“I was about to get to that, Your Eminence,” Pevsner said.
His face showing that he disliked being interrupted, His Eminence continued: “… when the godless Bolsheviks finally broke the will of Metropolitan Sergius, who headed the church. They had had him in a Moscow prison cell for about five years at the time, which probably had a good deal to do with what he did: He pledged loyalty to the Communist regime.
“That was too much for one of my predecessors, who informed Sergius that while we still regarded Sergius as an archbishop, we no longer could consider ourselves under the patriarchal authority of someone who had pledged loyalty to the Communists.”
He paused and then said, “You may continue, Aleksandr, my son.”
“In 1991, the year the Soviet Union imploded,” Pevsner went on, “it was announced that the unmarked graves of the Royal Family had been found. Since Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was involved, I suspected that he had known all along where they were.
“So, what was he up to? The answer was simple: He wanted to replace Stalin. And — no one has ever suggested that Vladimir Vladimirovich is not a very clever man — he knew the way to become the new Czar of all the Russias was to follow the philosophy of Ivan the Terrible — get the church on his side — rather than the failed philosophy of Lenin and Stalin to destroy the church.
“He was also smart enough to know that he couldn’t do this the way Ivan did, by throwing money at the church. For one thing, he flatly denied knowing anything about the assets of the SVR.
“Nicolai and I, I should point out, had already moved many of these assets to the Cayman Islands, Macao, and, of course, here to Argentina. If Vladimir Vladimirovich had started to give the church money, the Patriarch in Moscow was certain to have asked where he’d gotten it.
“So, what he needed to do was prove his devotion to the church. First, he found the long-lost unmarked graves of the Royal Family, hired DNA experts to determine they were indeed the royal bones, and then decided that the martyred Czar and his family should have the Christian burial those terrible Communists had so long denied them.
“This took place — with Vladimir Vladimirovich playing a significant and very visible role in the ceremonies — on July eighteenth, 1998, sixty years to the day from their murder in Yekaterinburg.
“The reinterment of the mortal remains of the Royal Family,” the archimandrite chimed in, “was in the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral inside the Saints Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg, which the Communist authorities had renamed during their reign as Leningrad.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Pevsner said with as much sincerity as he could muster, and then went on much more pleasantly as he suddenly remembered something about that. “It was well known within the Oprichnina that Vladimir Vladimirovich had been one of the more strident voices demanding of the new government of Russia that they change Leningrad back into Saint Petersburg to reflect its Christian heritage.”
“There is some good in even the worst of sinners,” His Eminence pronounced.
“After the funeral, Vladimir Vladimirovich’s reputation was that of a staunch and faithful supporter of the church,” Pevsner went on. “And about that time, he began to start inviting Nicolai and me back to the motherland for conferences. I wasn’t suspicious of this until one time when I told him I could fit it into my schedule, but Nicolai was tied up. He said he’d rather wait until we could come together.
“After that, neither Nicolai nor I could ever seem to find a time to travel to the motherland either together or alone.”
“But we did get word to Dmitri and Svetlana,” Nicolai furnished, “that it might be a good idea for them to visit us—”
“Together,” Pevsner interrupted.
“… for an extended period.”
“That was after Vladimir Vladimirovich sent word to us that he’d thought it over and come to the conclusion that five percent was excessive for the service we had rendered.”
“But that we could make things right,” Nicolai furnished, “if we deposited half of what we had earned to an account of the SVR in a bank in Johannesburg, South Africa.”
“Well, when Vladimir Vladimirovich realized that Nicolai and I were neither going to accept his kind invitation to visit the motherland, or — having become capitalists, where a deal is a deal — send half of what we had honestly earned to Joburg, he decided to demonstrate that the SVR was something still to be feared.”
“You don’t know that, Alek,” Nicolai interrupted.
“I also don’t know if the sun will rise tomorrow morning, but based on what’s happened in the past, I’ll bet it does.”
“What do you suspect Vladimir Vladimirovich of doing, Aleksandr, my son?” His Eminence asked, just a little impatiently.
“There were several people around the world who had, in one way or another, gotten in the SVR’s way,” Pevsner explained. “Vladimir Vladimirovich decided that eliminating them all, at the same time, would send the message ‘Fear the SVR’ or ‘Fear Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’ both around the world and within Russia.
“One of those he eliminated, for example, was Kurt Kuhl, who owned several pastry shops — called the Kuhlhaus — in Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. Vladimir Vladimirovich had good reason to believe that Herr Kuhl was a CIA asset who over the years had facilitated the defection of a number of SVR personnel, and agents controlled by the SVR.
“The bodies of Herr Kuhl and his wife were found behind the Johann Strauss statue in the Stadtpark in Vienna. They had been murdered with metal garrotes of the type the former Hungarian secret police, the Államvédelmi Hatóság, were fond of using. It isn’t much of a secret that those members of the Államvédelmi Hatóság who hadn’t been hung by their countrymen when Hungary severed its connection with the Soviet Union often found employment with the SVR, so Vladimir Vladimirovich could send that message, too, to other CIA assets. ‘We know about you, and are going to eliminate you.’
“Another problem for Vladimir Vladimirovich was right here,” Pevsner continued, gesturing toward Liam Duffy. “The SVR had a very profitable business going shipping cocaine and heroin from Paraguay and elsewhere through Argentina to Europe and the United States. The profits were used to fund SVR operations all over South America. When, rarely, the movements were detected, palms were greased, the drugs went back into the pipeline, and the shippers either never went to trial, or if they did were either freed or slapped on the wrist.
“Then my friend Liam was assigned the duty — the Gendarmería Nacional was — and things changed. Liam is a devout Roman Catholic who took his oath of office seriously. When his people intercepted a drug shipment, they burned the drugs and ran the shippers before courts which were not for sale.
“Worse than that, so far as Vladimir Vladimirovich was concerned, was that Liam began to hold — what’s that charming phrase? — drumhead courts-martial at the arrest scene, which saved the government the cost of trials and the expense of feeding the drug people during long periods of incarceration.”
“Holy Scripture teaches us,” the archbishop said disapprovingly, to ‘judge not, lest thee be judged.’”
“I considered that prayerfully, Your Eminence,” Duffy said, “and decided I could successfully argue my case before Saint Peter.”
“Vladimir Vladimirovich sent people to eliminate my friend Liam,” Pevsner continued, “and his family, and the attempt was made on Christmas Eve. All of the assassinations, or attempted assassinations, took place on Christmas Eve. In Liam’s case, the attempt failed.
“And finally, there was a reporter, Günther Freidler, who worked for Charley’s Tages Zeitung newspaper chain.”
“Excuse me?” the archbishop asked, and then parroted, “‘Charley’s newspaper chain’?”
“My brother Charley has two personas, Your Eminence,” Pevsner explained. “One of them is Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, U.S. Army, Retired, and the other is Herr Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, who is by far the princ
ipal stockholder of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, which owns, among other things, the Tages Zeitung newspaper chain.” He paused, and then added, “If Your Eminence was concerned that my brother Charley’s interest in marrying my cousin Svetlana is based on her affluence, I respectfully suggest it is not a factor.”
“I don’t understand,” the archbishop said.
“I’m a bastard, Your Eminence,” Castillo said. “Born out of wedlock to an eighteen-year-old German girl, following her seventy-two-hour dalliance with an eighteen-year-old American chopper jockey.”
“‘Chopper jockey’?” the archbishop parroted.
“Helicopter pilot,” Castillo clarified. “Whom she never saw or heard from again.”
“There are men like that, unfortunately,” His Eminence said. “I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive him.”
“I have managed to convince myself, Your Eminence, that my father never knew he had… left my mother in the family way.”
“I can’t let that ride, Charley,” Naylor said.
Castillo shrugged.
The archbishop made a go on gesture to Naylor.
“Charley’s mother didn’t know what had happened to Charley’s father until she was literally on her deathbed,” Naylor said.
“How do you know that?” the archbishop said.
“I was there,” Naylor said. “My father was deeply involved. What happened was that Charley’s mother, knowing she was about to die and Charley would be an orphan — his grandfather and uncle had died in a car accident on the autobahn the year before; she thought he was really going to be alone — asked my father to find Charley’s father.”
“Asked your father?” the archbishop said.
“Yes, sir. My father was an officer in the 14th Armored Cavalry, then patrolling the border between East and West Germany. The border line had cut Charley’s family’s property just about in half. Charley’s mother and my mom were friends.
“So my father started looking for Charley’s father. He wasn’t hard to find. He was buried in the National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas. A representation of the Medal of Honor was chiseled into his headstone.
“Once the Army learned that the twelve-year-old German boy about to be an orphan was the son of an American officer who had posthumously received our nation’s highest award for valor — at nineteen — the Army instantly shifted into high gear to take care of him. They knew that when his mother died, he would inherit just about all of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., and were concerned that Charley’s inheritance would fall into the hands of Charley’s father’s family and be squandered.
“While a platoon of senior Army lawyers began looking into trust funds and anything else that would protect him, my father was sent to San Antonio to see if he could find Charley’s family, and to see what problems they were going to pose for Charley.
“He found Charley’s grandmother and showed her a picture of Charley.”
“And my abuela,” Castillo said softly, visibly fighting his emotions, “took one look at the picture, said I had my father’s eyes, and two hours after that, she and General Naylor — he was then a major — were in my grandfather’s Learjet en route to New York, where they caught the five-fifteen Pan American flight to Frankfurt.
“When they showed up at the house, I didn’t want to let them in. My mother was in great pain, looked like a skeleton, and I didn’t want anyone to see her looking like that, and in a cloud of cognac fumes.
“Abuela pushed past me, found my mother’s bedroom, and said…”
He lost his voice, and it took a very long moment before he was able to continue: “… and said, ‘I’m Jorge’s mother, my dear. I’m here to take care of you and the boy.’
“And my mother looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘Thank you, God.’”
“Two weeks after that, I got on another Pan American flight with my grandfather, carrying my new American passport as Carlos Guillermo Castillo, and flew to the States. My abuela stayed with my mother, who didn’t want me to see her in her last days. Two weeks after I got to San Antonio, she died. And I began my new life as a Texican, which is how Americans of Mexican background are described.”
“Your ancestors emigrated from Mexico to the United States, my son?” the archbishop asked.
“Your Eminence is familiar with the Alamo?” Castillo asked.
“Of course.”
“The Alamo today is owned by the Alamo Foundation, membership in which is limited to direct descendants of those men — some of Spanish blood — who died at the Alamo at the side of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Daniel Boone trying to keep the Mexicans out of what later became Texas. My grandmother served for many years as president of the Alamo Foundation. No, sir, I do not consider myself to be descended from Mexicans who immigrated to the United States. I am a Texican.”
“And a Hessian, apparently,” the archbishop said. “Fascinating!”
“If I may?” Pevsner asked.
The archbishop nodded his permission.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich sent another team of ex—Államvédelmi Hatóság to Germany with a dual mission. First, they were to eliminate Günther Friedler in a particularly nasty way—”
“Why?” the archbishop asked.
“‘Particularly nasty way’?” Archimandrite Boris repeated.
“Why?” Pevsner said. “Because he had been asking too many questions about the SVR ‘fish farm’ in the Congo where the former East German people were developing, even starting to produce, that very nasty biological warfare substance the Americans called ‘Congo-X.’”
“An abomination before God!” the archbishop said.
“You know about that?” Castillo asked.
“The church, my son, has its sources of information.”
“Oddly enough, Your Eminence,” Castillo said, “that’s exactly how Colonel Hamilton, who heads our biological warfare laboratory, described that stuff, as ‘an abomination before God.’”
“And so it is,” the archbishop pronounced.
“Was,” Pevsner said. “Before Charley. Now there’s no more of it, whatever it’s called.”
“God will bless Colonel Castillo for his efforts in that regard,” the archbishop announced.
“As I was saying,” Pevsner said, “Vladimir Vladimirovich’s assassins eliminated Herr Friedler in a particularly nasty way — they tried to make it appear he had died as a result of a spat between homosexuals — for his journalistic enterprise. But Vladimir Vladimirovich didn’t stop there. He wanted to send another message to the journalistic community that writing about the fish farm was dangerous, and the way he decided to do it was to assassinate the senior staff of the Tages Zeitung organization during Friedler’s funeral.”
“The senior staff being?” the archbishop asked.
“Eric Kocian, Your Eminence, publisher of the Budapest edition; the senior editor; Otto Görner, the managing director of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft; and the owner thereof, Herr Gossinger. I don’t really think he knew our Charley had two personas.”
“You are underestimating Vladimir Vladimirovich, Aleksandr,” Nicolai Tarasov said. “That’s dangerous. I’m quite sure he knew all about our friend Charley.”
“Then we are agreed to disagree,” Pevsner said. “I think we can agree, however, that Vladimir Vladimirovich regarded the elimination of Kocian, Görner, and my brother Charley as too important to be left to the Államvédelmi Hatóság, despite their well-deserved reputation for efficiency in such tasks, and therefore ordered Dmitri to assume command — after Friedler was in his casket — of the operation, to make sure Kocian, Görner, and my brother Charley were eliminated.”
“Your Eminence,” Nicolai said, “while I regret having to differ with my cousin Aleksandr again, I must. My feeling has always been that Vladimir Vladimirovich had no intention of shipping Dmitri and Svetlana to Russia when they were arrested in Vienna — having them in Russia would have posed a number of problems for him
. Having them eliminated in Vienna, perhaps while trying to escape from the Austrian authorities, on the other hand, would have permitted Vladimir Vladimirovich to place the public blame for all the assassinations on Dmitri and Svetlana, and thus off himself, so far as the Germans were concerned. The SVR would know what had happened, that Vladimir Vladimirovich had eliminated his potentially most dangerous opponent—opponents, Dmitri and Svetlana. He would be ahead on both accounts.”
“Dmitri, my son,” the archbishop said, “what do you think?”
“Knowing Vladimir Vladimirovich as well as I do, Your Eminence, what Nicolai suggests may well be the case. I just don’t know.”
“I think that Nicolai and I can agree that the Marburg affair was a total disaster for Vladimir Vladimirovich,” Pevsner said. “None of the intended targets was eliminated; Dmitri and Svetlana, instead of being arrested in Vienna, were flown to safety here. Where they told my brother Charley about the fish farm, which resulted in the President of the United States doing his best to eliminate that ‘abomination before God.’”
“And the SVR rezident in Vienna, Kirill Demidov, who eliminated the Kuhls — or had them eliminated — with a Hungarian secret police garrote, was found sitting dead with such a device around his own neck in a taxicab outside the American embassy,” D’Alessandro said.
“You sound as if you approve, my son,” the archbishop said.
“Your Eminence, I’m not Russian Orthodox, I’m a Roman Catholic, but so far as I’m concerned you’re a priest and I can’t lie to a priest. I thought the sonofabitch got what he deserved. Maybe taking out the old man was justified — he knew the game he was in — but Frau Kuhl? I knew her. She was a sweet old lady. I’d have garroted the sonofabitch myself if I could have gotten at him.”
“Colonel Castillo, what do you know about this murder?”
“Not much more than Mr. D’Alessandro, Your Eminence.”
“Really?” His Eminence replied, his tone suggesting he did not accept what Castillo had said as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. When he went on, “But do you know who murdered this man?” the same tone was in his voice, as if he did not expect an honest answer.
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