Holliday made the sign of the cross and whispered the formulas as he did so.

“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.” Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Eddie was doing the same thing.

“En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espiritu Santo. Amen.”

“We have no time for this foolishness, Colonel Holliday; we have much more important things to concern us now,” said Genrikhovich, his voice a little petulant. “We have better things to do than mourn the deaths of prisoners five hundred years ago.”

“Whatever else they were or might have been, they were men once, and their bones deserve a little respect from the living.”

“We won’t be living much longer if you insist on dawdling and saying your prayers, Colonel. I can assure you of that.”

Eddie dropped a big hand on Holliday’s shoulder. “You are a good man, mi coronel, no matter what this idiota thinks.”

Holliday closed the door to the cell but he left the bar off; the dead men had been imprisoned long enough; now at least their spirits could be free. When he’d shut the door he went after the others down the low-ceilinged passageway.

The passage seemed to go on forever, sometimes curving, sometimes dipping down or up, depending on the terrain, but by Holliday’s calculation they were always heading in roughly the same direction. Ivanov answered the unspoken question.

“We are traveling south. Most of the research points to the Tainitskaya Tower, or the Secret Tower, as it is sometimes called, since it is the oldest.”

“Is that the only reason?” Holliday asked.