Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“One of the first things to happen was the formation of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia—ROCOR.”

“The archimandrite and I have the honor of humbly serving the ROCOR,” the archbishop said.

“And it is my honor to humbly serve His Eminence, who heads ROCOR,” the archimandrite said.

“ROCOR remained part of the Russian Orthodox Church,” the archbishop went on, “that is to say, under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate, until 1927—”

“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, Aleksand

r, 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.