Red Templar

He finished the last of the stew and sat back in his chair, waiting for Jeanette, the only server in the old, low-ceilinged place. She was also the owner’s daughter and was having an affair with the young chef. Ducos knew this because Jeanette, the young chef and the owner were all his clients. He smiled; sometimes it was difficult to remain objective in a small town like this.

Jeanette appeared. “I’ll bring out your sorbet in a moment, m’sieul’avocat.”

“No hurry,” answered Ducos. “I think I’ll step outside for a cigarette. I must make a call anyway.”

“A votre service, m’sieu l’avocat.”

Ducos smiled, stood up and made his way across the dimly lit and crowded room. Cabanoix et Chataignes was everything he liked about Domme-it was strong, with its dark oak rafters, thick plaster walls and slate floors as old as time. It was always crowded with people he knew, and more than anything else it was predictably excellent. The menu changed with the seasons and the whims of the chef, but whatever he chose from the menu he knew without doubt that it would be marvelous. If there was one thing Pierre Louis Rene Marie Joseph Ducos appreciated-nay, demanded-it was consistency. There was nothing he liked less than a thing out of place, time out of joint or an event unforeseen, and that was what he was faced with now.

He lit a cigarette and took out his cell phone. He tapped out a long series of numbers and waited. It answered after a number of rings.

“Sir James? C’estDucos. . Quite well, thank you. We have a situation that must be resolved. It has to do with number five. . Yes, Sir James, the Rose. . Yes, Holliday. . Russia, I’m afraid. . I assume they are aware of this. . All right. I’ll inform Barsukov tomorrow. His people will deal with it, I assure you. . Of course I’m aware Barsukov is in prison. What does that have to do with anything? The prisons in Russia are run by the Mafia, Sir James. . Of course. Every step of the way, Sir James. There is far too much at stake to let it go on any longer. . And a good afternoon to you, Sir James.”

Ducos closed the phone, pocketed it and stood there for a few moments enjoying the last of his cigarette, thinking about the Greek tragedian Aeschylus and his favorite quotation from the man: “God is not averse to deceit in a holy cause.” Smiling, Pierre Ducos stubbed out the remains of his cigarette on the cobbles and went back into the restaurant for his well-deserved sorbet and coffee.

21

The Red Arrow Express turned out to be the train once used by the local St. Petersburg party bigwigs and other members of the local apparat, complete with private and semiprivate compartments, ornate dining car, red velvet upholstery, fringes on the window blinds and the showers, all on a train that took only eight hours to reach its destination. Following Genrikhovich’s instructions they drove the rattletrap old Volga to Tosno and boarded the train without incident. They had purchased a four-bunk compartment even though there were only three of them. They wolfed down the contents of the little food boxes that were waiting for them on each of the bunks and then went to bed. Holliday stayed awake in the darkness, looking out into the night at the dark pastoral scene of birch trees and small farms as they sped past, and then he, too, fell asleep. He woke with the others just before the train pulled into Leningradsky station, exactly on time.

They left the train with the other passengers and made their way into the terminal building, a tall, rectangular hall lined with small shops and restaurants. If there had ever been benches for waiting or lockers for luggage they were long gone.

“We can’t stay here all day,” said Holliday. According to Genrikhovich, there were two daily trains to Yekaterinburg each day-the Ural Express, which left Moscow Kazanskaya station at four fifty in the afternoon, and the Rossiya, or Trans-Siberian Express, which left Moscow Yaroslavskaya station at nine oh five in the evening. Both trains took twenty-six hours to complete the journey.

In the end they decided on the Trans-Siberian. It was larger, more anonymous and not as destination-specific as the Ural Express. They crossed the expanse of Komsomol Square, bought their tickets in the booming, eighteenth-century station, then had breakfast at a nearby McDonald’s, Holliday fascinated by Genrikhovich’s almost magical ability to eat endless amounts of junk food.

They spent the rest of the day playing tourists and buying supplies for their trip, including backpacks, changes of clothing and a small digital camera to give their touristy playacting a bit of verisimilitude. They rode the magnificent subway, took pictures of one another in Red Square, rode a glass-topped tourist boat along the Moskva River and spent half an hour standing behind barricades on the Arbat watching Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brian Statham shooting a scene from Red Heat II.

Every once in a while during the strangely pleasant day in Moscow, Eddie or Holliday would drop back to see whether they were under any sort of surveillance. Neither man could detect anything out of the ordinary. They had lunch at a Kentucky Fried Chicken on the Arbat, a Pizza Hut dinner off Red Square, and made it back to the station in time to load up on snacks and bottled water for the trip and then climbed on the train. They made their way to their four-berth compartment somewhere close to the front of the long blue-and-red train. It was barely six feet wide, the lower berth upholstered benches during daylight hours, the upper berths permanently made up as beds. The narrow window was covered by a plush fringed curtain that seemed to belong to another age. A narrow hinged table pulled up on a folding single leg between the lower berths. They were each handed a packaged meal of burger, nibbed wheat, sweet corn and peas in a plastic container by their provodnitsa, a female, uniformed carriage attendant. The provodnitsa told them that there was a samovar at the end of the carriage with hot water available at all times of the day as well as powdered coffee. The attendant told them that if they required more or different food it could be obtained in one of the two dining cars on the Rossiya. She then gave them a brief official smile, cast a single nervous glance in Eddie’s direction and withdrew. At nine twenty-five on the dot the Trans-Siberian Express gave a single long blast on its horn and eased smoothly out of the station. They were on their way.

One of Genrikhovich’s purchases had been a cheap two-liter bottle of KiN horseradish vodka, which he brought out and began to drink as soon as the train began moving. Holliday and Eddie each had one shot of the foul stuff, agreed that it tasted like someone burning truck tires and switched to the powdered coffee. Between shots Genrikhovich ate bites of his packaged meal-one shot for each bite. By the time he’d finished the meal the Russian was drunk and almost unconscious. Together Holliday and Eddie managed to lift him onto one of the top bunks. Fortunately the bunk had a built-in guardrail.

With Genrikhovich snoring above them the two men sat on either side of the table drinking glasses of black instant coffee and staring out into the darkness. They had long ago left Moscow behind them as the long winding train clattered and rumbled its way east toward the distant Ural Mountains.

Eddie turned the switch on the little ventilator fan and lit one of the cigars he’d purchased in the lobby of the infamous Ukraine Hotel. “Tell me, Doc, why are we doing these things? I like excitement, yes, but I think this is getting a little crazy.” The Cuban shrugged. “You have told me the story of this monk, Helder Rodrigues, and the promise you made him when he was dying, but even promises come to their end, companero; am I right?”

“Well, in the first place our snoring, farting friend in the top bunk is right-we’ve gone too far to back out now. It’s simply a matter of survival, of getting out of this whole thing alive. We’ve got the FSB after us and God only knows who else.”

“That is not what I meant, companero, and you know it.” The Cuban shrugged his powerful shoulders. “This thing, whatever it is, has a. . sujecion, a grip on you.” Eddie smiled broadly in the darkness. “You are my friend and I go where you go, do what you do, but I would like to understand better the reason for all of this. I am old-fashioned, Doc; if I die I would like it either to be as a very old man with a pretty girl in the bed with me or for some great cause.”

Holliday stared out the window, the darkness broken every few minutes by the distant, dim light from farmhouses-lives lived that he would never know, dramas unfolding that he would never witness, nothing more than a passing wraith in the night. Finally he turned back to Eddie.

“At first, when I discovered the sword in my uncle Henry’s house I thought I was part of something important, something ancient and good. Uncle Henry was the only real family I ever had, and I thought there couldn’t be anything better than following in his footsteps. That’s why I got my degree and my doctorate in history,