Hayhanen. My father’s real name was Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher. He was born in England but grew up in Russia, which is why I speak English-he thought it might be useful for me.” Genrikhovich laughed sourly. “He thought he would get me a job with the KGB, but they would have nothing to do with me. I even failed the physical tests for military service.”
“This is all very interesting, but I don’t see what it has to do with our present situation,” said Holliday.
“Our present situation, Colonel, is that I have my father’s pistol aimed at you,” said Genrikhovich.
He might not have passed the physical for the army, but his grip on the Tokarev was firm. The safety was off and the knurled hammer was fully cocked. The slim, overpowered pistol could put a hole in Holliday’s spine the size of a bowling ball, and at this range Genrikhovich couldn’t miss. “You’re the boss,” said Holliday.
“That is correct, Colonel; I am the boss, so you and your friend will turn around slowly and go back the way we came in.”
“Whatever you say,” said Holliday. He and Eddie did exactly as they were told, heading slowly back along the sand-floored passageway and back out into the ornately painted antechamber. Holliday had seen the blank, distant look in the Russian’s eyes. Here in this strange place beneath the Kremlin the veil of normalcy had been removed once and for all. Holliday realized they were finally seeing the man as he truly was-completely insane, lost in a world of bitterness, anger and utter madness.
“My grandfather would have loved this place,” said the Russian. “He had a great belief in the spiritual world. He was also a Chekist; you know what that means?”
“The first version of the KGB.”
“Yes, and before that he was with the Okhrana, the czar’s secret police. But he was a revolutionary at heart. Lenin himself enlisted my grandfather as a double agent. He reported directly to him on the activities of the czar’s henchmen in St. Petersburg. From the palace itself.”
“Interesting,” said Holliday, wondering where all this was going. Eddie just rolled his eyes and kept his mouth shut.
Genrikhovich looked around the circular chamber with its complex designs. “You said that astrologically north is south and south is north?”
“According to my cousin Peggy.” Holliday shrugged. “But I can’t guarantee it.”
“You’d better decide, Colonel, because your life depends on it.” The Russian turned and faced the two doors that said CAPRICORN and SAGITTARIUS. “Choose,” he said.
From Holliday’s small store of knowledge about the constellations he vaguely recalled that Sagittarius lay almost exactly between the east and west quadrants of the sky, while Capricorn was very faint. He couldn’t imagine Ivan the Terrible choosing
“Very good,” said Genrikhovich. “That was my choice as well.” He motioned with the pistol. “Open the door. Your friend goes through first, then you.”
Holliday walked across the room and put his hand on the latch. It was stiff and resistant with age. He pressed harder and felt the latch begin to give and he paused. In his mind’s eye he saw a reconstruction of a medieval ballista, a huge, spring-operated crossbow that could deliver an immense spearlike projectile at incredible speeds. There were larger models that could fire as many as half a dozen arrows at a time.
“I think the door is rigged,” said Holliday. “I suggest that you stand aside.”
“You’re trying my patience, Colonel. I’ll shoot you without a second thought.”
“Just a suggestion,” said Holliday.
Genrikhovich eyed him thoughtfully, then stepped to the left, the gun never faltering. Eddie did the same. Holliday tugged hard on the latch, then stepped rapidly aside. There was a deep, thrumming resonance from the corridor beyond the open doorway, followed by a groaning metallic whirring, like some sort of mechanical device being released. An instant later four immense arrows, each one at least five feet long, hurtled out of the doorway, their eight-inch-long iron points crashing through the mosaic tile on the floor and embedding themselves into whatever was underneath. The projectiles jutted out of the floor at a forty-five-degree angle about three feet from the open door. If Holliday had been standing in front of the door he would have been skewered like a shish kebab.
“Fascinating,” said Genrikhovich. “Do you think that is the last of it?”
“Who knows?” said Holliday.
“There must have been a secret way to open the door, or a hidden mechanism.”
“Maybe,” said Holliday.
“The czar wouldn’t make it impossibly difficult to get at his treasure house,” said Genrikhovich.
“Unless he had some other way,” said Eddie, looking at the door.
“A private entrance.” Holliday nodded. “Makes sense.”
“To me, too,” said Eddie.
“Perhaps the
“You mean Mr. Cabrera?” Holliday asked.
Genrikhovich sighed and adjusted his spectacles with his free hand. “You are both becoming tedious,” he said.
“And you’re being rude.”
“I do not have time for your petty liberal sensitivities, Colonel Holliday. My family’s search for Ivan the Terrible’s secret library was begun in 1916, almost a hundred years ago now. I intend to use the secret my grandfather passed down to me to find what Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev failed to discover even with all the powers of the Soviet Union at their disposal. My rudeness, as you deem it, is irrelevant to such an epic quest, and once again may I point out that I am the one who has the pistol?” He flicked the barrel of the old automatic to make his point. “Your friend Senor Cabrera first, if you please.”
Eddie lifted his shoulders; then without hesitation the tall Cuban sidestepped between two of the heavy spears, ducked his head a little and entered the corridor. Holliday followed right behind him.
The passageway here was covered in mosaics, like the floor of the chamber behind them; even the curved ceiling above them was covered with them, except for the wide, dark slit that was surely the source of the spears from the hidden ballista. The symbols were arcane, designs showing the alchemical triangles signifying air, earth and fire, the lightning bolt for water, snakes curled around staffs like an ancient doctor’s caduceus, eyes of Horus, more complex pentagrams and mandalas, a gruesome inlay of a skulled man riding on the back of a goat, even the magical square of abracadabra, the alchemist’s palindrome. It was a sorcerer’s dream brought to life, or perhaps the nightmare fantasy of a long-dead czar with a penchant for torture and the mass murder of his enemies.
“Rasputin knew of this place, although he never came here,” said Genrikhovich from behind them. “He told my grandfather tales of it many times.”
“I thought your grandfather was a spy for the Okhrana, a double agent for Lenin and his Cheka?” Holliday said.
“He was. He was Rasputin’s bodyguard, in fact, assigned to him by the czarina Alexandra. The czar approved the choice because he knew that my grandfather actually worked for him; he provided the czar with the infamous ‘staircase notes’ of Rasputin’s activities. St. Petersburg was like that in those times before the revolution: a place of lies, deceit, betrayals, each man working for his own selfish ends.”
“Like your grandfather?” Holliday asked as they continued down the long passageway.
“Czar Nicholas knew the secret, as did the czarina. The secret that Rasputin stole and took with him onto the Moika Canal the night that he died. The secret my grandfather learned and took from him with his last breath.”
“I thought it was the British agent Rayner who was there at the end,” said Holliday.
“No, and that was the secret Oswald Rayner took with him to his grave. My grandfather was the last man to see Grigori Rasputin alive, and it was my grandfather who took matters into his own hands and pushed him under the ice.”
“Why did Rayner lie?”
“Because my grandfather knew he was
