Red Army Spies and the Blackrobes Trilogy

by Patrick Trese

  “But John Kennedy acted decisively not to act rashly. Instead, he calmly found a way to avert World War III. You may or may not know all the details about that crisis, but there is something you must know and never forget.

  “Some months later, during one of our last secret meetings, I asked President Kennedy about the future of the world. Was he now more optimistic or pessimistic? We are all human, he told me, so he was pessimistic. He said he believed that, sooner or later, someone will make a miscalculation and that will be the end of all of us.”

  Captain Ivan Ivanovich suddenly stood up and squared his shoulders.

  “Perhaps that is enough food for thought to digest for one morning,” he said. “With your permission, I shall return to my room. I will be there resting until the noon meal, if you need me.”

  “One more thing before you leave,” said Father Fitzmaurice. “When you last met with the President during the Cuban crisis, how did that meeting end?”

  “Ah, yes,” said the Russian. “I told him to remain calm and never forget that God was with him. He asked me if I really knew that and I said that I believed that. But I told him that I knew his sins were forgiven. He was surprised because he hadn’t confessed any to me.

  “I told him that there was no need to do so. I made the Sign of the Cross and recited the Latin words of Absolution and I said ‘Go in peace,’ in English. The President asked, ‘And my penance?’ And I told him to save the world.”

  The man bowed his head.

  “And so he did,” said the man who had played Father Alex Samozvanyetz. “John Kennedy saved the world from Khrushchev, but he couldn’t save himself.”

  C H A P T E R • 17

  “Father Beck was really down in the dumps when I first started visiting him,” Charley told the Visitor from Rome. They were walking to the Villa to wait for the Russian who was not to arrive for another half hour.

  “That was a couple days after Father got home from the hospital. Brother Hegstad told me that my manualia assignment was to try and cheer him up, so I did the best I could. We talked about my dad’s high school days at Saint Ignatius. He seemed to enjoy that a little bit.”

  “But not much, I suppose,” said Father Fitzmaurice.

  “No, not much. He was trying hard to be cheerful, but most days it was a real effort for him to keep a conversation going. One day he asked me to get a couple of books from his room, and I started reading to him every morning. He said he was going to improve my Greek and he seemed to get a kick out of tutoring me.”

  “But he was still down in the dumps?”

  “In general, yes, Father. I read to him every morning for a week or so, but then we stopped. I don’t know why exactly. He said he’d heard enough, or something like that.”

  “After you stopped the reading,” said Father Fitzmaurice, “did he get sadder or happier?”

  “Well, happier, I guess, now that you mention it,” said Charley. “His spirits seemed to get brighter, like he was starting to get better. But then he took a turn for the worse and then he died. That really surprised me.”

  “I’m sure,” said Father Fitzmaurice. “It’s always a shock, even when we’re more or less prepared. By the way, Charley, before he died, did Father Beck really tell the Russian to try the index?”

  “He sure did, Father Fitz. ‘Try the index, Alex’ he said. His exact words, honest. All the priests in the room started laughing and Father Beck had a little smile and then he closed his eyes and just stopped breathing and that was it. He was gone. Very peaceful. I wasn’t laughing though. I guess I was trying not to cry. I really liked Father Beck a lot.”

  “How did the Russian react?”

  “By the time I looked back at him, he had turned away from the foot of the bed and I could see his shoulders heaving and I guess he was crying, too. I could see that he’d dropped his book of sacraments on the bed. So I think he had been pretty shocked. Not by the laughter. Shocked by what Father Beck had said to him. That’s what I think, but I could be wrong about that.”

  “No, Charley. I think you’re absolutely right. The Russian must have been scared to death when Father Beck started to speak. But then the Russian didn’t hear what he was afraid to hear. He was crying because he was so relieved.”

  “You think, Father Fitz?”

  “We’ll just have to ask him when he shows up.” The Visitor checked his watch. “Let’s get inside the Villa and get a fire started.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “So what, may I ask, went wrong with Father Beck?” asked Father Fitzmaurice when the Russian sat down in his chair. “You told the Rector that you were responsible for his death.”

  “It was a tragic error of judgment on my part,” said the Russian. “I believed he had found me out or was close to doing so. Major Volkova ordered me to kill him. I tried to silence him without murdering him, but he died just the same.”

  “How did you silence him?”

  “I maneuvered him into hearing my confession. I told him everything about myself and my mission.”

  Charlie Coogan, who had been listening intently, was surprised when Father Fitzmaurice held up his hand. “How much detail did you give Father Beck when you confessed to him?”

  “I told him everything. Everything! About my life, my mission, my training, my time in the camps with Alex Samozvanyetz, everything I could think of. You see, I had to make sure that Father Beck could not tell anybody about me or my mission. I couldn’t give him any loopholes he could escape through. I had to make sure that he would not break the Seal of Confession.”

  It took a long time for the Russian to describe how Oksana trained him and schooled him. And Charlie sat silent, taking it all in. It was amazing how much the Russian had observed, studied and absorbed. How much he had learned about the American Jesuit priest, even his inner life. No wonder the Russian had fooled everybody. Amazing, thought Charley, but it was awful about Father Beck.

  “The burden of keeping the seal of confession became too much for him to bear,” concluded the Russian. “I did not intend to kill him, but that is what I did.”

  “You don’t know that,” said Father Fitzmaurice. “You didn’t cause his death. He had an inoperable disease.”

  “If I didn’t directly cause his death, I certainly hastened it. I made a serious mistake. He was so obviously suspicious. I misjudged why he had been watching me so closely. But the poor man was suspecting his friend Alex Samozvanyetz of being some kind of a saint!”

  The Russian buried his head in his hands. “He was a gallant, honorable man. A priest who kept my secret sacred even when he knew he was dying.”

  He looked up at the Visitor. “But even today, I cannot understand why he chose to make his last words a joke.”

  “Why, indeed?” said Father Fitzmaurice. “Isn’t it unfortunate that Father is no longer here to tell us.”

  He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “Given your concern for the young woman you believe to be your daughter, it is quite understandable that you handled your problem with Father Beck the way you did. You had to decide how best to maintain your cover.

  “But let’s move on. I have a different mystery on my hands,” Father Fitzmaurice said to the Russian. “I mean the mystery of the novices you trained.”

  “I don’t understand.” The Russian looked puzzled. “Is something wrong with them?”

  “Nothing whatsoever,” said the Visitor. “That’s exactly the point. They are the best Jesuit novices anyone has ever seen.”

  “Is that so?” said the Russian. “I am surprised to hear that. To me, they do not seem to be unusual at all. They seem to be what they are supposed to be.”

  “And then some,” said Father Fitzmaurice. “In point of fact, the Provincial and the Rector consider them to be extraordinary, including Carissime Coogan here. Now, how would you explain that?”

  “I don’t think I can. They are all fine young men. But you say they’re extraordinary? I don
’t know why that should be.”

  “When you were instructing them,” said Father Fitzmaurice, “when you were leading them through the Spiritual Exercises, did you believe all that you were telling them?”

  The Russian frowned.

  “Let me put it this way: I believed what I was saying while I was saying it. That is what an actor does.”

  “And what do you believe now?”

  “I am not a theologian, Father Fitzmaurice. I am a soldier.”

  “Yes, of course. Well, allow me to paraphrase: although not a believer yourself, you seem to have been the cause of belief in others. I wonder how that might have come about?”

  “I certainly don’t know.” The Russian shook his head. “But if what you say about the novices is true, I was not the cause.”

  “Then what was the cause?”

  “Let me try to explain something to you,” said the Russian. “Before the war, I was trained to be an actor and in Russia, at least, an actor must never be cynical about the character he is playing. If I am playing Iago or Hamlet or Lear, I am telling the truth, in an odd sort of way. Hamlet’s truth, or Lear’s truth, or Iago’s truth or, if you will, Shakespeare’s truth. That is to say: if anybody had such a profound influence on the novices, it was not me. It was never me.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Alex Samozvanyetz, I suppose, as best I could portray him. What other explanation can there be?”

  “So we’re talking about stagecraft? Is that your explanation?”

  “In a way,” said the Russian. “But not entirely.”

  He turned and faced Charley and spoke to him directly.

  “I tried my best to act as a good Master of Novices would, Charles. Apparently, I succeeded. I only hope that learning the truth about me won’t damage the other lads too badly. But it may be too heavy a blow, the truth.”

  “Yeah,” said Charley, “maybe it will be. Does that worry you?”

  “Very much, Charles. More than I can express in English words.”

  “Too bad none of the novices understand Russian.”

  “Yes, too bad. I only wish I could find some way to soften the blow. Remember, Charles, right at the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises, when I told all of you that it was Ignatius leading you and not me?”

  “But you were acting,” said Charley. “And I believed you.”

  “True,” said the Russian. “I was acting. But does knowing that I was playing a role stop you from understanding what Alex Samozvanyetz and Ignatius Loyola were trying to tell you? I was not trying to destroy your faith. Far from it, Charles.

  “Please try to remember where your heart and your mind were before you found out about me. And never forget that Ignatius was not asking you to follow him or Father Samozvanyetz or any other human being. Try to remember Who was calling you,” said the Russian agent. “It was never me.”

  Charley did not reply. He picked up a poker and jiggered the smoldering logs in the fireplace.

  Father Fitzmaurice broke the silence.

  “So the message was true even if the messenger was false, is that it?” he said. “So we get rid of the messenger, leave the true message untouched and keep the novices as they are and let them get on with lives. That might just work. What say you, Charley?”

  “If the novices ever learn the truth about the Russian, they’ll probably all leave and go home. Like me,” he said. “If you want them to stay? Well, you can’t lie to them. That would be wrong. But you don’t have to tell them the truth, do you? I mean, what they don’t know won’t hurt them?”

  “Mental reservation?” said Father Fitzmaurice. “That’s a tricky business. It’s usually just a polite way of getting someone to mind his own business, not yours. But let me think about that, Charley.”

  “In any event,” said the Russian, “you will get rid of the messenger. I will be gone forever. The FBI will see to that. But my Father Samozvanyetz cannot suddenly vanish, can he? One day it was he’s here and then he’s not?”

  “I had been thinking about getting you sick and letting you die in hospital. The FBI could help stage a public funeral and burial. We could bury Father Samozvanyetz up on Cemetery Hill right next to Father Beck. But I really don’t have a workable plan.”

  The Visitor drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair for a few seconds and then gave the chair a final tap.

  “I think it’s time to give you a little test, Charley. Let’s see if you’re cut out for undercover work. You participated in Father Beck’s funeral and burial. Right?”

  “Yes, I did. It was really beautiful. Chanting the Office for the Dead and the Solemn High Mass and the hymns we were singing on the way to cemetery. Really wonderful.”

  “Couldn’t we do the same for Father Samozvanyetz? In absentia, of course.”

  “It wouldn’t work,” said Charley. “It would be too complicated, Father Fitz. Too many things to do by too many people. Like a trick play some football coach dreams up in his office. It never works in a real game. If a trick play ever does work out, it’s a miracle. Because if just even one player makes a mistake the whole play falls apart.”

  “Well done, Charley! Good thinking by an experienced ball player. You are absolutely correct. So what do you suggest we do to secretly rid ourselves of this false Father Samozvanyetz?”

  “Maybe,” Charley said, “we could keep it all really simple and tell the truth. There’s no need to lie. Look, Jesuits are on call like doctors and firemen, right? Well, Father Samozvanyetz here gets a secret middle-of-night order to leave Milford. Immediately! He has to pack and leave right away. No time to say good-bye to anyone. Where did he go? We can’t say because we don’t know. Bam! It’s a secret. He was here and now he’s gone. End of story.”

  The Russian agent chuckled and nodded “Very good, Charles. You make me proud.”

  “Oh, right,” Charley said to Father Fitzmaurice. “I forgot you were testing me again. That public funeral idea was all bunk, wasn’t it?”

  “My apologies, Charley,” said Father Fitzmaurice. “But that’s one more time you’ve hit the bull’s-eye. We must keep our vanishing Jesuit act very, very simple.”

  C H A P T E R • 18

  The next morning, Charley made his usual run to the statue of Saint Stanislaus. He reached down and ran his fingers along the underside of the bench.

  “Great!” he said aloud as he pulled a red thumbtack from the wood. “Lakewood, here I come!”

  He stopped running when he came within sight of the Novitiate building and forced himself to proceed at a more appropriate gait through the side door and up the staircase to Paters Row.

  “Good show, Charley!” said Father Fitzmaurice when he received the red thumbtack. “Best you take it up to our Russian and give it to him. But don’t say anything to rattle him. Tonight will be his big night. Everything depends on how he performs.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “So this is it,” Ivan Ivanovich said. “The opening of my last act. Please tell Father Fitzmaurice that I will be ready.”

  The Russian sat on the edge of his bed twirling the red thumbtack between his thumb and forefinger. “But before you leave, Charles, there’s something I want you to have.”

  He removed an envelope from the drawer of his bedside table.

  “It’s a souvenir of what we’ve been through, you and me. No matter how things turn out for me, I hope you’ll keep it and remember me in your prayers, Charles.”

  “Do you know what will happen to you when you get back home?”

  “Who knows? I may get a medal, perhaps even the Order of Lenin, or maybe a bullet in the back of my head. It all depends on who is in control of the Kremlin when I get there.”

  Charley took the envelope and slipped it into the pocket of his cassock.

  “Let’s hope that it’s the medal you get, Captain.”

  “Thank you, Charles.” The Russian smiled. “Now please leave and go about your business. I have to prepare.”

  Char
ley hesitated at the door.

  “You know, Captain Ivanovich, I felt pretty good when I was pretending to be a novice. I wonder what you felt when you were pretending to be a real Jesuit priest?”

  “How did I feel?” The Russian gave a long sigh before speaking.

  “I was happy when I was a husband and a father as well as working as an actor in Leningrad. My wife and I were much in love and happy in our home. But then Hitler destroyed all that.

  “During our Great Patriotic War, I was commanding soldiers, sending young men into battle, and all that left me with not one good memory. Just anxiety, fear, constant worry about my wife and child under siege in Leningrad, the sheer terror of constant bombardment, witnessing so much death and dismemberment, the unending fear and guilt and despair.

  “It was almost a relief to fall into the clutches of Oksana Volkova and I did what I was ordered to do. Knowing that my daughter was still alive was a joyless comfort. She had no idea that I was alive. And perhaps she will never know.

  “Feelings? For years I was surviving, existing but numb, just waiting for everything to end. I studied hard, I learned all the words, all the actions. My only good memories were from my pretending to be serving time in Siberia with that Jesuit priest.

  “I was sent to the prison camp to study him, to learn everything there was to learn about him. Which I did until he died. And then I found myself alone in that frozen desolation, with no one to turn to for comfort, and I grieved for him when he died. I still do.

  “How did I feel while playing Alex Samozvanyetz? When I was young actor, I played Romeo for a while and I played him well, so I was told. I understood Romeo with all his virtues and all his flaws. I felt sorry for Romeo, but I did not fall in love with his character. Romeo was fiction. Alex Samozvanyetz was real, the most magnificent human being I had ever encountered in my life. He accepted me as a friend and, although I had no choice but to deceive him, I came to respect him and admire him and I still do. There was nothing about him that you could not love.”

  The man who had played Alex Samozvanyetz slowly placed his hand over his heart.