Red Templar

by Paul Christopher

  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 didn’t even blink. He swept up the bills, folded them neatly and tucked them into the pocket of his black-and-red vest.

  “Dobar wecher! What I can do for the gospoda today?”

  Holliday smiled pleasantly. “My friend and I are looking for a bit of an adventure,” he said. Viktor’s left eyebrow crept up and he glanced toward Eddie, but he remained silent.

  “What kind adventure the gospoda look for? Small-type adventure, bigging adventure, or very serious adventure?”

  “Very serious,” answered Holliday.

  Viktor stared at the spot where the money had been. Holliday took out ten more bills. Viktor didn’t look happy. Holliday laid out an additional ten. At that point they disappeared into Viktor’s vest pocket again.

  “You look for what adventure, exact?”

  “We were thinking there must be an adventurous way to get into Russia.”

  “Definite, sure.” Viktor nodded, giving his patented stare down at the table again.

  “Two hundred more when you give us directions.”

  “Easy,” said Viktor, grinning. “My friends, we do it all the time. Easy-peasy.”

  “How?” Holliday asked.

  “The ferry.”

  “There is no ferry.”

  “Not people ferry, ferry for the trains. Hero of Sevastopol. Leave tonight, nine o’clock, thirteen hours after, pssht! You have achieved Russia at port of Illichivsk.”

  “Where is Illichivsk?”

  “Maybe ten
mile Odessa. Very nearby. I have girl there. Marinoska. Blondie-type girl. Nice.”

  “I’m sure she is, Viktor. How do we get on the ferry?”

  “Two hundred leva, I show you, another five hundred, I take you there.”

  “To the ferry?”

  “No, no.” Viktor grinned. “I take you Illichivsk and then Odessa to meet with Marinoska. Viktor give the best service in Varna, no doubt!”

  “Okay,” said Holliday. “When do we leave?”

  “Seven thirty o’clock. You have car, of course?”

  “Of course.”

  “In parking lot of hotel then,” said Viktor. “Seven thirty o’clock we meet. I bring food and some nice beers. You pay me then. We have good time, okay?”

  “It’s a deal,” said Holliday.

  * * *

  The ferry terminal at the port of Varna was south of the main port and the naval base. After the fall of the Soviet Union, trade between Bulgaria and the Ukraine had collapsed, but UKR ferries had recently revived the trade in moving railcars back and forth between Varna and Odessa.

  There was a crane arrangement where the wider-gauge bogies on the Russian cars were switched to the narrower European gauge, a large multitrack holding facility for waiting railcars, and a dock and hydraulic ramp system capable of handling two ships at a time, usually one just arrived and one just leaving.

  Each four-hundred-foot-long ship was capable of taking a total of one hundred and eight freight cars on the main deck and the two decks below. The trick was to know which cars were going on the top deck and which were going below, and to make sure you didn’t try to hop a freight car that had just been unloaded. Empty freight cars were easy to spot, since they weren’t padlocked. Incoming cars were chalked with the capital letter, B for Bulgaria, and outgoing were marked with a U, for Ukraine. Tonight it was Hero of Sevastopol outgoing and Hero of Pleven incoming.

  Viktor told them all of this on the twenty-minute drive from the Golden Sands to the outskirts of the ferry terminal, a pool of sickly yellow sodium lights in the dusky October evening. Holliday and Eddie had brought Genrikhovich a taco plate from the Happy Bar and Grill, a late-night dinner they knew might have the same kind of repercussions as the Burger King Quad Stacker, but the old man had to eat something, and an open freight car was much airier than a cramped little Moskvich.

  Viktor turned out to be a full-service guide on their “very serious” adventure, turning up at the Grifid Arabella’s parking lot right on time and bringing four sleeping bags and a knapsack full of sandwiches, apples, two pomegranates, eight bottles of Zagorka beer and two rolls of toilet paper.

  “Do they patrol the rail yard?” Holliday asked as they abandoned the rental halfway down a gravel side road.

  “Sometimes. They have dogs but I have never been caught.”

  “I do not like dogs,” said Eddie.

  “Shtaw?” Genrikhovich said nervously.

  “Saabaka,” translated Eddie. “Awchen Gnevny Saabaka.”

  Genrikhovich went pale but he kept his mouth shut.

  “What did you say to him?” Holliday asked.

  “I told him there were dogs. Very big dogs,” said Eddie.

  “You sure that was the right thing to do?”

  “It will keep him. . ?paralizado por el miedo?”

  “Paralyzed with fear?”

  “Si, we will be much happier.” Eddie grinned. “Your Cuban is getting muy bueno.”

  “Muchas gracias, mi companero,” answered Holliday, bowing gravely forward.

  “?Ay, cono!” Eddie laughed. “Soon I take you back to my family in Habana.” He clamped a hand on Genrikhovich’s narrow shoulder as Viktor the waiter led the way down between the railway tracks. Viktor found the appropriate chalk marking on one of the cars and rolled back the door. The Bulgarian boosted himself up, then helped Holliday and Eddie up. Genrikhovich came last.

  The interior of the empty boxcar was half-solid and half-slatted. The lingering smell suggested that some kind of root vegetable like rutabagas had been the last cargo. Viktor rumbled the door shut and set up the bedrolls in one corner of the car, and they all settled in. Holliday had one of the bottles of beer Viktor offered and then lay down on his bedroll.

  Ten minutes after finishing the beer he was fast asleep. He woke once to the thumping and banging as the boxcar was loaded onto the ferry, and woke briefly again, feeling the odd, almost comforting sensation of being rocked on the sea. He fell asleep again and didn’t wake until the ship docked at the Ukrainian port city of Illichivsk at noon the following day. For the first time in twenty years Lieutenant Colonel John “Doc” Holliday, United States Army Ranger (retired), was back in what had once been enemy territory.

  8

  “You will need documents,” said Viktor. He nodded toward Genrikhovich. “Even him.” They were sitting in a dive called the Celantano Pizzeria in Illichivsk, eating slices. The glass-fronted fast-food joint had square panels of fluorescent lighting, plastic brick to waist height, and lime green roughly plastered walls above.

  “What kind of documents?” Holliday asked, feeling his wallet getting thinner by the minute. They’d already visited an ATM and he’d stocked up on two hundred twenty-griven notes, which, at ten grivna to the dollar, were the equivalent of twenty bucks, and which seemed to be the most common banknote in use.

  “The Russian will need an internal passport as well as an international one and a residency card.”

  “My friend and I?”

  “New passports. Gospodin Eddie is too. . obvious as a Cuban,” said Viktor.

  “What do you suggest?” Holliday asked.

  “Argentina, Venezuela. Best would be American. Spic, yes?”

  “Puerto Rican?”

  “Yes. You, too, must be American, of course, unless you like to be Canadian. Canada is very easy.”

  “I’ll stick with my own country for now.”

  “Okay, yes, easy-peasy, you know.” Victor nodded, sucking a straw stuck in a bottle of livid green Fanta passion fruit and orange Taste of Africa.

  “Are these forged documents or real?” Holliday asked.

  “Oh, very genuine.”

  “How do you get them?”

  “Not me, oh, no, I have no way of knowing this, really, but I have a friend. . ”

  “I thought you might.” Holliday nodded.

  “His name is Gennadi. Good friend.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Odessa. Not far, twenty minutes on bus. Psssht! We are there.”

  “Easy-peasy,” Holliday said.

  “Right,” said Viktor, speaking around the straw. His tongue was as green as the walls.

  Holliday wondered how far they were from Chernobyl. “Easy-peasy.”

  Gennadi Bondarenko lived in an old yellow stucco building in the Privoz district of Odessa, close to the railway station. In the old days the apartment would probably have been shared by at least three families, but now it was just Bondarenko and his voluptuous girlfriend, whose name was Natasha.

  There was a large living room/kitchen/dining room with a huge round caramel-colored velvet couch that could have slept two couples comfortably, expensive-looking Persian carpets, an eating island that jutted out between two massive windows covered in drooping velvet curtains the same color as the couch, and a refrigerator in one corner and a strange gas-powered hot plate that sat on the kitchen counters with its big propane supply right beside it.

  Built-in nineteenth-century cupboards and shelves covered the walls, which were painted a uniform sallow cream color. One area of open wall six feet wide and eight feet high had been painted flat white, for some unknown reason.

  Outside the bustling street seemed to be a combination farmer’s market, tailgate junk sale and pickup stroll for hookers. According to Gennadi, the party went on twenty-four/seven and drew no ethnic or religious borders. Jews, Asians, locals and anyone else sold whatever people wanted. Gennadi specialized in selling documents.

  Bond
arenko had been born on the Lower East Side of New York in the old Ukrainian part of the city and spent most of the first fifteen years of his life in a fourth-floor walk-up on Second Avenue. In 1999, his grandparents from Odessa had died, leaving the family farm to his parents. The parents went home, and with nothing else to do the young teenage Gennadi had been forced to go along with them.

  Now he was what his mother and father called a charter member of the Solntsevskaya Bratva, the Brotherhood, a colloquial term for the Russian-Ukrainian-Georgian crime family run by the Solntsevskaya gang out of Moscow. Bondarenko denied it, but the tattoos of crowned skulls and ornate stars that covered both arms told a different story. Now in his late twenties, Bondarenko was lean, with a shaved head, hooked nose and dark, suspicious eyes.

  “Five thousand dollars U.S. for everything,” he said, sprawled on the big couch smoking an evil-smelling Veraya cigarette. Natasha was curled up beside him, a vision swelling out of bulging silver hot pants and a red Victoria’s Secret push-up bra. She was either sleeping off a drunk or stoned out of her mind. Bondarenko used her large, upthrust hip as an armrest.

  “I don’t have that kind of cash on me,” said Holliday. “I’d have to go to a bank. Besides, I’d like to see what I’m getting first.”

  “Not a problem, bro,” said the Ukrainian thug. “I take Visa, MasterCard, Carte Bleue.”

  Using Natasha’s ample rear end to brace himself, Bondarenko levered himself off the big couch and disappeared from the room. When he returned he had a fistful of various passports. He sat down on a bar stool at the eating island and spread them out. Holliday picked one up at random. It was a genuine U.K. passport in the name of Simon Toyne, London resident at 2 °Cheyne Walk. Holliday knew London well enough to know that Simon had big bucks; Cheyne Walk was for big-time high rollers, often in the music or the writing game. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the English poet, had once lived there, as had Henry James, George Eliot and Mick Jagger. Holliday wondered what Simon did to make his pile, and also wondered how the rich man with the twinkling dark eyes and the slightly unnatural-looking silver hair had come to lose his passport in Odessa.