Red Army Spies and the Blackrobes Trilogy

by Patrick Trese

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Professor Sloane spent part of that Sunday at Camp David in private conversation with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert. The President and the Attorney General listened to Sloane’s assessment of Father Samozvanyetz and had some questions, most of them about the Jesuit’s account of his time spent in the Soviet prison camps and the Russian convicts he came to know there.

  “Some had held important positions,” Sloane reported. “The Jesuit did not name names, but I got the distinct impression that he learned a lot from them about the inner workings of the Kremlin. However, he was reluctant to discuss any of that.”

  The professor had expected that the Kennedy brothers would ask about the confessions the priest had heard in Siberia. But they did not get into that. At least, not while he was there.

  C H A P T E R • 14

  Enough time had passed at Milford, Father Beck decided one Friday evening, to write his letter to the Provincial as he had promised to do. He sat down at the desk in his office, took up his fountain pen, dated the sheet of stationery and wrote: ‘Dear Father Novak,” and stopped. He sat back, pen in hand, for several minutes before putting his thoughts down on paper.

  As promised, this will bring you up to date on Father Samozvanyetz since he moved into his room on Paters Row. He grows stronger each passing day. He’s been more or less following the novices’ routine: Meditation and Mass in the morning, Examen at Noon, etc. Some gardening or general yard work during the day. He’s been brushing up on his Latin and Greek and I think he’ll be ready to teach a class or two, soon. Or at least tutor some of the slower novices.

  Two weekends ago, he started helping out at our parish church in Cincinnati. He goes there on Saturday to hear Confessions, stays at the rectory overnight and takes one of the Sunday Masses. There is a car and driver available, but he insists on taking the bus downtown and back. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable being chauffeured around like a rich man,” he told me. So off he goes with nothing in his pocket but the exact change for his bus fare. That leaves the rest of us to ponder our own practice of poverty.

  Not that he reproaches any of us. Far from it. He just lives his life and pays no heed to any of our faults or eccentricities of which we have an ample supply. We all know he’s rigorous in following the rules of the house and the Society. Rigorous with himself, that is, but absolutely tolerant of others. He is an easy man to live with.

  As to government concerns about any psychological damage he may have sustained in the Soviet Union, hypnotic suggestion or so-called ‘brain-washing’ or some other mind-altering procedure, I see no evidence of that. Quite the contrary. What I am seeing, I suspect, is a humble man who’s walking an elevated spiritual path.

  I am not his confessor. I can only judge his inner life by the way he conducts himself in our community. In that, I believe I observe true holiness. I served as his acolyte one morning, early on. It was an experience beyond words. Never have I seen a priest say Mass with such reverence, such feeling for the drama of the Eucharist.

  Only time will tell, of course, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that we may be dealing with the real McCoy here. Alex Samozvanyetz is every inch the perfect Jesuit and that’s something I’ve never encountered before. Needless to say, I’ll be keeping my eyes open.

  Father Beck signed the letter and put the cap on his fountain pen. He turned off his office desk lamp, picked up his letter and walked through the door to his living quarters: a bedroom with a reading lamp, a comfortable arm chair, a bookcase and a bathroom. He settled into his easy chair and read the letter through. Did it need revision? If it was effusive, so be it. He’d stated his true feelings accurately. But maybe he should sleep on it.

  The next morning after Mass, Father Beck dropped his letter down the mail slot at the end of the hall. Father Minister, who was in charge of the financial affairs of the community, weighed the letter, put a five-cent stamp on it and sent it on its way.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Father Samozvanyetz left the grounds of the novitiate that Saturday morning and walked three blocks to the bus stop where he placed his valise on the sidewalk by his feet and waited, lost in thought. There was not much in the small black bag: his breviary, his good cassock, a clean shirt, a clean set of underwear, a toothbrush and the cigar box which contained his shaving kit. That was all he would need for his overnight stay at the rectory of the Jesuit church in Cincinnati.

  He had spent the night sleeping with one eye open, as he did in the camps. Old fears had returned, but he had not tried to push them away. He had survived for more than his share of years because he had never ignored the vague warnings that something might be wrong. Or, at least, that something was not right.

  The bus arrived on schedule and he was pleased that it was almost empty. He climbed aboard, dropped his coins into the fare box and took a seat halfway back. He did not want to be pulled into conversation with anybody this morning, so he took out his breviary. Reading his Office, he had found, kept people at a distance.

  “Quam magnifica sunt opera tua, Domine,” read the Ninety-first Psalm. “How great are thy works, O Lord! Thy thoughts are exceedingly deep.” The Latin flowed directly into English without passing through the Russian filter. That was good. He continued reading. His eyes tracked the Latin phrases, but his mind soon wandered from the text.

  What was it he could not see? What was it he could not understand? His mind, as it did in times of stress and danger, was working now in Russian. He tried to review everything that he had done since coming to Milford. It had not been that difficult to settle into the routine. He had felt comfortable almost immediately and he could not recall any instance when he had not followed the rules and customs of the house perfectly.

  Yet something was going wrong. Or, at least, something was changing.

  John Beck had certainly changed. He could see that, now that he thought about it. How often had he looked up and found Beck watching him? Beck was not so accomplished a dissembler that he could conceal his scrutiny. No, Beck was watching him. He had not imagined those quickly averted eyes.

  The more he thought about it, the more he could see that Beck was watching his every move, hanging on his every word like a prison guard who suspects something’s up, but doesn’t know exactly what. Had Beck observed some flaw, detected some fault? If so, he would have to identify it and correct it. His mind raced over the events of the past few weeks, but he could find nothing wrong. So intense was his self-examination, he almost stayed on the bus past his stop.

  Enough, he commanded himself. Concentrate on the moment at hand. He walked along the street toward the rectory, looking up at the spires of the church. Today is what is important. Tomorrow’s dawn may never come.

  Saint Francis Xavier, the Jesuit church in Cincinnati, had been established before the Civil War to serve what became a large Catholic congregation. Over the years, as the city changed, descendants of the early parishioners moved to the suburbs, leaving behind the elderly, the immigrants and the poor to fill the pews and collection baskets on Sundays.

  There were always visiting Catholic business people and tourists attending Sunday Masses and some people who worked downtown on weekends at hotels, restaurants and stores. But few of the suburbanite faithful ventured back into the city to go to Mass at Saint Xavier “for old times sake.” Some Sunday mornings, the old church seemed half-empty and almost without purpose.

  Saturday afternoons and evenings were different. Affluent, middle-class Catholics gravitated to the church from small towns and city suburbs in southern Ohio and even Kentucky. Saint Xavier, after all, was a Jesuit church where priests sat patiently in their confessional booths waiting to comfort and absolve the desperate. So many people came to confession each Saturday that the pastor and his two assistants had to be reinforced by Jesuit priests from the faculties of St. Francis Xavier High School and Xavier University and, as in the case of Father Alex Samozvanyetz, from Milford Novitiate.

&n
bsp; When he arrived, he deposited his valise in one of the rectory’s spare rooms, donned his cassock and went downstairs to share the noon meal with the pastor and his assistants. Later, breviary in hand, he went to the church to begin his ministry. In the sacristy, he opened a drawer, took out the purple stole that is the symbol of the priest’s power to forgive sins in Christ’s name. He kissed it before draping it around his neck.

  He glanced at a white card thumbtacked to the wall. Someone with a fine hand had lettered a quotation from the Cure D’Ars who had been criticized for spending too much time with individual penitents: “I am responsible only for those confessions which I hear.”

  Well said, he thought. He would no more rush a penitent than he would hurry through the Mass. In all his activities, he kept to a measured pace. It was better that way.

  He left the sacristy with eyes downcast and walked across the front of the church, past the side altar of the Blessed Virgin, past the life-sized figure of a pale, bloody Christ hanging on a dark wooden crucifix. At the center aisle, he turned and genuflected before the main altar where the Blessed Sacrament reposed in its golden tabernacle. At the far side of the church, he turned and walked up the aisle to his confessional booth halfway to the back of the church. The booth had three doors. The nameplate on the middle one read: “Visitor.”

  Before entering, he looked slowly about, surveying the whole church. The people waiting to have their confessions heard knelt apart from each other, solitary individuals scattered about in the twilight. Few of them, he knew, needed to refer to the sins listed in the back of their prayer books in order to examine their consciences. Few had to scrutinize their lives to uncover some minor imperfection. People so untroubled would have stayed in their suburban parishes.

  The sinners who came to confession at Saint Xavier knew full well what they had to tell a priest. Most had agonized for days or weeks or even years until they found the courage to do so. But they had been afraid to seek forgiveness near their homes where priests or neighbors might recognize them. So these strangers, driven by the pain of their separation from God, had skulked downtown and slipped into the dark anonymity of the Jesuit church. They now knelt staring at the main altar beyond the Communion rail, trying hard to pray, working up the nerve to walk to the confessional.

  Father Samozvanyetz stood for a moment, letting them become aware that he was there. Then he stepped inside, closed the “Visitor” door behind him, sat down on the padded bench and waited. Soon he would hear footsteps, then the door on the penitent’s side of the booth open and close. He would slide back the soundproof panel by his shoulder to reveal the translucent, perforated partition. He would hear a person whose face he could not see clearly whisper: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  He would wait a moment or two because most would have difficulty continuing. Softly, gently, he would ask: “How long has it been since your last confession?” Some could not remember.

  He would take his time, asking his probing questions in a comforting murmur and waiting patiently until they were able to declare their secret shame. He would offer them assurance of God’s love and encourage them to try to sin no more. Some he would have to prompt as they tried to recall the Act of Contrition they had memorized as children. Finally, he would bless them all and whisper the Latin words of absolution. And then he would say in English: “Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace and sin no more.”

  The penances he exacted were not severe. Some leaving his confessional knelt in a pew to say no more than an Our Father and three Hail Marys. Other penances took a bit longer. Now and then a penitent left the confessional and walked across the church to kneel at the altar of the Blessed Virgin and recite all five decades of the Rosary. Fifty Hail Marys in all. Someone sitting in the rear of the Jesuit church could easily identify the penitents who had received special attention from Father Samozvanyetz.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  For three Saturdays now, Major Oksana Volkova had been sitting in the church, watching. No one had noticed her. Who, after all, would pay any attention to an old woman fingering her beads in one of the back pews? It was all so safe and so simple.

  Already she had observed more than a dozen men and women whose sins were too grave to be taken lightly. She had watched them as they tucked away their rosary beads, left the church and went back into the world, confident that their shame was known only to God and a featureless Jesuit stranger who had no idea who they were. It would not be difficult to follow any of them and discover their names, their addresses, their occupations, the exact nature of their sins and with whom they had been committed.

  Yes, she thought, a blackmailing operation was entirely possible. But that was not the game she had come to play. What pleased her was that everything seemed to be working as she had planned. How fortunate she was to have discovered Alex Samozvanyetz, so many years before, in a cell in Lubianka. Not only to have found him, but to have realized his potential.

  She had always been frugal. It was not her nature to throw away anything that might prove useful at some later date. A woman who saved used paper clips in a shallow glass bowl on her office desk would never discard a captured American priest. She had spent two decades planning and training, but here she was in America with all the pieces in place, waiting for the game to begin.

  C H A P T E R • 15

  It rained suddenly that Saturday night. Thunderclouds rumbled above Milford Novitiate and sent the priests scurrying from their recreation parlor to close all the windows on Paters Row.

  “What about Father Sam’s windows?” said one of the priests.

  “I’ll take care of them,” said Father Beck. He hurried to his own quarters and pulled down the double-hung windows in his office and bedroom. Then, as thunder resounded through the building, he hustled along the second floor corridor.

  The door to his friend’s room was unlocked as was the custom of the house. He stepped inside and switched on the overhead light. He saw immediately that the windows were closed against the driving rain. Alex had shut them before he left that morning. There was no need to do anything.

  But Father Beck hesitated, his hand on the light switch. His eyes darted about the room. He could see his reflection in one of the dark, rain-swept windows. Slowly, he closed the door behind him.

  The room seemed to be uninhabited. Except for the crucifix above the bed, the walls were bare. The hard bed was covered with a thin gray blanket stretched taut. Beyond the foot of the bed, near one of the room’s two windows, stood a plain wooden armchair where Alex probably did his reading. There was no floor lamp next to the chair. There was not one stick of furniture that couldn’t have been found in any novitiate dormitory room. Not one personal item had been added to the spartan furnishings.

  A tall wardrobe made of dark wood stood against the wall between the two windows. A “coffin,” the novices called it. On the wall by the door to Father Beck’s right, there was a porcelain washbasin. The overhead light glinted off its metal fixtures.

  Stepping farther into the room, Father Beck could see the mirror in a wooden frame that hung above the basin. Its reflecting surface had been turned to face the wall.

  A low chest of drawers stood against the far wall, its top covered by a white cloth upon which were laid out a folded white bath towel, a face towel, a wash cloth and a bar of white soap in a metal dish. There was an empty space in the neat arrangement. Of course, thought Father Beck: Alex had taken his shaving kit with him into town.

  He walked to the desk that stood between the chest of drawers and the window wall. It was the same type of school desk the novices sat at in their dormitories, a plain wooden desk with no drawers. Perched on top of the desk was a bookshelf, its back pressed flat against the wall. A straight-backed wooden chair was tucked in tight.

  On the desk top there was a goose-necked lamp, the kind the novices used, two sharpened pencils, a wooden pen with a metal nib, a bottle of ink and a loose-leaf notebook.

  The bookcase held
three books: a Bible, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A’Kempis and the second volume of Archbishop Goodier’s The Public Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ which, according to the envelope attached to the inside of the back cover, had been withdrawn from the library earlier that week. Father Beck fingered the notebook for a moment, and then pulled his hand away.

  Never had he seen a priest’s room so bare and so austere. Except for the pencils and the pen, the books and the notebook, the towels and the bar of soap, the mirror with its face averted, the crucifix on the wall above the bed and the few pieces of necessary furniture, the room was empty. There was no clock on the wall, no rug upon the floor. There was not even a padded prie-dieu to kneel upon, only one of the rough wooden blocks the novices knelt on during their periods of prayer and meditation. Father Beck saw nothing in the room that was not community property.

  He opened the door to the wardrobe. Inside, suspended from the wooden rod that ran the width of the coffin, he saw three empty clothes hangers, the old patched cassock that Alex wore around the house, a faded denim jacket and the work pants that went with it. On the floor of the wardrobe were a pair of work boots, a pair of worn felt slippers and, neatly folded, an empty laundry bag. The wardrobe held nothing that had not once been worn by some other Jesuits. Probably dead ones, thought Father Beck, as he closed the coffin door.

  He slowly walked across the room to the chest of drawers. In the top drawer were four frayed but freshly laundered white shirts, four sets of underwear, two pairs of black stockings, two pairs of heavy woolen socks, and one Roman collar.

  In the far right corner of the drawer were two spools of thread, one black and one white, and a thimble. A sewing needle was stuck in the black spool. The bottom drawer was empty, except for an old dark gray cardigan sweater.

  Father Beck took one last look around the room. The man had not one item that could be called his own.