Paul Christopher - Red Templar

“All right, kid,” said Philpot, chewing his way through his third wedge of hash browns. “You’ve managed to get every security officer in the embassy in a tizzy, so spill. I need to know it all-start to finish. You’re the case officer; who the hell are you running that’s causing all this shit to hit the fan?”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, sir,” said Whit as Philpot wiped his fingers on the hash brown bag and started in on some scrambled eggs. “I’m afraid it’s the national security adviser’s operation.”

Philpot belched and took a sip of black coffee. He grimaced. “Don’t give me that White House West Wing crap, son; it doesn’t cut any ice with me. Besides, I know the kind of crap your boss Kokum gets up to, and I also know where all his bodies are buried. Spit it out or you’re on the next flight out.”

“It’s a blue operation. . sir,” said Whit stiffly.

“An assassination?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who’s the target?”

Whit hesitated. “A man named Holliday, sir,” he said finally.

Whit had heard the phrase “he turned white as a sheet” before, but he’d never actually seen it. The blood seemed to drain out of the fat man’s neck. It was amazing; he looked like he was going to have a stroke, which wouldn’t have been surprising, all things considered.

“Lieutenant Colonel John Holliday? He’s the one responsible for all this crap?”

“Yes, sir,” said Whit.

“Oh, shit,” said Philpot, his appetite gone with almost a complete Big Breakfast to go.

Twenty-five minutes after Eddie and Doc had left the burning dacha, an alert policeman noted the strange behavior of a snowplow in the middle of a snowstorm that wasn’t plowing any snow. When he reported to his superiors, it was discovered that the plow in question was well off its normal route, which began close to the gates of the dacha. Fifteen minutes later somebody put two and two together, and within another ten minutes there was a trail of police cars behind the power grader, sirens wailing. There was very little a one-ton police car could do to stop a massive grader like the one piloted by Felix Fyodor Fosdikov, and eventually air support was called in. One of the attack helicopters that had gone to the dacha headed for the location of the errant snowplow with orders to fire at will.

At four fifty-one a.m. Moscow time, Felix Fyodor Fosdikov turned the big power grader off the Ulitsa Novy Arbat and onto Novinsky Perulok, the trail of police cars following behind, the distant thunder of the helicopter getting louder by the second, its giant searchlight swinging back and forth less than half a mile away, searching for its target in the driving snow.

A hundred yards ahead at the bottom of the hill was Deviations Boulevard. On the far side of Deviations at the intersection of the two streets and lined up right in the crosshairs of a gun sight were the front gates of the United States Embassy.

“Tell him he’ll be fine as long as he does exactly as he’s told,” said Holliday.

Eddie told him.

“Tell him to drive slowly down the hill and stop in front of the gates; as soon as we’re outside and on the street he’s free to go.”

Eddie told him that as well.

“Does he understand?”

“Vy ponimaete?”

“Da,” answered Felix Fyodor. He threw the grader into a lower gear, eased his foot off the brake and pushed the throttle forward slightly. He felt terrible, and he didn’t believe his two passengers for a second. They were clearly terrorists, and he was going to be involved no matter what he said or did. To make things worse, his heartburn had reached levels of pain he never thought could come from sauerkraut. He was sweating rivers, his bladder was close to voiding and he suddenly had a terrible pain in the back of his neck. And his right eye started to have black spots dancing in front of it. He blinked, gritted his teeth and tried to concentrate on what he was doing. Suddenly his right hand spasmed and jerked the throttle forward. The grader began to speed up, its monstrous transmission growling.

“Tell him to slow down!” Holliday yelled.

And then it was all irrelevant to Felix Fyodor Fosdikov. A dozen or so hibernating arteries in the Russian’s head all conspired to blossom into bright flower, while at the same time his already elevated heart rate went into full-on tachycardia. Felix Fyodor’s brain and heart both stopped functioning at the same instant. He dropped dead over the controls, his hand pushing the throttle forward to its limit and his jerking knee hitting the blade control, dropping both plows into the snow. By the time the grader reached the bottom of the hill it was going its full forty-two miles per hour. The attack helicopter, finally in range, saw where the grader was headed and instantly sheered away, not wanting to be the root cause of World War Three by firing at the American embassy.

“Holy crap,” whispered Holliday.

All eighteen tons of the grader smashed into the gate, broke through the chain behind it, then jumped the steel poles that slid up automatically, while its big solid wheels went over the double strip of six-inch spikes as though they were thumbtacks. It finally struck the main entrance and the sally port before it came to a stop. For a few seconds there was a wintry absolute silence.

And then all hell broke loose.

All hell broke loose, but hell, especially during a Moscow winter, inevitably freezes over. Two weeks passed. Eddie was given an emergency splenectomy in the embassy’s clinic and was recovering by leaps and bounds. Holliday was debriefed by everyone at the embassy with clearance to do so, as well as two CIA types from Langley, three more from the NSA, Kokum from the national security adviser’s office and a humorless man from something called the Osmond Institute. Holliday’s joke about puppy love didn’t even make him crack a smile. Brinsley Whitman Havers was sent home on the first flight out the day after the snowplow crashed through the gates, doing an estimated three and a half million dollars’ damage.

For his part Holliday told them the truth, right from the beginning. He was relatively sure no one would believe him, and he was right. The only thing he left out was the Jesus gospel; that secret would remain with him until he died.

Privately furious but publicly contrite, the Kremlin apologized to the U.S. ambassador for the damage done by the snowplow by the unfortunate city employee who had dropped dead at the controls of his machine, and promised full restitution. The Kremlin separately and very privately demanded that Holliday be removed from the Russian Federation at the earliest opportunity, and further advised the ambassador that if Lieutenant Colonel Holliday ever set foot on Russian soil again he would be shot on sight.

“The powers that be have reached a consensus,” said Pat Philpot, reaching for a Werther’s Original from the full fishbowl on his desk. He undid the wrapper and popped it into his mouth.

“And that would be?” Holliday asked.

“You’re going home to a closed congressional hearing, and now that your friend is better we’re shipping him across town to the Cuban embassy.”

“If you give Eddie to the Cubans they’ll kill him. In the first place he’s a dissident, and in the second place he deserted from their forces in Angola.”

“Not my problem,” said Philpot, sucking on the candy.

“No, it’s my problem, Potsy, but that makes it your problem, too. I testify before a congressional committee, I’ll take you down, and a few dozen others with you. I know that you were a mole for the company at the National Counterterrorism Center, and I know that you’re a mole here-and that’s just the beginning. This is what’s going to happen, Potsy: you’re going to get a diplomatic flight from Sheremetyevo out of Russia and you’re going to put me and Eddie on it. Take us to Ramstein AFB in Germany and we’ll make our way from there. I promise you’ll never hear from us again.”