Reverend Collins shifted over one chair and invited him to be seated. “How did you find out about our church?”
“Through the American Consul General.”
“Oh, yes,” Collins said, quickly sobering. “Stan Allbright has proven to be a good friend to us. We have been confronted with a very serious problem, and had it not been for his assistance, quite frankly, I don’t know what we would have done.”
“As a matter of fact,” Jeffrey replied, “the work that’s brought me to Saint Petersburg might be connected.”
“How is that?”
“I’m not sure I should say.” Or could, he added silently.
“No, of course not.” Reverend Collins paused to greet a passing friend, then continued, “But I take it you know about Leslie Ann Stevens.”
“A little.”
“She was returning from a prayer meeting at our church when she was kidnapped. I suppose you know that, too. We have done everything we can think of, spoken to everyone we could approach, and the only vestige of hope we’ve found has been from the Consul General.”
“He appears to be taking the matter very seriously.”
“That girl was an absolute godsend for my wife and me,” Collins said, his eyes reaching out over the crowd. “Often we feel we are trying to run a church on the outer edge of civilization. The problems have been impossible to describe, truly impossible. We are growing at an incredible rate, utterly understaffed, more crises than you could ever imagine. And then up pops Leslie Ann, always willing to help out, never complaining, always taking over at the last-minute—”
A gray-haired American gentleman breezed over and cheerfully shouldered his way into the conversation. Collins introduced him as a deacon. Jeffrey shook hands and settled back to wait. Eventually the pastor turned back to him. “Sorry about the interruptions. Was your question about Leslie Ann?”
Jeffrey shook his head. “It wasn’t anything urgent. I can see you have a lot of more important things to tend to right now.”
“Nonsense. I’d be glad to help if I can, and now is as good a time as any. Do you mind talking about it here in public?”
“No.” He related the discussion with the Orthodox priest and his feelings upon entering the church. Reverend Collins listened in silence, his eyes never wavering from Jeffrey’s face, his depth of listening resembling the hidden reserves of a quiet, slow-moving river.
“Unity among believers is based on a twofold process,” Reverend Collins said when Jeffrey was finished. “In the Book of Peter, we are told that all of us, once Christ has entered our lives, participate in the divine nature. Christ is in me, and I am in Him. A glorious reassurance. And throughout the New Testament, we are declared joined to each other. A body of believers. The bride of Christ. A hint of the divine in earthly form. I think that we owe it to our Father to behave as He commands, don’t you?”
Jeffrey nodded. “In principle, I agree totally with what you say. I guess my question is where to draw the line. At what point does a practice become unacceptable?”
“Who are we to judge what is and is not acceptable? In Proverbs we are told that one of the seven things God truly despises is a man who sows discord among those whom God loves. Why on earth would anyone wish to take that risk?” He paused to sip from his cup. “The Bible says that all the world is in the hands of darkness. Conflict between believers is for me the greatest evidence of this dark presence within the earthly body of Christ.”
Jeffrey took a breath. “I lost my faith a while back and only recently found it again. Or it found me; I’m not so sure about that part. What I’m trying to say is that the experience is still really fresh with me. I can remember how it felt to be without faith—boy, can I ever. And I can still feel how it was to return to the fold. Such a powerful moment.”
“The moment of earthly rapture,” the man agreed. “An earth-shattering experience.”
“I think a lot of people,” Jeffrey went on, “mix up the path that led them to this moment with the goal.”
Gray eyes fastened him with an intensity that suspended time. “Fascinating.”
“I wonder if maybe people think that because their particular church brought them to Christ, it is the church of Christ. The only church. The right church.”
“And what, pray tell, keeps you from making the same mistake?”
Jeffrey had to smile. “A Baptist loses his faith, falls in love with a devout Anglican, and is guided back to the Lord by a Catholic brother. Who do I give the credit to?”
“The good Lord Jesus,” Collins replied firmly.
“And yet,” Jeffrey added, “I have these strong feelings of discomfort with the way the Orthodox worship. Actually, I guess it’s the way a lot of the Eastern churches worship. It’s not anything I’ve thought out. In fact, it bothers me to feel this way. But I do, way down at gut level.”
“Their ways are different,” Collins agreed. “But so is this entire world. What troubles me about the Orthodox church is their view toward evangelism here. They tend to see themselves as guardians of the country’s spirituality. As a result, many are uncomfortable with anyone else coming in to do direct evangelism. They tend to identify the church very closely with their national heritage, you see.”
“What about the icons,” Jeffrey asked. “Don’t they bother you?”
“It’s interesting,” Collins replied. “One objection the Orthodox make about us is that Western religious art depicts saintly figures in contemporary form. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes.” As styles of art and even fashion had changed with the centuries, Western religious paintings had done so as well. Biblical figures had been painted using local models and had often been dressed in clothing from the period in which the painter lived. Jeffrey had laughed when he first learned of this habit, until another dealer had pointed out that even today, actors in period films had their clothes and hairstyles adapted to modern styles and tastes.
“But we don’t kneel before Western art and pray,” Jeffrey protested.
“Certainly not in the same way,” Collins agreed. “But you see, the Orthodox deliberately make their paintings more abstract, exactly because they are used in the worship service. They do not wish to depict people, but rather religious principles.”
Jeffrey thought this over. “I still don’t get it.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Evan agreed. “Perhaps I am trying too hard to show compassion and fellowship with people who make real mistakes in their form of worship. But so long as there is this tiniest room for doubt in my mind, I hesitate to condemn. There has been so much condemnation between Christians over the centuries.”
Jeffrey recalled lessons about the Reformation wars. “And so many bloody mistakes.”
“Exactly. So I tend to search for harmony rather than judgment, even if that may mean erring on the side of tolerance. I still feel more comfortable leaving the condemnation up to God.”
He shrugged and added, “The Orthodox are facing problems which we in the West have enormous difficulty even imagining. Not enough priests, and those they have are often undertrained. Large numbers of believers who cannot read. And even if they could, for seventy years it has been virtually impossible for them to have Bibles.”
Jeffrey struggled to understand. “So they use pictures to remind people of lessons?”
“Here again, the Orthodox would say we are making a typical Western judgment,” Collins replied. “They do not see icons as pictures at all. They exaggerate hands and eyes and features because they intend to communicate truth through the painting. Attention should not be on the painting, but rather on what stands behind it. The worshiper must be pushed by the painting to see beyond the picture to the spiritual reality itself.”
Jeffrey shook his head. “But how do you separate the concept of icons from that of idolatry?”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t,” Collins allowed. “I’m not saying what is right or wrong here, you understand. I’m simply
trying to understand what they think. That was a central question I had when I arrived: was I facing a nation that, like the early Israelites, had fallen away to follow other religions? As my Russian improved, I listened as best I could, and I came to believe that those who had refused to follow the idolatry of Communism had remained Christian, at least in their own eyes.”
“And so?”
“And so I’m still not sure,” Collins replied. “What I think is that it is one thing for informed priests and theologians to know the difference, and maintain the difference, and so look through an icon to the truth beyond instead of worshiping the icon as an idol. But it seems to me that maybe ordinary folks haven’t been able to maintain that distinction. They end up identifying the Spirit’s power with these icons and images. In the worst of cases, perhaps they do follow the idolatrous path.
“They make offerings to shrines—we see this all through the poorer lands where illiteracy is a big problem, not just here. Mexico is covered with them. The impression you get is that people identify the source of power as the object itself, not something beyond the object. So I think—and it’s just one person’s thoughts here, all right? But yes, I think that the way priests explain the icons is often quite different from the way a lot of the people here understand them, and the way they understand salvation. These distinctions are lost on a lot of them.”
The troubled look firmed into a clear-sighted determination. “So I take it as my own personal responsibility to remind everyone with whom I have contact of the Lord Jesus’ saving grace. I do not condemn. I simply remind. I point to the Bible. I teach from the Bible. I teach as I myself was taught. I pray with them. I encourage them in the Lord. And I hope that all who seek shall find the one true Answer.”
* * *
“What I’m about to tell you is documented fact,” Consul General Stan Allbright told Jeffrey that afternoon when he and Casey picked him up at the Markov palace. They were driving toward an unidentified appointment, with Casey at the wheel. “But it’s also highly confidential, so I want you to keep it under your hat.”
“I understand.”
“For the moment, we’re going to assume that even if there’s no connection between our two dilemmas, they are at least not in conflict, and possibly in parallel. You have any problem with that?”
Jeffrey shook his head. “Not that I can think of.”
“Okay, here’s the picture.” Allbright crossed his legs in the Chevrolet’s roomy interior. “Everything we’ve been able to uncover points toward the Orthodox church not being directly involved in anything going on here. The mafia clans—and they call themselves that, by the way, mafia, even spell it out like that in Cyrillic. So the mafia and the Orthodox, they occupy two totally different worlds. What makes your story interesting is the suggestion that maybe, somehow, there is a bridge between the two.”
Casey spoke for the first time. “All those unemployed spies got to have something to occupy their time.”
Jeffrey looked from one to the other. “You mean the KGB?”
Allbright nodded. “You’ve probably heard stories about how some of the priests used to spy for them. That’s true. But what is not true is this assumption some people make that because a few of the priests were twisted, everybody in the church was on the take. That is plain nonsense.”
“A minority,” Casey interjected. “Powerful, dangerous, deadly. But still a minority.”
“Now, these Orthodox priests who were controlled by the KGB,” Allbright went on, “they’ve lost their power base. Just like the KGB itself has.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever had a chance to talk with one,” Casey offered. “But I kind of doubt that they’re real happy about the current state of affairs.”
“What this means,” Allbright continued, “is that there are two struggles inside the Russian Orthodox Church. One is between the devout and the xenophobes—that’s what I call the ultraconservatives who believe that only the Orthodox should tend to the spiritual needs of Russia. You get this struggle in a lot of churches, sure, but not like here, where the lid’s been screwed down tight for over seventy years. Anyway, the one point these two groups agree on is the second contest, which is in effect a major house cleaning. And guess who’s on the way out.”
“The priests who spied on their own church.”
“Right the first time,” Casey said.
“I bet that’s easier said than done.”
“Absolutely,” Allbright said. “The KGB infiltration goes right up the ladder, although it’s not as complete as you might expect. In some places, though, like in the Ukrainian Orthodox church based in Kiev, the power structure’s pretty much rotten to the core. So instead of obeying the commands of the Patriarch in Moscow, they just broke away entirely.”
“And where does that leave us?”
“The only people these soon-to-be outcast priests can rely on,” Allbright responded, “are their old buddies over at the KGB.”
“Who are in a pretty shaky position themselves,” Casey added.
“Exactly. But the KGB hasn’t been sitting around on its hands while its power vanished. On that point you can bet your whole bundle. Part of the organization is digging in its heels and shouting doom and gloom at the top of its collective voice. The radicals are working hard as they can to bring down the democratic government and replace it with a dictatorship. Some of these are diehard Communists, some are right-wing military fanatics, others are just out to feather their nest.”
“A real mixed bag,” Casey said. “They’ll stay together only as long as they don’t have power. Right now, though, you’d think they were all long-lost brothers.”
“This faction also contains the KGB department that used to control the flow of black-market goods,” Allbright said.
“Which was where the mafia gained their first foothold in the Russian power structure,” Casey explained.
Jeffrey asked, “So you really think the mafia’s involved here?”
But Allbright was not to be hurried. “Any place as tightly controlled as the former Soviet Union needed a safety valve for illegal goods, especially for items the bigwigs wanted, like Western radios and cameras and such. The KGB was the guy riding shotgun on the stagecoach. Only now, with their power structure in shambles, the horses are in control and the shotgun riders are hanging on for dear life.”
Allbright began drumming his fingers on the car window. “Over in the Asian part of Russia there’s a saying that goes, ‘A man needs two legs to stand upright.’ A lot of people feel like Russia’s trying to make headway with only one working leg. This newest Russian revolution has made great political strides, but from the legal side there’s total chaos. Economically too. The mafia’s taken a long look at this situation and decided to fill the vacuum and their pockets all at the same time.”
“How does this tie in with your missing girl?”
“This is pure conjecture,” Allbright replied, “but I think maybe our lady just happened upon something she shouldn’t have seen. They took her because she was there.”
“If it’s the mafia in control,” Casey said, “our only hope is if they figure she’s worth more alive than dead.”
Allbright pointed to the blank-faced building up ahead, a concrete and glass structure not far from the Neva River. Uniformed policemen flanked the entrance, stood sentry at either corner, and arrayed themselves in silent ranks across the street.
“KGB headquarters,” he said, then went on with his explanation. “There’s a second group emerging in there. Been hard at work over the past few months, made a strong impression on me and some others. Real law-and-order team. They’re trying to adapt to the new world order, become a sort of super-police, kind of like our FBI.”
“A definite minority,” Casey added. “Powerful, though, and growing stronger every day. They’re about our only hope when it comes to problems like ours.”
“Follow our lead here,” Allbright ordered. “Don’t open your mouth until we’re
in the group’s offices and the door’s locked. As far as they’re concerned, their most dangerous enemies are people under the same roof.”
* * *
“The mafia in Saint Petersburg is just as powerful as the city government,” the scruffy young man declared. “Here and every other major city in Russia.”
When Jeffrey, Casey, and the Consul General had entered the main doors, their contact had been waiting for them. He had exchanged harsh words with the sullen guard behind the protective glass barrier, refused to sign his guests in, then led them down a grimy hall lined with closed, unmarked doors. The only sinister element to the entire building had been the silence.
The man led them into a large office containing a dozen battered wooden desks pushed into a trio of square groupings. A punching bag hung over the entrance. At their arrival, the other four men and two women stopped their work and gathered near. Clearly they had been expecting the visitors. The outer door was quickly shut and locked.
They were all young, all hard-faced, all armed. They listened in silence as the Consul General related his own findings in surprisingly fluent Russian. Jeffrey spent the long minutes looking around the room. It was as cluttered and faceless as any American big-city bullpen. The biggest difference was the lack of electronics. There was no trace of a computer, nor any of the normal background radio static. He saw only one prewar telephone for the entire room. It did not ring the entire time they were there.
One of the young men spoke fluent English. When the Consul General was finished and they had conferred in quiet, clipped tones, he said to Jeffrey, “There are almost three thousand gangs operating in Russia, and another thousand or so from other states that work here from time to time. The markets are coming more under their control every day. Doing business means finding the right connections and paying them a share. If somebody doesn’t pay on time, the answer here is to shoot him.”
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