“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.
“One of those he eliminated, for example, was Kurt Kuhl, who owned several pastry shops — called the Kuhlhaus — in Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. Vladimir Vladimirovich had good reason to believe that Herr Kuhl was a CIA asset who over the years had facilitated the defection of a number of SVR personnel, and agents controlled by the SVR.
“The bodies of Herr Kuhl and his wife were found behind the Johann Strauss statue in the Stadtpark in Vienna. They had been murdered with metal garrotes of the type the former Hungarian secret police, the Államvédelmi Hatóság, were fond of using. It isn’t much of a secret that those members of the Államvédelmi Hatóság who hadn’t been hung by their countrymen when Hungary severed its connection with the Soviet Union often found employment with the SVR, so Vladimir Vladimirovich could send that message, too, to other CIA assets. ‘We know about you, and are going to eliminate you.’
“Another problem for Vladimir Vladimirovich was right here,” Pevsner continued, gesturing toward Liam Duffy. “The SVR had a very profitable business going shipping cocaine and heroin from Paraguay and elsewhere through Argentina to Europe and the United States. The profits were used to fund SVR operations all over South America. When, rarely, the movements were detected, palms were greased, the drugs went back into the pipeline, and the shippers either never went to trial, or if they did were either freed or slapped on the wrist.
“Then my friend Liam was assigned the duty — the Gendarmería Nacional was — and things changed. Liam is a devout Roman Catholic who took his oath of office seriously. When his people intercepted a drug shipment, they burned the drugs and ran the shippers before courts which were not for sale.
“Worse than that, so far as Vladimir Vladimirovich was concerned, was that Liam began to hold — what’s that charming phrase? — drumhead courts-martial at the arrest scene, which saved the government the cost of trials and the expense of feeding the drug people during long periods of incarceration.”
“Holy Scripture teaches us,” the archbishop said disapprovingly, to ‘judge not, lest thee be judged.’”
“I considered that prayerfully, Your Eminence,” Duffy said, “and decided I could successfully argue my case before Saint Peter.”
“Vladimir Vladimirovich sent people to eliminate my friend Liam,” Pevsner continued, “and his family, and the attempt was made on Christmas Eve. All of the assassinations, or attempted assassinations, took place on Christmas Eve. In Liam’s case, the attempt failed.
“And finally, there was a reporter, Günther Freidler, who worked for Charley’s Tages Zeitung newspaper chain.”
“Excuse me?” the archbishop asked, and then parroted, “‘Charley’s newspaper chain’?”
“My brother Charley has two personas, Your Eminence,” Pevsner explained. “One of them is Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, U.S. Army, Retired, and the other is Herr Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, who is by far the principal stockholder of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, which owns, among other things, the Tages Zeitung newspaper chain.” He paused, and then added, “If Your Eminence was concerned that my brother Charley’s interest in marrying my cousin Svetlana is based on her affluence, I respectfully suggest it is not a factor.”
“I don’t understand,” the archbishop said.
“I’m a bastard, Your Eminence,” Castillo said. “Born out of wedlock to an eighteen-year-old German girl, following her seventy-two-hour dalliance with an eighteen-year-old American chopper jockey.”
“‘Chopper jockey’?” the archbishop parroted.