Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

The archbishop joined in: “Your father is aware of what might happen to Colonel Castillo if Colonel Castillo accedes to President Clendennen’s request?”

“Yes, Your Eminence, he is.”

“Then why… ?”

“Because he’s a soldier, sir. Soldiers do what they are ordered to do.”

“Soldiers, I would suggest,” the archbishop said, “like priests, are expected to do what they have been ordered to do. Sometimes, a priest—and, I would suggest, a soldier—gets an order he knows it would be wrong to execute.”

“Yes, sir. That’s true, Your Eminence.”

“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.