The two men waited at the base of the Alexander Column and Holliday watched as the Cuban approached. The six-foot-six bald-headed black man was drawing stares from the pale tourists. As Holliday watched, four boys in their late teens converged on Eddie. Three of the four had shaved heads, the other a Mohawk. All four looked scrawny in cheap black leather jackets, skintight jeans and whatever passed for Doc Marten shit-kickers in Russia these days.
Eddie stopped and let the four teenagers come closer. One of them pulled something out of his back pocket and waved it in the Cuban’s face. A switchblade, most likely. Holliday watched as Eddie bent his head forward as though he were listening to something the kid with the knife was saying. Eddie’s legs told a different story. He’d eased one in front of the other and stiffened the rear leg, putting most of his weight on it. Holliday smiled thinly.
“Shouldn’t we help him?” Genrikhovich whispered. “They are dangerous. Shkoora-galava. Bad people.”
“He doesn’t need any help,” answered Holliday, watching the little drama unfold.
Eddie said something and the boy with the knife jabbed it toward the Cuban’s belly. Eddie grabbed the boy’s wrist and bent it back, the sound of the wrist bone snapping audible from a hundred feet away. The boy with the knife let loose a pitiful, high-pitched, screeching shriek.
The teenager on the Cuban’s left stepped forward, arms flailing. Eddie bent the knife wielder’s wrist even farther back and half turned, his forward leg snapping outward, catching the second skinhead in the crotch. The kicked boy dropped to the ground, screaming, hands between his legs.
Eddie cocked his left arm and gave the boy with the knife a hard fist to the throat. The boy turned blue, gagged and fell to the hard pavement, landing on his face and nose, gurgling, then passing out from the pain. The other two skinheads, eyes wide, stepped back. One of them turned his head and vomited.
Eddie dropped to one knee, took the switchblade from the now unconscious teenager’s hand and snapped the blade off between two of the interlocking paving stones. He patted the cheek of the boy he’d kicked in the crotch, stood and stepped over the unconscious teenager and continued his interrupted stroll to the Alexander Column.
The boy who’d been kicked struggled to his feet and, still bent over, began screaming for the police at the top of his lungs. Not far from where Holliday was standing two gorodovye-junior police officers in dark green military uniforms complete with absurdly large peaked caps-were smoking cigarettes and studiously ignoring the screaming teenager. As Eddie passed the two cops the one closest to him grinned and gave him a discreet thumbs-up.
“Horoshuyu rabotu,” the cop called out. Good work.
“Blagodaryu tebya, moi’ droog.” Eddie nodded. Thank you, my friend. The cop’s smile grew even wider at the sound of the Cuban’s fluent Russian.
“So what was that all about?” Holliday asked as Eddie joined them.
“The one with the knife wanted all my money and called me a ‘negr huesos,’ which is a very unpleasant thing to say in Russian, believe me. I told him his mother was a Georgian goat and that he had been born through her. . ojete? In Russian the word is zhopa.”
Genrikhovich snickered.
“I think I get it.” Holliday smiled.
Eddie shrugged. “He became very angry and he try to stab me with his knife, so I broke his wrist and kicked the other one in his huevos minusculos.”
“We must not draw attention to ourselves,” chided Genrikhovich, clearing his throat. “It could be very dangerous.”
“Should I have allowed the boy to stab me with his knife?” Eddie asked. “It looked as though he had not cleaned it in a very long time. The boy looked as though he had not been cleaned in a long time as well. I could have been given an infection.”
Genrikhovich grumbled something under his breath and turned away, heading for the Palace Bridge and the small patch of green between it and the Winter Palace.
“Anybody on our tail?” Holliday asked Eddie as they followed the Russian across the plaza. To the south the immense golden dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral gleamed in the clear, crisp air.
“No one,” said Eddie, shaking his head. “Nobody I could see, mi amigo.” He shrugged. “But these days, who knows? Maybe there was a satellite looking down on us, or one of your drones.”
They caught up with Genrikhovich as he reached the far side of the square and stepped into the park beside the Winter Palace. “You have a lot of skinheads in St. Petersburg?” Holliday asked as they walked beneath the trees.
“Shkoora-galava? Yes, they are a problem all over Russia, especially in the cities. They hate anyone who is not Russian and white. The worst kind of fascists. They could easily be my country’s future, I’m afraid.” The older man shook his head. “They call themselves patriots.”
“‘Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism,’” said Eddie, the English flawless. It was clearly a quotation.
“Who said that?” Holliday asked. “Fidel?”
“George Washington,” said Eddie. “We learned this in school.”
Holliday laughed. “You don’t have skinheads in Cuba?”
“In Cuba? No, it would not be allowed by El Comandante,” said Eddie, smiling broadly, rubbing the top of his smoothly shaved head. “And also the young men in my country are much too vanidoso. . conceited about their hair. We only have la cartelera de cocaina and purse snatchers, and, of course, like everyone else in Cuba they are university educated.”
Genrikhovich took them across the park to a narrow set of stone steps that led down to a heavy wooden door below ground level. A bored-looking soldier in camouflage fatigues was sitting on a stool beside the door, smoking a cigarette and reading a copy of Tvoi Den, Your Day, the Russian equivalent of the New York Post.
“Apaznaneya,” the guard said, looking up from the tabloid, his expression bored.
Genrikhovich dug around under his ancient cloth overcoat and found a pale blue plastic identification case. He snapped it open for the guard, who examined it, dull eyed. The guard nodded, then gestured toward the door. “Prayakets, professora.”
Genrikhovich bowed slightly, then motioned for Holliday and Eddie to follow him. The Russian dragged open the door and the three men went through into a short, dimly lit vestibule inside. The walls were green and white and the floor was cracked battleship linoleum. At the far end of the gloomy little room there was a metal circular staircase.
There was a desk to the left of the door with another guard seated behind it. This one had his nose buried in a copy of the Russian edition of Maxim. He was much older than the man outside, his nose bulbous and brick red. He smelled distinctly of alcohol.
The man looked up at Genrikhovich with the same bored expression as the first guard, and once again Genrikhovich showed his ID folder. This time the guard reached into a wooden box on the desk and handed Genrikhovich two plastic-coated pin-on cards that said "ПОСЕТИТЕЛЬ" which presumably meant “visitor.” The Hermitage curator pinned the cards onto Holliday and Eddie, then headed for the stairs.