"Really?" Rebecca asked. "Out of all of that, you just heard tunnel?"
Lopez's smile broadened. "Hey, there are not a lot of opportunities to practice cave surfing, and as long as we have to be in Russia we might as well have some fun."
Brandt turned his glare up to an eleven, finally convincing Lopez to watch the road. Their inaugural "cave surfing" event last year had not been fun. The last thing from it. His hipbone still felt bruised. Plus that incident marked his and Rebecca's first, horribly awkward, aborted kiss.
Did she remember?
From the deep red filling her cheeks, she did in fact remember that moment in Budapest.
Rebecca looked at anything but Brandt's eyes. The embarrassment of that stupid, sophomoric kiss still burned her with shame. Now though? Knowing what she did? How little time they would have together? Rebecca would have laid a lip-lock on Brandt and not let him go.
Unfortunately, the worst thing that could happen to them was not a momentary lapse of judgment. Nope, life had a lot more in store for them after Budapest.
"Sorry, Ricky." Rebecca tried to sound upbeat but failed miserably. "I don't think the commandments would be down there."
"Come on," Lopez said, "can't you give a guy a little room to hope?"
"Why then would Ivan build the cathedral? I think the tunnels were a ruse. Keep everyone looking under Moscow rather than right across from the Kremlin."
Brandt's eyes narrowed. "But why wouldn't he put the tablets down in the labyrinth? It looks like to date no one has found the secret chamber holding the library."
Finally a question she felt comfortable answering. "From everything I know about Ivan, he was not the type to just bury the tablets. He would have wanted them close. Which meant somewhere he could access without arousing suspicion."
"Like a confessional booth?" Harvish asked from her left.
She turned to the point man. "No. Orthodox churches don't have confessional booths, per se."
"Bummer," Harvish answered.
Succinct but true. It would be nice if just once a religious mystery would be uncovered that easily.
"So it looks like we're going to have to go and just take a look around," Brandt stated.
"Well..." Rebecca said as Brandt arched his eyebrow. "The Orthodox Church, given its name, is well, way more Orthodox than the Catholic Church."
"How so?" the sergeant asked.
"Their religion is much more aligned with Jewish traditions than the Vatican." She hurried on as Brandt frowned. "Such as beginning holiday celebrations at sunset rather than sunrise. They use incense in a deep and intricate way. Nor do they have a pope. It is considered that each person has equal access to God."
"And that helps us how?"
Rebecca matched Brandt's frown. "The cathedral is officially property of the Russian government, and only one ceremony is allowed in the church during the high feast of the Intercession of the Theotokos, which occurs in October."
"But it's May," Talli added, chewing on his licorice.
"Exactly," Rebecca said, calling up another web page. "Then why did the bishop of Moscow, Tolst, ask for permission to begin preparing for the feast a good four months early?"
Brandt tilted his head. "Nice try. But even for you that's a bit of a stretch. They may start preparations this early every year."
"Really?" Rebecca questioned. "Because according to church requests they normally start prepping for the feast in August." Rebecca felt Brandt studying her features. He still didn't seem convinced. "How about the fact Tolst asked for such early permission the day after Amed visited Osip?"
The frown on Brandt's face reversed itself into a tight grin. "Well, sounds like at the least we have someone to question."
Rebecca knew it was irrational and probably a sign of some form of mental illness, however being able to impress Brandt even just a little made her heart soar. Too bad it was going to take way more than coaxing a grin out of Brandt to retrace Amed's footsteps to find a stash of weaponized Rinderpest.
Brandt shifted his weight in the SUV's seat. What should have been a simple trip through Moscow in the late evening had turned into a slow crawl through a myriad of traffic jams, accidents, and night clubbound partiers who'd started partying a little early.
And the closer they drew to Krasnaya Ploshchad, the Red Square, the worse the traffic had become.
"What the hell is going on?" Brandt asked to no one in particular. This crowd wasn't just any crowd either. Uniforms dotted the mass of pedestrians streaming into Red Square. Not only Russian dress blacks either. From what Brandt could make out there were French, British, and even Americans in the revelers.
"What day is it?" he asked. With all the travel he was afraid his dates could be off.
"May ninth," Harvish answered. "Why?"
"It's freaking V-Day," Brandt groaned. Of all the days to have to get into Red Square, quickly and quietly.
Rebecca sat forward, looking out the SUV's windshield. "The day the Allies accepted Germany's surrender?"
"That would be the one," Brandt answered, debating if they should abort the mission. Find a place to hole up and strike out tomorrow when the vast majority of these people would be home with a hangover.
"Wow," Rebecca commented as Lopez tried to maneuver around a clump of pedestrians that had spilled over from the sidewalk. "The Russians take their V-Day seriously."
Talli nodded. "They had way more on the line during World War II. They didn't come to the 'aid' of the Allies. They had been fighting for the existence of their country for years. The Russians lost over twenty-eight million people to the Nazis."
"I didn't realize," Rebecca said, scanning the boisterous crowd with more appreciation.
Most didn't. There was a very real reason the Russians worried if any other country's military exceeded theirs. The Nazis had taught them a hard-won lesson. And now Brandt and his team were here, right smack dab in the middle of all the makings of an international incident.
Adding to the delays, the event's organizers were still trying to get all of the military equipment out of Red Square from the day's earlier events. A truck pulling a large missile turned in front of them. It felt like Russia was giving them a big fat warning. Nothing says don't mess with my country better than a big fat missile. Up ahead it looked like a flatbed with a fighter jet. Each moving at the speed of a snail.
While the day had been dedicated to their war accomplishments and showing off to the world their military might, tonight was about celebrating their victory. Brandt had never seen the commemoration party-the Russians had just started to allow foreign soldiers to attend last year-but it supposedly surpassed New Year's Eve in New York. There would be bands, a DJ, and then fireworks. The whole shebang. Red Square would be crammed with people into the early morning hours.
"What do you want me to do, Sarge?" Lopez asked.
Brandt glanced to Rebecca.
"What did you teach me?" she asked.
He cocked his head, uncertain what Rebecca meant.
"If you can't beat 'em?" she said with a smile.
Join them.
CHAPTER 11.
Moscow, Russia 9:59 p.m. GMT Rebecca stepped from the steamy shower of their suite at the Baltschug Kempinski. With its gold-trimmed handles and silk curtains, the hotel was the finest luxury in Russia. Of course it was owned by Swedes, but hey as least it had enough hot water to finally wash the smell of not-all-that-well-refrigerated meat from her hair.
When she had suggested that they blend in with the crowd as tourists, she never imagined that Brandt would actually have them become tourists. Rebecca did not argue one bit though when he suggested getting a hotel room to act as home base.
Of course on V-Day everything was booked solid, so again, she didn't complain when they had to rent a suite at the finest hotel in Russia. Nor did she complain when Brandt suggested she take a shower while he and the men developed an entry plan into the cathedral. She was more than willing to let the guys do the heavy lifting on this one.
Winding a towel around her body, she parted the curtains.
The sight made her nearly drop her towel. For as many times she had traveled to Moscow for various archeological conferences, she'd never witnessed Red Square at night. Their hotel room was positioned directly across the Moscow River from the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral. She had the perfect view of their quarry. Even as the windows steamed up, the sight stunned.
At the far end of the square, floodlights illuminated the Russian National Museum. The bright lights accentuated its red, red facade. The building screamed, "I am Russian. Take that."
Then there was Red Square. It was accustomed to crowds, but this gathering was off the hook. There was a small stage built by the museum. Lights throbbed to the music as the entire crowd moved as one to the rhythm.
Off to the right of the crammed square sat GUM, one of Russia's largest shopping malls. The exterior of the mall was lined by tiny twinkling lights, almost like a Swiss chalet at Christmastime. The building's gaiety seemed so incongruous to the usual harsh, utilitarian nature of the Russians. It was like having the Mall of America across the street from the White House.
The Kremlin sat off to the left, seeming odd as well. One might have expected an austere, functional building, yet here they would be confounded as well. The Kremlin wasn't a building so much as a complex. It contained something like four palaces and churches within the grounds that were protected by a tall brick wall along with nearly a dozen towers. The Russian president lived within the largest palace, a huge white-facade-covered building capped in green and gold.
The seat of Russian power was meant to impress, and it did. Especially at night. The gilded towers glistened against the darkness.
But the true sight was St. Basil's Cathedral. What could you say about one of the world's most unique buildings? They truly shattered the mold when they built the cathedral.
Instead of all the straight lines and sharp angles you would usually associate with Russian architecture, the designers had borrowed from nearly every culture to assemble Ivan the Terrible's church.
The onion-domed roofs were to honor his victory over the Islamics, and the detailed flames adorning the domes were meant to resemble God's fire rising to the heavens. The brickwork was commissioned from the Germans, and colors? Dear God, the colors were a riot. They made no sense individually. Blue, red, orange, purple, and green fought for attention as they basked under the floodlights. Yet, taken together, they all worked together as a tribute to both Ivan's victories and his God.
Could the tablets of Moses be hidden within those brightly colored walls? Or knowledge of where the tablets were sequestered? Had Amed found what he was looking for?
As much as Rebecca had sworn off anything religious, she had a "smart" gene to prove damn it, a bit of her thrilled at the sight of the cathedral. Science brought its own sense of accomplishment. However it demanded slow, deliberate, painstaking attention to detail. And research at the DNA level? Double that. And when she proved that certain genes bestowed exceptional intelligence and culture-building properties, she would break open a bottle of champagne.
But the thought of touching the actual Ten Commandments? To feel the weight of the stone beneath her fingers? That sent a thrill through her that staring down a microscope could never provide.
Add in the bonus of saving the world from a Rinderpest plague the world hadn't seen since biblical times? Yeah, that feeling never got old.
"Hope you're decent," Brandt said just before he burst into the room.
"Brandt!" Rebecca protested, tugging the towel upward, suddenly aware of her wet hair sending rivulets of water down her cleavage.
Apparently oblivious, the sergeant held out a pair of binoculars. "Look."
"At what?" she asked, taking a step back.
"The back door of the cathedral."
She knew when the sergeant was in this mood there was no stopping him. So hoping the towel stayed up, Rebecca accepted the binoculars and swept them past the Kremlin, the huge, surging crowd in Red Square to St. Basil's. Fiddling with the focus, she zeroed in on the back door. Was there someone standing outside, a woman smoking? Looking out at the celebration?
"Is that who I think it is?" Brandt asked.
But it couldn't be. Could it?
Despite her mind's protests the young woman's face came into sharp focus.
There she was in Technicolor.
"Bunny."
At the confirmation of the woman's identity, Brandt spun on his heel and charged into the living room of the suite. "We've got a complication," he informed his men.
"You know the woman down there?" Talli asked.
"Barely," Brandt answered. The men were "read in" to some aspects of the previous mission that led them from France to Budapest to Istanbul to Rome in pursuit, or more accurately put, pursued by the Knot. Many, many, many details from that mission were seriously need-to-know, and until the appearance of Bunny at St. Basil's, she had not been one of them.
"I thought she was dead," Rebecca said as she hastily tugged a shirt on.
"Technically she was," Brandt said.
"Define technically?"
Talli and Harvish stepped closer. Crap. The lid was off-why not blow it all the way open? He turned to his men first. "Brenda Hollingford, aka 'Bunny,' had been a graduate student of Rebecca's old mentor. She was badly injured in our escape from the Knot at the French laboratory." Actually, badly injured was an understatement. The woman had come a hairsbreadth from death. "The US asked the French to declare her dead. She was then transported home to the States and put into the Witness Protection Program."
To his surprise Rebecca nodded, not demanding a more elaborate explanation of why she hadn't been informed. "Probably best," she stated. "But what is she doing in Russia?"
Brandt didn't know, and he did not like coincidences. Actually, he didn't believe in them at all. And happy coincidences? Never. Bunny was supposed to be in Topeka or a city equally boring, waiting tables or marrying a major league ballplayer or something.
"Guess we're going to find out," Brandt answered Rebecca and then turned to Talli. "Your nest is the same."
The dark-skinned man picked up his sniper's "go-bag." "You got it."
And maybe this time you might want to actually shoot something, Brandt thought but didn't voice. Pushchino had been a clusterfuck on a massive scale. Putting the lion's share of the blame on Talli wasn't going to help anyone. But they couldn't and shouldn't count on Davidson saving the day. Talli needed to step up or go back to escorting businessmen in the Green Zone.
"Harvish lead the way," Brandt said as he stripped his black T-shirt off to change into something a bit more festive, like a white T-shirt. "We stick to the plan until the plan comes unstuck."
"You got it," the point man said, prepping his equipment.
Brandt turned to Rebecca. Her eyes found the jagged scar just below the vest. He'd like to say he forgot it was even there, but that would be a blatant lie. Every time he twisted hard to the left or even lifted weights that scar screamed in protest. Well, Brandt just shouted back.
He tucked his shirt into his pants, wanting Rebecca focused on the problem at hand, not on the fact of exactly how many times they'd each almost died on the last mission. As he buttoned the shirt, Rebecca's eyes found his.