Hazardous Duty - PA 8

by W. E. B Griffin

  “He found Charley’s grandmother and showed her a picture of Charley.”

  “And my abuela,” Castillo said softly, visibly fighting his emotions, “took one look at the picture, said I had my father’s eyes, and two hours after that, she and General Naylor—he was then a major—were in my grandfather’s Learjet en route to New York, where they caught the five-fifteen Pan American flight to Frankfurt.

  “When they showed up at the house, I didn’t want to let them in. My mother was in great pain, looked like a skeleton, and I didn’t want anyone to see her looking like that, and in a cloud of cognac fumes.

  “Abuela pushed past me, found my mother’s bedroom, and said…”

  He lost his voice, and it took a very long moment before he was able to continue: “. . . and said, ‘I’m Jorge’s mother, my dear. I’m here to take care of you and the boy.’

  “And my mother looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘Thank you, God.’”

  “Two weeks after that, I got on another Pan American flight with my grandfather, carrying my new American passport as Carlos Guillermo Castillo, and flew to the States. My abuela stayed with my mother, who didn’t want me to see her in her last days. Two weeks after I got to San Antonio, she died. And I began my new life as a Texican, which is how Americans of Mexican background are described.”

  “Your ancestors emigrated from Mexico to the United States, my son?” the archbishop asked.

  “Your Eminence is familiar with the Alamo?” Castillo asked.

  “Of course.”

  “The Alamo today is owned by the Alamo Foundation, membership in which is limited to direct descendants of those men—some of Spanish blood—who died at the Alamo at the side of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Daniel Boone trying to keep the Mexicans out of what later became Texas. My grandmother served for many years as president of the Alamo Foundation. No, sir, I do not consider myself to be descended from Mexicans who immigrated to the United States. I am a Texican.”

  “And a Hessian, apparently,” the archbishop said. “Fascinating!”

  “If I may?” Pevsner asked.

  The archbishop nodded his permission.

  “Vladimir Vladimirovich sent another team of ex–Államvédelmi Hatóság to Germany with a dual mission. First, they were to eliminate Günther Friedler in a particularly nasty way—”

  “Why?” the archbishop asked.

  “‘Particularly nasty way’?” Archimandrite Boris repeated.

  “Why?” Pevsner said. “Because he had been asking too many questions about the SVR ‘fish farm’ in the Congo where the former East German people were developing, even starting to produce, that very nasty biological warfare substance the Americans called ‘Congo-X.’”

  “An abomination before God!” the archbishop said.

  “You know about that?” Castillo asked.

  “The church, my son, has its sources of information.”

  “Oddly enough, Your Eminence,” Castillo said, “that’s exactly how Colonel Hamilton, who heads our biological warfare laboratory, described that stuff, as ‘an abomination before God.’”

  “And so it is,” the archbishop pronounced.

  “Was,” Pevsner said. “Before Charley. Now there’s no more of it, whatever it’s called.”

  “God will bless Colonel Castillo for his efforts in that regard,” the archbishop announced.

  “As I was saying,” Pevsner said, “Vladimir Vladimirovich’s assassins eliminated Herr Friedler in a particularly nasty way—they tried to make it appear he had died as a result of a spat between homosexuals—for his journalistic enterprise. But Vladimir Vladimirovich didn’t stop there. He wanted to send another message to the journalistic community that writing about the fish farm was dangerous, and the way he decided to do it was to assassinate the senior staff of the Tages Zeitung organization during Friedler’s funeral.”

  “The senior staff being?” the archbishop asked.

  “Eric Kocian, Your Eminence, publisher of the Budapest edition; the senior editor; Otto Görner, the managing director of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft; and the owner thereof, Herr Gossinger. I don’t really think he knew our Charley had two personas.”

  “You are underestimating Vladimir Vladimirovich, Aleksandr,” Nicolai Tarasov said. “That’s dangerous. I’m quite sure he knew all about our friend Charley.”

  “Then we are agreed to disagree,” Pevsner said. “I think we can agree, however, that Vladimir Vladimirovich regarded the elimination of Kocian, Görner, and my brother Charley as too important to be left to the Államvédelmi Hatóság, despite their well-deserved reputation for efficiency in such tasks, and therefore ordered Dmitri to assume command—after Friedler was in his casket—of the operation, to make sure Kocian, Görner, and my brother Charley were eliminated.”

  “Your Eminence,” Nicolai said, “while I regret having to differ with my cousin Aleksandr again, I must. My feeling has always been that Vladimir Vladimirovich had no intention of shipping Dmitri and Svetlana to Russia when they were arrested in Vienna—having them in Russia would have posed a number of problems for him. Having them eliminated in Vienna, perhaps while trying to escape from the Austrian authorities, on the other hand, would have permitted Vladimir Vladimirovich to place the public blame for all the assassinations on Dmitri and Svetlana, and thus off himself, so far as the Germans were concerned. The SVR would know what had happened, that Vladimir Vladimirovich had eliminated his potentially most dangerous opponent—opponents, Dmitri and Svetlana. He would be ahead on both accounts.”

  “Dmitri, my son,” the archbishop said, “what do you think?”

  “Knowing Vladimir Vladimirovich as well as I do, Your Eminence, what Nicolai suggests may well be the case. I just don’t know.”

  “I think that Nicolai and I can agree that the Marburg affair was a total disaster for Vladimir Vladimirovich,” Pevsner said. “None of the intended targets was eliminated; Dmitri and Svetlana, instead of being arrested in Vienna, were flown to safety here. Where they told my brother Charley about the fish farm, which resulted in the President of the United States doing his best to eliminate that ‘abomination before God.’”

  “And the SVR rezident in Vienna, Kirill Demidov, who eliminated the Kuhls—or had them eliminated—with a Hungarian secret police garrote, was found sitting dead with such a device around his own neck in a taxicab outside the American embassy,” D’Alessandro said.

  “You sound as if you approve, my son,” the archbishop said.

  “Your Eminence, I’m not Russian Orthodox, I’m a Roman Catholic, but so far as I’m concerned you’re a priest and I can’t lie to a priest. I thought the sonofabitch got what he deserved. Maybe taking out the old man was justified—he knew the game he was in—but Frau Kuhl? I knew her. She was a sweet old lady. I’d have garroted the sonofabitch myself if I could have gotten at him.”

  “Colonel Castillo, what do you know about this murder?”

  “Not much more than Mr. D’Alessandro, Your Eminence.”

  “Really?” His Eminence replied, his tone suggesting he did not accept what Castillo had said as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. When he went on, “But do you know who murdered this man?” the same tone was in his voice, as if he did not expect an honest answer.

  There was a perceptible pause before Charley replied.

  “I have a good idea, Your Eminence.”

  “And whom do you suspect?”

  “That’s none of your business, sir,” Castillo said.

  “Charley,” Pevsner said warningly, “you can’t talk—”

  “To put a point on it, did you order the murder of this man?” the archbishop interrupted.

  “Weren’t you listening when I just told you I don’t know much about it?” Castillo said, now visibly angry, and then the anger took ove
r. “What would you like me to do, Your Eminence, lay my hand on a Bible and swear that I did not order the execution of Demidov?

  “It has been my sad experience,” Castillo snapped, “that the worst of liars are willing to utter the most outrageous untruths with one hand on the Holy Bible and the other on their mother’s tombstone or the heads of their children.”

  Castillo stood up.

  “Go fuck yourself, Your Eminence,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this whole affair, the history lesson, telling you a hell of a lot that’s none of your business, and especially you, you self-righteous sonofabitch. I thought I was willing to do damned near anything to get you to give Sweaty permission to marry me. But you just stepped over that legendary line drawn in the sand and that no longer seems to be the case.

  “Let’s go, guys. This session of the Russian Inquisition is over.”

  The archbishop laughed heartily, which was the last reaction Castillo—or anyone else—expected of him.

  “I now understand why Svetlana was swept off her feet by you, my son,” he said. “Aleksandr, would you ask the ladies to join us?”

  “Excuse me?” Pevsner said, his utter confusion evident in his voice and demeanor.

  “Go out into the foyer, Aleksandr, and bring the women in here,” the archbishop ordered.

  Pevsner did so.

  “Svetlana, my child,” the archbishop then said. “If you will stand there”—he pointed—“and Carlos, my son, if you will stand beside her, and if the other ladies will find places at the table, we can deal with the situation before us.”

  “Svetlana,” he ordered, “place your hand in Carlos’s hand.”

  He stood up, put his hand on the gold crucifix hanging around his neck, and held it out in front of him at shoulder height.

  “Let us pray,” he boomed. “May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bestow his manifold blessings on the union of Svetlana and Carlos in the holy state of matrimony in which they are soon to enter. Amen.”

  He lowered the crucifix and let it fall against his chest.

  “The archimandrite and I would be honored to officiate at the ceremony, if that is your desire,” the archbishop said. “And now I suggest we have our dinner. No, first I think champagne is called for. And then dinner. During which Archimandrite Boris will continue his history lecture—Oprichnina 101—during which I’m sure he will satisfy Carlos’s questions why I felt it necessary to conduct the Russian Inquisition.”

  [TWO]

  “Oh, my Charley,” Svetlana whispered in Castillo’s ear. “I was so afraid you were going to do something to offend His Eminence, show a lack of respect, or get into an argument with him, or say something at which he would take offense.”

  “By now, sweetheart, you should know me better than that.”

  “If you two can spare the time for him…” His Eminence said.

  Just a little thickly, Charley decided. He’s about half plastered. First all that wine, and then the champagne, and now more of the grape… .

  “. . . the Archimandrite Boris will continue with Oprichnina 101.”

  “I beg Your Eminence’s pardon,” Charley said.

  “Not at all,” the archbishop said.

  —

  The archimandrite stood up and, as he collected his thoughts, took a healthy swallow from his wineglass. He swayed just perceptibly as he did so.

  I guess the protocol here, Castillo thought, perhaps a bit cynically, is that if the archimandrite falls down during his lecture, the rest of us will pretend not to notice.

  “As I touched on briefly before,” the archimandrite began, “the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov’ Zagranitsey, sometimes known as the Orthodox Church outside Russia, acronym ROCOR, is a semiautonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church.

  “ROCOR was formed soon after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the anti-Christian policy of the Bolsheviks became painfully evident. It separated itself from the Russian Patriarchate in 1927, when the Moscow Metropolitan—in effect the Pope—offered its loyalty to the Bolsheviks.

  “His Eminence serves Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov’ Zagranitsey as its spiritual head, and I humbly serve His Eminence.

  “His Eminence is the spiritual leader of thirteen hierarchs—each headed by a bishop; what the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans would call dioceses—and controls our monasteries and nunneries in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe, and South America.

  “Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad ascended the patriarchal throne of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1990 as Alexius the Second, after the Soviet Union imploded. Became the Russian Orthodox Pope, if you like.

  “There were calls after that from the faithful for ROCOR to place itself under the new Patriarch. While, on its face, this was a splendid idea, there were those opposed to it.”

  “Including,” Nicolai Tarasov said, “the Tarasovs, the Pevsners, the Berezovskys, and our cousin Svetlana.”

  “Why?” Jake Torine asked.

  “They felt there was too much SVR influence on the Patriarch,” the archbishop said. “I decided that it was my Christian duty to give the Patriarch the benefit of the doubt, and last month…”

  “On May twenty-seventh, a day which, like Pearl Harbor, will live in infamy,” Tarasov said, “you signed the ‘Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.’”

  “Nicolai,” Laura Berezovsky said to her uncle, “you can’t talk like that to His Eminence!”

  “Why not? Svetlana’s Charley called him a ‘self-righteous sonofabitch.’”

  “He did what?” Svetlana demanded incredulously.

  She glared at Castillo. “Did you?”

  “That was after Charley told him to go fuck himself,” Vic D’Alessandro confirmed, wonderingly. “I never thought I’d hear anyone tell an archbishop to go fuck himself, not even a Russian one.”

  Castillo, stonefaced, shrugged.

  “Children, children,” the archbishop said placatingly. “We all make small mistakes from time to time. Mine was in not listening to Aleksandr and Nicolai when they told me of their suspicions about SVR influence on the throne of the Moscow Patriarch.

  “And then I immediately compounded the error by what I thought at the time was an offering of, so to speak, an ecumenical olive branch. I notified His Holiness the Metropolitan that, barring any objections from him, it was my intention to authorize the marriage of one of his flock now living outside Russia. I speak, of course, of Svetlana.”

  “And what did this guy say?” D’Alessandro asked.

  If behavior in the past is any key to the future, Charley thought, one more glass of wine and Vic will start singing “O sole mio” and then, weeping, confess to breaking his mother’s heart when he joined the Army instead of becoming a priest.

  “Not ‘this guy,’ my son,” the archbishop said, “but His Eminence, the Patriarch of Moscow.”

  “Got it,” Vic replied. “So what did he say?”

  “Boris, my son,” the archbishop said, “will you tell our friends how the Church feels about marriage and divorce?”

  “The Church,” the archimandrite began, “disapproves of divorce. Divorced individuals are usually allowed to remarry only after they have satisfied a severe penance imposed on them by their bishop. Second-marriage wedding ceremonies are more penitential than joyful. On the other hand, widows are permitted to remarry and their second marriage is considered just as valid as the first.”

  “It was on the basis of this,” His Eminence broke in, “that I could see no reason to deny Svetlana permission to remarry as a widow. Her intended, Aleksandr told me, and she confirmed, was un-churched, canonically speaking a heathen, but that could be dealt with. Aleksandr, Dmitri, and Nicolai were all willing to serve as Charley’s
godfathers.

  “I informed His Holiness the Patriarch of my reasoning. He immediately replied that I apparently wasn’t aware of all the facts, in particular that the reason Svetlana was a widow was because she had either arranged for the murder of her husband, the late Polkovnik Evgeny Alekseev, or killed him herself. His Holiness also said that Svetlana’s intended, one Colonel Carlos G. Castillo, had a well-deserved reputation as one of the CIA’s best assassins and had most recently shown his skill at that by garroting a fine Christian KSB officer, one Podpolkovnik Kirill Demidov, and leaving his body in a taxi outside the American embassy in Vienna.”

  Vic D’Alessandro said: “So that’s why you were pushing Charley so hard about what he knew about Demidov getting whacked. The… what do you call him? The Patriarch was accusing him of being the whacker.”

  “I would suggest, my son, that the Patriarch made that accusation because someone had told him that vile accusation. I recall your comment that you couldn’t lie to a priest. Neither should anyone professing to adhere to our faith.”

  Jake Torine said, quoting, “‘It has been my sad experience that the worst of liars are willing to utter the most outrageous untruths with one hand on the Holy Bible and the other on their mother’s tombstone or the heads of their children.’”

  The archbishop nodded.

  “Carlos, my son, I understand why you thought I was making reference to you when I said that, but I really wasn’t.”

  “I deeply apologize for what I said, Your Eminence,” Castillo said.

  “What exactly did you say?” Sweaty demanded. “I can’t believe that you actually called His Eminence a sonofabitch and told him to go—”

  “I’m sure, my child, I would remember if Carlos said anything like that to me,” the archbishop said, and changed the subject. “So when I heard from the Patriarch about what terrible people you and your Carlos were, Archimandrite Boris and I came down here to see what Aleksandr, Nicolai, and you had to say. And to speak to Carlos, and, if I could find them, to any friends of his.