Red Templar

by Paul Christopher

  Eddie hauled open the barn doors and stared. “?Absolutamente perfecto!”

  To Holliday it looked like a biplane left over from the First World War. The rust-colored primer and mottled brown paint on the aluminum hull were worn down to the metal in some places, and the fat rubber tricycle tires were totally bald. Spray nozzles lined the trailing edge of the lower wings, and there was an even larger nozzle directly behind the single, four-bladed rotary engine.

  “What is it?” Holliday asked.

  Eddie stepped up to the aircraft, running his big hand over the engine nacelle like a man examining a racehorse. “She is a Kukuruznik, a Maize Worker. Her real designation is an Antonov An-2. They used to use them a lot in Cuba but now there are only a few. There is even one of them in the Air Force Museum in Habana.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Holliday. “Can you fly it?”

  “Pero por supuesto, mi amigo-of course I can fly it.”

  24

  Holliday followed Eddie around the biplane’s sturdy, stumpy wings to the midsection of the fuselage. The more of the plane he saw, the more he realized that the mottled paint job was probably done that way on purpose. It was camouflage. There was a large, upward-hinged cargo door with a smaller passenger door inserted within it. Eddie pulled the simple twist handle on the passenger door and boosted himself up into the plane. Holliday followed.

  “?Hijo de puta!” Eddie breathed. “?Es un mal olor!”

  The Cuban was right: the inside of the aircraft smelled, and it wasn’t crop-dusting chemicals. Holliday recognized the rubbery, earthy stink immediately: baled, processed Afghani opium. Yuri was no farmer’s friend; he was a drug smuggler, and apparently on a fairly large scale. Instead of insecticide tanks there were a pair of large fuel tanks just behind the wings. Holliday tried to visualize a map of Asia. It was probably about fifteen hundred miles from here to one of the northern towns of Afghanistan, Herat, maybe. With the two extra fuel tanks, an old plane flying low, under the radar and following the mountain passes, would have an easy time of it.

  They made their way forward to the cramped cockpit. The glass in the windows was flat, and the cockpit was so heavily tilted Holliday couldn’t see the ground.

  Eddie settled into the left-hand pilot’s seat and let his fingers wander over the controls. He reached into the side pocket of his seat and pulled out a folder full of charts and began going through them.

  “These will take us to Yekaterinburg.” He nodded.

  “You’re the pilot,” said Holliday. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  “Go to the back of the plane. See how much fuel is in those tanks. When you have done that go outside and take away the calzos, the. . how do you call it, chocks. Then come back and sit yourself beside me, okay?”

  “Okay.” Holliday nodded. He went back to the tanks and tapped them; they appeared to be about half-full. That done, he jumped down from the doorway, pulled out the wooden chocks that stood against the wheels and then climbed back into the plane. He closed the passenger door, twisting the handle firmly, and went back to the cockpit. He sat down across from Eddie, staring at a hundred dials and switches in front of him. It was impossibly complicated.

  “You can really fly this thing?”

  “Yes. She is una vaca, a cow, but she will do as I tell her, I think.”

  Eddie reached down and fiddled with some kind of push-pull button low on the dashboard, the fingers of his right hand easing forward a small throttlelike handle on the console between the seats. A sharp coughing noise followed and the four-bladed propeller spun through a few rotations. Eddie pushed the lever a little farther forward and the propellers began to whirl, gouts of black smoke blasting out into the inside of the barn. Eddie pushed the throttles forward a little more, the sound of the engine roaring almost painfully.

  Holliday caught motion from the corner of his good eye and he turned, peering out through the windshield. In the distance off to their right he could see a rooster tail of dust or smoke.

  “We’d better get moving,” said Holliday. “I think Yuri’s onto us.”

  “I cannot,” said Eddie, pushing the throttles even farther forward. He hauled back on the half-wheel yoke directly in front of him. “I must run the engine up to clear the oil from the pistons. If I do not do this the cow will die, yes?”

  “Do what you have to do, but hurry it up,” said Holliday. The plume of dust had resolved itself into an old GAZ-67, the Russian knockoff of a jeep crossed with a tractor. Holliday could make out at least four people in the vehicle. One of them was standing up and gripping the handles of what looked like a mounted fifty-caliber machine gun. “How long?” Holliday asked, raising his voice over the phlegm-rattling noise of the engine.

  “A few seconds more!” Eddie called out. A few seconds more and the fifty-cal was going to be within killing range. The five-inch-long shells would go through the skin of the old plane like a rat through cheese. Holliday watched as the truck bounced closer on the invisible track through the fields. Another thirty yards and it was going to be too late.

  “Go! Now!” Holliday yelled. The first ranging burst from the truck was chewing up the dirt runway a few yards ahead. Eddie released the yoke and pulled the throttle all the way back. The Antonov jumped forward like an overweight greyhound chasing a rabbit. Holliday and Eddie were thrown back into their seats as the first burst of machine-gun bullets struck the plane, clipping the undercarriage and the belly of the fuselage only seconds before the Antonov took to the air. A second burst hammered through the lower starboard-side wing, but by then it was too late-the Antonov was climbing at an insane rate of speed, all with Eddie’s hands clear of the yoke. He worked the pedals and the plane banked away from the airstrip and the murderous fire of the machine gun. Only then did Eddie grab the yoke and gently ease the old airplane into level flight. The Volga was five hundred feet below them and the machine-gunning Gaz was a memory.

  “You always fly with no hands?” Holliday asked.

  “You do not lead una vaca by her horns, amigo; you let her find her own way. It is the same with this aircraft.” He stroked the yoke in front of his hands. “When you taxi the Antonov the yoke is the brake. Pull the yoke to raise the nose and you will stand the aircraft on its head.”

  “Glad I wasn’t trying to fly it.” Holliday laughed.

  “Yo tambien, compadre-me, too.” Eddie grinned. He reached into the side pocket on his left and pulled out the bulging chart book. Flying the plane with his knees, he leafed through the charts until he found the one he wanted. He studied it for a moment, then stuffed the chart book back into the side pocket. He adjusted the Antonov’s course slightly and they slowly lost altitude until they were only three hundred feet or so above the ground.

  “How far to Yekaterinburg?” Holliday asked.

  “Two hours, maybe, two and a half, no more than that.”

  “Where do we land?”

  “A good question, mi amigo,” answered Eddie. “A very good question.”

  The International Cathar Historical Society met in the village of Montsegur each year. Montsegur was a favorite of groups interested in Cathar history, of which there were a surprising number, and the ICHS didn’t stand out among them in any special way. Each year they organized tours of the massive Cathar stronghold on the steep hill that loomed above the town, as well as seminars and readings about the twelfth- and thirteenth-century sect that split from the Catholic Church, believing it to be irretrievably corrupt.

  The Cathars also believed that each man had the individual spark of God within his soul and needed no organized religion to keep that spark alive. To them Christ was a prophet and philosopher and no more divine than any other ordinary man.

  Most interesting, at least to the International Cathar Historical Society, was the fact that the Cathars believed that they were the true inheritors of the Apostolic Creed, not the Roman Catholic Church. It was this connection with the Apostles that attracted the ICHS, since they were in fact kno
wn to one another as the Apostles, a group of twelve men organized secretly in the early thirteen hundreds to protect, preserve and enlarge the assets of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, more commonly referred to as the Templars.

  The Apostles had never been knights of the order, but they had been and continued to be its bankers, its accountants and its bookkeepers. With their ink-stained fingers the monks and laymen of the order had survived long past the vaunted holy men, the knights and the grand masters, most of whom were tortured or burned at the stake, or both. The scribes, the note takers, the money changers and the moneylenders had gone on undisturbed and tranquil in the immutability of numbers, of money owed and money lent.

  The motto of the Templar Knights had been, In hoc signo vinces-By this sign we shall conquer. The motto of the Apostles was, Aqua profunda est quieta-Still waters run deep. Better to survive shyly for your purpose than to die any number of glorious and useless deaths.

  The twelve Apostles-and there were always twelve who came to Montsegur each year-were from every inhabitable continent, and in their way represented every major power on the planet. None of the twelve ever answered to their real names when they met, although some knew of one another and did business together. When they met they were Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon and Judas Iscariot. In this way, as Apostles died and were replaced, continuity, which was their watchword, never changed-always twelve, always the same.

  As always when the Apostles assembled together they spoke in Berrichon, the obscure and now vanished vulgate Latin tongue that the Templars had sometimes used in coded communications with one another.

  Pierre Ducos was Peter, not the first Apostle but, as the Greek version of his name suggested, the Apostles’ “rock.” Usually it was Ducos who offered the official greeting and prayer as the twelve men gathered in the private dining room of the Hotel Costes. The sumptuous meal had been laid before them, the wine poured, and the waitstaff had withdrawn. It was a prayer little known and even more rarely heard.

  “May the grace of the Holy Spirit be present with us. May Mary, Star of the Sea, lead us to the harbor of salvation. Amen.

  “Holy Father, eternal God, omnipotent, omniscient creator, bestower, kind ruler and most tender lover, pious and humble redeemer; gentle, merciful savior, Lord! I humbly beseech Thee and implore Thee that Thou may enlighten me, free me and preserve the brothers of the Temple and all Thy Christian people, troubled as they are.

  “Thou, O God, who knowest that we are innocent, set us free that we may keep our vows and Your commandments in humility, and serve Thee and act according to Thy will. Dispel all those unjust reproaches, far from the truth, heaped upon us by the means of tough adversities, great tribulations and temptations, which we have endured, but can endure no longer. Amen.”

  There was a chorus of mumbled amens and then the clatter of cutlery. Sir James Sinclair, otherwise known as Simon to the group, was the first to speak. “In our discussions over the last few weeks most of us have voiced concerns regarding the man Holliday. Rodrigues had no right to give the list to him.”

  “Rodrigues was dying, as I recall,” answered Ducos. He took a sip of his wine, a very fine Margaux. “And in point of fact, Holliday’s uncle was one of us many years ago. He has some right to the notebook.”

  “He was never pledged to the order,” said Judas, a plump banker from Switzerland. “He has no idea of the laws and ordinances. He is not one of us; therefore he has no rights at all.”

  “From what we’ve seen he wouldn’t have abided by the laws and ordinances anyway,” snapped Sir James Sinclair. “He is a rogue and he cannot be tolerated.”

  “Enjoy your ratatouille before it gets cold, my dear Simon; there is nothing worse than soggy vegetables,” said Ducos. “The situation is in hand. The Russian has promised me that when Holliday reaches the church in Yekaterinburg, he will be dealt with.”

  “And if he doesn’t go to the church?” Sir James asked, taking of a forkful of the aromatic vegetable stew.

  “If he does not go to the church, my dear Simon, then we have nothing to worry about, n’est-ce pas?” The lawyer smiled, watching as the Scotsman’s protests were silenced by the marvelously cooked meal. “We have been one step ahead of the unfortunate colonel and his golliwog friend from the very beginning.”

  25

  Landing near Yekaterinburg presented no real problems, to Holliday’s surprise. With the main airport out of the question when flying a stolen plane, Eddie artfully set the old Antonov down in a farmer’s fallow field. Safely back on the ground, the two men found an old set of abandoned railway tracks leading into the town of Sredneuralsk less than a mile from their landing spot. Both men carried the backpacks they’d taken from the train, and Holliday still carried the Serdyukov SPS automatic he’d taken from the provodnitsa. According to the charts, Sredneuralsk was about twenty-five miles from Yekaterinburg.

  Reaching the town, they passed a gigantic factory that emitted the reeking odor of processing chickens. In the center of Sredneuralsk they found a large yellow building that looked as though it might have originally been some wealthy landowner’s mansion but which turned out to be a hotel.

  They stopped there for a meal in the sparsely decorated cafe and Eddie asked their waiter how they could get to Yekaterinburg. The waiter, a grizzled, rheumy-eyed man in his sixties with a long stained apron tied to his front, was surprised at being addressed by a black man in fluent Russian, but then he beamed, showing off a gleaming set of Stalin-era steel teeth. “Tourist, yes?” he asked in English. “I am Ivan Chaplitzky, owner of Tsentral’nyi ’otel, of course.” He poured coffee into their thick pottery cups from a sterling-silver pot that appeared to be at least a hundred years old. Something buried in a backyard before the revolution and dug up after the revolution failed seventy-four years later, thought Holliday. “You are, of course, tourists, I am sure.”

  “Yes,” answered Holliday. “I’m American and my friend is Cuban.”

  “Viva Fidel, okay?” Ivan chuckled. “Your friend has very good Russian.”

  “Spasiba,” said Eddie.

  “Priglashaem Vas,” said Ivan the waiter. “You say that you wish to get to Yekaterinburg, of course?”

  “Yes.” Holliday nodded.

  “I take you,” said Ivan. “I have taxi, of course. One thousand rubles. Pay U.S. I take you for fifty dollars.”

  “All right,” said Holliday.

  “Each way,” said Ivan.

  “We’re only going one way,” said Holliday.

  “But I must come back, of course.” Ivan shrugged.

  “Of course,” said Holliday.

  Ivan’s taxi turned out to be a mid-fifties ZiL 111 hearse that looked a lot like a 1955 Chevy Bel Air, which he’d borrowed from his undertaker brother Dimitri. Ivan stuck a magnetized plastic sign on the door and another one with suction cups on the roof, switched the license plates and they were off. Forty-five minutes later he dropped them in front of the glass-and-steel arch of the Hyatt Yekaterinburg in the middle of a bustling city of a million and a half people. The sleepy little town on the edge of the Urals had come a long way since the czar and his family had been assassinated there in 1917. So had the czar, for that matter. After lying in the bottom of a coal mine in a swamp for the better part of a hundred years, Nicholas had been elevated to sainthood in the Greek Orthodox Church, with a cathedral built on the site of the very spot where he’d been gunned down.

  Holliday and Eddie booked a suite using their phony passports, praying that news of their exploits hadn’t reached this far, this soon. Once in the suite they cracked open the minibar and settled down in the front room with a couple of tall bottles of Stary Melnik Gold.

  The two men, both exhausted by their day, sat silently for what seemed to be a very long time. When the silence was broken it was Eddie who spoke. “Ahora el tango, el bolero siguiente.”

  “Tra
nslation?” asked Holliday sleepily, stretched out on the couch.

  “Something my grandmother said when I told her I was tired.” The Cuban smiled. “Now the tango, then the bolero.”

  “In other words, we’re not finished yet. You mean Genrikhovich?” said Holliday.

  “Si.”

  “Was he snatched or did he leave the train on his own?”

  “It is the question, mi coronel.”

  “The only reason we’re here is because of his suggestion. I’m not sure whether I believe him now.”

  “I do not trust him, either,” said Eddie, taking a long swallow of beer.

  “So what would your grandmother say?”

  “La discrecion es la mejor parte del valor,” answered the Cuban.

  “Good advice.”

  “It worked for her, mi compadre; she lived to be a hundred and ten years old.”

  “So what would Granny do in this situation?”

  “I think Genrikhovich mentioned a name, no?”

  “Anton Zukov.” Holliday nodded.

  “If Genrikhovich has set us up for some kind of trap, it will be in the museum at the church, where Gospodin Zukov works.”

  “Ergo, we don’t go to the church; we find out where Mr. Zukov lives and pay him a visit at home.”

  Eddie shrugged. “It is what my grandmother would have done.” The Cuban smiled. “But first she would have had a siesta, I think.”

  “Truly, Eddie, your grandmother was very wise. I’ll take the couch; you can have the bed.”

  By the time they woke up night had fallen. They ordered room service dinners and then they got down to work. There were seven A. Zukovs listed in the book, and Eddie began phoning them all. He told them he was a reporter for Moskovsky Komsomolets, the national newspaper, doing a story on the Hermitage during the Great Patriotic War, and understood Gospodin Zukov’s father had come to Yekaterinburg with the treasures. Four of the people who answered said he had a wrong number and hung up. The fifth didn’t. Eddie and the man talked for a few moments before the Cuban set down the telephone.