Red Templar

Although there were certainly doubtful aspects to Anton Pesek’s character, morals, personality and perhaps even his sanity, there was no doubt that he was extremely good at his job. Within five minutes of the appearance of Holliday and his black companion at the mausoleum-like exit to the Teatralnaya metro station just off Red Square, he had taken up a loose surveillance, following them at a distance across the cobbled plaza and through the Spassky Gate into the Kremlin.

Pesek, who hated the cold, was dressed in a gray, down-filled nylon ski jacket, an old-fashioned Russian fur hat, jeans and work boots. In a small backpack slung over his shoulder he carried several pieces of potentially useful equipment that had come in handy on other assignments. He looked like everyone else, and he looked like no one in particular, which is the best way to look when you’re following someone.

The Czech assassin followed Holliday and his friend as they meandered through the Kremlin, looking at the sights, but he stopped when they entered the Armoury Museum. Father Brennan had briefed him on the egg and its importance, but there was no way Holliday was going to try to steal it from behind the prisonlike walls of the Kremlin. Instead he stepped inside the small gold-domed St. Lazar Church across from the Armoury’s main entrance and waited. He picked up a pamphlet beside a donation box and began to read, one eye on the Armoury entrance.

According to the pamphlet, the Kremlin had originally been called Mastera Gornogo, or Wizard’s Mountain-a burial place for wizards, witches and magicians whose spirits were restless. A priest had once cursed the place and, according to legend, was martyred on the spot. Pesek smiled. According to the stories Pesek’s father had told him, Comrade Stalin had martyred more than priests in this place.

Reading on, Pesek discovered that in 1750 Elizabeth, empress of Russia, had ordered St. Lazar’s Church to be built for the indigents and beggars of the city. Twice each year all the dead beggars who had been kept in a giant icehouse to keep them from decomposing were brought to the church and buried in a single grave. There were so many beggars in Moscow, however, that the ritual was ended after only a dozen years for lack of space, but the church still stood, the cemetery paved over hundreds of years ago, its nameless occupants forgotten.

Twenty minutes after they’d entered the Armoury Museum, Pesek saw Holliday and his friend come out. He followed them again, this time to a taxi stand on the far side of the square. Pesek got his own cab and followed them to the Holiday Inn on Lesnaya Ulitsa, a relatively modern hotel a few miles across the Moskva River to the north. They picked up their key from the desk clerk and headed up the elevator. Pesek waited for a moment, then crossed the plain, brightly lit lobby and approached the clerk. Speaking Russian, he booked a room for himself, expressing an interest in getting a room adjoining the one occupied by the two gentlemen who had just come in, describing them and making his interest clearer by putting two folded hundred-euro bills down on the reception desk. The bills disappeared and he was given the key card to a room on the fifth floor. Pesek didn’t fret about the expense of two hotel rooms, or the two-hundred-euro bribe; the Catholic Church had plenty more where that came from.

He found his room, rummaged around in his backpack and eventually found his tiny FM wireless microphone and the headset radio he used. He knelt down beside the adjoining door, switched on the microphone and eased it forward under the doorsill, then took the headphones back to the comfortable-looking bed and lay down. He turned on the headphone radio, tuned it to the bottom of the FM dial and slipped the headset over his ears.

Pesek could clearly hear the quick flipping of pages. There was a pause and then the black man’s voice came clearly through the headset.

“There are many men with that name here. They are all listed as A. Ivanov.”

“No Anatoliy Ivanov?”

“No, but there is only one of the names listed on Peryeulok Sivtsev Vrazhek-number thirty-six Sivtsev Vrazhek Lane.”

“Does it give an apartment number?”

“Three.”

“That has to be the one.”

“In Russian Vrazhek is meaning una arroyo.”

“Stream?”

“Si. In the olden days there would have been such a stream there. In Habana there are many places like this-streams covered over and turned to sewers. Do we go and see this man?”

“Yes, but I need a shower and some dinner first. I’m starving.”

Pesek smiled. He slipped off the headphones and sat up on the edge of the bed. He had what he needed now, except for one last vital element.

The assassin stood up, removed the listening device, then put it and the headphones back in his knapsack. He slipped on his ski jacket and left the room. Pesek then headed downstairs, picked up a taxi from the rank near the door and told the driver to take him to the Central Bus Terminal near the Shcholkovskaya metro station. He settled back in the comfortable leather seat of the Avtoframos Thalia, a Russian-made Renault, feeling quite pleased with himself. For the present, at least, things seemed to be going quite well.

For being in a profession renowned for its short life spans, Anton Pesek had done quite well for himself over a career covering an astounding four decades. He had a generous retirement fund spread over seven banks and five countries; a beautiful albeit somewhat compulsively murderous wife, Daniella Kay; a condominium in Vancouver, Canada, close to the Southlands so Daniella could ride her beloved Dutch Warmblood, Bohemian Rhapsody; an immense and lavish condominium apartment on Old Town Square in the center of Prague; a villa in Tuscany; and another condominium in the tiny village of Mougins in the Alpes Maritimes, fifteen minutes from Cannes and the slot machines of his favorite casino, La Croisette.

While Pesek had developed few if any real friendships over those four decades, he had accumulated a remarkable number of contacts, acquaintances, people who knew people and people he’d done favors for at one time or another. It was one of those people he was visiting now.

Three days a week Yuri Otrepyev ran a small souvenir booth next to the bus station, mostly selling cheap plastic icons and matryoshka nesting dolls, and T-shirts with the word “Moscow” stenciled on them in Cyrillic writing. His market was almost entirely made up of hayseed country bumpkins on their way home after a visit to the big city.

Each Wednesday afternoon, however, as Pesek knew, Yuri’s uncle, Grigory Otrepyev, the real owner of the booth, would leave his last shift at the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant and would take the overnight train to Moscow, arriving at noon on Thursday. He would then take over the booth’s operations until Sunday afternoon, when he would ride the train back to Izhevsk and his poorly paid job as an inventory clerk in the huge factory.

On the surface it seemed ludicrous for a man in his sixties who barely had a job at all to travel so far to operate a souvenir booth that rarely did much more than break even most months, but like many things in Russia, things weren’t always what they seemed. During his four days in the booth Grigory Otrepyev generally netted the equivalent of between three and five thousand American dollars-roughly six times the net monthly salary of an Aeroflot pilot. Otrepyev was the chief inventory clerk in the largest combat weapons factory in Russia, and the suitcase he carried with him to Moscow each week was filled with the factory’s stock-in-trade.

The taxi dropped Pesek off at the Central Bus Terminal, and he made a pretense of going into the big modern terminal. He came out again a moment later and wandered around the cluster of booths to the left of the entrance. Most of them sold souvenirs, but a few sold soft drinks, snacks and sandwiches for travelers about to go on their way. He purchased a plastic bottle of Polustrovo water and sipped it as he meandered among the booths. He finally stopped in front of Otrepyev’s establishment, by no means the largest one at the bus terminal.

Grigory Otrepyev bore a remarkable resemblance to Mr. Toad of The Wind in the Willows. He was short and squat, with wide, rubbery lips, a bulbous nose and slightly bulging eyes. The resemblance was heightened by the old curved pipe inevitably clamped between his teeth that constantly sent up a cloud of choking smoke that had long ago given Otrepyev a permanent squint in his right eye. To top things off, the man’s complexion was cratered with pockmarks like the surface of an asteroid, and he made only the most basic passes with a razor at the white stubble on his cheeks and chin.

“I’m looking for a matryoshka doll,” said Pesek in Russian.

“As you can see, gospodin, I have many such dolls,” answered Otrepyev, making a sweeping gesture over his stock and grinning around the yellowed stem of his pipe. Even from six feet away behind the counter, the man smelled like an overflowing ashtray. “Do you have any particular size doll in mind?”