“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, y
ou 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.
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