“I know my days here are drawing to a close, Charles. In spite of everything, I have felt safe and secure here. I truly wish I could stay in this Novitiate and continue to play this role forever. But that, I know, is not to be.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Father Fitzmaurice looked up from his desk when Charley returned from the Russian’s room.
“You look a bit rattled, Charley,” he said. “Did he say something to upset you?”
Charley shook his head.
“Sit down and tell me what’s bothering you.”
“Thanks,” said Charley. He pulled up a chair and began to report everything the Russian had said to him and how it had impressed him.
“He knows he has to leave,” he said finally, “but he really doesn’t want to leave here. He meant right here! Milford! The Novitiate!”
“Well done, Charley! I think you found the right question to ask Ivan Ivanovich. Our actor does not want to exit the stage. He wishes this play would never end. You put him at ease and allowed him to speak honestly. Did you understand what he was talking about?”
“Sort of, I guess. But I believe he meant it.”
“Do you ever feel that way, Charley? I mean since the Russian confessed?”
“Yeah, sometimes. Mostly I want to go home, but sometimes I wish I could just hunker down here and wait for everything to blow over. You know, let the Novitiate get back to normal. And me, too.”
“Well, let me tell you what I’ve learned about staying or leaving a novitiate. No matter what we decide, we can’t stay in this comfortable, orderly routine. We have to move on and we can’t go back. Even Ignatius Loyola, no matter how powerful what he experienced at Manresa, had to leave his cave and go outside to find his place in the world.
“That took guts, Charley, because Ignatius had no way of knowing what he would face when he left his cave. The same can be said for Captain Ivan Ivanovich. And, it seems, for Carissime Charles Coogan.
“Stay here and you will have to move to the Juniorate wing of this building to begin your collegiate studies. Leave here and you return to your home, family and friends. You will find that the world has changed while you’ve been sequestered here. And so have you. The awesome truth is that there is no telling what you’ll have to cope with next year in Milford or in Cleveland.
“Come to think of it, Charley, the Catholic Church has come to a fork in the road. Stay in the past or move into the future. Very soon, seminarians, parish priests, the people in the pews, all will have to adjust to whatever is decided during Vatican II.”
“So you weren’t just blowing smoke, Father Fitz, when you told everyone here to make suggestions about changes in Jesuit novitiates? It wasn’t just to create a distraction so you could do your real work?”
“No, I wasn’t dissembling, Charley. What our brethren are doing is as serious as what we’re doing with the Russian.
“But enough of that, Charley. If I can get an automobile from the Rector, could you drive me to that old abandoned farm you told me about? Do you think you could find it?”
“I’m pretty sure I can.”
“Then let’s drive out there this afternoon. There may be something more for our Russian to do before he leaves Milford.”
“Something like penance, Father Fitz?”
“Perhaps. Something like that. I just want to take a look at the barn and see if it’s suitable for what I have in mind.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Electric Angelus bells began ringing through the corridors.
“I almost forgot, Father Fitz,” said Charley. “He wanted me to tell you that he will be ready for his meeting with the Russian woman tonight.”
“Yes, I’m sure he will be,” said the Visitor from Rome. “He will do a perfect job.”
C H A P T E R • 19
The woods were cold and dark that night. Oksana Volkova stood shrouded in her winter disguise, a heavy sweater over her cassock, her pea jacket’s collar pulled up around her neck, her watch cap pulled down around her ears. She was a minute or two early for the rendezvous, so she stepped back into the trees to a spot where she could observe the statue and the bench. As always, she saw him before she heard him. He was walking silently along the gravel path, one bare hand holding a rosary.
She stepped out to meet him.
“Have you had any word from Moscow?” he asked in Russian.
“Only one short signal. ‘All well. Proceed.’ Nothing more. But I thought you should know.”
“What should we do now?”
“Take this time to consider what actions we can take in the future. Do you think the new President will ask to see you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It does not seem likely. But I should start to study the newspaper and magazine commentaries to be prepared in any event, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” said Oksana. “What did Kennedy think of Johnson? Did he ever talk to you about him?”
“Only in passing.”
“Will Johnson continue Kennedy’s policies, do you think?”
“I would suppose so. For a while, at least. But I really don’t know much about Johnson.”
“I am thinking about Southeast Asia,” said Oksana. “Kennedy’s involvement in Laos and Viet Nam, in particular. If the opportunity presents itself, try to reinforce any decision he is making to stay engaged there.”
“I doubt that he will ask for my opinions. Not like Kennedy.”
“No, I don’t suppose so. But, who knows? I can only tell you to stay alert in case he does. Keep in mind that it’s to our advantage that Americans stay involved in that part of the world. It will drain their resources and keep them from meddling in Europe.”
“So how should I proceed? Should I take any action?”
“Not until I receive instructions,” said Oksana. “I intend to suggest that Father Samozvanyetz will become more vocal. Kennedy’s assassination has moved him to speak out in radio and newspaper interviews.”
“And saying what President Johnson will be happy to hear?”
“Exactly,” said Oksana. “That might help attract his attention. But for the moment, do nothing. Do you believe you are secure in your present situation? No one suspects anything?”
“Absolutely not. I am completely assimilated. The Jesuits are convinced that I am ‘one of ours,’ as they say.”
“But watch your back,” said Oksana. “Whoever had Kennedy killed may be thinking dark thoughts about us.”
∗ ∗ ∗
She left him then and followed the path out of the woods to the road where she was scheduled to be picked up. The truck paused for only a moment, just long enough for her to hoist herself into the cab and quietly close the door. She rode in silence all the way back to her hideaway on the river, lost in thought. She was completely unaware that she was being followed.
C H A P T E R • 20
Early that next day, Father Fitzmaurice sat at Charley Coogan’s desk in the empty dormitory room. The other novices were off doing their morning manualia chores. Charley leaned back against the window ledge, his arms folded.
“He had a son, you know,” said Father Fitzmaurice in a tone that suggested that he was merely thinking aloud. “The Russian, I mean. A son very much like you, so he told me. Were you aware of that? His son was a soldier. Killed in the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians call it. By some strange chance, our man was right there in the same battle when his son died. He was right there with him, holding him in his arms while he died. Amazing, I’d say. But you don’t seem surprised, Charley.”
“It sort of fits, Father. I remember during the Long Retreat, when he described Jesus dying on the cross, it was like he knew how God the Father must have felt. I suppose that’s pretty poor theology.”
“Yes, pretty poor,” said Father Fitzmaurice with a smile. “But it’s a nice thought. Hang onto it.”
He struck a match and then thought better of lighting his pipe.
“If it’s not too painful to recall,
Charley, could you tell me what you felt about our Russian before you found about him? How did he seem to you when he was pretending to be Father Samozvanyetz?”
Charley cleared his throat and shook his head. “I hate to think about it because I really believed him. Not so much as what he said, but I believed in who he was. Like kind and, I don’t know, not gentle but strong and not mean in any way. I felt, sort of, I really knew that he cared for me, that he was a good friend and he would protect me.
“And he did, Father Fitz. He taught me how to act so that nobody would figure out that I wasn’t a real novice. And he tried to protect me from actually becoming a real novice.
“I could see how serious he was being a Jesuit, like being poor and being obedient without making any big deal about it. He never had any personal belongings, only what they gave him, like even pencils and pens. He only took one of each very time.
“And he was a great storyteller. He made everybody in the Bible and the Long Retreat come alive so that it was like, during meditation, I could feel and smell the places I was thinking about, just like I was there.
“And I can’t describe how I felt when I was serving his Mass. His Latin was so plain and simple and yet, I guess, powerful? Like really, really real. Like he was.”
“How about evocatus, Charley? An adjective to describe something that calls forth, say, a powerful feeling?”
“That’s it, Father Fitz. He wasn’t reading the Mass. He was hardly looking at the missal. And he wasn’t reciting from memory. It was like he was actually talking straight to God. And I was right there helping him.”
Charley looked away.
“Yeah,” he said, “it was a powerful feeling all right. And it was really powerful to find out that it was all bullshit. That man that I believed was maybe a saint, well, he was only acting.”
Then Charley laughed out loud.
“Was that what you wanted to hear, Father Fitz? Well, you got it.”
“Yes, I got it all right, Charley. Bloody awful. But bullshit is quite an understatement. What the Russians were engaged in here was something far more sinister.”
Father Fitzmaurice sat adjusting his eye glasses while Charley waited in silence. Finally, the Visitor from Rome snapped his fingers and murmured, “Try the index.
“You know, Charley, I’m beginning to suspect that, before he died, Father Beck had figured out something about the man who was playing Father Samozvanyetz. Otherwise, why his joke? And I suspect that when you visited Father Beck in the infirmary you may have observed more about Father Beck than you realized. Do you recall what else you and Father Beck talked about?”
“He talked about Brother Krause,” Charley said. “He liked him a lot. He told me once how Brother Krause started studying Latin because of an offhand remark he had made. I said that was kind of funny, but Father Beck said that it showed him that Brother Krause was a good, obedient Jesuit, that he didn’t have to wait to be told what to do. He could anticipate the will of his superior, like Saint Ignatius says we should do.”
“The will or the intent or what the superior has in mind,” said Father Fitzmaurice. “So Brother Krause taught himself Latin?”
“That’s what Father Beck told me,” said Charley. “He told me that he wished Brother Krause would start studying Greek some day.”
“He said that?”
“Well, not exactly. Something like that.”
“Please try to remember.”
“Well, I was reading Plato’s Republic to him one morning and he said something like he wished Brother Krause had learned Greek instead of Latin. I asked him what he meant, but it was like he hadn’t actually said it out loud. He kind of just ignored my question.”
“You were reading Plato? That’s what he asked for?”
“Yes,” Charley said. “He asked me to get Plato’s Republic and a book by Thomas A’Kempis. I don’t think he wanted to hear anything from that one. I think he just wanted to have it close to him on the table beside his bed. I only read to him from Plato. Maybe another week. Anyway, it was about then that I stopped reading to him.”
“He lost interest in what you were reading?”
“Not exactly,” Charley said. “That wasn’t it.”
Father Fitzmaurice pushed his glasses up and waited for Charley to put his impressions together.
“I think Father Beck had heard all he had wanted to hear,” Charley said. “It was like he had remembered something he’d read once. He got this look on his face, like: ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right!’ And then we didn’t read Plato any more. Or anything else.”
“Was it about that time that he started feeling better?”
“I think so,” said Charley. “Right about then or a little after that.”
“What happened to the books?”
“I saved them. I guess I should have put them back in his room, but they’re right up there on my shelf, next to my Missale Romanum.”
“Ah, yes,” said Father Fitzmaurice. He turned and plucked out the small green volume of Plato’s Republic and opened it. Greek, he saw, after so many years of neglect, was once again mostly Greek to him. Fortunately, facing each page of the Greek text was a corresponding page of English.
“There’s a book marker in place,” said Father Fitzmaurice. “Is that where you stopped reading?”
“Probably.” Charley leaned over to check the page. “Yes, I think so,” he said. “I think I stopped right about there.”
Father Fitzmaurice read the passage to himself and closed the book. “Mind if I take this with me, Charley? Some light reading might help me get to sleep tonight.”
Charley laughed. “Father Beck said Plato must have had a sense of humor and that he was just kidding about all that Utopia stuff.”
“Perhaps,” said Father Fitzmaurice, getting up from his chair. “But if Plato had no sense of humor, Father Beck certainly did.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Later, when he was alone in his room, Father Fitzmaurice picked up the book and slowly reread the passage:
But if they imitate, they should from childhood up imitate what is appropriate to them—men, that is, who are brave, pious, free and all things of that kind. But things unbecoming the free man they should neither do nor be clever at imitating—nor yet any other shameful thing—lest from the imitation they imbibe the reality. Or have you not observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and second nature in the body, the speech and the thought?
Father Fitzmaurice laughed out loud. “Well played, John Beck,” he said to himself. “Very well played, indeed.”
C H A P T E R • 21
Mitchell Sloane, feeling the winter chill, sat with Herb Coogan in an unmarked car parked on the shoulder of a narrow dirt lane and waited to hear something on the radio. Up ahead, just out of sight, was the paved road that ran past Oksana Volkova’s riverside hideout.
A mile away, concealed in the brush, two of Herb’s agents were watching the fishing cabin through binoculars. Mitchell stared out the side window of the car at the bleak landscape. The trees and fields were lifeless. The sky was a cold, grey haze.
“How is your son holding up at the novitiate? Is he thinking about really becoming a Jesuit?”
“I think he’s ready to leave,” said Herb, “but he has a stubborn streak. He might think it’s his duty to stay, or something like that. Stick it out. Make the best of a bad situation. Turn the game around, you know? I had a chance to talk to him on the phone. Charley sounded really disillusioned. Not just about the Russian agent, but about life, about religion, about the Jesuits, about everything. Honestly, Mitchell, I just want what’s best for Charley.”
“But, then, it’s not up to you, is it, Herb?”
“Yeah. That’s right. It’s Charley’s decision.”
Herb waited, but Mitchell had nothing more to say.
A voice on the radio broke the silence.
“We have two subjects in view. Man and woman arriving in a
gray pickup truck. Woman fitting description leaving the truck. Entering cabin and closing door. Vehicle leaving yard. Male driver is turning truck right onto river road. Moderate speed. Should pass by your location within five minutes.”
Herb keyed his microphone. “Do you have front and back doors in view?”
“Affirmative.”
“Stay in place. Report if she leaves the cabin, but do not interfere.”
Herb pulled the car off the shoulder of the lane and drove toward the paved road up ahead.
“There goes the pickup truck,” said Mitchell.
“Well, I called that one,” Herb said. “Her driver took her to the grocery store and now he’s going off to wherever he waits for her next call. So now she’s home alone.”
“And so we just knock on her front door like a couple of aluminum siding salesmen?” Mitchell laughed. “No muss, no fuss. Are you sure you’re working for the FBI? I don’t see any heavy weapons or newsreel cameras.”
“Well, Lyndon Johnson doesn’t want any publicity. So that’s what we’re giving him. We just go and introduce ourselves. So what can she do? Put up a fight? She can’t run or jump in the river and she sure isn’t going to shoot us. She doesn’t want any publicity either.”
Herb turned the car off the paved road and parked in front of the cabin. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get started.”
They got out of the car and walked toward the cabin.
“You’re not nervous, are you, Mitchell?”
“Hell, no, Herb. Lay on, Macduff! I didn’t know this was going to be this much fun.”
“And damn’d be him that first cries . . .”
“Hold! Enough!”
∗ ∗ ∗
First she heard the laughter and then the knocking on the door. Oksana Volkova was not expecting visitors. Rowdy fishermen, she thought. Drunk, most likely. Curse them out and send them on their way. She swung the door open and glared at two clean-shaved businessmen, judging by their hats, overcoats and suits.
“Good morning!” said the taller one. “We hate to bother you at this early hour, but could you please take the time to answer a few questions?”
Red Army Spies and the Blackrobes Trilogy Page 49
