“To me, too,” said Eddie.
“Perhaps the negr is right,” said Genrikhovich.
“Poshel na hui slishkom,” said Eddie blandly.
“You mean Mr. Cabrera?” Holliday asked.
Genrikhovich sighed and adjusted his spectacles with his free hand. “You are both becoming tedious,” he said.
“And you’re being rude.”
“I do not have time for your petty liberal sensitivities, Colonel Holliday. My family’s search for Ivan the Terrible’s secret library was begun in 1916, almost a hundred years ago now. I intend to use the secret my grandfather passed down to me to find what Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev failed to discover even with all the powers of the Soviet Union at their disposal. My rudeness, as you deem it, is irrelevant to such an epic quest, and once again may I point out that I am the one who has the pistol?” He flicked the barrel of the old automatic to make his point. “Your friend Senor Cabrera first, if you please.”
Eddie lifted his shoulders; then without hesitation the tall Cuban sidestepped between two of the heavy spears, ducked his head a little and entered the corridor. Holliday followed right behind him.
The passageway here was covered in mosaics, like the floor of the chamber behind them; even the curved ceiling above them was covered with them, except for the wide, dark slit that was surely the source of the spears from the hidden ballista. The symbols were arcane, designs showing the alchemical triangles signifying air, earth and fire, the lightning bolt for water, snakes curled around staffs like an ancient doctor’s caduceus, eyes of Horus, more complex pentagrams and mandalas, a gruesome inlay of a skulled man riding on the back of a goat, even the magical square of abracadabra, the alchemist’s palindrome. It was a sorcerer’s dream brought to life, or perhaps the nightmare fantasy of a long-dead czar with a penchant for torture and the mass murder of his enemies.
“Rasputin knew of this place, although he never came here,” said Genrikhovich from behind them. “He told my grandfather tales of it many times.”
“I thought your grandfather was a spy for the Okhrana, a double agent for Lenin and his Cheka?” Holliday said.
“He was. He was Rasputin’s bodyguard, in fact, assigned to him by the czarina Alexandra. The czar approved the choice because he knew that my grandfather actually worked for him; he provided the czar with the infamous ‘staircase notes’ of Rasputin’s activities. St. Petersburg was like that in those times before the revolution: a place of lies, deceit, betrayals, each man working for his own selfish ends.”
“Like your grandfather?” Holliday asked as they continued down the long passageway.
“Czar Nicholas knew the secret, as did the czarina. The secret that Rasputin stole and took with him onto the Moika Canal the night that he died. The secret my grandfather learned and took from him with his last breath.”
“I thought it was the British agent Rayner who was there at the end,” said Holliday.
“No, and that was the secret Oswald Rayner took with him to his grave. My grandfather was the last man to see Grigori Rasputin alive, and it was my grandfather who took matters into his own hands and pushed him under the ice.”
“Why did Rayner lie?”
“Because my grandfather knew he was pedik, a homosexual, and also a double agent acting for both the British and the Okhrana. He threatened Rayner with exposure to both organizations. Either would have had him killed or at least imprisoned.”
“And so Rasputin died at your father’s hand.”
“Using Rayner’s Webley pistol for the coup de grace, and finally drowning him. But not before retrieving the key.”
“The key to Ivan the Terrible’s treasure house?”
“The key to everything,” answered Genrikhovich. He began to hum something that sounded like a hymn of some sort, and then began to sing the words under his breath.
“Can you make out what he’s saying?” Holliday whispered to Eddie as they continued on down the mysterious corridor somewhere deep beneath the Kremlin.
“It is something religious, I think,” the Cuban said, listening to the mournful, chanting tune. “It is very old, too.” He listened again as Genrikhovich repeated what sounded like a chorus. “‘We who misticamente. . mystically? represent’. . ?el bebe angel?”
“Cherubim?” Holliday suggested.
“Si. . ‘cherubim, and singing to the life-giving Trinity the. . three-times-holy hymn, let us now lay aside all earthly care that we may. . receive the king of all, who comes invisibly’. . transmitido por. . ‘carried up. . borne up by angels. Aleluya! Aleluya! Aleluya!’”
Behind them Genrikhovich repeated the chorus over and over again, lost within the hymn and whatever it meant to him. A few moments later the passageway ended in a wrought-iron gate with six rusted bars that was closed, but not locked. Eddie cautiously pushed open the gate and waited.
“Step through into the chamber,” said Genrikhovich.
“What do you see?” Holliday asked, standing a couple of feet behind his friend. “Any wires, traps, anything out of place in the doorway?” Eddie scanned the iron frame of the gate, paying particular attention to the hinges, the bottom of the frame and the lintel overhead.
“Nada,” said the Cuban.
“What about the room beyond?”
“A circle, a dome in the ceiling. There are two other gates and a door. There is a great deal of dust everywhere. The floor is in mosaic. Circles one inside another, red and black, and there are mosaic pictures over the gates.”
“Pictures of what?”
“A saint in one, the Holy Mother above the other.”
Holliday smiled faintly. You could spend a lifetime under Fidel, but once a Catholic, always a Catholic. “Anything else?”
“Directly across the room there is ?un. . pulpito??Un altar?”
“An altar?”
“Si,” said Eddie. “Un altar de oro. A golden altar.”
“A golden altar?” Genrikhovich asked, excitement rising in his voice.
“Yes,” replied Holliday.
“The Holy Altar of the Ninth Sanctuary,” breathed the Russian. “The old stories were true!”
“What old stories?” Holliday asked.
“Step through!” Genrikhovich demanded. “Step through! I must see for myself!”
“Go through,” said Holliday to Eddie, his voice soft. “But stay close to the wall.”
“Si, compadre. I understand,” the Cuban replied. He stepped through into the room and shuffled quickly to the left, keeping his back close to the wall. Holliday followed, his eyes scanning the room in the light from his helmet. Genrikhovich stepped through the gateway, the big lantern in his left hand, the Tokarev still firmly gripped in his right.
“It is true,” he whispered. “All true.” He walked forward, hypnotized by the gleaming vision of the gold altar on the far side of the room.
“I think you’d better stop,” advised Holliday. Genrikhovich ignored him and continued forward toward the altar. “Stop!” Holliday said, speaking like a drill instructor.
Genrikhovich stopped and turned, blinking like a man coming out of sleep. “What did you say?” the Russian asked. Holliday noticed that the hand with the gun had dropped slightly. Not enough to do anything about, not yet, at least.
“Look at the floor,” said Holliday. “There are four circles of red, four of black and one red circle in the center. Between the last circle of black and the red one in the center it looks as though the dust has settled into some sort of crack.”
“What are you talking about?” Genrikhovich asked, suspicion rising in his tone along with the pistol in his hand.
“It’s a tiger trap,” said Holliday.
“What?” Genrikhovich asked, looking confused. “What is that?”
“Your weight springs a trapdoor and you fall into a pit with twenty or thirty bamboo stakes jutting up. In Vietnam they used to cover the sharpened ends of the bamboo with human feces; if the spikes didn’t kill you the sepsis would.”