C H A P T E R • 17
“Who are you?” Father Beck muttered.
“I am not Alex Samozvanyetz. My real name would mean even less to you than it does to me.” The man shrugged. “I intend to keep the name I have now, so it will be better for you if that is the only name you know.”
“It was all a lie! Everything you told us about Alex was a lie?”
“No, what I told you was true, except that it happened to Samozvanyetz, not to me. His capture, his imprisonment, his life in the camps: that was essentially true, just as I described it. His interior life, as well. What you heard is what you would have heard from his own lips. Of that, you can be sure. I heard it all from the man himself.”
“You knew him, then?”
“It was my job to know him. Know him better than he knew himself. I spent years listening to him and studying his every word, every gesture, every mannerism, every memory. I lived with him in the prison camps. He thought I was a fellow prisoner. A fellow priest. A Russian priest of the Eastern Rite. He never doubted it.”
“I don’t understand,” said Father Beck. “You are a priest?”
“No, I am not a priest, John. I was trained to play the part of the priest you knew.”
Father Beck sat silently, shaking his head.
“How did Alex die?” he said at last. “Can you tell me that, at least? Did they execute him after all?”
“No, they did not. The cold, the work, the poor food. He died, exhausted finally, like so many others. There was not much left of him, except his spirit, I’m afraid.”
“And he died without a priest?”
“I was with him. I heard his confession. I gave him the Last Rites, just as I was trained to do.”
“Monstrous!” said Father Beck.
“Not at all. He believed I was priest. What’s important is what he believed, wouldn’t you say? He seemed content to leave this world and he did not die alone.”
“Because you were with him? A false priest and a false friend?”
“It could have been worse. He could have died without anyone. Even a counterfeit priest is better than none at all. Believe me, Beck, I played my role very carefully, to the very end of his life. I wanted to give him some comfort in his last hours.
“I respected him, you see. He was a good man. Intelligent, kind, generous. But, in the end, he died. And I took over his name and identity.”
He stood up.
“You look ill. Let me get you a glass of water.”
“I’ll get it myself,” snapped Father Beck.
He tried, but there was more strength in his voice than in his body. He had to accept the man’s help to get to his feet. He staggered to his bathroom and vomited in the washbasin. When he was finished, the man wiped his mouth with a wet washcloth, then moved him aside and rinsed out the bowl.
“You will feel better now,” he said. “Wash your face in cold water. It will clear your head. You’ve had quite a shock, I know.”
Father Beck did as he was told. He dried his face with a towel and glared at the reflection of the man’s face in the mirror.
“I see that you are angry. That’s good, John. We can deal with reality now.”
He took Father Beck’s arm and guided him back to his desk and settled him into his chair. The man took off his own cassock and threw it over the back of his own chair, rolled up his shirtsleeves and sat down.
“Listen carefully, John. You know the truth about how Samozvanyetz got to the Soviet Union. Now I will tell you what you do not know. After your friend was apprehended and imprisoned in Lubianka, he was held by the NKVD and undoubtedly would have been shot.
“But a young, ambitious Red Army lieutenant named Oksana Volkova intervened in his case. She was interrogating military prisoners who had been sent to Lubianka for political reasons when she stumbled upon Alex Samozvanyetz.
“Lieutenant Volkova believed he should be kept alive. She could not say exactly why, but she believed that an American Jesuit might prove useful someday in the future. She successfully argued that he was, in a technical way, a military prisoner. So she took charge of his case and was able to keep him isolated in a special section of Lubianka. She had no plan then, I believe. She was just following her instincts. Until, that is, she found me.
“Now, about myself,” he said. “I was born in Saint Petersburg and raised in Leningrad, as people of my generation say. Before the war, I was an actor: not well known, but slowly building my reputation. When Germany invaded my country, I was conscripted into the Red Army.
“I had no military training, but I became a good enough soldier. There’s nothing an actor can’t learn to do in three weeks and I learned enough to survive many battles. Many of my comrades and officers were killed, so I rose through the ranks to a position of command.
“One night, the Germans overran my company. We were cut off for several days, but some of us managed to fight our way back to our own lines. Our battalion commander welcomed us enthusiastically, but some damned political officer charged us with desertion. He claimed that we had gone over to the Germans of our own free will.
“So, one day I was a hero of the Red Army and the next day I was a traitor being hauled off to prison in a boxcar. Fortunately, my first interrogator was Oksana Volkova, who was by now a captain in the GRU. By chance, she had seen me on stage some years before and remembered my performance.
“But she said nothing about that during my first interrogation. She was cold and correct, and never let on that she recognized me. She sent me back to my cell and to the prison routine so that I would learn who had the power of life and death. She probed, investigated, questioned everything about me for almost a year. Only then, when she was convinced that I knew I was completely in her power, did she take me into her confidence.
“What would it take, she asked me, for a trained actor such as myself to become another person? Not on the stage, but in life? Not for two hours, but for a lifetime? Could such a thing be accomplished?
“The idea intrigued me. I replied that the actor would have to know a great deal about the other person, much more than he would have to know to portray a character on stage. Then there would be the matter of physical resemblance. Theatrical make-up only works at a distance.
“She took me to observe the man she had in mind. That is when I first saw Alex Samozvanyetz. At that time, I knew nothing about his true identity. I watched him from behind a one-way mirror during one of his interrogations. I studied him as best I could after that, watched more interrogations, watched him through the peephole of his cell door.
“What I saw immediately were his eyes. Just like mine, they were. He could have been a member of my own family. Our chins were similar, too. It was not that close a resemblance, I thought, but Oksana Volkova believed it was close enough to work with.”
The man turned his head to show Father Beck his profile.
“I don’t look all that much like him, do I?”
“No, only in a general way,” said Father Beck. “I can’t understand how I was taken in so completely.”
“Don’t rebuke yourself. You were an excellent audience. The very best. Attentive, generous with your emotions, eager to believe. A good audience sees what it wants to see.”
He smiled as if he were complimenting a small child.
“Preparation was the key to it all. Oksana Volkova worked hard for years to make it possible for you and the other Jesuits here to suspend disbelief.
“First the letter from Russia and the photos. Then I appeared: an actor who had spent long, hard years of study and rehearsal preparing for this one performance.
“What I lacked in physical resemblance had to be made up for by specific detail in speech and movement.”
He snapped open his right hand, looked down at the outstretched fingers, then quickly looked up.
“That’s Samozvanyetz making a point, is it not?”
He dropped his hand to his knee and looked down at his shoe.
&
nbsp; “Samozvanyetz modestly accepts a compliment. Just as you remember.”
The man rubbed the left side of his chin.
“Perfect, yes?”
He looked up and grinned at Father Beck.
“Alex searching for a thought. One of a thousand movements, signs and gestures. And how many quirks of speech? Oksana Volkova collected them all and I made them my own. By the time she completed her interrogations, I learned everything of importance that there was to know about Alex Samozvanyetz and I absorbed his life like a sponge.”
“Alex would never have cooperated of his own free will,” said Father Beck. “Was he tortured?”
“No, never. It was not necessary. Oksana Volkova knew from the very first interrogation that he would die rather than betray anyone. That, she perceived, was his greatest fear. So that is what she used to get what she wanted.
“She led him to believe that she was trying to turn him, to make him her agent, to send him out as a Judas goat to lead innocents to slaughter. She knew, of course, that he would never go out among the Russian Catholics as her agent, her spy, her informer. But he didn’t know that she knew. He was deathly afraid that she might succeed in turning him by trickery or torture.
“So, to prevent her, to divert her, to relieve the pressure, he talked and talked and talked. Like the woman Scheherazade telling a thousand and one tales, he told her in great detail all sorts of personal anecdotes and experiences. He was trying to keep her at bay by giving her hours of facts and stories he believed could hurt no one. And she was recording everything that she really wanted me to know.
“He poured out all his memories about his training as a Jesuit, about his dear old friend John Beck. It took a full five years, but Oksana Volkova drew out of him a complete autobiography rich in detail. Five years, John! And never, once, was he aware of what she was doing! Brilliant, wouldn’t you say?”
Father Beck struggled weakly in his chair, but he couldn’t escape the man’s words that pounded away at him like hammers. He tried to breathe, but his chest ached. For a moment, he thought he was going to suffocate.
“Are you going to vomit again? Do you want a glass of water?”
Father Beck tried to wave him away.
“Here, drink a little of this.”
Father Beck’s hands trembled when he tried to take the glass. The man held it to his lips. He sipped a little water, shamed by his own helplessness.
“That’s better,” said the man. “You are in shock, I know. But you have to hear and understand all of this. It is important and necessary, believe me.”
Father Beck could say nothing. He watched the man walk to the window. He grasped the arms of his chair and tried to rise, but he lacked the strength. He sank back into his chair and lethargy engulfed him. The man sat down again next to Father Beck’s desk.
“I know this is distasteful and painful for you, but you must bear with me. I must tell it all. While Oksana Volkova was milking Samozvanyetz’s memory, she established me in a suite of rooms in a building outside the prison. Only a few people she trusted were allowed to enter. Technically, I was no longer a prisoner, but I was not free to move about either. I lived there and studied there. I suppose you could call it my seminary.
“My first task was to learn English well enough to read it. I started with copies of the primers used in the grammar school Samozvanyetz had attended. My reading got better with practice. But Oksana Volkova ordered me not to attempt to speak the language. That, she told me, would have to come later.
“There were several rooms in Volkova’s seminary: my living quarters where I slept and took my meals, the library where I studied everything that Samozvanyetz had ever studied in the United States and in Rome, a small room where I looked at motion pictures, and a larger room fitted out as a church where I practiced Roman Catholic rituals and also those of the Eastern Rite.
“How Oksana Volkova got it all assembled, I don’t know. But she accumulated everything needed for my research and preparation: books, films, vestments, candles, incense, everything. And how diligently I studied: Latin, Greek, Italian, American English, philosophy, theology, the history of the Roman Catholic Church and the Society of Jesus.
“My memory has always been good and I was a superior student when I was young, but the schooling Oksana Volkova put me through almost broke my head.
“When I was not studying, I was reading the books Samozvanyetz said he had read. I read old American newspapers, studied old photographs of Samozvanyetz and his family and of the places he had lived. Oksana Volkova had found pictures of every place he said he had been and pictures of almost every person he said he had known.
“She made me watch hours and hours of motion pictures: priests saying Mass, leading processions, baptizing babies, giving sermons, walking through towns and cities, talking to people on the street. Not theatrical films. They were of no use, whatsoever. I studied hundreds of documentary films and amateur films. Any picture that showed any American priest doing anything at all. I would watch the priests closely and then I would imitate them. All the rituals are described in the Rubrics, as you know, but seeing them performed in real life was a great help to me. And, then, of course, there was the man himself to study.
“When I completed my seminary training to Oksana Volkova’s satisfaction, I was sent to join Samozvanyetz in the labor camps. This was the most difficult part of my preparation, but she felt there was no other way. We lived side by side, Samozvanyetz and I, as fellow prisoners and fellow priests. So he believed, and why wouldn’t he? I was every inch a priest and, in the camps, I received no special treatment.
“He was more than happy to help me learn to speak English and over our time together I learned how to speak the language exactly the way he did. And the way he spoke Russian as well. He was an excellent teacher and he taught me more than he could ever imagine. I was able to absorb his speech patterns, his walk, his mannerisms, all of which were being changed by the hardships we were undergoing.
“Those were long, hard years. But that’s when he revealed all the deeper parts of himself that he had never revealed before. As well as his thoughts and his attitudes which were changing, day by day, as he drew closer to the end.”
The man looked at the crucifix above Father Beck’s desk.
“He was a most impressive man, Samozvanyetz. His spirit never broke. Only his body.”
“You just let him die?”
“There was nothing I could do to help him.”
“And this woman Volkova? There was nothing she could do?”
“No, there was nothing she could do. The Red Army did not run the camps. The internal security people were in charge. She was lucky just to be able to get me into the camps and get me out. No, there was nothing she could do to make things easier for Samozvanyetz or even for me. That’s the way it had to be. It was necessary.”
“I don’t understand,” said Father Beck.
“Why should you? There were two intelligence services in the Soviet Union, the political NKVD and the military GRU. The Red Army struggled to make sure there were two so that there would never be just one. The NKVD and the GRU kept each other in check, more or less, and they despised each other. So Oksana Volkova’s superiors in the Red Army knew her project had to remain secret to protect it from the politicians. The NKVD is called the KGB nowadays, but that secrecy is still necessary.
“After Samozvanyetz died, Oksana Volkova pulled me out of the camps and got me back to Moscow. It took a while to recuperate physically, but I don’t think I will ever get over the degradation of the experience. But I have to accept the fact that Oksana Volkova was correct.
“Acting has its limits. It would not have been possible for me to assume the identity of Alex Samozvanyetz without having endured what he endured. His suffering is a part of me now.
“So, he died. Well, we all die, do we not? But I would have to say that he was more fortunate than most of us, for he died with all his illusions intact. You might say t
hat Oksana Volkova kept Father Samozvanyetz’s faith alive, if only for purposes of study. He lived longer than he would have lived had not Oksana Volkova intervened at Lubianka. And, thanks to her, Samozvanyetz was able to do some of what you Jesuits had trained him to do. It is true! He ministered to the other prisoners and that was important to him. He believed he did some good. His mind was at peace when he died, judging from what he told me in his last confession.”
“Stop!” cried Father Beck. “Have you no decency?”
“Contain yourself, John. I have no intention of breaking the Seal of Confession, counterfeit though it may be. I know that you couldn’t take that blow. I simply want to reassure you that your friend died a good Jesuit. One you can be proud of. I’ll say no more about it.”
“Good,” said Father Beck. Anger was clearing his mind. “Why did you agree to do all this?”
“I had no choice. Believe me, I had no choice then and I have no choice now.”
“Are we finished now?”
‘Not yet. There is more that you have to know. While I was continuing my studies and training in Moscow, negotiations for the visit of the American agricultural group began, at which time Oksana Volkova planted me at a state farm so that I could be discovered. Her scheme worked perfectly, for here I am.”
“But why? What are you trying to accomplish? There’s nothing of value to you here.”
“Nothing at Milford? Of course there is. Perfect cover. A quiet place to sit and wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For what, indeed? For information, John. That is what the GRU gathers all over the world, at all places and at all times. Information is a commodity, like oil or coal or gold. And Oksana Volkova believes that a priest might collect the most valuable information of all.”
“Why are you telling me all this? You know I am not going absolve you. But, then, you don’t want absolution, do you?”
“No, I don’t want your absolution. I have what I want. Your silence.
“Listen to me, John. Oksana Volkova wanted you dead. I convinced her that your death was not necessary. All we needed was your silence and we have that now, do we not?”
Red Army Spies and the Blackrobes Trilogy Page 16