Red Templar by Paul Christopher Page B

eight feet in diameter, hinged on one side and locked on the other with a padlock through a tongue and hasp. The metal was iron and it was flaked heavily with layers of rust and grime. If Genrikhovich was right, this had been intended as one of those 1925 outfalls and never used. The padlock was a long laminated brass shackle style with the name VARLUX along the bottom, and clearly a copy of an American Master brand lock. The padlock looked fairly new. He checked the bottom of the lock. There was a faint M ADE IN C HINA stamp. Everything was made in China these days. It wasn’t a good sign.
    Holliday looked around. A long, adjustable spring-handled monkey wrench lay on top of the generator casing. He picked up the wrench, put the short, flat-sided grip into the shackle of the lock and pulled hard. There was a dry snapping sound as the tongue of the hasp snapped off the vent grille. Eddie darted forward and caught the lock before it hit the floor.
    “Gracias,”
said Holliday.
    “No es nada, mi amigo,”
replied the Cuban softly. “Your Spanish is becoming
muy fluido
.” He handed the lock to Holliday, who slipped it into the pocket of his jacket.
    He dug the short arm of the wrench through the grille and pulled. There was a ratcheting squeal and it opened six inches. He looked over his shoulder but no one seemed to have noticed. He pulled again. There was a second high-pitched grinding sound from the hinges and the screen opened two feet. “Go!” Holliday whispered to Genrikhovich, pushing him through the opening. He turned to Eddie, but the Cuban was already moving behind the big generator. “What the hell are you doing?” Holliday hissed at his friend.
    “Momentito,”
whispered Eddie, disappearing behind the big piece of electrical equipment. Still, no one paid any attention to them. Holliday waited, his nerves winding up like a clockwork engine. He could feel the fear tickling the hairs at the back of his neck, and out of the corner of his eye he could see one of the blinking red lights, which no one else seemed to have noticed. His mouth was dry as sand. In a few seconds one of the workers would turn and see the light, even if the sound of the siren was buried under the hum and drone of all the machinery in the boiler room.
    Finally the Cuban returned. He was holding a giant six-volt dry-cell searchlight.
    “I saw this. I thought perhaps it would be good to see where we are going, no?”
    “Yes.” Holliday grunted. The Cuban was right. “Go and find Genrikhovich,” he ordered, “He won’t have gone far. I’ll stay here and close things up.”
    Eddie nodded. Still holding the monkey wrench, he slipped through the opening and disappeared into the darkness. Holliday followed, then turned and eased the grille until it was open only three or four inches. He fished the lock out of his pocket, hung the shackle over the remains of the hasp and eased the door shut. If anyone gave it a casual look the vent would have appeared to be locked. He turned and stumbled into the darkness.

15
    Wearing white gloves, as required, Cardinal Antonio Niccolo Spada, Vatican secretary of state, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, better known as the Holy Inquisition, sat in the private manuscript reading room of the Vatican Library, carefully turning the pages of the original manuscript on vellum of
The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin
or
al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyya wa’l-Mahasin al-Yusufiyya
by Baha’ al-Din Ibn Shaddad.
    Seated across from the hawk-faced cardinal, smelling like an ashtray as usual, was Father Thomas Brennan, head of Vatican foreign intelligence, once known as Sodalitium Pianum, its name now changed to that of a much more bureaucratic and thus anonymous group, the Committee for Doctrinal Research and Investigation.
    “North, south, east and west,” murmured Cardinal Spada. “Four holy swords, Polaris, Octanis, Aos and Hesperios. Hesperios, the Sword of the West, was given to Adolf