“Holy crap,” whispered Holliday.
All eighteen tons of the grader smashed into the gate, broke through the chain behind it, then jumped the steel poles that slid up automatically, while its big solid wheels went over the double strip of six-inch spikes as though they were thumbtacks. It finally struck the main entrance and the sally port before it came to a stop. For a few seconds there was a wintry absolute silence.
And then all hell broke loose.
All hell broke loose, but hell, especially during a Moscow winter, inevitably freezes over. Two weeks passed. Eddie was given an emergency splenectomy in the embassy’s clinic and was recovering by leaps and bounds. Holliday was debriefed by everyone at the embassy with clearance to do so, as well as two CIA types from Langley, three more from the NSA, Kokum from the national security adviser’s office and a humorless man from something called the Osmond Institute. Holliday’s joke about puppy love didn’t even make him crack a smile. Brinsley Whitman Havers was sent home on the first flight out the day after the snowplow crashed through the gates, doing an estimated three and a half million dollars’ damage.
For his part Holliday told them the truth, right from the beginning. He was relatively sure no one would believe him, and he was right. The only thing he left out was the Jesus gospel; that secret would remain with him until he died.
Privately furious but publicly contrite, the Kremlin apologized to the U.S. ambassador for the damage done by the snowplow by the unfortunate city employee who had dropped dead at the controls of his machine, and promised full restitution. The Kremlin separately and very privately demanded that Holliday be removed from the Russian Federation at the earliest opportunity, and further advised the ambassador that if Lieutenant Colonel Holliday ever set foot on Russian soil again he would be shot on sight.
“The powers that be have reached a consensus,” said Pat Philpot, reaching for a Werther’s Original from the full fishbowl on his desk. He undid the wrapper and popped it into his mouth.
“And that would be?” Holliday asked.
“You’re going home to a closed congressional hearing, and now that your friend is better we’re shipping him across town to the Cuban embassy.”
“If you give Eddie to the Cubans they’ll kill him. In the first place he’s a dissident, and in the second place he deserted from their forces in Angola.”
“Not my problem,” said Philpot, sucking on the candy.
“No, it’s my problem, Potsy, but that makes it your problem, too. I testify before a congressional committee, I’ll take you down, and a few dozen others with you. I know that you were a mole for the company at the National Counterterrorism Center, and I know that you’re a mole here-and that’s just the beginning. This is what’s going to happen, Potsy: you’re going to get a diplomatic flight from Sheremetyevo out of Russia and you’re going to put me and Eddie on it. Take us to Ramstein AFB in Germany and we’ll make our way from there. I promise you’ll never hear from us again.”
There was a long pause. Potsy swallowed what was left of the caramel candy and cleared his throat. He stared at the man seated across from him. He’d known Holliday for the better part of thirty years. Twice he’d saved his life. If nothing else Potsy was a good judge of character; he knew that regardless of any past relationship, the one-eyed man would be true to his word. And he knew more than where the bodies were buried-he knew who’d dug the graves. Finally he spoke.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport is enormous; the passenger terminal is the size of a dozen football fields, and although it has been given a rudimentary face-lift since the fall of the Soviet Union, it still has the low-ceilinged, brightly lit, concrete-columned and utilitarian look that was dominant in that era, although the bare concrete columns had now been plastered with liquor company advertisements. On an average afternoon in early November there can be up to fifty thousand people milling around in the enormous space, some arriving, some departing. After several Chechen terrorist attacks the security presence has been increased, and heavily armed police are a common sight. There are hundreds of cameras, and metal detectors have been installed in all the entrance doorways.
Holliday and Eddie arrived at the airport at three fifteen in the afternoon, each of them handcuffed to a U.S. Marine guard from the embassy and flanked by two black-uniformed and helmeted “special” officers. An unmarked U.S. Army VIP Gulfstream V had been arranged to take them to Ramstein Air Force Base, with a flight time of two and a half hours. Both Holliday and Eddie had already been cleared by Russian customs and immigration by special arrangement with Prime Minister Putin’s office in the Kremlin.
John Bone, seated on a plastic bench with his overcoat over his arm, saw the man first. He looked either extremely ill or worse, drunk, and his weaponry was wrong. He wasn’t carrying the standard Czech-made Skorpion submachine gun. His handgun looked like a twenty-year-old Makarov rather than the proper Stechkin APS blowback pistol. On top of that the man’s uniform was dirty and ill fitting, hanging on him like a clown’s outfit. John Bone was a man of many talents, and one of them was knowing when the kill site had been prejudiced. He stood up, walking crosswise across the terminal and out of harm’s way. Maybe some other time.
As Holliday and Eddie headed for the special boarding gate that had been arranged, a uniformed security policeman came out of the crowd almost directly in front of them. His name was Yakov Semenov, and the uniform, weapons and identification allowing him entrance to the airport had been provided by his boss, Yevgeni Ivanovich Barsukov, imprisoned head of the Tambov Gang of St. Petersburg, the assignment done at the request of Pierre Ducos and the other Apostles. Semenov, suffering from metastasized fourth-stage lung cancer, knew there was very little likelihood that he would survive the next thirty seconds-he had been promised that his family in St. Petersburg would be amply rewarded for his sacrifice.
Eddie was the first to see Semenov draw his weapon and he acted instinctively; yanking his marine guard bodily to the right he shouldered Holliday out of the line of fire. He was too late; the assassin had already fired. Falling, Holliday saw rather than felt an enormous white-hot blur of pain in the corner of his right eye, and then there was nothing but the perfect certain blackness of death.
EPILOGUE
The eyewitness statements provided by the two marine escorts agreed that the assassin was definitely aiming for center mass when he fired. If it hadn’t been for Eddie’s quick thinking there was no doubt that had the homemade dumdum round connected it would have blown Holliday’s heart out through his spinal cord. As it was the shot struck Holliday in the empty socket of his right eye, exiting the skull two inches above his ear.
It was decided that the surgeons at the trauma center at Ramstein AFB could do a better job, and he arrived there two hours later. The surgeons put him into an induced coma for three days until his brain swelling subsided, and then he was awakened, not much the worse for wear but suffering from the mother of all concussions and the grandmother of all headaches.
Holliday woke from his first good night’s sleep since arriving at Ramstein and opened his eyes. Eddie, sitting in the big visitor’s chair by the window, looked up.
“You are awake, compadre. You still have the headache?”
“It’s starting to fade.”
Eddie brought the rolling table and pushed it so it was across Holliday’s lap. Holliday used the control on the bed and raised it into a sitting position, and Eddie brought him his breakfast tray. He sat down at the edge of the bed.
Holliday looked at his friend; something was clearly bothering him. “What’s the matter?”
Eddie sighed. “I spoke with my mother in Habana last night. My brother Domingo, who works for the Ministry of the Interior, has vanished, disappeared. She is very worried. . how do you say it in English. . frantic?”
Holliday could see from his expression that Eddie wasn’t too far from being frantic himself. He thought about Eddie and what they
had been through, both in Africa and in Russia. Holliday had never had a brother and rarely a close friend, but he had one now, and the kind of friendship he and Eddie had together had obligations and responsibilities.
“Okay,” said Holliday quietly. “As soon as they let me out of here let’s go find him.”
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-a83ffe-86f6-cf45-f990-3321-16ff-12ddae
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 15.03.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.39, Fiction Book Designer, Fiction Book Investigator, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.3 software
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