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“What we may surmise is that he saw something in these pages that so disturbed him that he risked and finally gave his life to reveal the inner intentions of Igor Komarov. Would Your Holiness now read the Black Manifesto?”

An hour later the Patriarch of Moscow and All the Russias leaned back and stared at a point above Monk’s head.

“He cannot mean this,” he said finally. “He cannot intend to do these things. They are satanic. This is Russia on the threshold of the third millennium of Our Lord. We are beyond these things.”

“As a man of God, you must believe in the forces of evil, Holiness?”

“Of course.”

“And that sometimes those forces can take human form? Hitler, Stalin …”

“You are a Christian, Mr. ... ?”

“Monk. I suppose so. A bad one.”

“Aren’t we a

ll? So inadequate. But then you know the Christian view of evil. You do not need to ask.”

“Holiness, the passages concerning the Jews, the Chechens, and the other ethnic minorities apart, these plans would send your Holy Church spinning back into the Dark Ages, either a willing tool and accomplice, or a fellow victim of the Fascist state, as godless in its way as the Communist one.”

“If this is true.”

“It is true. Men do not hunt down and kill for a forgery. Colonel Grishin’s reaction was too fast for the document not to have come from Secretary Akopov’s desk. They would have been unaware of a forgery. They were aware within hours that something of priceless value had gone missing.”

“What have you come to seek of me, Mr. Monk?”

“An answer. Will the Orthodox Church of All the Russias oppose this man?”

“I shall pray. I shall seek guidance. …”

“And if the answer is that, not as a Patriarch but as a Christian, and a man, and a Russian, you have no choice. What then?”

“Then I shall have no choice. But how to oppose him? The presidential elections of January are seen as a foregone conclusion.”

Monk arose, gathered the two files, and pushed them inside his cassock. He reached for his hat.

“Holiness, shortly a man will come, also from the West. This is his name. Please receive him. He will propose what can be done.”

He handed over a small pasteboard card.

“Will you need a car?” asked Alexei.

“Thank you, no. I shall walk.”

“May God walk with you.”

Monk left him standing erect beside his Rublev, a deeply troubled man. As he crossed the floor he thought he heard the rustle of foot on carpet outside, but when he opened the door the passage was empty. Downstairs he met the Cossack, who showed him out. The wind on the street was bitter. He pushed his priestly hat firmly onto his head, leaned into the wind, and walked back to the Metropol.

Before the dawn a plump figure slipped out of the home of the Patriarch and scurried through the streets and into the lobby of the Rossiya. Although he had a portable telephone beneath his dark coat, he knew that the lines from public booths were far safer.

The man he spoke to at the dacha off Kiselny Boulevard was one of the night guards but he agreed to take a message.

“Tell the colonel my name is Father Maxim Klimovsky. Got that? Yes, Klimovsky. Tell him I work in the private residence of the Patriarch. I must speak to him. It is urgent. I will phone back on this number at ten this morning.”

He got his connection at that hour. The voice at the other end was quiet but authoritative.

“Yes, Father, this is Colonel Grishin.”