This was not simply a matter of snobbery. Along with the titles went huge estates, castles, farms, and manors. In modern terms it could be the equivalent of proving legal ownership of the majority stock in General Motors. Great wealth and power were involved.
Nobles tended on their deathbeds to leave behind a gaggle of offspring, some legitimate and many not, so disputes concerning who was the legitimate heir flared up. Wars broke out over rival claims. The heralds, as keepers of the archive, were the final arbiters of true bloodline and of who had the right “to bear arms,” meaning not weapons but a coat of arms describing the ancestry in pictorial terms.
Even today, the college will adjudicate on rival claims, devise a coat of arms for a newly ennobled banker or industrialist, or for a fee trace the genealogical tree of anyone as far back as records go.
Not surprisingly, the heralds are scholars, steeped in their strange science with its arcane Norman-French language and emblems, mastery of which requires many years of study. Some specialize in the ancestry of the noble houses of Europe, linked to the British aristocracy by constant intermarriage. By discreet but sedulous inquiry, Sir Nigel Irvine discovered that one in particular was the world’s leading expert on the Romanov dynasty of Russia. It was said of Dr. Lancelot Probyn that lie had forgotten more about the Romanovs than the Romanovs ever knew. After introducing himself over the phone as a retired diplomat preparing a paper for the Foreign Office on possible monarchic trends in Russia, Sir Nigel asked him for tea at the Ritz.
Dr. Probyn turned out to be a small cuddly man who treated his subject with great good humor and no pomposity. He reminded the old spymaster of the illustrations of Dickens’s Mr. Pickwick.
“I wonder,” said Sir Nigel as the crustless cucumber sandwiches arrived with the Earl Grey, “if we might contemplate the matter of the Romanov succession?”
The post of Clarenceux King of Arms, to give Dr. Probyn his glorious title, is not vastly paid and the rotund little scholar was unaccustomed to tea at the Ritz. He tucked into the sandwiches with eager industry.
“The Romanov line is only my hobby, you know. Not my real job.”
“Nevertheless, I believe you are the author of the definitive work on the subject.”
“Kind of you to say so. How can I help?”
“What about the Romanov succession? Is it clear?”
Dr. Probyn demolished the last sandwich and eyed the cakes.
“Far from it. They’re a mess, a complete mess. The surviving bits of the old family are at sixes and sevens. Claimants all over the place. Why do you ask?”
“Let us suppose,” said Sir Nigel carefully, “that for some reason the Russian people decided as a people that they wished to restore constitutional monarchy in the form of a czar.”
“Well, they couldn’t, because they never had one. The last Emperor—incidentally, that is the correct title and has been since 1721, but everyone still uses the word czar—was Nicholas the Second, an absolute monarch. They never had a constitutional one.”
“Indulge me.”
Dr. Probyn slipped the last fragment of an éclair into his mouth and took a sip of tea.
“Good cakes,” he said.
“I’m glad.”
“Well, in the extremely unlikely event of that ever happening, they would have a problem. As you know, Nicholas, along with the Czaritza Alexandra and all five of their children, were butchered at Yekaterinburg in 1917. That wiped out the direct line. All the claimants today are of indirect line, some going back to Nicholas’s grandfather.”
“So no strong, unassailable claim?”
“No. I could give you a more cogent briefing back at my office. Got all the charts. Couldn’t spread them out here. They’re quite large, lots of names, branches all over the place.”
“But in theory, could the Russians reinstitute the monarchy?”
“Are you serious, Sir Nigel?”
“We are just talking theoretically.”
“Well, theoretically anything is possible. Any monarchy can choose to become a republic by expelling its king. Or queen. Greece did. And any republic can choose to institute a constitutional monarchy. Spain did. Both in the last thirty years. So, yes, it could be done.”
“Then the problem would be the candidate?”
“Absolutely. General Franco chose to create the legislation to restore the Spanish monarchy after his death. He chose the grandson of Alfonso XIII, Prince Juan Carlos, who reigns to this day. But there no counterclaim emerged. The bloodline was clear. Counterclaims can be messy.”
“There are counterclaims in the Romanov line?”
“All over the place. Extremely messy.”
“Anyone stand out?”
“No one springs to mind. I’d have to look hard. It’s been a long time since anyone seriously asked.”
“Would you have another look?” asked Sir Nigel. “I have to travel. Say, when I return? I’ll call you at your office.”
¯
BACK in the days when the KGB was simply one vast organization for espionage, suppression, and control, with a single chairman, its tasks were so varied that it had to be subdivided into chief Directorates, Directorates, and Departments.
Among these were the Eighth Chief Directorate and the Sixteenth Directorate, both charged with electronic surveillance, radio interception, phone tapping and spy satellites. As such they were the Soviet equivalent of the American National Security Agency and National Reconnaissance Organization, or the British Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ.
For the old-timers of the KGB like Chairman Andropov, electronic intelligence gathering, or ELINT, was hi-tech and scarcely understood, but at least its importance was recognized. In a society where technology was years behind the West save in military- or espionage-related matters, the very latest and best hi-tech facilities were nevertheless procured for the Eighth CD.
After Gorbachev’s breakup of the KGB monolith in 1991 the Eighth and Sixteenth Chief Directorates were amalgamated and renamed the Federal Agency for Government Communication and Information, or FAPSI.
FAPSI was already endowed with the most advanced computers, the country’s best mathematicians and code-breakers, and anything in interception technology that money could buy. But after the fall of Communism, this exceptionally expensive-to-run department ran into a major problem: funding.
With the introduction of privatization FAPSI literally went to the open market for funds. It offered emerging Russian business the ability to intercept, meaning steal, the commercial traffic of its rivals, domestic and foreign. For at least four years prior to 1999 it had been perfectly possible for a commercial operation in Russia to hire this government department to monitor the movements of a foreign subject in Russia whenever that foreigner made a phone call, sent a fax, cable, or telex, or made a radio transmission.
Colonel Anatoli Grishin estimated that wherever Jason Monk might be, the chances were he would have some means of communication with whoever had sent him. This could not be via his embassy, which was under surveillance, unless he called in by phone, which would be overheard and traced.
Therefore, reasoned Grishin, he had brought in or collected in Moscow some form of transmitter.
“If I were he,” said the senior ranking scientist of FAPSI whom Grishin consulted for a substantial fee, “I would use a computer. Businessmen do it all the time.”
“A computer that transmits and receives?” asked Grishin.
“Of course. Computers talk to satellites, and via satellites computers talk to computers. That’s what the information superhighway, the Internet, is all about.”
“The traffic must be vast.”
“It is. But so are our computers. It’s a question of filtering out. Ninety percent of computer-generated traffic is chitchat, idiots talking to each other. Nine percent is commercial, companies discussing products, prices, progress, contracts, delivery dates. One percent is governmental. That one percent used to be half the traffic flying ar
ound up there.”
“How much is coded?”
“All governmental and about half the commercial. But most of the commercial codes we can break.”
“Where in all that would my American friend be transmitting?”
The FAPSI official, who had spent his working life in the covert world, knew better than to ask for details.
“Probably among the commercial traffic,” he said. “The governmental stuff, we know the source. We may not be able to crack it, but we know it comes from this or that embassy, legation, consulate. Is your man in one of those?”
“No.”
‘‘Then he’s probably using the commercial satellites. The American government’s equipment is mainly used for watching us and listening to us. It also carries diplomatic traffic. But now there are scores of commercial satellites up there; companies rent time and communicate with their branch offices all around the world.”
“I think my man is transmitting from Moscow. Probably receiving, too.”
“Receiving doesn’t help us. A message pumped out by satellite over us could be received anywhere from Archangel down to the Crimea. It’s when he transmits we might spot him.”
“So, if a Russian commercial company were to engage you to find the sender, you could do it?”
“Maybe. The fee would be substantial, depending on the number of men and the amount of computer time assigned, and the number of hours per day the watch has to be kept.”
“Twenty-four hours a day,” said Grishin, “all the men you have got.”
The FAPSI scientist stared at him. The man was talking millions of U.S. dollars.
“That’s quite an order.”
‘‘I’m serious.’’
“You want the messages?”
“No, the location of the sender.”
“That’s harder. The message, if intercepted, we can study at leisure, take time to break it. The sender will only be on-line for a nanosecond.”
The day after Monk had his interview with General Nikolayev, FAPSI caught a blip. Grishin’s contact rang him at the dacha off Kiselny Boulevard.
“He’s been on-line,” he said.
“You have the message?”
“Yes, and it’s not commercial. He’s using a one-time pad. It’s unbreakable.”
“That’s not good enough,” said Grishin. “Where did he transmit from?”
“Greater Moscow.”
“Marvelous. Such a tiny place. I need the building.”
“Be patient. We think we know the satellite he is using. It’s probably one of the two InTelCor machines that overfly us daily. There was one over the horizon at the time. We can concentrate on them in the future.”
“You do that,” said Grishin.
For six days Monk had evaded the army of watchers Grishin had put on the streets. The Head of Security of the UPF was puzzled. The man had to eat. Either he was holed up in some small place, afraid to move, in which case he could do little harm; or he was out and about pretending to be a Russian, in heavy disguise, which would soon be penetrated; or he had slipped out after his one useless contact with the Patriarch. Or he was being protected: fed, given a place to sleep, moved around, disguised, protected, guarded. But by whom? That was the enigma whose answer still eluded Anatoli Grishin.
¯
SIR Nigel Irvine flew into Moscow two days after his talk at the Ritz with Dr. Probyn. He was accompanied by a personal interpreter, for although he had once had a working knowledge of Russian, it was far too rusty to be reliable for delicate discussions.
The man he brought back was the ex-soldier and Russian speaker, Brian Marks, except that Marks was now on his real passport in the name of Brian Vincent. At Immigration the passport control officer punched both names into his computer but neither came up as a recent or frequent visitor.
“You are together?” he asked. One man was clearly the senior, slim, white-haired, and according to his passport in his mid-seventies; the other was late thirties, dark-suited, and looked fit.
“I am the gentleman’s interpreter,” said Vincent.
“My Russky not good,” said Sir Nigel helpfully, in bad Russian.
The Immigration officer was less than interested. Foreign businessmen often needed interpreters. Some could be hired from agencies in Moscow; some tycoons brought their own. It was normal. He waved them through.
They checked into the National, where the unfortunate Jefferson had stayed. Waiting for Sir Nigel, deposited twenty-four hours earlier by an olive-skinned man no one recalled but who happened to be a Chechen, was a single envelope. It was handed to him with his room key.
It contained a slip of blank paper. Had it been intercepted or lost no particular harm would have come. The writing was not on the paper, but on the inside of the envelope in lemon juice.
With the envelope sliced open and laid flat, Brian Vincent gently warmed it with a match from the complimentary box on the bedside table. In pale brown, seven figures became discernible, a private phone number. When he had memorized it, Sir Nigel ordered Vincent to burn the paper totally and flush the ashes down the toilet. Then the two men had a quiet dinner in the hotel and waited until ten o’clock.
When the phone rang, it was answered personally by Patriarch Alexei II, for it was his private phone situated on the desk in his office. He knew that very few people possessed that number, and he ought to know them all.
“Yes?” he said carefully.
The voice that responded was one he did not know, speaking good Russian but not a Russian.
“Patriarch Alexei?”
“Who speaks?”
“Your Holiness, we have not met. I am merely the interpreter for the gentleman who accompanies me. Some days ago you were kind enough to receive a father from London.”
“I recall it.”
“He said another man would come, more senior, for a private discussion of great importance with you. He is here beside me. He asks if you will receive him.”
“Now, tonight?”
“Speed is of the essence, Your Holiness.”
“Why?”
“There are forces in Moscow who will soon recognize this gentleman. He could be put under surveillance. Utter discretion is the key.”
That was an argument that certainly rang a bell with the edgy prelate.
“Very well. Where are you now?”
“Within a few minutes’ drive. Ready to move.”
“In half an hour then.”
This time, with forewarning, the Cossack guard opened the street door without question and a nervous but intensely curious Father Maxim conducted the two visitors to the Patriarch’s private study. Sir Nigel had taken advantage of the National’s own limousine and asked it to wait at the curb.
Patriarch Alexei was again in a pale gray cassock with a simple pectoral cross on a chain round his neck. He greeted his visitors and bade them be seated.
“Permit me first to apologize that my poor grasp of Russian is so unsatisfactory that I have to converse through an interpreter,” said Sir Nigel.
Vincent translated rapidly. The Patriarch nodded and smiled.
“And, alas, I speak no English,” he replied. “Ah, Father Maxim, please place the coffee on a table. We will serve ourselves. You may go.”
Sir Nigel began by introducing himself, though avoiding specifying that he had once been a very senior intelligence officer combating Russia and all her works. He confined himself to saying that he was a veteran of Britain’s Foreign Service (almost right), now in retirement but recalled for the present task of negotiation.
Without mentioning the Council of Lincoln, he related that the Black Manifesto had been privately shown to men and women of enormous influence, all of whom had been deeply shocked by it.
“As shocked no doubt as yourself, Holiness.”
Alexei nodded somberly as the Russian translation ended.
“I have come, therefore, to suggest to you that the present situation involves us all, people of goodwi
ll inside and outside Russia. We had a poet in England who said: No man is an island. We are all part of the whole. For Russia, one of the greatest countries in the world, to fall under the hand of a cruel dictator again would be a tragedy for us in the West, for the people of Russia, and most of all for the holy church.”
“I do not doubt you,” said the Patriarch, “but the church cannot involve itself in politics.”
“Overtly, no. Yet the church must struggle against evil. The church is always involved in morality, is it not?”
“Of course.”
“And the church has the right to seek to protect itself from destruction, and from those who would seek to destroy her and her mission on earth?”
“Beyond doubt.”
“Then the church may speak to urge the faithful against a course of action that would help evil and hurt the church?”
“If the church speaks out against Igor Komarov, and still he wins the presidency, the church will have accomplished her own destruction,” said Alexei II. “That is how the hundred bishops will see it, and they will vote overwhelmingly to stay silent. I will be overruled.”
“But there is possibly another way,” said Sir Nigel. For several minutes he outlined a constitutional reform that caused the Patriarch’s jaw to drop.
“You cannot be in earnest, Sir Nigel,” he said at length. “Restore the monarchy, bring back the czar? The people would never encompass it.”
“Let us look at the picture before you,” suggested Irvine. “We know that the choice before Russia is more bleak than can be imagined. On the one hand lies continuing chaos, possible disintegration, even civil war in the Yugoslav style. There can be no prosperity without stability. Russia is rocking like a ship in a gale with no anchor and no rudder. Soon she must founder, her timbers split apart, and her people perish.
“Or there is dictatorship, a terrible tyranny to match anything your long-suffering country has ever seen. Which would you choose for your people?”
“I cannot,” said the Patriarch. “Both are too terrible.”
“Then remember that a constitutional monarch is always a bulwark against single-tyrant despotism. The two cannot coexist, one has to go. All nations need a symbol, human or not, to which they can cleave when times are bad, that can unite them across barriers of language and clan. Komarov is building himself into that national symbol, that icon. No one will vote against him and in favor of vacuum. There must be an alternative icon.”
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