Brennan flinched a little; had the cardinal been in his full red cassock and biretta it would have been something out of an old Fellini movie. He looked up at the ceiling of the dining room and spoke. “Pesek had traced them to their hotel in Moscow. He somehow learned they were to meet with Genrikhovich later that evening. He was going to deal with the situation for us then.”
“Does Pesek have any idea who Genrikhovich really is?”
“I doubt it. He would have been in his late teens at the time, and it was not the name by which he was generally known. It was his patronymic, and he generally went by his mother’s name, even inside Russia.”
“What about Holliday?”
“Almost certainly not; in the first place, if he knew he would have run like an Irishman from a temperance meeting.”
“He’s a historian.”
“He’s an American historian, Your Eminence. In the history books of the United States the name Genrikhovich probably doesn’t even rate a footnote. Besides, his specialty is medieval history, not the Cold War.”
“All right, assuming that is so, why do you think Pesek has not called?”
“Either he’s forgotten, lost them somehow, or Holliday has killed him instead of the other way around.”
“Which do you think is the most likely?”
“If Pesek hasn’t called me within the next couple of hours I’d put my money on Holliday. He almost killed Pesek in Venice; maybe the bugger succeeded this time. He’s got the skills.”
“If Pesek is dead, do we have any other options?”
“Do you mean does Mother Church have any more assassini up its holy sleeves?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I mean,” said the cardinal stiffly, the dessert and the wine in front of him forgotten. Brennan lit the butt of his cigarette and puffed on it gratefully.
“None that I know of, not of Pesek’s stature.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I know one of the people who work for Pezzi in the archbishop’s office in Moscow; perhaps he knows of a few thugs in the archdiocese.”
“Paolo Pezzi is no friend of mine,” said Spada, his voice sour. “He wanted my job more than I did, but there were too many rumors about his sexual proclivities. He considers Russia to be a banishment.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to take our friends where we find them, Your Eminence. I’ll call my connection in Moscow.”
“Holliday cannot be allowed to get his hands on the book. It would ruin us,” said the cardinal.
Brennan smiled. “The Church has lasted these one thousand, nine hundred and seventy years, Your Eminence. One man isn’t about to bring it down.”
“I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong, Father Brennan; one man is precisely what it would take.”
Their ride on the grease-slicked, unholy river of Moscow’s sewage was an hour-long nightmare. On the voyage they saw every conceivable type of waste that a city of eleven and a half million people could produce, animal, vegetable and even mineral. To make things worse, the high-arched tunnel was thick with stalactites of lime that had clearly been forming for centuries, and these pendulous horrors hanging from the stone of the ceiling had become roosts for generations of bats, who dropped their guano where they roosted and fed on whatever had the misfortune to float or fly past them. Fortunately the filters in their respirator masks removed the majority of the odors, but the ammonia-fumes emanation from the bat feces was eye-wateringly dense.
“Where are we?” Holliday asked, raising his voice over the glutinous blender sound of the little outboard.
“Close now,” called back Ivanov, checking the GPS on the seat beside him. “We are beneath the old Zaryadye district. The same place they found the bunker of illegals. We must move carefully now.”
“Why so careful here?” Holliday asked.
“Spetsnaz,” said Genrikhovich. “Although we are below the levels of the special Kremlin telecommunications conduits, we are very close.”
“We’re below them?” Holliday asked.
“Certainly,” said Ivanov. “Moscow today is not the Moscow of a thousand years ago. There have been many cities here, one built atop the next, like the ancient city of Troy. Each in its turn had its own way of dealing with its waste. According to Father Stelletskii, there are seventeen distinct levels under Moscow’s streets, each with its own secret passages, tunnels, dungeons and bunkers.”
Ivanov eased off on the throttle and guided the rubber dinghy to “shore.” Holliday twisted around in his seat and saw an outflow channel on their left. A mountain climber’s piton had been driven into a crack in the concrete. As they bumped into the walkway Eddie took the forward line and threaded it through the piton’s eyelet.
“This like the character Arne Saknussemm,” said Eddie, tying them up and stepping up out of the little boat. He held out a hand to Holliday and pulled him up.
“Who?” Holliday asked.
“You have never read this story?” Eddie said, surprised.
“What story?” Holliday asked. Genrikhovich clambered awkwardly out of the dinghy, almost losing his footing, and Ivanov climbed up onto the concrete walkway.
“It is very popular in Cuba, oh, my, yes,” said the Cuban. “Viaje al Centro de la Tierra by the writer Jules Verne, no?”
“Journey to the Center of the Earth,” said Holliday.
“Yes.” Eddie nodded. “Arne Saknussemm left behind A.K. to guide the people who came after; the padre leaves these,” said Eddie, nudging the piton.
“Eddie, you never cease to amaze me.”
“Thank you. . I think.”
Once again Ivanov led the way up the outfall passage. The effluent in the narrow, downward-sloping channel was different from anything else Holliday had seen so far on their odorous journey beneath the streets of Moscow; it was dark, almost black, and it flowed thickly, like molasses. Even through the respirator Holliday could tell the smell was different, too: richer, a sweet-rotten scent, like potatoes left too long in a root cellar.
After traveling along the outfall for a little more than two hundred yards they stepped out into an enormous circular domed room at least three hundred feet in diameter. The room was made entirely of brick, and very old. At least a hundred broad, troughlike spigots had been inserted into the sloping walls of the dome, one spigot every few yards, and from each one there was a steady trickling flow of the tarry goop.
From the spigots the thick fluid fell over the edge of an iron walkway that surrounded the base of the black, shallow lake that filled the middle of the room like some enormous tar pit. There were a dozen outfall channels ranged around the enclosure, just like the one they came up. The fumes rising off the artificial lake were thick, choking and easily identifiable. In the center of the lake greasy bubbles rose and broke lazily.
“That’s alcohol!” Holliday said.
“Indeed,” said Ivanov. “As I mentioned, we are traveling underneath the old Zaryadye district. The fruit and vegetable markets have been there for more than three centuries. At market’s closing each day the spoiled or rotten fruit and vegetables are tossed into a central refuse area and forgotten. The produce rots further, of course, and over time, the heat created by the rotting began a fermentation process. By the mid-nineteenth century the fumes created became both a health and fire hazard, so this collecting pond was created. Essentially what you see in front of you is a lake of vodka. Poisonous, but vodka nevertheless.”
“Good thing the local drunkard population hasn’t found it,” Holliday commented. His lamp shone out over the glass-smooth surface of the pool.
“They have,” said Genrikhovich, laughing behind his mask. “That’s why it’s so poisonous; several of them have fallen in and added their decomposing corpses to the brew.”
They moved off to the left, following Ivanov’s lead. He paused again at the fifth archway and turned into the passage beyond. They left the dark fuming lake behind them in the enclosing darkness. The thought that the only way to get back to the surface was by retracing their steps began to prey on Holliday’s thoughts; in the Rangers you always left yourself with at least one line of safe withdrawal, but he saw none here. As they walked along the side corridor leading away from the lake he asked Ivanov about it.