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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 into 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 all? 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.

The man he spoke to at the dacha off Kiselny Boulevard was one of the night guards but he agreed to take a message.

“Tell the colonel my name is Father Maxim Klimovsky. Got that? Yes, Klimovsky. Tell him I work in the private residence of the Patriarch. I must speak to him. It is urgent. I will phone back on this number at ten this morning.”

He got his connection at that hour. The voice at the other end was quiet but authoritative.

“Yes, Father, this is Colonel Grishin.”

In the booth the priest held the receiver in a damp hand, a bead of sweat across his forehead.

“Look, Colonel, you do not know me. But I am a passionate admirer of Mr. Komarov. Last night a man came to visit the Patriarch. He brought documents. He referred to one as a Black Manifesto. ... Hello? Hello? Are you there?”

“My dear Father Klimovsky, I think we should meet,” said the voice.

CHAPTER 13

AT THE FAR SOUTHEASTERN END OF STARAYA PLOSHAD IS
Slavyansky Square where stands one of the smallest oldest, and most beautiful churches in Moscow. All Saints of Kulishki was originally built in the thirteenth century of wood, when the Russ capital comprised only the Kremlin and a few surrounding acres. After burning down, it was rebuilt in stone in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and remained in constant use until 1918.

Moscow was then still known as the city of Twenty-Times-Twenty Churches, for there were over four hundred of them. The Communists closed down ninety percent and destroyed three-quarters. Among those that remained abandoned but otherwise intact was All Saints of Kulishki.

After the fall of Communism in 1991, the little church underwent four years of meticulous restoration at the hands of teams of craftsmen until it reopened as a place of worship. It was here that Father Maxim Klimovsky came on the day following his phone call. He attracted no attention because he was dressed in the standard full-length black cassock and stovepipe hat of an Orthodox priest, and there were several of them in and around the church. He took a votive candle, lit it, and walked to the wall on the right of the entrance, where he stood contemplating the restored icons as if in prayer and contemplation.

In the center of the church, ablaze with gold and paintings, a resident priest stood behind the altar chanting the litany to a small group in Street clothes who answered with the responses. But the right-hand wall, behind a series of arches, was unoccupied apart from the single priest.

Father Maxim glanced nervously at his watch. Five minutes after the appointed hour. He did not know he had been seen from the parked car across the little square, nor had he noticed the three men alight after he entered the building. He did not know they had checked to see if he was being followed; he knew none of these things, or how they were done.

He heard the slight scrape of a shoe on the flagstone behind him and felt the man move into position beside him.

“Father Klimovsky?”

‘‘Yes.”

“I am Colonel Grishin. I believe you have something to tell me.”

He glanced sideways. The man was taller than him, slim, in a dark winter coat. He turned and looked down at Father Maxim. The priest met his eyes and was frightened. He hoped he was doing the right thing and would not regret it. He nodded and swallowed.

“First tell me why, Father. Why the phone call?”

“You must understand, Colonel, that I have long been a keen admirer of Mr. Komarov. His policies, his plans for Russia—all admirable.”

“How gratifying. And what happened the night before last?”