Paul Christopher: Red Templar

“Two hundred more when you give us directions.”

“Easy,” said Viktor, grinning. “My friends, we do it all the time. Easy-peasy.”

“How?” Holliday asked.

“The ferry.”

“There is no ferry.”

“Not people ferry, ferry for the trains. Hero of Sevastopol. Leave tonight, nine o’clock, thirteen hours after, pssht! You have achieved Russia at port of Illichivsk.”

“Where is Illichivsk?”

“Maybe ten mile Odessa. Very nearby. I have girl there. Marinoska. Blondie-type girl. Nice.”

“I’m sure she is, Viktor. How do we get on the ferry?”

“Two hundred leva, I show you, another five hundred, I take you there.”

“To the ferry?”

“No, no.” Viktor grinned. “I take you Illichivsk and then Odessa to meet with Marinoska. Viktor give the best service in Varna, no doubt!”

“Okay,” said Holliday. “When do we leave?”

“Seven thirty o’clock. You have car, of course?”

“Of course.”

“In parking lot of hotel then,” said Viktor. “Seven thirty o’clock we meet. I bring food and some nice beers. You pay me then. We have good time, okay?”

“It’s a deal,” said Holliday.

* * *

The ferry terminal at the port of Varna was south of the main port and the naval base. After the fall of the Soviet Union, trade between Bulgaria and the Ukraine had collapsed, but UKR ferries had recently revived the trade in moving railcars back and forth between Varna and Odessa.

There was a crane arrangement where the wider-gauge bogies on the Russian cars were switched to the narrower European gauge, a large multitrack holding facility for waiting railcars, and a dock and hydraulic ramp system capable of handling two ships at a time, usually one just arrived and one just leaving.

Each four-hundred-foot-long ship was capable of taking a total of one hundred and eight freight cars on the main deck and the two decks below. The trick was to know which cars were going on the top deck and which were going below, and to make sure you didn’t try to hop a freight car that had just been unloaded. Empty freight cars were easy to spot, since they weren’t padlocked. Incoming cars were chalked with the capital letter, B for Bulgaria, and outgoing were marked with a U, for Ukraine. Tonight it was Hero of Sevastopol outgoing and Hero of Pleven incoming.

Viktor told them all of this on the twenty-minute drive from the Golden Sands to the outskirts of the ferry terminal, a pool of sickly yellow sodium lights in the dusky October evening. Holliday and Eddie had brought Genrikhovich a taco plate from the Happy Bar and Grill, a late-night dinner they knew might have the same kind of repercussions as the Burger King Quad Stacker, but the old man had to eat something, and an open freight car was much airier than a cramped little Moskvich.

Viktor turned out to be a full-service guide on their “very serious” adventure, turning up at the Grifid Arabella’s parking lot right on time and bringing four sleeping bags and a knapsack full of sandwiches, apples, two pomegranates, eight bottles of Zagorka beer and two rolls of toilet paper.

“Do they patrol the rail yard?” Holliday asked as they abandoned the rental halfway down a gravel side road.

“Sometimes. They have dogs but I have never been caught.”

“I do not like dogs,” said Eddie.

“Shtaw?” Genrikhovich said nervously.

“Saabaka,” translated Eddie. “Awchen Gnevny Saabaka.”

Genrikhovich went pale but he kept his mouth shut.

“What did you say to him?” Holliday asked.

“I told him there were dogs. Very big dogs,” said Eddie.

“You sure that was the right thing to do?”

“It will keep him. . ?paralizado por el miedo? ”

“Paralyzed with fear?”

“ Si , we will be much happier.” Eddie grinned. “Your Cuban is getting muy bueno .”

“Muchas gracias, mi companero,” answered Holliday, bowing gravely forward.

“?Ay, cono!” Eddie laughed. “Soon I take you back to my family in Habana.” He clamped a hand on Genrikhovich’s narrow shoulder as Viktor the waiter led the way down between the railway tracks. Viktor found the appropriate chalk marking on one of the cars and rolled back the door. The Bulgarian boosted himself up, then helped Holliday and Eddie up. Genrikhovich came last.

The interior of the empty boxcar was half-solid and half-slatted. The lingering smell suggested that some kind of root vegetable like rutabagas had been the last cargo. Viktor rumbled the door shut and set up the bedrolls in one corner of the car, and they all settled in. Holliday had one of the bottles of beer Viktor offered and then lay down on his bedroll.

Ten minutes after finishing the beer he was fast asleep. He woke once to the thumping and banging as the boxcar was loaded onto the ferry, and woke briefly again, feeling the odd, almost comforting sensation of being rocked on the sea. He fell asleep again and didn’t wake until the ship docked at the Ukrainian port city of Illichivsk at noon the following day. For the first time in twenty years Lieutenant Colonel John “Doc” Holliday, United States Army Ranger (retired), was back in what had once been enemy territory.

“You will need documents,” said Viktor. He nodded toward Genrikhovich. “Even him.” They were sitting in a dive called the Celantano Pizzeria in Illichivsk, eating slices. The glass-fronted fast-food joint had square panels of fluorescent lighting, plastic brick to waist height, and lime green roughly plastered walls above.

“What kind of documents?” Holliday asked, feeling his wallet getting thinner by the minute. They’d already visited an ATM and he’d stocked up on two hundred twenty-griven notes, which, at ten grivna to the dollar, were the equivalent of twenty bucks, and which seemed to be the most common banknote in use.

“The Russian will need an internal passport as well as an international one and a residency card.”

“My friend and I?”

“New passports. Gospodin Eddie is too. . obvious as a Cuban,” said Viktor.

“What do you suggest?” Holliday asked.

“Argentina, Venezuela. Best would be American. Spic, yes?”

“Puerto Rican?”

“Yes. You, too, must be American, of course, unless you like to be Canadian. Canada is very easy.”

“I’ll stick with my own country for now.”

“Okay, yes, easy-peasy, you know.” Victor nodded, sucking a straw stuck in a bottle of livid green Fanta passion fruit and orange Taste of Africa.

“Are these forged documents or real?” Holliday asked.

“Oh, very genuine.”

“How do you get them?”

“Not me, oh, no, I have no way of knowing this, really, but I have a friend. . ”

“I thought you might.” Holliday nodded.

“His name is Gennadi. Good friend.”

“Where does he live?”

“Odessa. Not far, twenty minutes on bus. Psssht! We are there.”

“Easy-peasy,” Holliday said.

“Right,” said Viktor, speaking around the straw. His tongue was as green as the walls.

Holliday wondered how far they were from Chernobyl. “Easy-peasy.”

Gennadi Bondarenko lived in an old yellow stucco building in the Privoz district of Odessa, close to the railway station. In the old days the apartment would probably have been shared by at least three families, but now it was just Bondarenko and his voluptuous girlfriend, whose name was Natasha.

There was a large living room/kitchen/dining room with a huge round caramel-colored velvet couch that could have slept two couples comfortably, expensive-looking Persian carpets, an eating island that jutted out between two massive windows covered in drooping velvet curtains the same color as the couch, and a refrigerator in one corner and a strange gas-powered hot plate that sat on the kitchen counters with its big propane supply right beside it.