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9

Genrikhovich lived in an old five-room apartment in a nineteenth-century stucco building on Nevsky Prospekt not far from the train station and the Hermitage. By old-fashioned Soviet standards it was lavish, sharing a bathroom and toilet with only one other apartment and having a kitchen of its own.

The apartment had apparently been assigned to his grandfather by the local party committee shortly after the revolution. His grandfather, curator of the Hermitage’s Treasure Gallery, raised Genrikhovich’s father there, and he in turn passed it along to his son.

Genrikhovich’s wife had fled for greener pastures after the fall of the USSR in 1991, and Genrikhovich had lived alone in the apartment ever since. The furniture was of the large, dark, Victorian variety, the chairs old, worn and comfortable, the lamps fringed. There were books everywhere, and where there weren’t books there were paintings, mostly small and gilt framed, some with their own little lamps and virtually all of them horticultural or seascapes.

Genrikhovich excused himself and left the apartment to use the toilet facilities. Holliday wandered around the living room while Eddie sank gratefully into a plump, overupholstered chair.

Holliday checked out the bookcase and frowned. Like the paintings, many of the books were about horticulture and the sea. Erskine Childers’s TheRiddle of the Sands; Aero-Hydrodynamics and the Performance of Sailing Yachts by Fabio Fossati; Illustrated Custom Boatbuilding by Bruce Roberts-Goodson; The Gardens at Kew; The Gardener’s Essential Gertrude Jekyll; Botanica’s Trees amp; Shrubs; The No-Work Garden by somebody named Bob Flowerdew, which had to be a pseudonym; David Austin’s English Roses; the bookcase was packed with them.

He stepped over to what was obviously Genrikhovich’s “comfy chair,” a Russian version of a La-Z-Boy recliner with a perfectly placed reading lamp and a side table stacked with books and magazines.

Holliday looked at the titles: WoodenBoat,Hortus, The Marine Quarterly. On top of the pile was a paperback called Black Fish by Sam Llewellyn, a sailing thriller. Holliday seemed to recall that he’d read some of Llewellyn’s early historical novels and quite liked them.

“I smell a rat,” said Holliday.

“?Una rata!” Eddie said, jumping up out of his chair. “?Adonde va?” He whirled around frantically. “?Odio las ratas!”

“The books and the magazines,” said Holliday. “They’re all in English. I thought Genrikhovich didn’t speak any English.”

“?No hay ratas?” Eddie said, confused. “There is no rat?”

Genrikhovich came back into the room. “I’m sorry to have deceived you, Colonel Holliday,” the Russian said, his English tinged with a slight Oxford plumminess. “I assure you that it was entirely necessary, given the circumstances.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough,” snapped Holliday angrily, turning to face the Russian. “I’m in a shitload of trouble with the secret police because of you. People are dead because of you, Mr. Genrikhovich, and now I find out you’ve been lying to me.”

“It’s Dr. Genrikhovich, Colonel Holliday,” said the Russian stiffly. “And as I have already informed you, my deception was completely necessary.”

“You’ll have to explain that,” said Holliday. He dropped down in one of the stuffed chairs. Genrikhovich sat down in the recliner. Eddie stood for a moment longer, scanning the baseboards carefully and muttering in Spanish. He finally seated himself again.

“I know who you are, Colonel Holliday, and more important, I know what you are.”

“So who and what am I?”

“In effect, you are the keeper of the king’s keys; do you know what that is?”

“I’m a historian, Genrikhovich; of course I know what it is. It’s what they sometimes call the chief yeoman warder of the Tower of London. For seven hundred years the chief yeoman has locked up the Tower every night at exactly nine fifty-three; he goes through a pass-and-be-recognized ceremony with the sentry.” He recited the ancient exchange:

Who comes there?The keys.Whose keys?The king’s keys.Pass, king’s keys. All’s well.

Holliday frowned. “But I’m not sure what any of that has to do with me.”

Genrikhovich smiled. “In this case the king in question happens to be Czar Nicholas the Second, emperor and autocrat of all the Russias, and now formally recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-bearer.”

“I still don’t see the connection,” replied Holliday, his voice stubborn.

“You perform the same function within your order. With the exception of Brother Dimitrov at the monastery outside Ahtopol, you are the last of the White Templars, the keeper of their keys, their secrets, their wealth and their power.”

“Fairy tales, Genrikhovich. There are no Templars, and the original Templars were anything but ‘white.’ They were bankers, builders, spies and speculators. Somewhere on the Pilgrim Road they lost their way. I’m not convinced they ever found it again.”

“A cynical point of view, Colonel.”

“I’ve fought in half a dozen wars, some legitimate, some not. Scratch any soldier my age and you’ll find a cynic; believe me. I’ve seen too many boys with their guts all over the ground calling for their mothers to be anything but cynical, especially when it comes to the activities of medieval mercenaries hiding behind a cross.”

“You imply they do no good at all.”

“I don’t know one way or the other.”

Genrikhovich smiled calmly. “Yet here you are, Colonel, and no one forced you to fight for your country or for the downtrodden of other lands. You did it by choice. Free choice, Colonel. Your choice.”

Holliday thought about what the Russian had said and suddenly realized that he had no pat answer to the question. In fact, the question had touched a nerve somehow. Why was he here? Why had he taken the notebook from Rodrigues in the first place? He’d taken on an enormous responsibility and he wasn’t really sure whether he knew why. Was it some quest for a faith or a purpose that had eluded him all his life, or was it simply a knee-jerk call to duty he’d been trained for all these years? Don’t think, do. The question nagged. He changed the subject.

“Let’s get back to the matter at hand, Dr. Genrikhovich. Let’s connect the dots, shall we?”

“By all means.”

“You lied to me about speaking English. Why?”

“Because I didn’t want there to be any hesitation or suspicion on your part when I spoke Russian to the people we will surely need to talk to on our journey. Your friend Gospodin Cabrera will provide you with the reassurance that what I say to these people is what I say to you.”

“What exactly is this journey we’re supposedly going on?”

“We know of three of the Templar swords. We must find the fourth.”

“Why is it so important?”

“It will lead us to the Apophasis Megale, the Great Declaration of Simon Magus, just as Brother Dimitrov explained.”

“And the key to the location of the sword is somehow held within the Kremlin Easter egg?”

“Yes, also as Brother Dimitrov told you.”

“And how do you come to know this?”

“It is a long story, Colonel.”

“I’m not doing anything else at the moment except being chased by your New Age KGB friends. I’ve got plenty of time.”

“They are not my KGB friends, Colonel. If you will recall they were shooting at me on that road as well as you.”

“The story,” Holliday prompted.