Red Templar

by Paul Christopher

  12

  The metal steps seemed to go on forever, their feet clanging noisily as they headed downward. The stairwell itself was lit bleakly every ten steps or so by short flickering fluorescents protected behind wire cages. Holliday felt as though he were descending to a castle dungeon. He wondered whether every step downward was taking him closer and closer to some unseen disaster.

  Genrikhovich led the way, chattering on as they descended. “The basements beneath the Winter Palace were extensively renovated between the wars. The Armenian was no fool-he knew there would be another war and he prepared for it, even though Stalin fought him at every turn.”

  “The Armenian?”

  “Joseph Orbeli, the director of the Hermitage from 1934 to 1951. He knew Hitler would come, so he turned the basements into concrete bunkers for the collections. The Winter Palace was bombarded dozens of times, but not a single artifact or object was ever damaged. A few people froze to death on the rooftop fire watches, but nothing was ever damaged and no one was hurt in the basement shelters.”

  They finally reached the bottom of the stairs and found themselves in the cavernous rabbit warren of chambers and rooms beneath the Hermitage. There was no plan to any of it; the refitting of the basement area had clearly been done ad hoc as funds or time or material demanded. Everything was done in rough concrete, some gray and solid-looking, the wooden grain of the forms still visible on the stony surface, while other areas were old and crumbling, too much sand or too little lime in the mixture. Stalactites of dripping mineral exudates dripped from parts of the ceilings, and there were white salt stains on the walls.

  Genrikhovich led them down a succession of zigzagging unmarked green-and-white corridors and through huge arch-ceilinged chambers fitted with wood and metal racks filled with sturdy crates of all sizes and shapes. There was little signage anywhere except for small wooden plaques here and there with stenciled letter-number combinations. Cats wandered everywhere. They were every size and type, but they all looked extremely well fed.

  “The Hermitage cats.” Genrikhovich smiled. “A tradition here. Very useful too. Rats.”

  The Russian finally stopped in front of a plain, numbered door, took out a ring of keys and flipped through them, looking for the one he wanted. He found it eventually, turned the key in the lock and opened the door, ushering Holliday and Eddie into his private inner sanctum. The room was large, twenty feet on a side and low ceilinged, and covered in sagging acoustic tile, lit by banks of fluorescent tubes hanging down on chains. Two walls were filled floor to ceiling with old-fashioned wooden plan drawers of the kind architects used for storing drawings. The third wall was fitted with a long worktable with its own high-intensity lighting and a section that acted as a light table. There were two armless drafting chairs on casters, as though Genrikhovich had once had assistants. Above the table were rows of metal racks and shelves stuffed with thick numbered and lettered binders, all in gray slipcases. The area to the right of the desk contained an institutional-looking metal desk and a wooden rolling office chair. There was an old PC on the desk sitting on a boxy hard drive.

  “So, here we are,” said Genrikhovich, closing and locking the door behind him. He sat down in the chair in front of the desk. There was also a modem and a touch-tone multiline phone. The room was completely functional except for a small framed photograph on the desk. It showed a woman and a boy. The woman was wearing a drab, poorly fitted dress. She was holding the hand of a young boy of about ten. He was wearing a young pioneer’s uniform.

  “You and your mother?” Holliday asked, nodding toward the picture.

  “My wife and my son, Yuri. They were visiting my wife’s parents in Arzamas in the Gorky oblast. Her father was a retired machinist there. It was his eightieth birthday and he wanted to see his grandson. June fourth, 1988. A train carrying one hundred and eighteen tons of hexogen-you know hexogen?”

  “RDX.” Holliday nodded. It was one of the best-known military explosives ever made.

  “Yes, RDX. The tanks exploded. My wife’s family lived in a small block of flats next to the railway line. They were all killed, vaporized. There was no funeral. There was nothing to bury.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said Holliday.

  Genrikhovich shrugged and sighed. “It was a very long time ago. More than twenty years.” Even so the Russian’s eyes were welling up with barely contained tears.

  Holliday nodded. He knew what that was like and knew that the sadness and the pain never really left you. He still dreamed of Fay sometimes, usually a Fay who was young and vibrant and healthy, but just as often he dreamed of her gaunt and dying, her eyes rimmed with the dark shadows that predicted her inevitable death. He often wondered now whether that kind of pain grew more painful as you became older and came closer to death yourself.

  “So,” said Genrikhovich, regaining his composure. “We come to the beginning of it all.”

  Genrikhovich took out his keys, found one and fitted it into the drawer of the desk. He took out a plain green file folder and took a single sheet from it, placing it delicately on the light table. He flicked a toggle switch and the milky sheet of glass making up the surface of the table glowed. Holliday swiveled in his drafting chair and stared.

  “What is it?” Holliday asked, wondering what it was he’d come so far to see. In the end it was nothing more than a small rectangle of paper, obviously old, pressed between two sheets of celluloid, themselves yellowed with age. The document had a pale mimeographed bust of Stalin in three-quarter profile at the top, surrounded by flags. The lines and squares on the paper were filled with figures. There was a signature at the bottom, faded to a yellowed sepia and unquestionably done with a straight pen. The name was Boris Vasilyevich Legran. The date was June 7, 1933. There was a pale blue stamp-pad scrawl beneath Legran’s name.

  “Who was Legran?”

  “Briefly he was the director of the State Hermitage. More so he was a crony of Stalin’s.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It’s a purchase order made out to Torolf Prytz for the construction of a gold key two and one half inches long,” Genrikhovich said. He took another celluloid-enclosed document out of the file and laid it beside the first. The second document showed a diagram of an old-fashioned skeleton key with dimensions marked. “These are the specifications for the key.”

  “This would seem to be true.” Eddie nodded, reading over Holliday’s shoulder.

  “Who was Torolf Prytz?” Holliday asked. “It doesn’t sound like a Russian name to me.”

  “There were few goldsmiths left in the new Soviet Russia after 1917, as I am sure you can understand,” answered Genrikhovich, his tone dry. “And none capable of the master craftsmanship to re-create the key. Torolf Prytz was a Norwegian master goldsmith. Legran commissioned the key from him, with Stalin’s countersignature below.” He pointed to the scrawl beneath Legran’s signature. “He always used a signature stamp except on documents he signed in public.”

  “What is this supposed to prove?” Holliday asked.

  “Nothing on its own,” said Genrikhovich. “It is merely the first piece in the puzzle.”

  “And the next?”

  Genrikhovich took something that looked like an old-fashioned photostat of a letter, written on CCCP or Soviet stationery with the words "НАРОДНЫЙ КОМИССАРИАТ ВНУТРЕННИХ ДЕЛ"

  Below was the wreathed red sigil of the Soviet Union. It was dated March 1934. The letter was countersigned in a scrawl much like the signature stamp on the purchase order for the Norwegian goldsmith. Holliday pointed to the Cyrillic words on the letterhead. “Eddie?”

  “Narodnyy komissariat vnutrennikh del, NKVD,” translated the Cuban.

  Genrikhovich nodded. “It is a letter from Beria, the head of the NKVD, to Legran, the director, berating him because the key does not work and serves only to operate the music box within the 1906 Kremlin Egg. He asks for Legran’s resignation. The letter is countersigned in ink by Stal
in and asks for the money spent on the gold key to be returned.” The Russian shrugged. “Of course, the operation of the music box was all the key was ever designed for in the first place.”

  “Did Legran resign?”

  “The following day.” Genrikhovich nodded.

  “Where did the letter come from?”

  “Legran put it into his personal correspondence file. Eventually all the official correspondence comes to the archives. I was adding the material to Legran’s general documentation file when I saw the letter, so I removed it.”

  “I’m still not sure where all this is going,” said Holliday.

  Genrikhovich picked up the phone on his desk and spoke in Russian for a moment. Holliday stiffened.

  “He is asking for a file,” murmured Eddie, translating. “Nothing more than that.”

  A few minutes later a young man appeared carrying a pale pink cardboard file case. He gave it to Genrikhovich, who signed a small chit in return, and then the boy left after a pleasant spasiba and that was that.

  “Look,” said the Hermitage document curator. He took an item from the pink file case. This was an eight-by-eight transparency of the base of what appeared to be an octagonal piece of onyx covered by a green felt cover. Genrikhovich took out a second transparency, which he laid beside the first, and then a third. Both the second and third transparencies showed the same eight-sided onyx base with the green felt removed. The second transparency was black-and-white, while a third was in color. The second transparency had the date 1906 drawn on it in white ink. The date on the color transparency was digitally stamped August 12, 2012. The base of the second transparency had the appropriate Faberge hallmark stamped on it: БA

  And so did the second, but with one small change: JVA

  “I don’t get it,” said Holliday.

  “By the 1880s Faberge was the imperial court jeweler. It was one of the functions for the Hermitage to document and photograph each of the Faberge eggs given to the empress by the czar. The first black-and-white transparency shows the base of the Kremlin Egg, also known as the Uspenski Cathedral Egg, made by Faberge in 1903, although it wasn’t given to Alexandra until 1906, for a variety of reasons. The bottom was covered with felt so it wouldn’t scratch delicate surfaces. The master goldsmith in charge of the Kremlin Egg was Johan Victor Aarne, a Finn who worked in the Faberge shop in St. Petersburg from 1891 to 1904, when he returned to Finland. The Cyrillic hallmark is his signature, the punch for making it his alone to use.” Genrikhovich paused. “Three months ago some of the Kremlin treasures were taken out of the collection for repairs and for cleaning. Included among them was the Kremlin Egg; the clockwork mechanisms had become clogged with dust and dirt over the decades, and several of the larger jewels had become loose in their settings.

  “Since the Hermitage has the largest and best conservation unit in the Federation, the items were sent here. As chief archivist I was responsible for the documentation of the treasures as they came into the Hermitage, and our photographers took a series of comprehensive detailed exposures of each and every item. The second transparency of the Kremlin Egg was taken at that time.”

  “Different marks on the base,” said Holliday.

  “Precisely. The JVA mark from the second transparency is also that of Johan Victor Aarne, but it was not used by him until his return to Vyborg, Finland, in 1904. He used the mark between that date and his death in 1934.”

  “So sometime in that thirty-year period he made a perfect copy of the egg.”

  “Yes,” said Genrikhovich. “The one on display in the Kremlin Armoury is a fake.”

  13

  The big black ZiL 114 limousine and its front and rear guard of Mercedes G55 four-by-fours sped across the granite cobblestones of Red Square, scattering the small crowds of tourists as it raced towards Spasskaya Gate, the official entrance to the Kremlin.

  The thin, partially bald man brooding in the deep leather seat of the passenger compartment looked more like an accountant than the director of the FSB, the feared secret police agency that held sway over the Russian people, but Alexander Vasilyevich Bortnikov liked his unassuming look. Especially the glasses Vladimir had suggested. Bortnikov had nearly perfect vision, but he liked the studious, professorial aspect his oversize spectacles gave him.

  The limousine slipped through the broad opening beneath the tower, breaching the ancient fortress with amazing ease. Ivan the Terrible would have spun in his grave. Bortnikov smiled thinly. What was it poet Mikhail Lermontov had said about this place-“the legendary phoenix raised out of the ashes”? If only he knew how appropriate those words were.

  As the wall in Berlin had crumbled, so had great Russia’s hopes for the future. Now, with his old friend Vladimir putting the iron back into the Rodina’s soul, there was hope once again. . and it was the Phoenix that would give Russia that chance at restoring her greatness.

  The limousine slowed somewhat as it came through the opening in the massive wall and rolled ponderously past the old Supreme Soviet Building. It threaded its way through the maze of buildings until it finally reached the courtyard of the old State Kremlin Palace, once the home of the czars when they were in Moscow.

  Vladimir kept his official prime minister’s office in the Russian White House, the modern, Stalinist-era building that was home to Parliament. But he was never one to cut himself off from the real seat of power and maintained his real and private office in a suite of rooms that had once been the apartment of one of the Romanov princes.

  The limousine stopped at an entrance at the rear of the building, and Bortnikov waited while Tolya, his chauffeur and sometime bodyguard, opened the door for him. He climbed out of the leather seat and stood briefly in the cool late-afternoon sunshine. He nodded to Tolya, told him to go and get himself a cup of coffee somewhere, and entered the building.

  He climbed two flights of narrow stone stairs and continued down a long, ornate hallway, the ceiling arched and covered in gilded cherubim and angels. The walls of the corridor were bright blue watered moire silk, and every few feet there were marble busts depicting an assortment of green gods and goddesses. He reached an arched white door at the end of the hallway, opened it and stepped inside.

  Beyond the door was a large vestibule with an ornate gilded desk on the left and a guard seated behind it in full, red-breasted Kremlin guard uniform, complete with the huge Pinochet-style peaked cap and shiny cavalry boots. As Bortnikov stepped into the room the young man snapped to attention, heels clicking, white-gloved hand snapping to the peak of his idiotic cap, his eyes unblinking. The FSB director smiled pleasantly.

  The boy was smooth cheeked and very handsome, just his type. There was sweat forming on the young fellow’s forehead. Power was a wonderful thing. Bortnikov gave him a little nod, then crossed the vestibule to a set of double doors. He opened the one on the right and stepped into the sitting room of Vladimir Putin’s private office.

  There was no desk, only chairs and tables and glittering blue stone “Imperial Porphyry” columns. The tall windows were covered in bloodred velvet fringed with gold. The chairs were gilt and red upholstery in the Louis Quinze style, the carpets covered with rich “tree of life” patterns from Azerbaijan. The tables by each chair were chased silver and crystal, and the central coffee table the chairs surrounded was a circular slab of inlaid marble held up on curved gold legs with lion’s-paw feet. On the coffee table was a solid-gold platter holding three sweating bottles of red-labeled Istok vodka, a dozen green-and-gold bottles of Baltika 9 beer and the appropriate glassware.

  Three of the four chairs around the table were already occupied. To Bortnikov’s left was the balding, narrow-faced Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, prime minister of all the Russias. Directly in front of the FSB director was Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, the diminutive, boyish-looking Russian president and Putin’s successor in the job. The gray-bearded older man on the right, wearing a very expensive pin-striped suit from Bond Street instead of his ornate robes, was Vladimir
Mikhailovich Gundyaev, known during his days in the old KGB by his code name “Mikhailov” and otherwise known as Kirill I, patriarch of Moscow and all Rus, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church-effectively its pope and, by the numbers, the most powerful of all the Orthodox patriarchs.

  Gundyaev was the oldest of the four by a few years, but all of the men were in their late middle age. Friends since boyhood, all four had been in the Leningrad Oblast KGB during the same period.

  Bortnikov turned and closed the door firmly behind him. He turned back to his companions, a hand raised in greeting, then sat down in the fourth chair. Putin stood, went to the coffee table and poured out four generous shots of vodka into the crystal old-fashioned glasses. The other three men stood and Putin passed the drinks around. “Podnaseets Kloob Leningradski!” toasted the prime minister. To the Leningrad Club.

  “Kloob Leningradski!” the other three responded.

  “Daneezoo!”Bottoms up, Putin ordered. All four downed their drinks in a single swallow. Putin, the host, refilled them, and the four old friends sat down again.

  “Perhaps we should sing patriotic songs,” said the gray-bearded Gundyaev. He began to sing the moody, solemn chorus of “Gosudarstvenniy Gimn SSSR,” the anthem of the Soviet Union, in his strong, baritone voice:

  Slav’sya, Otechestvo nashe

  svobodnoye,Druzhby narodov nadyozhny oplot!

  Partiya Lenina-sila narodnaya

  Nas k torzhestvu kommunizma vedyot!

  Glory to the Fatherland, united and free!

  The stronghold of the friendship of the people!

  The party of Lenin, power of the people,

  It leads us to the triumph of Communism!

  “I really don’t think that will be necessary, Vladimir Mikhailovich.” Putin laughed. “Singing such a song outside this office might get you into terrible trouble with the proletariat.”

  “But it is such a nice song,” complained the primate. He’d obviously been drinking before Bortnikov got there. “It has gravity, strength, power. Not like that rude stuff you hear in the streets now.” The head of the Russian Orthodox Church launched into a reasonably good imitation of a beat-box song called “Black Boomer” by Seryoga.