by Darcy Fray
One typically English overcast morning on his way to lecture, Zolkin passed a sidewalk cafe. Sitting by herself, enjoying a cup of tea in the midst of a light mist, was the most beautiful girl he had ever gazed upon. Seemingly oblivious to the current weather situation, she daintily sipped her Earl Grey as if it were the first sunny day of spring after an arduous winter. Zolkin was instantly enamored. He looked down at his clothing with trepidation. Khaki trousers, two inches too short, a stained, yellowing white shirt, and a threadbare corduroy blazer. It was quite possibly the first time he had ever truly acknowledged his challenged wardrobe.
Unflinchingly, he approached her table, by which time the rain had evolved into a nagging drizzle.
“Excuse me, Miss?” Zolkin asked with a hopeful tone.
“Yes.” Her enchanting voice melted his very being.
“Is that tea cup taken?” Zolkin inquired, pointing to an extra cup next to the teapot. His voice cracked twice during the question, but Sarah didn’t notice. She was too busy staring into his sleepy, gunmetal-blue Russian eyes. Sarah looked beyond Zolkin’s careless fashion, and saw the man she was destined to share her teapot with all along.
“It is now. Please,” Sarah responded as she gestured to the empty chair next to her. Her welcoming smile was all he needed. “Do you take cream and sugar?”
“No, thank you. I prefer my tea black with a touch of English rain,” he replied. It was the perfect thing to say to a literature major, and led to an effortless conversation that carried on far too long, given the inclement weather.
After that fateful cup of tea, their romance quickly blossomed. Sarah introduced him to poetry, opening doors in his mind that he had not even known to exist. She often read aloud to him the poems of Goethe, Rilke, Rumi, and his personal favorite, Pushkin.
Zolkin grew to love Pushkin not only because he was a great Russian poet and the founder of Russian modern literature, but because he was also a man of civil courage and moral integrity. Zolkin’s first book about the writer, The Twenty-Nine Faces of Death, detailed each of Pushkin’s twenty-nine duels, with the final one resulting in his early death. On that fateful day, Pushkin fought Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d’Anthes, a French officer who had attempted to seduce Pushkin’s beautiful young wife, Natalia. Pushkin died defending his love, surely the most powerful feeling a human can experience. It made Zolkin wonder...when Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d’Anthes fired that fatal bullet into Pushkin’s stomach and Pushkin took his last breath, where did all that energy go?
Gordon looked up from the thesis paper and checked the time. An hour and a half had flown by unnoticed. He picked up the AN/PRC-148 Multiband InterTeam Radio resting on his desk and pressed the push-to-talk switch.
“John?” Remarkably, he had never before used a two-way radio and was ignorant of the proper jargon and etiquette. As a child, he had resented the military for stealing his father for months at a time, and thus shunned all military-esque boyhood institutions. He was no Eagle Scout.
“Go for John, over.” Wilkinson stood outside the Crimm trailer, overseeing members of the Army bomb disposal team who were preparing the detonation.
“This is Gordon.”
“Roger that, this is a private secure channel between just you and me, over.”
“Oh, okay, sorry, didn’t realize. I need to talk to you about something before you demolish the trailer,” Gordon said as he tapped his pencil on the desk.
“Roger, what’s your twenty, over?”
“At my desk in base camp. I think we missed something.”
A large truck pulled up next to Wilkinson, completely overpowering the handheld speaker. “Say again, over,” Wilkinson said, stepping away from the commotion surrounding the trailer.
“I said, I think we missed something.”
“Go on, over.”
“In my opinion, a targeted attack like this needs a...well, a vessel or a conduit, if you will. I’ve been mulling over the possibilities and I think there must be some sort of an object that acted as such. I have no idea what that object is or even if it’s still anywhere near the site, but we will know it when we see it.”
“Roger. That’s not much to go on, Gordon. We’ve completely emptied out the trailer. We have everything boxed in storage, but I can assure you we’ve uncovered nothing out of the norm, over.”
“I need your men to conduct a search of the surrounding area.”
“Roger. How wide?”
“The perimeter should be defined by the presence of wildlife. Tell your men to walk out from the trailer until they see birds, squirrels and deer. That will mark the outer boundary for the search. You need to look everywhere within that perimeter.”
•••
Dust, WV - Forest
The grid search covered one square mile, with the trailer serving as a midpoint. Ninety-six soldiers, each spaced ten feet apart, slowly walked in straight lines through the densely forested area, carefully scrutinizing the ground below. With this manpower, the search would take approximately three and a half hours per pass, with the possibility of up to three passes.
The key to conducting a successful grid search involved maintaining both spacing and pace, while simultaneously keeping one’s attention tuned to the smallest of details. The hilly, dense terrain made for a complicated search, but the soldiers’ rigorous training and keen eyes left them well-equipped for the task.
The first pass revealed three menacing vintage china doll heads, one hundred seventy-eight cigarette butts, four toilet seats, fourteen condom wrappers, parts of three pairs of unhinged eyeglasses, three hundred twenty assorted beer and soda cans, one hundred thirty-four miscellaneous food wrappers, one 12-gauge shotgun, an assortment of filthy old clothing and one...human skull.
Pvt. Ben Golden of Little Rock, Arkansas, unearthed the cranium of census taker Betty Lovell, putting to rest a fifteen-year mystery and confirming the suspicions that her husband, Bob Lovell, had held all the way to his grave. A forensic team later exhumed and assembled the remainder of Betty’s skeleton which had been hacked into about thirty different pieces, all buried within a six-foot radius. The search continued.
Pvt. Ron Evans of Scranton, Pennsylvania, twenty years old, was midway through his second pass. It was his first grid search and he found it odd that nobody seemed to know exactly what they were looking for...but then again, the whole mission had been obscured by conflicting directives and wild rumors. On his first pass he had uncovered a multitude of food wrappers and cans, and one toilet seat. As he descended toward the trailer from the crest above, he came across a patch of ground which appeared to have been recently disturbed. He stopped to take a closer look. There were two cigarette butts, some charred leaves, and an oddly shaped hole in the ground, about six inches in depth. He lifted the AN/PRC-148 Multiband InterTeam Radio to his lips and pressed the push-to-talk button.
“Break-break, Private Ron Evans for Lieutenant General Wilkinson, over.” It seemed odd to Pvt. Evans that the Lieutenant General was manning the search radio; surely it was a job better suited for a subordinate.
“Go for Wilkinson, over.”
“Sir, I’ve come upon an unusual disturbance in the soil. I think you should come take a look, over.”
“Roger. What’s your twenty, over?” Wilkinson had already been called out three times to look at unusual disturbances, including a human skull.
“Sir, I’m a quarter klick due north of the trailer on the crest of the hill, over.”
“Roger, en route, out.”
Wilkinson and Gordon walked the short distance up the hill from the trailer to Pvt. Ron Evans’ position. They both crouched down to examine his discovery.
“Looks like we almost had a four-alarm smoke break,” Wilkinson said as he examined the charred leaves next to the cigarette butts.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Private.”
“Take a look at these boot prints. There are two sets that look the same...standard Army issue, but this set over
here looks like a civilian trail shoe of some sort.”
Wilkinson examined all three sets of prints and nodded in agreement. “Nice find, Private.”
“Sir, thank you, sir, err...Lieutenant General Wilkinson,” Pvt. Evans stuttered, flustered by the compliment.
“One ‘sir’ is quite enough, Private.”
“John, take a look at this.” Gordon pointed to the unusually shaped hole in the ground. “Someone has obviously dug something up here and judging by the footprints, it wasn’t one of your guys.” Gordon extracted a sample of the soil using a stainless steel soil probe and bucket handed to him by a prudent young private.
The General took a closer look. Nothing particularly revelatory, except for the distinct hard-pressed pyramid shape at its base.
“Captain Dillon, I need you up here stat,” Wilkinson barked into his radio.
Captain Keith Dillon bounded up the hill like a dog to its master. “Sir?”
“I want to know which of your men were up here with their thumbs stuck up their asses, when they should’ve been watching the perimeter...and I want them questioned and held accountable for their actions or lack thereof,” Wilkinson demanded, making no attempt to disguise his anger.
“Yes, sir. Right away. Is that all, sir?”
“No. I need a bulletin sent out to all law enforcement and airports in the area. They need to be on the lookout for a pyramid-shaped object with a three-inch base. Understood?”
“Yes sir, right away, sir!” Captain Dillon nodded before making a hasty retreat.
Wilkinson kicked the ground in disgust, sending up a swirling curtain of dry leaves.
•••
Charleston, WV - Yeager Airport
Fletcher Crisp pulled his rental car into the Hertz express drop at Yeager Airport in Kanawha County, West Virginia, which sat upon a bucolic hilltop overlooking the valleys of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers. Yeager’s unique setting also afforded passengers a scenic view of the city of Charleston, West Virginia, framed by rolling forested hills. But Fletcher was far too distracted to admire views.
He had disposed of his surveillance gear in a truck-stop dumpster minutes earlier. Though a little known fact, it was technically illegal for non-U.S. citizens to even look through U.S. Generation 3 night vision goggles on U.S. soil, let alone try to get them through TSA. Fletcher’s mission was simply to return home with the pyramid, and he would do nothing to jeopardize that.
Fletcher had surmised that the size and shape of the pyramid itself would render it innocuous to TSA personnel, especially at a small airport like Yeager. If anyone asked, he was a visiting artist and the pyramid was his latest modern sculpture. His many years of experience in dealing with Americans had led him to the conclusion that they believed almost anything delivered in a British accent.
However, unbeknownst to Fletcher, just moments before, every airport in West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio had been put on high alert. The bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security stated that a terrorist was attempting to transport a bio-terror weapon housed in the shell of a small pyramid-shaped object with a three-inch base. There was no accompanying physical description of the alleged terrorist, and because hand searches of every bag would result in unacceptable travel delays, TSA employees were asked to focus on males between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five, hardly a narrow cross section.
As Fletcher approached the TSA desk, an unexpected wave of anxiety passed over him, hitting him squarely in the gut.
“Sir?” A pretty young TSA employee gazed up at him with a cheery smile. It was too late now.
“How very embarrassing, I’m afraid you caught me right in the middle of a midday dream,” he replied in his most alluring British accent.
“Happens to me all the time. Your accent is so lovely. Whereabouts are you from?”
“I have England to thank for my accent, as well as for my penchant for fine tea and rose gardens,” he remarked foxily, easily winning over his more than willing victim.
“May I see your boarding pass and passport, please?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to need to settle for a green card. I’m one of yours now,” he responded, pouring on the charm as he handed her his U.S. identification and boarding pass.
The TSA employee looked over the documents, before returning them to Fletcher. “Thank you, sir. Have a nice day.”
He proceeded to the x-ray machine and laid his bag on the conveyor belt. His stomach churned and beads of cold sweat sprouted on his brow.
On the other side of the belt sat TSA employee Luke Johnson. He was on the tail end of an eight-hour shift and all he could think about was the date he had scheduled for later with fellow TSA employee Mindy Jacobs. They had tickets to see Blake Shelton at the Charleston Civic Center, followed by a late-night dinner reservation at Bridge Road Bistro, and hopefully a nightcap at his place. He was looking at the x-ray monitor in front of him, but his mind was elsewhere.
Fletcher’s bag passed through the x-ray without raising a single red flag, but even if TSA employee Luke Johnson had given the monitor his full attention, it would not have altered the outcome of the screening. The pyramid shaped object did not show up on the x-ray...at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood
Seven Months Earlier - Saint Petersburg, Russia - The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood
DR. DMITRY ZOLKIN was late...again. He furiously pedaled his painstakingly refurbished WWII-era Russian military folding bike down Nevsky Prospect, Saint Petersburg’s main avenue. He crossed the bridge over the Griboyedov Canal. The view never ceased to take his breath away. The macabrely-name Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood had been built in memory of Tsar Alexander II on the exact site of his assassination. Featuring a medieval Russian style of architecture, distinguished by brightly colored mosaics and multiple onion domes, it was a marvelous sight to behold and always brought Dmitry back to that day in 1979.
In the spring of 1979, Dmitry and his beloved English rose, Sarah Appleton, made their first trip together to Russia, then part of the Soviet Union. Born and raised in Saint Petersburg, Dmitry wished to share his love for the city that his revered Pushkin described as “the grace and wonder of the northern lands.” Located in the delta of the Neva River and spanning many islands, Saint Petersburg’s waterways and magnificent architecture completely enraptured Sarah, who felt as though she had stepped into a postcard sent from the distant past.
On May 7, 1979, Dmitry awoke at the early hour of 7:34 a.m., left a note instructing Sarah where and when she should meet him, and made his way to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. Earlier that winter, he had arranged for his cousin, a jewelry artisan, to craft an engagement ring for Sarah. Dmitry had spent many hours in his physics lab at Oxford drawing and tearing up designs, before deciding upon the unlikely combination of a river anchor embossed with an English rose. The river anchor represented his home and the English rose, his heart, Sarah. The previous day, he had picked up the ring from his cousin’s shop on Nevsky Prospect. The workmanship was spectacular. The river anchor wrapped delicately around the entire circumference of the ring, and the English rose was inset with a resplendent raspberry-red alexandrite stone, a precious Russian gem named after Alexander II himself.
Dmitry arrived at the church at nine o’clock, after picking up four dozen red roses from a greenhouse on the outskirts of town. In May of ’79, the Church was not yet open to the public and was still under the control of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, a highly profitable museum. After a generous donation from Dmitry’s well-heeled uncle, Viktor Zolkin, the administrators of the church agreed to grant access to Dmitry for exactly one hour, from nine to ten a.m. on the seventh of May.
A riot of color, the interior of the Church harbored seven thousand square meters of Italian marble and more than twenty different Russian minerals, and was adorned with extravagant mosaics based on paintings by Nikolai Bruni, M
ikhail Nesterov, Viktor Vasnetsov and Andrei Ryabushkin. That morning, the gilded chandeliers cast a soft glow, augmented by the morning light that streamed in through the large cathedral windows. Surely, this was Heaven on Earth.
Dmitry laid down each rose with care, creating a floral path for his beautiful Sarah to follow.
He glanced down at his antique leather-banded Poljot wristwatch. It was 9:18 a.m. On the note he left for Sarah, he had requested that she open the front door to the Cathedral at exactly 9:20 a.m. The next two minutes seemed to stretch interminably and no matter how hard Dmitry tried, he could not tame his racing heart. It felt as though a thousand wild mustangs were galloping across his very soul.
One minute passed. He watched each second tick by on the watch’s second hand as if it were a decade...56, 57, 58, 59...9:20 a.m. He looked to the door. Silence. His heart skipped a beat and an uncomfortably large lump formed in his throat. Sarah was always early to everything. She prided herself on her punctuality.
Dmitry slowly walked the entire length of his rose pathway to the door, with each step echoing his growing fears. 9:25 a.m. Had she missed the note? Were the directions incorrect? Had she gone to the wrong church? Was she dead in a car accident? Had she fallen in to the Neva River? Had she changed her mind about him? The last question reverberated loudly, spawning a thousand others. He had always thought that she was far too good for him anyway. He reached for the door handle, forcefully pulling it inward. Much to the surprise of both, Sarah flew by him, landing on the stone floor a few feet away.
“My love!” Dmitry exclaimed, overcome by both shock and joyful relief.
Sarah lay on the floor crying, writhing in pain as she grabbed her ankle, which was already bruised and badly swollen. Dmitry rushed to her side and helped her to her feet. Between sobs, she explained, “I’m so sorry, Dmitry...I fell and sprained...my ankle halfway here...and then I realized...I didn’t have any money for a taxi...and I hobbled the rest of the way.”
