Having discovered the opening, he yanked out the metal grate and pulled Emma after him into the maze of subterranean Moscow.
Cringing from the dirt, darkness, and disorientation, Emma demanded to know where they were.
“We are under the street, under the buildings,” explained Templar. “This isn’t unusual, it’s simply that most people never think about the city under the city.”
“I don’t,” confirmed Emma without the slightest trace of humor.
Templar glanced again at his compass, then led his wary companion around another dark corner.
“Most major cities, especially old ones — even American ones like New York and Seattle — have an entire subterranean culture,” he continued. “It used to be that the lower-class workers couldn’t be seen above ground except on the job.”
Emma was not interested in social history. “Are we there yet? I see lights.”
She also heard voices. One of them was decidedly female.
Templar stopped when he saw an attractive woman in her mid-twenties coming toward them, gesturing wildly.
“Hurry, in here! You’re the Americans?!”
5
Emma looked at Templar; Templar looked at Emma. They both looked at the slender, curly-haired woman who seemed overly enthusiastic to see them.
“Expecting us?” asked Templar.
The girl laughed and motioned for them to follow her.
Emma wished she were home with her fish.
Dark, cramped, and as dismal as an air-raid shelter was the subterranean depot into which they were summoned. But propped against the dirt walls, lit by oil lamps, were gilt-edged embroidery. The room was filled with silver chalices and various authentic or replicated Russian Orthodox sacramental objects.
In the corner a nerdy young man was polishing a pendant.
“That’s Toli, my curator, and I’m Alexa Frankievitch, but since you’re Americans, you can call me Frankie.”
“How did you know...?”
“Oh, I’ve been expecting a happy American couple looking for valuable religious relics. In fact, I was expecting you an hour ago. I thought you got lost.”
Frankie turned to her vast display of items for sale.
“I can sell you all manner of religious relics and semiauthentic antiques,” she insisted.
Templar leaned over and whispered in Emma’s ear.
“She thinks we’re somebody else.”
“No kidding,” hissed Emma. “Let’s get going.”
When Frankie turned back around, Simon attempted to confront the situation directly.
“Frankie, listen, all we want is—”
“I know, I know,” interrupted the energetic young woman, “the icon of the Virgin of the Don. I need thirty-thousand dollars American up-front.”
“No, no...” Emma tried to intercede and explain.
“Okay, twenty thousand, not a penny less,” Frankie relented, unaware that no one was bargaining with her. “C’mon. It’s the very icon Prince Donskoy carried into battle against the Tatars, who retreated, was a miracle—”
“I don’t believe in miracles,” Templar cut in brusquely. He picked up a jewel encrusted chalice and spun it in the air. “Whadya do, Frankie, stamp these replicas out by the dozens?”
Frankie stomped a small boot and shook her curly hair in agitation and mock anger.
“That’s authentic. Everything here is authentic.”
Simon set the glass decorated chalice down as if it were valuable and grabbed Emma by the hand. “Let’s go.”
Frankie swiftly interposed herself in the doorway.
“Five thousand for the icon. Final offer. Not including cost to smuggle it through tunnels out of town.”
Templar’s eyes lit up when he realized she was gesturing at maps which detailed Moscow’s extensive underground.
He was about to speak when they heard the pounding of boots in the distance.
“Bastards!” hissed Frankie. “You’ve brought the police!”
“No, they’re not police,” countered Templar emphatically. “They’re ‘comrade criminals’ — Tretiak’s goon squad.”
Frankie’s eyes widened at the sound of Tretiak’s name. She unleashed a stream of Russian expletives and grabbed an oil lamp off the wall as Toli extinguished the rest. Frankie then gestured Templar and Emma back into the labyrinth, and Toli expertly sealed up the relic-packed depot.
“Please help us,” entreated Emma. “We’re just trying to get to the American Embassy.”
They all saw the faint glow of approaching firelight. They didn’t need to know exactly who was coming — the phrase Tretiak’s goons said it all.
It was Vlad, sans teeth, and several Tretiak Security stalking through the maze, armed with torches and guns like a lynch mob.
If Frankie and Toli consulted on an agreed course of action, they did it telepathically.
“Follow me,” ordered Frankie. “We’ll have to go the long way, but we won’t let them get you. There is exit hatch just under Embassy bomb shelter.”
The Saint was skeptical; Emma was impressed.
“How do you know the underground of Moscow so well?”
“We are the underground of Moscow,” answered Frankie dryly.
It seemed like hours, and perhaps it was, as the tired and filthy foursome stumbled around another bend. Frankie, much to Templar’s consternation, seemed to be having trouble getting her bearings.
“Are we lost?”
“You’re in Russia, sir,” explained the gregarious Frankie. “Its tunnels are mysterious and illogical as... well... the Motherland herself!”
Templar’s eyes narrowed. “But you do know the way...”
“Of course,” insisted Frankie, “like I know the face of a stainless-steel Bulgari Chronograph.”
She was staring at Templar’s five-thousand dollar wristwatch.
He pulled it off with a faint growl and handed it over.
Frankie, infatuated with her new timepiece, had a sudden refreshment of memory. “This way!”
Hunched low. Templar and Emma followed Frankie and Toli to a walkway leading to a compression hatchwheel.
“The water main,” explained their energetic guide, “because of rationing, they shut it down each afternoon.”
“And they turn it back on...?” asked Templar.
Frankie checked her new Chronograph.
“Hmmm, ’bout five minutes, plus or minus.”
No time to lose.
Templar was already at the hatch, melting the rusted lock mechanism with a tiny-but-mighty blowtorch attachment to his penknife. Emma, surprised by technological breakthrough, shook her head.
“That damn thing does have a blowtorch!”
Frankie offered Simon a few nuggets of further guidance.
“The third hatchwheel is under your embassy. Make it to number three and you’re home free.”
She gave poor distraught Emma a good-luck embrace. Then, seized with transports of conscience, she took off Templar’s watch and handed it to Emma.
“Here. Take it. Honest. I’ve got one just like it at home.”
Frankie and Toli hurried off as the hatchwheel opened. Templar climbed in and extended a hand to Emma.
The tunnels of Moscow’s underground labyrinth were as fun as Chutes & Ladders compared to the pitch-black metallic universe of the large pipe in which Emma and Templar now found themselves.
The Saint pulled out his penknife — the one that had been a blowtorch only moments before — and stuck it between his teeth. A powerful high-intensity bulb burned at its tip, shining a shaft of light ahead of them.
“I’m an idiot, Simon,” noted Dr. Emma Russell. “I’m wasting my time with cold fusion.”