“And if I help you, what do you need?”
“To hide. But in plain sight. To move but not be recognized. To see the people I have come to see.”
“You think Komarov will know you are here?”
“Quite soon. There are a million informants in this city. You know that. You use many yourself. All can be bought. The man is no fool.”
“He can buy all the organs of the state. Even I never take on the entire state.”
“As you will have read, Komarov has promised his partners and financial backers, the Dolgoruki mafia, the world and all therein. Soon now, they will be the state. What happens to you?”
“All right. I can hide you. Though for how long even I do not know. Inside our community no one will find you until I say so. But you cannot live here. It is too obvious. I have many safe houses. You will have to pass from one to the other.”
“Safe houses are fine,” said Monk. “To sleep in. To move about, I will need papers. Perfectly forged ones.”
Gunayev shook his head.
“We don’t forge papers here. We buy the real thing.”
“I forgot. Everything is for money.”
“What else do you need?”
“To start with, these.”
Monk wrote several lines on a sheet of paper and handed it over. Gunayev ran his eye down the list. Nothing was a problem. He reached the last item.
“What the hell do you need that for?”
Monk explained.
“You know that I own half the Metropol Hotel,” Gunayev sighed.
“I’ll try and just use the other half.”
The Chechen failed to see the joke.
“How long until Grishin knows you are in town?”
“It depends. About two days, maybe three. When I start to move about, there are bound to be some traces left. People talk.”
“All right. I will give you four men. They will watch your back, move you from place to place. The leader is one you have met. In the front seat of the BMW, Magomed. He’s good. Give a list of what you need to him from time to time. It will be provided. And I still think you are crazy.”
By midnight Monk was back in his room at the Metropol. At the end of the corridor was an open area by the elevators. There were four leather club chairs. Two of them were occupied by silent men who read newspapers and would do so all night. In the small hours of the morning two suitcases were delivered to Monk’s room.
¯
MOST Muscovites and certainly all foreigners presume that the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church lives in a sumptuous suite of apartments deep in the heart of the medieval Daniovsky Monastery, with its white crenellated walls and its complex of abbeys and cathedrals.
This is certainly the impression, and it is a carefully cultivated one. In one of the great office buildings within the monastery guarded by fiercely loyal Cossack soldiers, the Patriarch does indeed keep his offices, and these are the heart and center of the Patriarchate of Moscow and All the Russias. But he does not actually live there.
He lives in a quite modest town house at Number Five Chisti Pereulok, meaning “Clean Passage,” a narrow side street just outside the central district of the city.
Here he is attended by a priestly staff of personal private secretary, valet/butler, two manservants, and three nuns who cook and clean. There is also a driver on call and two Cossack guards. The contrast with the magnificence of the Vatican or the splendor of the palace of the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church could not be greater.
In the winter of 1999 the holder of that office was still His Holiness Alexei II, elected ten years earlier, just before the fall of Communism. Still only in his early fifties then, he became the inheritor of a church demoralized and traduced from within and persecuted and corrupted from without.
From the very earliest days, Lenin, who loathed the priesthood, realized that Communism had only one rival for the hearts and minds of the teeming mass of the Russian peasantry, and he determined to destroy it. Through systematic brutality and corruption he and his successors nearly succeeded.
Even Lenin and Stalin balked at the complete extermination of the priesthood and the church, fearful they might inspire a backlash not even the NKVD could control. So after the first pogroms in which churches were burned, their treasures stolen, and the priests hanged, the Politburo sought to destroy the church by discrediting it.
The measures were numerous. Aspirants of high intelligence were banned from the seminaries, which were controlled by the NKVD and later the KGB. Only plodders from the periphery of the USSR, Moldavia in the west and Siberia in the east, were accepted. The level of education was kept low and the quality of the priesthood degraded.
Most churches were simply closed and allowed to rot. A few remained open, patronized mainly by the elderly and very old, i.e., the harmless. The officiating priests were required to report regularly to the KGB and did so, acting as informers against their own parishioners.
A young person seeking baptism would be reported by the priest he approached. After that he would lose his high school place and a chance at university, and his parents would probably be ousted from their apartment. Virtually nothing went unreported to the KGB. Almost the entire priesthood, even if not involved, became tainted by popular suspicion.
The Communists used the stick-and-carrot technique, a crippling stick and a poisoned carrot.
Defenders of the church point out that the alternative was complete extirpation, and thus that keeping the church, any church, alive was a factor that outweighed the humiliation.
What the mild, shy, and retiring Alexei II inherited, therefore, was a college of bishops steeped in collaboration with the atheist state and a pastoral priesthood discredited among the people.
There were exceptions, wandering priests without parishes who preached and dodged arrest, or failed to do so and were sent to the labor camps. There were ascetics who withdrew to the monasteries to keep the faith alive by self-denial and prayer, but these hardly ever met the masses of the people.
In the aftermath of the collapse of Communism the opportunity occurred for a great renaissance, a rebirth that would put the church and the word of the Gospel back at the center of the lives of the traditionally deeply religious Russian people.
Instead the turning back to religion was experienced by the newer churches, vigorous, vibrant, dedicated, and prepared to go and preach to the people where they lived and worked. The Pentecostalists multiplied, the American missionaries poured in with their Baptism, Mormonism, and Seventh-Day Adventism. The reaction of the Russian Orthodox leadership was to beg Moscow for a ban on foreign preachers.
Its defenders argued that root-and-branch reform of the Orthodox hierarchy was impossible because the lower levels were also dross. The seminary-trained priests were of poor caliber, spoke in the archaic language of the scriptures, were possessed of pedantic or didactic speech, and had no training in non-academic public delivery. Their sermons were delivered to captive audiences, few in number and elderly in years.
The opportunity missed was vast, for as dialectical materialism was proved a false god and as democracy and capitalism failed to provide for the body, let alone the soul, the appetite for comfort was pan-national and profound. It went largely unanswered. Instead of sending out its best younger priests on missionary work, to proselytize for the faith and spread the word, the Orthodox Church sat in bishoprics, monasteries, and seminaries waiting for the people. Few came.
If a passionate and inspirational leadership was desperately needed after the fall of Communism, the mild scholar Alexei II was not the man to provide it. His election was a compromise between the various factions among the bishops, a man who, the inadequate hierarchs hoped, would not make waves.
Yet despite the burden he inherited and his own personal lack of charisma, Alexei II was not without some reforming instinct, which took courage. He did three important things.
His first reform was to divide the land of Russia int
o one hundred bishoprics, each far smaller than in the past. This enabled him to create new and younger bishops from among the best and most motivated priests, the least tarred by the brush of collaboration with the defunct KGB. Then he visited every see, making himself more visible to the people than any patriarch in history.
Second, he silenced the violent anti-Semitic outpourings of Metropolitan Ioann of St. Petersburg and made plain that any bishop preferring to offer hatred of man above love of God as his message to the faithful would depart his office. Ioann died in 1995, still privately railing against the Jews and Alexei II.
Finally he gave his personal sanction, over considerable opposition to Father Gregor Rusakov, a charismatic young priest who steadfastly refused to accept either a parish of his own or the discipline of the bishops through whose territory he moved on his itinerant pastoral mission. Many a Patriarch would have condemned the maverick monk and forbidden him the pulpit, but Alexei II had refused to take this path, preferring to accept the risk of giving the nomad priest his head. With his moving and passionate oratory Father Gregor reached out to the young and the agnostic, something that the bishops were failing to do.
One night in early November 1999 the gentle-mannered Patriarch was disturbed at his prayers just before midnight with the news that an emissary from London was waiting at the street door and asking for an audience.
The Patriarch was dressed in a plain gray cassock. He rose from his knees and crossed the floor of his small private chapel to take the letter from the hand of his secretary.
The missive was on the letterhead of the London bishopric, based in Kensington, and he recognized the signature of his friend Metropolitan Anthony. Nevertheless he frowned in perplexity that his colleague should contact him in such an unusual way.
The letter was in Russian, which Bishop Anthony both spoke and wrote. It asked his brother in Christ to receive as a matter of some urgency a man who bore news that concerned the church, news of great confidentiality and very disturbing.
The Patriarch folded the letter and glanced at his secretary.
“Where is he?”
“On the pavement, Holiness. He came by taxi.”
“He is a priest?”
“Yes, Holiness.”
The Patriarch sighed.
“Let him be admitted. You may return to your sleep. I will see him in my study. In ten minutes.”
The Cossack guard on night duty received a whispered command from the secretary and reopened the street door. He glanced at the gray taxi from Central City Cabs and the black-clad priest beside it.
“His Holiness will see you, Father,” he said. The priest paid off the cab.
Inside the house he was shown to a small waiting room. After ten minutes a plump priest entered and murmured: “Please come with me.”
The visitor was shown into a room that was clearly the study of a scholar. Apart from one exquisite Rublev icon on a white plaster wall, the room was adorned only with shelving on which row upon row of ancient books gleamed in the light from a table lamp on a desk. Behind the desk sat Patriarch Alexei. He gestured his guest to a chair.
“Father Maxim, would you bring us refreshments. Coffee? Yes, coffee for two, and some biscuits. You will take Communion in the morning, Father? Yes? Then there is just time for a biscuit before midnight.”
The plump valet/butler withdrew.
“So, my son, and how is my friend Anthony of London?”
There was nothing false about the visitor’s black cassock, nor even the black stovepipe that he had now removed to reveal blond hair. The only odd thing was that he wore no beard. Most Orthodox priests do, but not all the English ones.
“I’m afraid I could not say, Your Holiness, for I have not met him.”
Alexei stared at Monk without comprehension. He gestured at the letter in front of him.
“And this? I do not understand.”
Monk took a deep breath.
“First, Holiness, I have to confess that I am not a priest of the Orthodox Church. Neither is the letter from Bishop Anthony, though the paper is genuine and the signature skillfully forged. The purpose of this disrespectful charade is that I had to see you. You personally, in privacy and in conditions of great secrecy.”
The Patriarch’s eyes flickered in alarm. Was the man a lunatic? An assassin? There was an armed Cossack guard down below, but could he be summoned in time? He kept his face impassive. His butler would return in a few moments. Perhaps that would be the time to escape.
“Please explain,” he said.
“First, sir, I am by birth an American, not a Russian. Second, I come from a group of people in the West, discreet and powerful, who wish to help Russia and the church, not harm either of them. Third, I come only with news that my patrons feel you may believe to be important and troubling. Finally, I come to seek your help, not your blood. You have a phone at your elbow. You may use it to summon help. I will not stop you. But before you denounce me, I beg you to read what I have brought.”
Alexei frowned. Certainly the man did not appear to be a maniac, and he had already had time to kill him. Where was that fool Maxim with his coffee?
“Very well. What is it you have for me?”
Monk reached beneath his cassock and produced two slim folders, which he placed on the desk. The Patriarch glanced at the covers, one gray, the other black.
“What do these concern?”
“The gray one should be read first. It is a report that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the black file is no forgery, no joke, no hoax, no trick.”
“And the black file?”
“It is the private and personal manifesto of one Igor Alexeivich Komarov, who it appears will soon be president of Russia.”
There was a knock on the door. Father Maxim entered with a tray of coffee, cups, and biscuits. The mantel clock struck twelve.
“Too late,” sighed the Patriarch. “Maxim, you have deprived me of my biscuit.”
“I am terribly sorry, Holiness. The coffee ... I had to grind fresh ... I …”
“I am only jesting, Maxim.” He glanced at Monk. The man appeared hard and fit. If he was going to commit murder, he could probably kill them both. “Away to your bed, Maxim. May God give you good rest.”
The butler shuffled toward the door.
“Now,” said the Patriarch, “what does Mr. Komarov’s manifesto tell us?”
Father Maxim closed the door behind him, hoping no one had noticed the start he gave at the mention of Komarov’s name. In the corridor he glanced up and down. The secretary was already back in bed, the religious sisters would not appear for hours, the Cossack was downstairs. He knelt by the door and applied his ear to the keyhole.
Alexei II read the verification report first, as he was asked. Monk sipped his coffee. Finally the Patriarch had finished.
“An impressive story. Why did he do it?”
“The old man?”
“Yes.”
“We shall never know. As you see, he is dead. Murdered beyond any doubt. Professor Kuzmin’s report is adamant on that.”
“Poor fellow. I shall pray for him.”
“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.