Hazardous Duty

[ONE]

La Casa en el Bosque

Colonel Jacob Torine was accustomed to being around very senior people, some of whom had worn exotic clothing — among other assignments, he had served as the senior aircraft commander of Air Force One — so while he was impressed with Archbishop Valentin, he wasn’t dazzled.

As soon as the introductions had been made, he said, “It is very gracious of Your Eminence to hold dinner for us.”

“Not at all,” the archbishop replied. “While we were waiting, we’ve been at these magnificent hors d’oeuvres and heeding the advice of Saint Timothy, who admonished us, you may recall…”

“‘Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake,’” Torine picked up. “In the King James Bible, First Timothy, chapter five, verse twenty-three. One of my favorite bits of Holy Scripture.”

“That would suggest you’re a Christian, Colonel,” Archbishop Valentin said, “which is one of the questions I planned to pose.”

“I think I am, Your Grace,” Torine replied. “My wife is not so sure. Which brings us, of course, to the First Epistle to the Corinthians….”

“‘Let Your Women Keep Silent,’” the Archbishop quoted, chuckling. “On the basis of your knowledge of Holy Scripture, Colonel, I will regard you as a Christian. I’ll get to the other gentlemen in a moment, but right now, why don’t we all have a glass of the very excellent Saint Felicien Cabernet Sauvignon that Aleksandr has so graciously provided.”

He raised his hand and a man in a starched white jacket appeared with a tray holding bottles of wine and glasses.

When the wine had been poured, Archimandrite Boris raised his glass.

“I would like to thank you all for coming here to help His Eminence and myself, even understanding that wasn’t your primary purpose in coming.”

When there was no response to that, the archimandrite went on: “Will someone tell us what that primary purpose is?”

When there was no response to that, the archimandrite nodded toward Naylor.

“Perhaps you would be willing, my son, to do so.”

Naylor opened his mouth. But before a word came out, the archimandrite asked, “Are you a Christian, my son?”

“When I was a kid, I was confirmed — Colonel Castillo and I were — in the Evangelische Church in Germany. Saint Johan’s, in Hersfeld. And then I became an Episcopalian when I was at West Point. My parents are Episcopalian.”

“That’s very interesting, but my question was ‘Are you a Christian?’”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what is it that brings you here, that so infuriates Mrs. Alekseeva?”

Naylor looked at Castillo, obviously asking for his permission to answer. Castillo nodded.

“I am to relay to Colonel Castillo the request of the President of the United States that he enter upon extended hazardous active duty in connection with the Mexican drug and Somali pirates problems.”

“And why would you say this so infuriates Mrs. Alekseeva?”

Naylor again wordlessly asked for — and got — Castillo’s permission to reply.

“Probably because the last time Colonel Castillo worked for the President, the President tried very hard to kidnap Colonel Castillo — and Mrs. Alekseeva and her brother — with the intention to load them on a plane and ship them off to the SVR in Russia.”

“So they’ve told me. So why are you in effect doing so?”

“Obeying orders, Your Grace.”

“Obeying orders from whom?”

“My father.”

“Heeding the scriptural admonition to ‘Honor thy father and mother…’ et cetera?”

“It’s more that my father is a general and I’m a lieutenant colonel, Your Grace.”

“And do you think the President will again try to turn Colonel Castillo over to the kind ministrations of the SVR?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, Your Grace.”

Castillo snorted.

The archimandrite asked, “Yet you’re here to tell him what President Clendennen wants him to do?”

“And to tell him I think he’d be a damned fool to do it.”

The archbishop joined in: “Your father is aware of what might happen to Colonel Castillo if Colonel Castillo accedes to President Clendennen’s request?”

“Yes, Your Eminence, he is.”

“Then why…?”

“Because he’s a soldier, sir. Soldiers do what they are ordered to do.”

“Soldiers, I would suggest,” the archbishop said, “like priests, are expected to do what they have been ordered to do. Sometimes, a priest — and, I would suggest, a soldier — gets an order he knows it would be wrong to execute.”

“Yes, sir. That’s true, Your Eminence.”

“Posing for him the problem of doing what he’s ordered to do knowing it’s wrong, or disobeying the order, while knowing disobedience is wrong.”

“Then, Your Eminence,” Naylor said, “he must decide which is the greater evil: disobedience, or complying with an order he knows is wrong.”

“Or choosing the middle path,” the archbishop said. “Which apparently you have done. Complying with your orders, but making it clear that Colonel Castillo would be a ‘damned fool’ for doing what your father and the President want him to do.”

“Sorry about the language, Your Eminence,” Naylor said.

“That wasn’t blasphemy, my son, simply colorful language spoken in the company of men. But, while fascinating as this conversation is, I think we should turn to why the archimandrite and I are here, and your role in that. That is, I’m afraid, going to take some time.”

“We are at your pleasure, Your Eminence,” Jake Torine said.

“My pleasure was the exchange between Colonel Naylor and myself. This is duty, and as we just discussed, duty sometimes — perhaps even often — is not a matter of pleasure.

“And so I am here to deal with a matter between Patriarch Alexius the Second and myself. Do any of you know who His Beatitude is?”

“Isn’t he sort of the Pope of the Russian Orthodox Church, Your Eminence?” Torine asked.

“His Beatitude is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia,” the archbishop said. “A position analogous to the Roman Catholic Pope. But having told you that, I suspect that you don’t know much more than you did previously.

“Let me ask this question, then, of all of you. How much Russian history do you know? Specifically, how much do you know about the Oprichnina?”

“Not much about either, Your Eminence,” Torine confessed.

The others shook their heads, joining in the confession of ignorance.

“Sweaty… Svetlana has told me about the Oprichnina, Your Eminence,” Castillo said.

“In addition to his other duties, the archimandrite is in charge of our seminaries,” the archbishop said. “In that function he has reluctantly become far more of an academic than I am. Boris, could you give our friends a quick history lesson — Oprichnina 101, so to speak?”

“If that is your desire, Your Eminence,” the archimandrite said. He took a long moment to collect his thoughts, and then began.

“I suppose I should begin with Ivan the Fourth, sometimes known as ‘Ivan the Terrible.’”

Both Castillo and Naylor had first heard of Ivan the Terrible when they were eleven and students at Saint Johan’s School in Bad Hersfeld. He had stuck in their memory because they had learned he had amused himself by throwing dogs and men off the Kremlin’s walls because he liked to watch them crawl around on broken legs.

“Ivan the Terrible — Ivan the Fourth — was born in 1530,” the archimandrite went on. “There was then no Czar. Most of the power was in the hands of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, Ivan’s father, Vasily the Third. His power came from the private armies of the nobility, the boyars, who placed them at Vasily the Third’s service, providing they approved of what he was doing.

“Vasily the Third died in 1533, when Ivan was three years old. The boy became the Grand Duke of Muscovy. The boyars ‘advised,’ through a series of committees, the Grand Duke what Grand Ducal decrees he should issue.

“As soon as he reached puberty, and very probably before, the boyars began to abuse Ivan sexually, more to remind him how powerful they were than for pleasure, although at least some of them enjoyed what they were doing.

“In the belief that he was firmly in their control, they allowed him to assume power in his own right — in other words, without the advice of the committees — in 1544, when he was fourteen.

“During the next three years, Ivan developed a close relationship with the church, specifically with Philip the Second, Metropolitan of Moscow. The Metropolitan discovered Holy Scripture that suggested God wanted Ivan to be Czar, and in January 1547, the Metropolitan presided over the coronation of Czar Ivan the Fourth. Ivan was then seventeen years old.

“Ivan, who had figured out that if he had the church on his side, he would also have the support of the peasants and serfs, who were very religious, then began to favor the boyars he felt sure he could control, and undercutting the power of the others.

“Phrased less kindly, as soon as he became Czar, he began feeding those boyars who questioned his divine right to rule to pits of starving dogs. Then he seized their property and divided it between himself, the church, and the boyars, who did think he had God on his side. It is important to remember here that boyar property included the serfs who lived on the land, and that the various private armies involved were made up of serf conscripts.

“The church — Philip the Second, it must be admitted — was involved in this un-holy scheme of things up to his ears. In payment for telling the faithful that Ivan was standing at the right hand of God, and making the point that challenging Ivan was tantamount to challenging God, the church grew wealthy.

“Ivan also began to form an officer corps from the merchant class. Their loyalty was to him personally, and he bought it by paying them generously. What had been two or three dozen private armies under the control of that many boyars became one army answering only to Ivan.

“This went on for about eighteen years, until 1565, when he decided he had arranged things as well as he could. Then he went into action. First, he moved his family out of Moscow to one of his country estates. When he was sure that he and they were safe in the hands of his officer corps, he wrote a letter to Metropolitan Philip the Second. The Czar said he was going to abdicate and, to that end, had already moved out of Moscow. He posted copies of the letter on walls and, importantly, in every church.

“The people, the letter said, could now run Russia to suit themselves, starting by picking a new Czar, to whom they could look for protection. This upset everybody. The people didn’t want a new Czar who was not chosen by God. The boyars knew that picking one of their own to be the new Czar was going to result in a bloodbath. The officer corps knew that the privileges they had been granted were almost certainly not to be continued under a new Czar, and that the boyars would want their serfs back.

“The Czar was begged not to abdicate, to come home to Moscow. After letting them worry for a while, during which time they had a preview of what life without Czar Ivan would be like, he announced his terms for not abdicating.

“There would be something new in Russian, the Oprichnina—‘Separate Estate’—which would consist of one thousand households, some of the highest nobility of the boyars, some of lower-ranking boyars, some of senior military officers, a few of members of the merchant class, and even a few families of extraordinarily successful peasants.

“They all had demonstrated a commendable degree of loyalty to the Czar. The Oprichnina would physically include certain districts of Russia and certain cities, and the revenue from these places would be used to support the Oprichnina and of course the Czar, who would live among them.

“The old establishment would remain in place. The boyars not included in the Oprichnina would retain their titles and privileges; the council — the Duma—would continue to operate, its decisions subject of course to the Czar’s approval. But the communication would be one way. Except in extraordinary circumstances, no one not an Oprichniki would be permitted to communicate with the Oprichnina.

“The Czar’s offer was accepted. God’s man was back in charge. The boyars had their titles. The church was now supported by the state, so most of the priests and bishops were happy. Just about everybody was happy but Philip the Second, Metropolitan of Moscow, who let it be known that he thought the idea of the Oprichnina was un-Christian.

“The Czar understood that he could not tolerate doubt or criticism. And so Ivan set out for Tver, where the Metropolitan lived. On the way, he heard a rumor that the people and the administration in Russia’s second-largest city, Great Novgorod, were unhappy with having to support Oprichnina.

“Just as soon as he had watched Metropolitan Philip being choked to death in Tver, the Czar went to Great Novgorod, where, over the course of five weeks, the army of the Oprichnina, often helped personally by Ivan himself, raped every female they could find, massacred every man they could find, and destroyed every farmhouse, warehouse, barn, monastery, church, every crop in the fields, every horse, cow, and chicken.”

He paused, then said, “And so was born what we now call the SVR.”

“Excuse me?” Jake Torine asked. “I got lost just now.”

“Over the years, it has been known by different names, of course,” the archimandrite explained. “It actually didn’t have a name of its own, other than the Oprichnina, a state within a state, until Czar Nicholas the First. After Nicholas put down the Decembrist Revolution in 1825, he reorganized the trusted elements of the Oprichnina into what he called the Third Section.

“That reincarnation of the Oprichnina lasted until 1917, when the Bolsheviks renamed it the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of Counterrevolution and Sabotage — acronym Cheka.”

“That sounds as if you’re saying that the Czar’s secret police just changed sides, became Communists,” D’Alessandro said.

It was his first comment during the long history lesson.

“My son, you’re saying two things, you realize,” the archbishop said. “That the Oprichnina changed sides is one. That the Oprichnina became Communist is another. They never change sides. They may have worked for different masters, but they never become anything other than what they were, members of the Oprichnina.”

“Excuse me, Your Eminence,” D’Alessandro said, “but I’ve always been taught that the Russian secret police, by whatever name, were always Communist. Wasn’t the first head of the Cheka — Dzerzhinsky — a lifelong Communist? I’ve always heard he spent most of his life in one Czarist jail or another before the Communist revolution. That’s not so?”

“The Dziarzhynava family was of the original one thousand families in Ivan’s Oprichnina,” the archbishop said. “Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the Cheka, was born on the family’s estate in western Belarus. The estate was never confiscated by the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks or the Communists after they took power. The family owns it to this day.”

The archimandrite picked the narrative up.

“The Czar’s Imperial Prisons were controlled by the Third Section. How well one fared in them — or whether one was actually in a prison, or was just on the roster — depended on how well one was regarded by the Oprichnina. The fact that the history books paint the tale of this heroic revolutionary languishing, starved and beaten, for years in a Czarist prison cell doesn’t make it true.”

The archbishop took his turn by asking, “And didn’t you think it was a little odd that Lenin appointed Dzerzhinsky to head the Cheka and kept him there when there were so many deserving and reasonably talented Communists close to him?”

D’Alessandro put up both hands in an admission of confusion.

“The Cheka,” the archimandrite went on, “was reorganized after the counterrevolution of 1922 as the GPU, later the OGPU. A man named Yaakov Peters was named to head it. By Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, who was minister of the interior, which controlled the OGPU.

“Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack in 1926. After that there were constant reorganizations and renaming. In 1934, the OGPU became the NKVD — People’s Commissariat for State Security. In 1943, the NKGB was split off from the NKVD. And in 1946, after the Great War, it became the MGB, Ministry of State Security.”

“What you’re saying, Your Grace,” D’Alessandro said, “is that this state within a state…”

“The Oprichnina,” the archimandrite furnished.

“… the Oprichnina was in charge of everything? Only the names changed and the Oprichnina walked through the raindrops of the purges they had over there at least once a year?”

“My son,” the archbishop said, “you’re again putting together things that don’t belong together. Yes, the Oprichnina remained—remains—in charge. No, not all the Oprichniki managed to live through all the purges. Enough did, of course, in order to maintain the Oprichnina and learn from the mistakes made.”

“Excuse me, Your Eminence,” Torine asked. “Are you saying the Oprichnina exists today?”

“Of course it does. Russia is under an Oprichnik.”

“Putin?” D’Alessandro blurted.

“Who else,” the archbishop replied, “but Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin?”

“And that Mr. Pevsner, Swe… Svetlana, and Colonel Berezovsky were — are — Oprichniki?”

Nicolai Tarasov raised his pudgy hand above his bald head.

When Torine looked at him, Tarasov said, smiling, “Yes, me, too. I confess. If there were membership cards, I would be a card-carrying Oprichnik.”

“How do you get to be an Oprichnik?” D’Alessandro asked. “Like the Mafia makes ‘made men’? First you whack somebody, then there’s a ceremony where you cut your fingers to mingle blood, and then take an oath of silence?”

“One is born into the Oprichnik,” the archbishop said. “Or, in the case of women, marries into it. Only very rarely can a man become an Oprichnik by marrying into it. There is no oath of silence, such as the Mafia oath of Omertà, because one is not necessary. It is in the interest of every Oprichnik to keep what he or she knows about the state within the state from becoming public knowledge.”

“May I have your permission, Your Eminence, to make a comment?” Aleksandr Pevsner asked. It was the first time he’d said anything.

The archbishop nodded.

“But please, my son, try to not get far off the subject,” he said.

“The Oprichnina has not endured for more than four hundred years without difficulty,” Pevsner said. “From time to time, it has been necessary to purify its membership—”

“Purify it? How was that done, Mr. Pevsner?” Jake Torine asked.

“I recently found it necessary to purify my personal staff of a man — an American — who betrayed the trust I placed in him.”

“Howard Kennedy?” Torine asked.

Pevsner did not respond directly, but instead said, “As I was saying, we have found it necessary to purify our ranks from time to time and also to place under our protection certain individuals who have rendered one or more of us — and thus the Oprichnina — a great service.

“This was the case with our Charley. Before he met Svetlana and Dmitri, I very seriously considered eliminating him as a threat. God in His never-failing wisdom stayed my hand, and Charley lived to save my life at the risk of his own. Knowing that others, in particular Vladimir Vladimirovich, still wanted our Charley out of the way, I sent word to Vladimir Vladimirovich that I considered our Charley my brother.

“Ordinarily, that would have been enough to protect our Charley, as a friend of the Oprichnina, but Vladimir Vladimirovich apparently decided that our Charley posed a threat he could not countenance and/or that I no longer had the authority to categorize Charley as a protected friend of the Oprichnina.

“He sent Dmitri and Svetlana to eliminate our Charley in Marburg, Germany. That operation turned out disastrously for Vladimir Vladimirovich, as you all know. Not only did Dmitri and Svetlana decide not to eliminate our Charley, but enlisted his aid in helping them to defect.

“Vladimir Vladimirovich had SVR agents waiting in Vienna to arrest Dmitri and Svetlana. Instead, our Charley flew them to Argentina and ultimately brought them here.”

“Can I jump in here, Your Eminence?” Vic D’Alessandro asked.

“I was afraid this would happen,” the archbishop asked. “But yes, my son, you may. Try to be brief.”

“Thank you,” D’Alessandro said.

“Dmitri—”

“Please call me Tom, Vic.”

“Okay. Tom, why did you defect? From all I’ve ever heard, all the intelligence services in Russia live very well, and I’m guessing that you Oprichniks lived pretty high on the hog. So why did you defect?”

“Because we came to the conclusion that sooner or later, Mr. Putin was going to get around to purifying us. We knew too much. We had family members — Aleksandr and Nicolai — who had, Vladimir Vladimirovich could reasonably argue, already defected.”

“I don’t think Vladimir Vladimirovich, if he could get his hands on us, would have actually fed us to starving dogs or thrown us off the Kremlin wall,” Aleksandr Pevsner said, “but keeping us on drugs in a mental hospital for the rest of our lives seemed a distinct possibility.”

“What did he have… does he have… against you?”

“You didn’t tell them, Charley?” Pevsner asked.

Castillo shook his head.

“Would you have told them if they asked?” Pevsner asked.

“If they had a good reason for wanting to know, I would have.”

“You really have the makings of a good Oprichnik,” Pevsner said. “Well, now there is that reason, so I will tell them.

“In the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was a polkovnik—colonel — in both the Soviet Air Force and the SVR. I was in charge of Aeroflot operations worldwide, both in a business sense and in the security aspect. These duties required me to travel all over the world, and to make the appropriate contacts. My cousin Nicolai was my deputy in both roles.

“When the USSR collapsed, the SVR — which is to say Vladimir Vladimirovich — learned the new government had the odd notion that the assets of the SVR should be turned over to the new democratic government.”

“What assets?” Torine asked.

“Would you believe tons of gold, Jake?” Castillo asked.

“Jesus Christ!” Torine said.

“Now that was blasphemous,” the archbishop said.

“I’m sorry, Your Eminence,” Torine said.

“You need Our Savior’s forgiveness, not mine.”

“Plus some tons of platinum,” Castillo said, chuckling. “Not to mention a lot of cash.”

Pevsner, his tone making it clear that he didn’t appreciate contributions from others while he was explaining things, then went on:

“As I was saying. When Vladimir Vladimirovich was faced with the problem of not wanting to turn over the SVR’s assets to the new democratic government, he turned to me. Nicolai and me. He correctly suspected that we would know how to get these assets out of Russia to places where they would be safe from the clutching hands of the new government.

“At about this time, Nicolai and I realized there were some aspects of capitalism we had not previously understood. As Ayn Rand so wisely put it — she was Russian, I presume you know—‘No man is entitled to the fruits of another man’s labor.’

“So Nicolai and I told Vladimir Vladimirovich we would be happy to accommodate him for a small fee. Five percent of the value of what we placed safely outside the former Soviet Union.”

“Jake,” Castillo said, “you’ve always been good at doing math in your head. Try this: In 1991, when the USSR collapsed, gold was about $375 an ounce. How much is five percent of two thousand pounds of gold, there being sixteen ounces of gold in each pound?”

“My Go— goodness,” Torine said.

“‘Goodness’ being a euphemism for God,” the archbishop said, “there are those, myself included, who consider the phrase blasphemous.”

“Again, I’m sorry, Your Eminence,” Torine said, then looked at Castillo. “And you said ‘tons of gold’? Plural?”

“So now you know,” Castillo said, “where ol’ Aleksandr got the money to buy Karin Hall, and all those cruise ships, and the Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort, et cetera, et cetera.”

“We started out with a couple of old transports from surplus Air Force stock,” Pevsner said. “We flew surplus Soviet arms out of Russia, and luxury goods — Mercedes-Benz automobiles, Louis Vuitton luggage, that sort of thing — in.

“Mingled with the arms on the flights out of Moscow were fifty-five-gallon barrels of fuel. You would be surprised how much gold one can get into a fifty-five-gallon drum. That, unfortunately, is how I earned the reputation of being an arms dealer; but regretfully that was necessary as a cover. No one was going to believe I prospered so quickly providing antique samovars and Black Sea caviar to the world market.

“But turning to Vladimir Vladimirovich, who is really the subject of this meeting…”

“I’m so glad you remembered, my son,” the archbishop said.

“As long as I have known Vladimir Vladimirovich, which has been for all of our lives, I always suspected — probably because of his father; the apple never falls far from the tree — that he was more of a Communist than a Christian, which means that he was far more interested in lining his pockets than promoting the general welfare of the Oprichnina.”

“That characterization, I would suggest,” the archbishop said, “qualifies as a rare exception to the scriptural admonition to ‘judge not,’ et cetera.”

“I gather you are a Christian, Mr. Pevsner?” Naylor asked.

“Of course I’m a Christian,” Pevsner said indignantly. “I’m surprised our Charley didn’t make that quite clear to you.”

“It must have slipped his mind,” Naylor said.

“Where was I?” Pevsner asked.

“You were saying that Mr. Putin was very much like his father,” D’Alessandro said.

“He is.”

“The story I’ve always heard is that his father was a foreman in a locomotive factory who became Stalin’s cook.”

“That’s what the official biographies say. Actually, he was Stalin’s cook as much as Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky was a tortured prisoner of the Czar until he was twenty-six. Vladimir Putin the elder was a general in the KGB, who served, among other such duties, as political commissar during the siege of Stalingrad.”

Pevsner paused long enough to let that sink in, then said, “With the gracious permission of His Eminence, I will continue.”

“Keep it short, my son,” the archbishop said.

“Where to begin?” Pevsner asked rhetorically, and then answered his own question. “At the beginning…

“During the revolution of 1917, a substantial portion of Third Section, the Czar’s secret police, was co-opted by the Bolsheviks of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and renamed the Cheka—”

“‘A substantial portion’?” D’Alessandro interrupted.

“If they had taken it over completely, Vic,” Pevsner said, “none of us would be here today, and there would be no Oprichnina.”

“And with no Oprichnina, God alone knows what would have been the fate of the church,” the archbishop added.

“Who didn’t get co-opted?” D’Alessandro asked.

“My family, obviously, and the Alekseev family, and perhaps fifty or sixty others,” Pevsner said. “May I continue?”

“Alek,” Castillo said, “all Vic is trying to do is make sure he and everybody else understands what you’re trying to tell them.”

“Be that as it may, friend Charley, if I am continually interrupted, I’ll never finish.”

“Sorry, Alek,” D’Alessandro said.

“The Cheka,” Pevsner went on, “arrested the Imperial Family — Czar Nicholas the Second, Czarina Alexandra, their five children — Czarevich Alexei, and Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia — and a half dozen of the intimate friends and servants and took them to Yekaterinburg, which is some nine hundred miles east of Moscow.

“There, on July seventeenth, 1918, at the personal order of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, they were murdered and their bodies buried in unmarked graves in a forest.

“The Bolsheviks then turned to destroying the church.”

“Their greatest mistake, in my humble judgment,” the archbishop said. “Wouldn’t you agree, Father Boris?”

“Absolutely, Your Eminence,” the archimandrite said.

“They murdered clergy, confiscated church property, burned seminaries, turned churches and cathedrals into warehouses… that sort of thing. Shipped millions of Christian people to Siberia. But the church was stronger than they thought it would be.”

“In large part because of the faithful within the Oprichnina, it must be admitted,” the archbishop furnished.

His face showing that while he appreciated the archbishop’s kind words, he still didn’t appreciate being interrupted, Pevsner picked up his history lesson.

“One of the first things to happen was the formation of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia — ROCOR.”

“The archimandrite and I have the honor of humbly serving the ROCOR,” the archbishop said.

“And it is my honor to humbly serve His Eminence, who heads ROCOR,” the archimandrite said.

“ROCOR remained part of the Russian Orthodox Church,” the archbishop went on, “that is to say, under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate, until 1927—”

“I was about to get to that, Your Eminence,” Pevsner said.

His face showing that he disliked being interrupted, His Eminence continued: “… when the godless Bolsheviks finally broke the will of Metropolitan Sergius, who headed the church. They had had him in a Moscow prison cell for about five years at the time, which probably had a good deal to do with what he did: He pledged loyalty to the Communist regime.

“That was too much for one of my predecessors, who informed Sergius that while we still regarded Sergius as an archbishop, we no longer could consider ourselves under the patriarchal authority of someone who had pledged loyalty to the Communists.”

He paused and then said, “You may continue, Aleksandr, my son.”

“In 1991, the year the Soviet Union imploded,” Pevsner went on, “it was announced that the unmarked graves of the Royal Family had been found. Since Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was involved, I suspected that he had known all along where they were.

“So, what was he up to? The answer was simple: He wanted to replace Stalin. And — no one has ever suggested that Vladimir Vladimirovich is not a very clever man — he knew the way to become the new Czar of all the Russias was to follow the philosophy of Ivan the Terrible — get the church on his side — rather than the failed philosophy of Lenin and Stalin to destroy the church.

“He was also smart enough to know that he couldn’t do this the way Ivan did, by throwing money at the church. For one thing, he flatly denied knowing anything about the assets of the SVR.

“Nicolai and I, I should point out, had already moved many of these assets to the Cayman Islands, Macao, and, of course, here to Argentina. If Vladimir Vladimirovich had started to give the church money, the Patriarch in Moscow was certain to have asked where he’d gotten it.

“So, what he needed to do was prove his devotion to the church. First, he found the long-lost unmarked graves of the Royal Family, hired DNA experts to determine they were indeed the royal bones, and then decided that the martyred Czar and his family should have the Christian burial those terrible Communists had so long denied them.

“This took place — with Vladimir Vladimirovich playing a significant and very visible role in the ceremonies — on July eighteenth, 1998, sixty years to the day from their murder in Yekaterinburg.

“The reinterment of the mortal remains of the Royal Family,” the archimandrite chimed in, “was in the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral inside the Saints Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg, which the Communist authorities had renamed during their reign as Leningrad.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Pevsner said with as much sincerity as he could muster, and then went on much more pleasantly as he suddenly remembered something about that. “It was well known within the Oprichnina that Vladimir Vladimirovich had been one of the more strident voices demanding of the new government of Russia that they change Leningrad back into Saint Petersburg to reflect its Christian heritage.”

“There is some good in even the worst of sinners,” His Eminence pronounced.

“After the funeral, Vladimir Vladimirovich’s reputation was that of a staunch and faithful supporter of the church,” Pevsner went on. “And about that time, he began to start inviting Nicolai and me back to the motherland for conferences. I wasn’t suspicious of this until one time when I told him I could fit it into my schedule, but Nicolai was tied up. He said he’d rather wait until we could come together.

“After that, neither Nicolai nor I could ever seem to find a time to travel to the motherland either together or alone.”

“But we did get word to Dmitri and Svetlana,” Nicolai furnished, “that it might be a good idea for them to visit us—”

“Together,” Pevsner interrupted.

“… for an extended period.”

“That was after Vladimir Vladimirovich sent word to us that he’d thought it over and come to the conclusion that five percent was excessive for the service we had rendered.”

“But that we could make things right,” Nicolai furnished, “if we deposited half of what we had earned to an account of the SVR in a bank in Johannesburg, South Africa.”

“Well, when Vladimir Vladimirovich realized that Nicolai and I were neither going to accept his kind invitation to visit the motherland, or — having become capitalists, where a deal is a deal — send half of what we had honestly earned to Joburg, he decided to demonstrate that the SVR was something still to be feared.”

“You don’t know that, Alek,” Nicolai interrupted.

“I also don’t know if the sun will rise tomorrow morning, but based on what’s happened in the past, I’ll bet it does.”

“What do you suspect Vladimir Vladimirovich of doing, Aleksandr, my son?” His Eminence asked, just a little impatiently.

“There were several people around the world who had, in one way or another, gotten in the SVR’s way,” Pevsner explained. “Vladimir Vladimirovich decided that eliminating them all, at the same time, would send the message ‘Fear the SVR’ or ‘Fear Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’ both around the world and within Russia.

“One of those he eliminated, for example, was Kurt Kuhl, who owned several pastry shops — called the Kuhlhaus — in Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. Vladimir Vladimirovich had good reason to believe that Herr Kuhl was a CIA asset who over the years had facilitated the defection of a number of SVR personnel, and agents controlled by the SVR.

“The bodies of Herr Kuhl and his wife were found behind the Johann Strauss statue in the Stadtpark in Vienna. They had been murdered with metal garrotes of the type the former Hungarian secret police, the Államvédelmi Hatóság, were fond of using. It isn’t much of a secret that those members of the Államvédelmi Hatóság who hadn’t been hung by their countrymen when Hungary severed its connection with the Soviet Union often found employment with the SVR, so Vladimir Vladimirovich could send that message, too, to other CIA assets. ‘We know about you, and are going to eliminate you.’

“Another problem for Vladimir Vladimirovich was right here,” Pevsner continued, gesturing toward Liam Duffy. “The SVR had a very profitable business going shipping cocaine and heroin from Paraguay and elsewhere through Argentina to Europe and the United States. The profits were used to fund SVR operations all over South America. When, rarely, the movements were detected, palms were greased, the drugs went back into the pipeline, and the shippers either never went to trial, or if they did were either freed or slapped on the wrist.

“Then my friend Liam was assigned the duty — the Gendarmería Nacional was — and things changed. Liam is a devout Roman Catholic who took his oath of office seriously. When his people intercepted a drug shipment, they burned the drugs and ran the shippers before courts which were not for sale.

“Worse than that, so far as Vladimir Vladimirovich was concerned, was that Liam began to hold — what’s that charming phrase? — drumhead courts-martial at the arrest scene, which saved the government the cost of trials and the expense of feeding the drug people during long periods of incarceration.”

“Holy Scripture teaches us,” the archbishop said disapprovingly, to ‘judge not, lest thee be judged.’”

“I considered that prayerfully, Your Eminence,” Duffy said, “and decided I could successfully argue my case before Saint Peter.”

“Vladimir Vladimirovich sent people to eliminate my friend Liam,” Pevsner continued, “and his family, and the attempt was made on Christmas Eve. All of the assassinations, or attempted assassinations, took place on Christmas Eve. In Liam’s case, the attempt failed.

“And finally, there was a reporter, Günther Freidler, who worked for Charley’s Tages Zeitung newspaper chain.”

“Excuse me?” the archbishop asked, and then parroted, “‘Charley’s newspaper chain’?”

“My brother Charley has two personas, Your Eminence,” Pevsner explained. “One of them is Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, U.S. Army, Retired, and the other is Herr Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, who is by far the principal stockholder of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, which owns, among other things, the Tages Zeitung newspaper chain.” He paused, and then added, “If Your Eminence was concerned that my brother Charley’s interest in marrying my cousin Svetlana is based on her affluence, I respectfully suggest it is not a factor.”

“I don’t understand,” the archbishop said.

“I’m a bastard, Your Eminence,” Castillo said. “Born out of wedlock to an eighteen-year-old German girl, following her seventy-two-hour dalliance with an eighteen-year-old American chopper jockey.”

“‘Chopper jockey’?” the archbishop parroted.

“Helicopter pilot,” Castillo clarified. “Whom she never saw or heard from again.”

“There are men like that, unfortunately,” His Eminence said. “I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive him.”

“I have managed to convince myself, Your Eminence, that my father never knew he had… left my mother in the family way.”

“I can’t let that ride, Charley,” Naylor said.

Castillo shrugged.

The archbishop made a go on gesture to Naylor.

“Charley’s mother didn’t know what had happened to Charley’s father until she was literally on her deathbed,” Naylor said.

“How do you know that?” the archbishop said.

“I was there,” Naylor said. “My father was deeply involved. What happened was that Charley’s mother, knowing she was about to die and Charley would be an orphan — his grandfather and uncle had died in a car accident on the autobahn the year before; she thought he was really going to be alone — asked my father to find Charley’s father.”

“Asked your father?” the archbishop said.

“Yes, sir. My father was an officer in the 14th Armored Cavalry, then patrolling the border between East and West Germany. The border line had cut Charley’s family’s property just about in half. Charley’s mother and my mom were friends.

“So my father started looking for Charley’s father. He wasn’t hard to find. He was buried in the National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas. A representation of the Medal of Honor was chiseled into his headstone.

“Once the Army learned that the twelve-year-old German boy about to be an orphan was the son of an American officer who had posthumously received our nation’s highest award for valor — at nineteen — the Army instantly shifted into high gear to take care of him. They knew that when his mother died, he would inherit just about all of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., and were concerned that Charley’s inheritance would fall into the hands of Charley’s father’s family and be squandered.

“While a platoon of senior Army lawyers began looking into trust funds and anything else that would protect him, my father was sent to San Antonio to see if he could find Charley’s family, and to see what problems they were going to pose for Charley.

“He found Charley’s grandmother and showed her a picture of Charley.”

“And my abuela,” Castillo said softly, visibly fighting his emotions, “took one look at the picture, said I had my father’s eyes, and two hours after that, she and General Naylor — he was then a major — were in my grandfather’s Learjet en route to New York, where they caught the five-fifteen Pan American flight to Frankfurt.

“When they showed up at the house, I didn’t want to let them in. My mother was in great pain, looked like a skeleton, and I didn’t want anyone to see her looking like that, and in a cloud of cognac fumes.

“Abuela pushed past me, found my mother’s bedroom, and said…”

He lost his voice, and it took a very long moment before he was able to continue: “… and said, ‘I’m Jorge’s mother, my dear. I’m here to take care of you and the boy.’

“And my mother looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘Thank you, God.’”

“Two weeks after that, I got on another Pan American flight with my grandfather, carrying my new American passport as Carlos Guillermo Castillo, and flew to the States. My abuela stayed with my mother, who didn’t want me to see her in her last days. Two weeks after I got to San Antonio, she died. And I began my new life as a Texican, which is how Americans of Mexican background are described.”

“Your ancestors emigrated from Mexico to the United States, my son?” the archbishop asked.

“Your Eminence is familiar with the Alamo?” Castillo asked.

“Of course.”

“The Alamo today is owned by the Alamo Foundation, membership in which is limited to direct descendants of those men — some of Spanish blood — who died at the Alamo at the side of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Daniel Boone trying to keep the Mexicans out of what later became Texas. My grandmother served for many years as president of the Alamo Foundation. No, sir, I do not consider myself to be descended from Mexicans who immigrated to the United States. I am a Texican.”

“And a Hessian, apparently,” the archbishop said. “Fascinating!”

“If I may?” Pevsner asked.

The archbishop nodded his permission.

“Vladimir Vladimirovich sent another team of ex—Államvédelmi Hatóság to Germany with a dual mission. First, they were to eliminate Günther Friedler in a particularly nasty way—”

“Why?” the archbishop asked.

“‘Particularly nasty way’?” Archimandrite Boris repeated.

“Why?” Pevsner said. “Because he had been asking too many questions about the SVR ‘fish farm’ in the Congo where the former East German people were developing, even starting to produce, that very nasty biological warfare substance the Americans called ‘Congo-X.’”

“An abomination before God!” the archbishop said.

“You know about that?” Castillo asked.

“The church, my son, has its sources of information.”

“Oddly enough, Your Eminence,” Castillo said, “that’s exactly how Colonel Hamilton, who heads our biological warfare laboratory, described that stuff, as ‘an abomination before God.’”

“And so it is,” the archbishop pronounced.

“Was,” Pevsner said. “Before Charley. Now there’s no more of it, whatever it’s called.”

“God will bless Colonel Castillo for his efforts in that regard,” the archbishop announced.

“As I was saying,” Pevsner said, “Vladimir Vladimirovich’s assassins eliminated Herr Friedler in a particularly nasty way — they tried to make it appear he had died as a result of a spat between homosexuals — for his journalistic enterprise. But Vladimir Vladimirovich didn’t stop there. He wanted to send another message to the journalistic community that writing about the fish farm was dangerous, and the way he decided to do it was to assassinate the senior staff of the Tages Zeitung organization during Friedler’s funeral.”

“The senior staff being?” the archbishop asked.

“Eric Kocian, Your Eminence, publisher of the Budapest edition; the senior editor; Otto Görner, the managing director of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft; and the owner thereof, Herr Gossinger. I don’t really think he knew our Charley had two personas.”

“You are underestimating Vladimir Vladimirovich, Aleksandr,” Nicolai Tarasov said. “That’s dangerous. I’m quite sure he knew all about our friend Charley.”

“Then we are agreed to disagree,” Pevsner said. “I think we can agree, however, that Vladimir Vladimirovich regarded the elimination of Kocian, Görner, and my brother Charley as too important to be left to the Államvédelmi Hatóság, despite their well-deserved reputation for efficiency in such tasks, and therefore ordered Dmitri to assume command — after Friedler was in his casket — of the operation, to make sure Kocian, Görner, and my brother Charley were eliminated.”

“Your Eminence,” Nicolai said, “while I regret having to differ with my cousin Aleksandr again, I must. My feeling has always been that Vladimir Vladimirovich had no intention of shipping Dmitri and Svetlana to Russia when they were arrested in Vienna — having them in Russia would have posed a number of problems for him. Having them eliminated in Vienna, perhaps while trying to escape from the Austrian authorities, on the other hand, would have permitted Vladimir Vladimirovich to place the public blame for all the assassinations on Dmitri and Svetlana, and thus off himself, so far as the Germans were concerned. The SVR would know what had happened, that Vladimir Vladimirovich had eliminated his potentially most dangerous opponent—opponents, Dmitri and Svetlana. He would be ahead on both accounts.”

“Dmitri, my son,” the archbishop said, “what do you think?”

“Knowing Vladimir Vladimirovich as well as I do, Your Eminence, what Nicolai suggests may well be the case. I just don’t know.”

“I think that Nicolai and I can agree that the Marburg affair was a total disaster for Vladimir Vladimirovich,” Pevsner said. “None of the intended targets was eliminated; Dmitri and Svetlana, instead of being arrested in Vienna, were flown to safety here. Where they told my brother Charley about the fish farm, which resulted in the President of the United States doing his best to eliminate that ‘abomination before God.’”

“And the SVR rezident in Vienna, Kirill Demidov, who eliminated the Kuhls — or had them eliminated — with a Hungarian secret police garrote, was found sitting dead with such a device around his own neck in a taxicab outside the American embassy,” D’Alessandro said.

“You sound as if you approve, my son,” the archbishop said.

“Your Eminence, I’m not Russian Orthodox, I’m a Roman Catholic, but so far as I’m concerned you’re a priest and I can’t lie to a priest. I thought the sonofabitch got what he deserved. Maybe taking out the old man was justified — he knew the game he was in — but Frau Kuhl? I knew her. She was a sweet old lady. I’d have garroted the sonofabitch myself if I could have gotten at him.”

“Colonel Castillo, what do you know about this murder?”

“Not much more than Mr. D’Alessandro, Your Eminence.”

“Really?” His Eminence replied, his tone suggesting he did not accept what Castillo had said as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. When he went on, “But do you know who murdered this man?” the same tone was in his voice, as if he did not expect an honest answer.

There was a perceptible pause before Charley replied.

“I have a good idea, Your Eminence.”

“And whom do you suspect?”

“That’s none of your business, sir,” Castillo said.

“Charley,” Pevsner said warningly, “you can’t talk—”

“To put a point on it, did you order the murder of this man?” the archbishop interrupted.

“Weren’t you listening when I just told you I don’t know much about it?” Castillo said, now visibly angry, and then the anger took over. “What would you like me to do, Your Eminence, lay my hand on a Bible and swear that I did not order the execution of Demidov?

“It has been my sad experience,” Castillo snapped, “that the worst of liars are willing to utter the most outrageous untruths with one hand on the Holy Bible and the other on their mother’s tombstone or the heads of their children.”

Castillo stood up.

“Go fuck yourself, Your Eminence,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this whole affair, the history lesson, telling you a hell of a lot that’s none of your business, and especially you, you self-righteous sonofabitch. I thought I was willing to do damned near anything to get you to give Sweaty permission to marry me. But you just stepped over that legendary line drawn in the sand and that no longer seems to be the case.

“Let’s go, guys. This session of the Russian Inquisition is over.”

The archbishop laughed heartily, which was the last reaction Castillo — or anyone else — expected of him.

“I now understand why Svetlana was swept off her feet by you, my son,” he said. “Aleksandr, would you ask the ladies to join us?”

“Excuse me?” Pevsner said, his utter confusion evident in his voice and demeanor.

“Go out into the foyer, Aleksandr, and bring the women in here,” the archbishop ordered.

Pevsner did so.

“Svetlana, my child,” the archbishop then said. “If you will stand there”—he pointed—“and Carlos, my son, if you will stand beside her, and if the other ladies will find places at the table, we can deal with the situation before us.”

“Svetlana,” he ordered, “place your hand in Carlos’s hand.”

He stood up, put his hand on the gold crucifix hanging around his neck, and held it out in front of him at shoulder height.

“Let us pray,” he boomed. “May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bestow his manifold blessings on the union of Svetlana and Carlos in the holy state of matrimony in which they are soon to enter. Amen.”

He lowered the crucifix and let it fall against his chest.

“The archimandrite and I would be honored to officiate at the ceremony, if that is your desire,” the archbishop said. “And now I suggest we have our dinner. No, first I think champagne is called for. And then dinner. During which Archimandrite Boris will continue his history lecture — Oprichnina 101—during which I’m sure he will satisfy Carlos’s questions why I felt it necessary to conduct the Russian Inquisition.”

[TWO]

“Oh, my Charley,” Svetlana whispered in Castillo’s ear. “I was so afraid you were going to do something to offend His Eminence, show a lack of respect, or get into an argument with him, or say something at which he would take offense.”

“By now, sweetheart, you should know me better than that.”

“If you two can spare the time for him…” His Eminence said.

Just a little thickly, Charley decided. He’s about half plastered. First all that wine, and then the champagne, and now more of the grape….

“… the Archimandrite Boris will continue with Oprichnina 101.”

“I beg Your Eminence’s pardon,” Charley said.

“Not at all,” the archbishop said.

The archimandrite stood up and, as he collected his thoughts, took a healthy swallow from his wineglass. He swayed just perceptibly as he did so.

I guess the protocol here, Castillo thought, perhaps a bit cynically, is that if the archimandrite falls down during his lecture, the rest of us will pretend not to notice.

“As I touched on briefly before,” the archimandrite began, “the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov’ Zagranitsey, sometimes known as the Orthodox Church outside Russia, acronym ROCOR, is a semiautonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“ROCOR was formed soon after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the anti-Christian policy of the Bolsheviks became painfully evident. It separated itself from the Russian Patriarchate in 1927, when the Moscow Metropolitan — in effect the Pope — offered its loyalty to the Bolsheviks.

“His Eminence serves Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov’ Zagranitsey as its spiritual head, and I humbly serve His Eminence.

“His Eminence is the spiritual leader of thirteen hierarchs — each headed by a bishop; what the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans would call dioceses — and controls our monasteries and nunneries in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe, and South America.

“Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad ascended the patriarchal throne of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1990 as Alexius the Second, after the Soviet Union imploded. Became the Russian Orthodox Pope, if you like.

“There were calls after that from the faithful for ROCOR to place itself under the new Patriarch. While, on its face, this was a splendid idea, there were those opposed to it.”

“Including,” Nicolai Tarasov said, “the Tarasovs, the Pevsners, the Berezovskys, and our cousin Svetlana.”

“Why?” Jake Torine asked.

“They felt there was too much SVR influence on the Patriarch,” the archbishop said. “I decided that it was my Christian duty to give the Patriarch the benefit of the doubt, and last month…”

“On May twenty-seventh, a day which, like Pearl Harbor, will live in infamy,” Tarasov said, “you signed the ‘Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.’”

“Nicolai,” Laura Berezovsky said to her uncle, “you can’t talk like that to His Eminence!”

“Why not? Svetlana’s Charley called him a ‘self-righteous sonofabitch.’”

“He did what?” Svetlana demanded incredulously.

She glared at Castillo. “Did you?”

“That was after Charley told him to go fuck himself,” Vic D’Alessandro confirmed, wonderingly. “I never thought I’d hear anyone tell an archbishop to go fuck himself, not even a Russian one.”

Castillo, stonefaced, shrugged.

“Children, children,” the archbishop said placatingly. “We all make small mistakes from time to time. Mine was in not listening to Aleksandr and Nicolai when they told me of their suspicions about SVR influence on the throne of the Moscow Patriarch.

“And then I immediately compounded the error by what I thought at the time was an offering of, so to speak, an ecumenical olive branch. I notified His Holiness the Metropolitan that, barring any objections from him, it was my intention to authorize the marriage of one of his flock now living outside Russia. I speak, of course, of Svetlana.”

“And what did this guy say?” D’Alessandro asked.

If behavior in the past is any key to the future, Charley thought, one more glass of wine and Vic will start singing “O sole mio” and then, weeping, confess to breaking his mother’s heart when he joined the Army instead of becoming a priest.

“Not ‘this guy,’ my son,” the archbishop said, “but His Eminence, the Patriarch of Moscow.”

“Got it,” Vic replied. “So what did he say?”

“Boris, my son,” the archbishop said, “will you tell our friends how the Church feels about marriage and divorce?”

“The Church,” the archimandrite began, “disapproves of divorce. Divorced individuals are usually allowed to remarry only after they have satisfied a severe penance imposed on them by their bishop. Second-marriage wedding ceremonies are more penitential than joyful. On the other hand, widows are permitted to remarry and their second marriage is considered just as valid as the first.”

“It was on the basis of this,” His Eminence broke in, “that I could see no reason to deny Svetlana permission to remarry as a widow. Her intended, Aleksandr told me, and she confirmed, was un-churched, canonically speaking a heathen, but that could be dealt with. Aleksandr, Dmitri, and Nicolai were all willing to serve as Charley’s godfathers.

“I informed His Holiness the Patriarch of my reasoning. He immediately replied that I apparently wasn’t aware of all the facts, in particular that the reason Svetlana was a widow was because she had either arranged for the murder of her husband, the late Polkovnik Evgeny Alekseev, or killed him herself. His Holiness also said that Svetlana’s intended, one Colonel Carlos G. Castillo, had a well-deserved reputation as one of the CIA’s best assassins and had most recently shown his skill at that by garroting a fine Christian KSB officer, one Podpolkovnik Kirill Demidov, and leaving his body in a taxi outside the American embassy in Vienna.”

Vic D’Alessandro said: “So that’s why you were pushing Charley so hard about what he knew about Demidov getting whacked. The… what do you call him? The Patriarch was accusing him of being the whacker.”

“I would suggest, my son, that the Patriarch made that accusation because someone had told him that vile accusation. I recall your comment that you couldn’t lie to a priest. Neither should anyone professing to adhere to our faith.”

Jake Torine said, quoting, “‘It has been my sad experience that the worst of liars are willing to utter the most outrageous untruths with one hand on the Holy Bible and the other on their mother’s tombstone or the heads of their children.’”

The archbishop nodded.

“Carlos, my son, I understand why you thought I was making reference to you when I said that, but I really wasn’t.”

“I deeply apologize for what I said, Your Eminence,” Castillo said.

“What exactly did you say?” Sweaty demanded. “I can’t believe that you actually called His Eminence a sonofabitch and told him to go—”

“I’m sure, my child, I would remember if Carlos said anything like that to me,” the archbishop said, and changed the subject. “So when I heard from the Patriarch about what terrible people you and your Carlos were, Archimandrite Boris and I came down here to see what Aleksandr, Nicolai, and you had to say. And to speak to Carlos, and, if I could find them, to any friends of his.

“And then those friends, without warning, suddenly appeared,” the archbishop said. “And here we are, with the problem solved.”

The archbishop helped himself to a little more wine, and then said, “What I’m curious about now is your mission here, Colonel Torine. While we eat, could you tell me about that, or does Carlos think that’s none of my business?”

“I’d like to hear that, too,” Svetlana said.

“Go ahead, Jake,” Castillo said. “You’re going to have to tell Sweaty sooner or later, and with His Eminence here, you’re probably safe from her otxokee mecto nanara.”

About three minutes into his explanation, Jake looked at the archbishop and stopped.

The archbishop’s head was bent over. His eyes were closed, and he was snoring softly.

“What do I do?” Torine asked.

“Eat your dinner, my son,” the archimandrite said. “If His Eminence wakes, resume. If he doesn’t, you can tell us at breakfast.”

The archbishop was still soundly asleep in his chair when the dessert — strawberries in a cream and cognac sauce — was served and consumed.

After that, everyone but Archimandrite Boris quietly left the room and went to bed.