Red Templar

The windshield shattered and the BMW spun out, then hit the ditch on the far side of the road, flipping over twice, then flipping right-side up again, the roof crumpled between the doorposts.

“?Aprende a manejar, aweonao!” Eddie whooped happily.

The snowplow truck, taken by surprise, kept swinging into where the Moskvich had been a second before. Air brakes screaming, the driver tried to stop the sideways motion of the giant vehicle, but inertia had its way with the steel beast, and the side blade of the plow hooked the rear end of the ZiL, slammed into the guardrail and sliced through it like a knife through soft cheese.

The twenty-two-ton behemoth and the four-ton ZiL rocketed out over the cliff, seemed to hang against the bright blue sea and the sky for a split second, and then disappeared. An eternity later there was a muted, thundering crash and the sound of an explosion. The Moskvich screeched to a halt.

There was silence except for the distant pounding of the surf and the soft rustling of wind in the trees. It was almost peaceful. There was a twenty-foot gap in the guardrail and another ten feet on either side of the hole that sagged out over the cliff, the stumps torn out of the ground and the galvanized steel twisted into corkscrews.

“?Hala!” Eddie whispered, staring. “?Ay, cono!”

Holliday looked back over his shoulder. Genrikhovich was groaning on the floor. “Let’s check on the BMW.” He left the car engine running, pushed open the door and stepped out onto the road. Eddie followed.

Holliday stopped suddenly, swaying for a second, holding on to the open door of the Moskvich as a wave of nausea swept over him. His face was suddenly slippery with flop sweat, his heart was still jumping behind his ribs like a jackrabbit and he could hear his pulse hammering in his ears. He knew it was just the adrenaline rush, but he also knew that thirty seconds ago he’d been staring death in the face and it wasn’t looking good. A herd of buffalo stampeding over his grave. For a moment he thought he was going to puke all over his shoes. He closed his eyes and shook off the nausea.

Eddie came up beside him. He had a worried look on his face, staring at his friend. “?Estas bien, Doc?”

“I’m okay.”

“Is crazy all this, no?”

“Is crazy mucho, compadre,” answered Holliday. He let go of the car door, the ground solid beneath his feet again.

He and Eddie crossed the road to the ditch and peered inside the BMW. The two men were both dead. The driver had the jagged end of the steering column through his chest, and the man on the passenger side looked as though his head had gone into the dashboard and then rebounded against the roof. His face had been pulped into gravy, and his skull was crushed like an egg, the whole mess held together by a bag of flesh and sitting at an odd angle on his neck. There was blood and tissue everywhere. If one of Eddie’s shots had found its mark, it was going to take a coroner a bit of time to find it.

“You missed,” said Holliday.

“Mis disculpas, Coronel.” The Cuban grinned.

Holliday reached in carefully through the shattered window and flipped back the passenger’s jacket. There was an empty shoulder holster on the left. The weapon, a big Stechkin APS, was clutched in his right hand. Holliday leaned in farther and pried it from the man’s fingers, then handed it back to Eddie. He reached back in and slipped his hand into the inner pocket of the man’s jacket and took out the man’s wallet. He eased it back through the window, then flipped it open. There was a red plastic ID case inside. He flipped the case open. Inside was a card with a plastic shield with an eagle and a sword on it, and a picture presumably showing what the dead man had looked like up until a few minutes ago. The cover of the ID case had three Cyrillic letters stamped in gold on the cover:

Holliday handed the case to Eddie. “Those Bulgarian State Security types Dimitrov mentioned?”

“Much worse, I’m afraid, my friend. These men are not Bulgarian at all. The letters are FSB, and they stand for Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii.”

There was a keening, moaning sound from behind them, like one of Scrooge’s terrible, desperate spirits in A Christmas Carol. Eddie and Holliday turned. A bleary-looking, ashen-faced Genrikhovich had managed to drag himself out of the Moskvich and stagger across the empty road. He stood just behind them, his lank gray hair plastered sweatily across his cheeks. He looked over Holliday’s shoulder, swaying back and forth, staring goggle-eyed and horrified at the ID case in Eddie’s hand. He began to shake his head wildly back and forth, wailing loudly.

“KGB!” Genrikhovich screamed. “KGB!”

7

In the late afternoon they stopped in a place called Golden Sands, a resort town about fifteen miles outside the city of Varna. Like most off-season summer destinations, there was an empty, abandoned air to the town, the neon signs on the strip bars and the sex stores dark, the soft-ice-cream stands boarded up for the season and almost no traffic, pedestrian or otherwise.

They found a hotel called the Grifid Arabella that was still open for business, booked a suite and put an exhausted Genrikhovich to bed. The Russian had become apoplectic at discovering that they’d been involved with the deaths of the secret police thugs they’d left in the ditch, and it had taken them more than an hour to calm him down with a combination of violent threats from Eddie and reassurances from Holliday.

All three restaurants in the high-rise hotel were closed, but they eventually found a place on the main street of the town called the Happy Bar and Grill that looked like it was part of a chain. The logo showed a smiling man, in a tall white hat and a mustache, who looked remarkably like Chef Boyardee from the spaghetti cans, and the interior decor was a combination maritime/rock-and-roll theme, with neon guitars, real saxophones and ships in bottles.

The Happy menu offered everything from sushi to skewers to something dreadful-looking called “Happy Bits,” which appeared to be crinkle-cut home fries and chicken nuggets covered in a congealed grayish gravy that gleamed in the harsh overhead lighting. They also offered something suspiciously called “Krispy Loins,” which Holliday didn’t even want to think about. Virtually everything on the menu was served with an ice-cream scoop of potato salad and sour cream.

“Genrikhovich would love this place,” commented Holliday. He ordered a “Slavic Salad” and a chicken skewer from the pleasant, English-speaking waiter, whose name was Viktor. Eddie ordered the same thing.

“Let him sleep,” said the Cuban. “I’ve had enough of his peos for one day.”

“Agreed.” Holliday nodded. Their food arrived quickly and they began to eat. Slavic Salad turned out to be a mixture of peeled tomatoes, roasted peppers, garlic, black pepper, olives, olive oil, cottage cheese, yogurt and fresh parsley, and it wasn’t half-bad.

“They will have discovered those men by now,” said Eddie, looking suspiciously at the lump of cottage cheese in the middle of his colorful paper plate. He took a small taste on the end of his fork, made a face and nodded. “Ah, es requeson.” He speared a piece of tomato on the end of his plastic fork and chewed thoughtfully. “They will be watching the airport, I think.”

“Train station and bus station as well.” Holliday nodded. “Not to mention the fact that neither you nor I have visas for entering Russia.”

“If we stay here they will find us sooner or later. They will check the Turkish border crossing, I think. I am the very handsome man, I am sure, but I am also very black, and I don’t think they would be seeing too many pasaportes from Cuba.”

“So what do we do?”

Eddie shrugged. “There must be places where the border is easier to cross.”

“Into Serbia, maybe, but not into Russia.”

Viktor the waiter shimmered up and asked them if they needed anything else. . fresh-squeezed pomegranate and tangerine juice, perhaps, dessert, coffee, anything. . Holliday took out his wallet and counted out ten twenty-lev notes and set them on the table. By his calculations two hundred leva was about a hundred and fifty bucks. Viktor