“Help him!” Genrikhovich yelled, staring horrified at the spot where the priest had vanished.
“Too late-he’s gone,” said Holliday.
Genrikhovich turned and looked at Holliday, dumbfounded. “What happened to him?” the Russian whispered.
“I wondered about the sand,” murmured Holliday. “I knew it wasn’t right.”
“What are you talking about?” Genrikhovich snapped.
“You can find it naturally in the Qattara Depression in the Libyan Desert and in some places in the Sahara. It’s liquefied sand. Somewhere behind these walls there’s a piston that pushed air up through the sand, giving it the properties of a liquid. Stop the air and the sand becomes solid again. He could be twenty feet down, for all we know.” He shook his head and gave the Russian a cold look. “You were right, Genrikhovich: Taurus is an earth sign, and the earth just swallowed your friend Father Ivanov whole.” He turned away in disgust. “Come on, Eddie; we’re getting the hell out of here once and for all.”
“I don’t think so, Colonel,” the Russian said quietly.
“Who’s going to stop me?” Holliday said, turning angrily.
“I am,” said Genrikhovich, the pearl-handled Tokarev semiautomatic pistol held in his fist aimed in the general direction of Holliday’s belly.
35
“Nice weapon,” said Holliday. “Looks like a presentation piece.” He seriously doubted that any pistol made during the Soviet era came stocked with pearl grips.
“Yes, Khrushchev gave it to my father, along with the Order of Lenin and his Hero of the Soviet Union medal in 1962.” Genrikhovich sneered. “That and a postage stamp twenty years after his death was just about all he received for his good works. My mother and I lived from hand to mouth on the few rubles he gave us.”
“I thought your father was a curator at the Hermitage?” Holliday said.
“My father was probably the most famous and successful KGB agent the Soviet Union ever had,” said the Russian. “And they treated him like dirt.” Genrikhovich smiled thinly. “Since you are a historian I’m surprised that you don’t recognize the name, Colonel Holliday.”
“In 1962 I was a kid and chasing girls,” said Holliday. “I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on in Moscow except for the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“And if I mentioned a certain U-two spy plane pilot shot down over Soviet territory whose name was Francis Gary Powers?”
Holliday stared at the thin, long-nosed Russian with the wire eyeglasses. Suddenly his memory kicked in and he had it. “My God!” he said softly. “Your father was Rudolf Abel, the atom-bomb spy.”
“That was the alias he used when he was arrested after being betrayed by his assistant, the traitor Reino Hayhanen. My father’s real name was Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher. He was born in England but grew up in Russia, which is why I speak English-he thought it might be useful for me.” Genrikhovich laughed sourly. “He thought he would get me a job with the KGB, but they would have nothing to do with me. I even failed the physical tests for military service.”
“This is all very interesting, but I don’t see what it has to do with our present situation,” said Holliday.
“Our present situation, Colonel, is that I have my father’s pistol aimed at you,” said Genrikhovich.
He might not have passed the physical for the army, but his grip on the Tokarev was firm. The safety was off and the knurled hammer was fully cocked. The slim, overpowered pistol could put a hole in Holliday’s spine the size of a bowling ball, and at this range Genrikhovich couldn’t miss. “You’re the boss,” said Holliday.
“That is correct, Colonel; I am the boss, so you and your friend will turn around slowly and go back the way we came in.”
“Whatever you say,” said Holliday. He and Eddie did exactly as they were told, heading slowly back along the sand-floored passageway and back out into the ornately painted antechamber. Holliday had seen the blank, distant look in the Russian’s eyes. Here in this strange place beneath the Kremlin the veil of normalcy had been removed once and for all. Holliday realized they were finally seeing the man as he truly was-completely insane, lost in a world of bitterness, anger and utter madness.
“My grandfather would have loved this place,” said the Russian. “He had a great belief in the spiritual world. He was also a Chekist; you know what that means?”
“The first version of the KGB.”
“Yes, and before that he was with the Okhrana, the czar’s secret police. But he was a revolutionary at heart. Lenin himself enlisted my grandfather as a double agent. He reported directly to him on the activities of the czar’s henchmen in St. Petersburg. From the palace itself.”
“Interesting,” said Holliday, wondering where all this was going. Eddie just rolled his eyes and kept his mouth shut.
Genrikhovich looked around the circular chamber with its complex designs. “You said that astrologically north is south and south is north?”
“According to my cousin Peggy.” Holliday shrugged. “But I can’t guarantee it.”
“You’d better decide, Colonel, because your life depends on it.” The Russian turned and faced the two doors that said CAPRICORN and SAGITTARIUS. “Choose,” he said.
From Holliday’s small store of knowledge about the constellations he vaguely recalled that Sagittarius lay almost exactly between the east and west quadrants of the sky, while Capricorn was very faint. He couldn’t imagine Ivan the Terrible choosing anything that could be described as faint, and besides, Sagittarius was an archer, a warrior. “Sagittarius,” he said.
“Very good,” said Genrikhovich. “That was my choice as well.” He motioned with the pistol. “Open the door. Your friend goes through first, then you.”
Holliday walked across the room and put his hand on the latch. It was stiff and resistant with age. He pressed harder and felt the latch begin to give and he paused. In his mind’s eye he saw a reconstruction of a medieval ballista, a huge, spring-operated crossbow that could deliver an immense spearlike projectile at incredible speeds. There were larger models that could fire as many as half a dozen arrows at a time.
“I think the door is rigged,” said Holliday. “I suggest that you stand aside.”
“You’re trying my patience, Colonel. I’ll shoot you without a second thought.”
“Just a suggestion,” said Holliday.
Genrikhovich eyed him thoughtfully, then stepped to the left, the gun never faltering. Eddie did the same. Holliday tugged hard on the latch, then stepped rapidly aside. There was a deep, thrumming resonance from the corridor beyond the open doorway, followed by a groaning metallic whirring, like some sort of mechanical device being released. An instant later four immense arrows, each one at least five feet long, hurtled out of the doorway, their eight-inch-long iron points crashing through the mosaic tile on the floor and embedding themselves into whatever was underneath. The projectiles jutted out of the floor at a forty-five-degree angle about three feet from the open door. If Holliday had been standing in front of the door he would have been skewered like a shish kebab.
“Fascinating,” said Genrikhovich. “Do you think that is the last of it?”
“Who knows?” said Holliday.
“There must have been a secret way to open the door, or a hidden mechanism.”
“Maybe,” said Holliday.
“The czar wouldn’t make it impossibly difficult to get at his treasure house,” said Genrikhovich.
“Unless he had some other way,” said Eddie, looking at the door. “Una entrada privada.”
“A private entrance.” Holliday nodded. “Makes sense.”