by Al Ruksenas
George Brandon and Paul McCallister looked dumbfounded at each other.
“It’s settled, gentlemen. Have the Press Secretary prepare a statement for release after Ron’s funeral.”
When the two advisers left the Oval Office, Brandon reminded McCallister that the President had just met with Victor Sherwyck.
“It figures,” McCallister intoned.
Chapter 18
Oleg Alekseev was the Second Secretary of the Russian Embassy in Washington, whose position was a thinly veiled cover for espionage. He was the ranking intelligence officer of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB. As such, he was the first to receive news of the death of the American Secretary of Defense, Ronald Stack.
It was Alekseev’s duty to analyze the situation and cable Moscow a rationale as to why the death occurred. Nothing in the Russian view was accidental. There had to be reasons behind everything— especially a case where a Cabinet officer in the American government, surrounded by security—dies in an accident. Something like that was hard to fathom. It was intrinsically suspicious, since accidents were a favored means of assassination in the former USSR.
Alekseev, dour looking in his ornate, wood‐paneled office, seemed even more melancholic when he furrowed his brow, as an intelligence aide—a cultural attaché by title—described what happened at the Washington intersection when the steel beam fell on the Secretary’s limousine.
“Hmm,” was all he would say to indicate to the aide that he was listening. It gave him momentary mental distance to think of something else.
“What do you think, sir?” Yuri Menshikov ventured.
“Like we used to say,” Alekseev eventually responded: “Whoever had to be eliminated—was eliminated.”
He was trying to concentrate on rumors about the vanishing of the American Congresswoman’s daughter. When Alekseev first heard of her disappearance, he had made a mental note of it, skeptical of its veracity. She was probably being extra discreet in some romantic, high level and most probably illicit liaison. Now, with these new developments, he thought twice.
His skepticism was heightened when he was informed that a day or two later the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. General Benjamin Starr, was killed in a riding accident.
“Those horse trails are for rental nags,” he thought. Alekseev knew the area. His spies had used it routinely as a dead drop for messages during the Soviet era. “No horse can gallop fast enough around there.”
His inbred suspicions increased. He would have to see again the report on the American Secretary of Defense and the report on the missing Congresswoman’s daughter. And he would have to find out more about the American General as soon as his sentinels reported.
But he did not trust his intelligence aide—the cultural attaché—to retrieve the reports for him. He would have to do it himself, unobtrusively. Alekseev did not want him or anyone else to make unnecessary and dangerous conclusions about the possible connection of certain events.
He did not know where his aide, Menshikov, stood in the ever changing corridors of power of the new Russian secret police. He smiled laconically. He did not know where he, himself, stood.
Oleg Alekseev only knew that he spent his career in the Soviet secret police with an obsession: an obsession on behalf of his wife, Natasha, who for decades was trying to find out what happened to her beloved older brother—Yuri Rudenko. Rudenko had disappeared on a secret mission somewhere in the Middle East when she was still a little girl. She had adored her older brother—little knowing who he was, but proud of his uniform and proud to see what apparent power he had over everyone around him. She matured in that elite circle of the Communist Party select—the Nomenklatura—and when she married Oleg Alekseev, whom she fell in love with at Moscow University, she urged that he join the KGB. He willingly did so, for he also knew where success in life lay in the Soviet Union.
Oleg Alekseev was a jaded man, but his love for his wife was real and stayed so over the years. His love for Natasha was the only constant in a tumultuous life of internal political intrigue. Her obsession over her brother, as it began to destroy her, became his obsession. He hoped by finding the answer to Rudenko’s disappearance, he could save his beloved Natasha from creeping insanity.
In truth, there was little of real value that he saw in the system and in his career. He just knew that he was on top of a social pecking order and it was always others who were “enemies of the state.” That was a major comfort to him over the years and a serious career accomplishment. Especially, when he saw many of his comrades putting each other in prison for various offenses, all capriciously defined.
They were all cannibals, indeed, but Alekseev prided himself in being a survivor, rising in the ranks—but carefully and not too ambitiously—for that itself could bring suspicion fueled by jealousy.
Another secret comfort Alekseev nurtured was his belief in God. He thought it could bring salvation in the godless system he served.
Natasha’s words from years past perpetually haunted him. “Find out what happened to Yuri and I promise you, I’ll believe in God too.”
So it was, that the only true goal in his career, indeed, in his life, was to find out what happened to his brother‐in‐law, Major Yuri Rudenko. The only advantage that Oleg Alekseev had was that, he, himself, was in the KGB. He knew that if he made even the most innocent inquiries as a regular citizen of the Soviet Union, he would have been in Siberia long ago, most likely even dead.
His position allowed him to ferret out bits and pieces of information, but that quest, was itself strange and dangerous. Alekseev considered himself lucky to this day that the first time he inquired internally about Rudenko many years ago, he gave no indication of personal interest, but, as a junior officer, appeared to be relaying a request from a commissar. No one bothered or dared to ask who the commissar was. That innocent ploy saved his life, because any secret police colleagues who pursued any question linked to Rudenko’s name or the nature of a particular mission into the Middle East—mysteriously disappeared. Naturally, any further inquiries suddenly ceased.
This never stopped Alekseev from his search for answers, it only intensified them. But it taught him to be redundantly sure that he was not connected to any of the initiatives. He also knew that his own sense of insularity could be illusory, especially since he was married to Rudenko’s sister.
To this day he had not learned what happened to Major Yuri Rudenko and he never gave the slightest indication that he was interested. He did, however, gather over time fragments of information that there existed a fanatical faction within the inner circles of the KGB that was held in awe by all others. It had no titles and its members were found in all departments, adding to the fear that it was omnipresent and could reach everyone around it with sudden, silent efficiency that surpassed even the KGB organization’s own reputation for ruthlessness.
Even as the Soviet system attempted reforms and abruptly collapsed, this nebulous inner circle within the KGB retained its fratricidal fanaticism. Rumors circulated and were embellished over the years that the circle was involved in some wild plan to take control of world powers in a very sudden and decisive way.
Rumors included the contention that the group was in league with some ancient devil cult; an odd observation in a system that was supposed to be atheistic, but a convenient folkloric metaphor to explain what was unexplainable.
Oleg Alekseev knew that there were certain factions left over from the old KGB that did not want to accept the reality of a new Russia, especially one groveling in the rubble of communism, as it struggled for an elusive democracy.
“What would they do to turn back the clock?” he thought. “And how it heaven’s name could they even think to accomplish it?”
Alekseev knew one thing for sure. After years of frustration he was resolved to seek answers outside the framework of his own government. He had picked Colonel Christopher Caine whom he had observed closely at a Smithsonian reception sev
eral nights earlier. The Colonel had displayed apparent interest in a devil exhibit from a Lithuanian museum. He might be receptive to what Alekseev might say, since it was quite incredulous for the average person to accept or comprehend.
He also knew that Colonel Caine was a member of some ultra‐secret, extra‐legal government action group called “Omega.”
The Russian Embassy’s eyes and ears had inexplicably lost track of Colonel Caine in the last several days, but it had maintained its surveillance of the young assistant professor who was with him at the Smithsonian’s reception and had left in his company. Oleg Alekseev could not accept this as coincidence. She was of particular continuing interest to the Russian, because her uncle was one of the last covert combatants fighting the Soviet Union’s occupation of Eastern Europe after World War II, had spent years of imprisonment in Siberia and now, in the United States, had become active again through his writings. As such he continued to be dangerous or useful, depending on the political winds. Since the uncle clearly idolized her, Alekseev saw the niece as a potential pawn in his quest.
She had to be followed.
Chapter 19
George Washington University was a short drive along Constitution Avenue from the National Museum of Natural History. The Campus was seven blocks west of the White House and just north of the U.S. Department of State in historic Foggy Bottom.
Laura Mitchell was formulating her lecture for that afternoon. She knew the material, but had to get the Smithsonian episode out of her mind—at least for now. She regretted the short time she had for preparation, arriving just in time to greet the students enrolled in her seminar.
The scowls of the two men in the museum elevator crossed her mind again and sent a visible shudder through her body.
“Are you all right, Dr. Mitchell?” a student next to her asked.
“Thanks, Abigail, I’m okay,” she said softly.
Dr. Mitchell took her place among them in a rectangle of conference tables; her tailored pants suit the only indication that she was the professor among the twenty young men and women present.
“A funny thing happened on my way to class,” she said as she settled in.
The students looked her way in anticipation.
She liked to present her material as an exploration, a common educational journey where she revealed facts and concepts and welcomed the students to arrive at sound conclusions based on readings she had assigned. She was not didactic—often theatrical— and encouraged discussion and logical dissent, even if it meant modifying her own themes.
Therefore, she avoided PowerPoint presentations as too constraining and clichéd. Her well‐heeled students were too sophisticated to follow along on a presentation in a darkened room reading from a screen instead of a book. That they can do on their own, she reasoned. As long as they were together, they would interact, if Dr. Laura Mitchell had anything to say about it. Her students (more likely their parents) were paying too much in tuition to accept mediocre presentations. And many of them would be following historical precedent of the prestigious university in the heart of Washington and go on to high level government and societal positions.
“I was at the Smithsonian this morning.” She thought of recounting the episode of the two men in the elevator, maybe even the attack outside the museum the night before, thwarted by the new acquaintance she could not get out of her mind, but then thought better of it.
“I happened to see a pair of Marie Antoinette’s diamond earrings,” she said.
“Was she wearing them when they took off her head?” one of the men interjected to mixed laughter and groans from his classmates.
“Uhh, No, Mr. Powell, she wasn’t. But, funny you should mention it. The story goes that they did let her hold her cherished Papillion to the end.”
“Her dog?”
“Yes.”
“They’re a type of Spaniel,” one of the women volunteered. “They were a favorite of the French Court. You know, the ones with the butterfly ears. My aunt shows them at the Westminster Dog Show.”
“Very interesting, Amy,” Dr. Mitchell replied. “Then you probably also know, there was another favorite breed at the French Court— the Pyrenean Mountain Dog.”
“Yes,” Amy Cabot replied. “The AKC calls it the Great Pyrenees here.”
Some of the students looked around quizzically.
Amy noticed Dr. Mitchell’s prodding gaze and continued. “It’s a big, white sentry dog. It looks like a fluffy Labrador Retriever. They guarded flocks from wolves.”
“Well,” Dr. Mitchell intoned dramatically, “there was a particular dog around the Court at Versailles belonging to a country priest. The priest was Father Pierre Dumas, an itinerant monk. He was said to be a very charismatic and imposing figure. He was an occasional confessor to Queen Marie Antoinette. Father Dumas had a large, gray dog rumored at Court to be a cross between a Great Pyrenees and a wolf. The dog’s name was ‘Monsieur’. He was also rumored to be a familiar of the priest.”
The looks on the faces of the students indicated surprise and keen interest.
“Whoa, that’s a new one,” blurted Corey Wynn, a divinity student.
“Marie Antoinette had many detractors and enemies,” Dr. Mitchell replied. “Her reign is filled with intrigues and innuendos, much of them, unfortunately, fueled by her own behavior.”
“What about this monk and his familiar?” the divinity student queried with skeptical interest. “A wizard or devil worshiper?”
“Apparently so, Corey. It’s a good thing the Age of Enlightenment was taking hold in France and Europe generally at the time,” Dr. Mitchell explained. “Otherwise, the likes of Father Dumas could well have been burned at the stake. The witchcraft hysteria was finally ebbing less than a hundred years before he came on the scene. But witchcraft in the late Eighteenth Century was still very prevalent.”
“It still is today,” another student announced.
Her classmates turned to her with bemused suspicion.
“I saw a program on public TV,” she said defensively.
The peaked interest in the seminar class became palpable.
“What about this ‘familiar’ you mentioned?” asked another student.
“Corey. Would you like to explain?” Dr. Mitchell invited.
“A familiar is an attendant demon attached to a witch. They’re like a servant. Familiars often took the shape of human beings, but typically they were animals: birds, cats, dogs, goats and the like. They’re supposed to help bewitch enemies.”
“The role of Father Dumas in the life of Marie Antoinette and the Court at Versailles prior to the French Revolution is vague and mysterious,” Dr. Mitchell continued. “There is very little source material. And most that exists is in obscure writings and indirect references from letters related to other subjects.”
“Why is that?” a student across from her asked, reflecting everyone’s unspoken train of thought.
“For a number of reasons, Timothy, First, let’s remember that the Catholic Church had overwhelming influence in France prior to the Revolution. That influence—including the power to tax, if you remember—is one of the causes of the Revolution itself. Second, the Church hierarchy identified with their noble peers, so there was underlying discrimination against rural clergy, even though they were in the same Church. A lowly country priest—a traveling monk—having influence at Court, was a major affront to church nobles. So they would try to downplay that kind of information. And this whole situation is exacerbated by the fact that Marie Antoinette for many years ostracized the Cardinal of France—the nobleman Louis de Rohan.”
She looked around the seminar class, inviting explanation, since they had covered the influential relationship of the Church—the so called, First Estate—and the Monarchy.
Abigail Hitchcock, daughter of a network television producer, perfunctorily raised her hand and began: “Right. Louis Rene Eduoard de Rohan,” she said proudly, remembering the full name, “came from a very nob
le lineage. But he was not liked at Court. He had been a diplomat to Austria. While there he criticized Marie’s freewheeling lifestyle to the Austrian Queen, who happened to be Marie Antoinette’s mother. This naturally enraged Marie.”
“That’s right, Abigail. So her ostracism was a monumental snub against Cardinal de Rohan, the highest clergyman of the Church in France, who was also known as a man about town—or about the Court, so to speak,” the professor explained. “He wanted to become one of the King’s ministers, like other officials of the Church already were—especially in financial affairs—but Marie Antoinette treated him as an outcast, because of his insulting criticisms to her mother. According to contemporary accounts, she didn’t speak to the Cardinal for more than ten years.”