The Berkut (34 page)

On an elevated track bed the corporal showed them where he'd seen the bodies. There had been no wounds on them, he reiterated, but he was certain that they were dead. Ezdovo and Gnedin fanned out on a methodical search of the area, looking for fresh graves or any sign of digging. When they found a depression twenty meters away, Ezdovo went off to fetch extra manpower, and soon returned with three men with picks and shovels. It was amazing what the Red Badge could do, Gnedin thought.

The grave was larger than they had anticipated; it contained eight badly decomposed corpses. However, by size alone they were sure that one of them was Stumpfegger's. The bodies were taken to a nearby hospital. Ezdovo returned to their headquarters to fetch the two Nazis' medical records, and the next day Gnedin confirmed their identities by autopsy. To make their records complete they took photographs of the two corpses.
In
accordance with Petrov's standing order, Soviet military authorities were not informed of their findings, but the group knew that Bormann and Stumpfegger were dead. The Germans were reburied in the same hole where they had been found.

That night the Special Operations Group celebrated and the brandy flowed freely. They were eager for Petrov to return so that they could show him how productive they had been during his absence.

40 – June 9, 1945, 10:15 A.M.

Though rolling banks of yellow clouds threatened rain, Petrov rode his bicycle, preferring the fresh morning air and exercise to riding in an automobile. He had discovered long ago that investigators tended to go to seed in direct proportion to the amount of time spent behind their desks, so he exercised every day, no matter what the weather. His preference was for walking, at a pace most people found painful. It was not a walk, but neither was it a run; it was something strenuous in between that served him well. When he was in a hurry he rode his bicycle, a dilapidated specimen many years old with no fenders and its paint long ago obliterated by tumors of rust.

The Archangel Basilica was a black fortress, a forgotten landmark in a crumbling residential neighborhood near the Moskva River. Pulling into the alley beside the church, Petrov left his bicycle near the door. He liked the church, especially its tall stained-glass windows. Despite the overcast, the centuries-old glass seemed to gather all the available light from without and concentrate it inside the building. Even in winter the interior of the church was bright and alive, a stark contrast to its run-down exterior and the Moscow weather. He made his way to the back of the building, comfortable with its familiarity. He'd been here many times before. Passing through the sacristy, which was lined with books on shelves and withered, discolored cardboard boxes, he walked through a white marble far;:ade onto the raised area that had once served as the altar. Once again it struck him that the difference between churches and palaces was indeed narrow. Both bespoke power; both demanded allegiance under penalty of death or a condemned soul, the difference being only the time frame in which payment would be demanded.

The Archangel, as it had once been known to its parishioners, had ceased its holy mission nearly ten years before. Since the Revolution hundreds of Roman Catholic churches had been confiscated by the Central Committee of the party and reassigned to uses termed "more socially productive." Many of them now housed trade unions or gymnasiums. The Archangel served the state as the headquarters for the clandestine operation known by those inside the Kremlin, with uncharacteristic directness, as Vatican Watch. It was ironic, Petrov thought, that the inhabitants of the church had gone full circle, from listening to Vatican directives in order to carry them out to finding ways to obstruct or deflect them.

The head of Vatican Watch was a sixty-five-year-old former Jesuit known only as Father Grigory. The ex-priest led an elite intelligence network whose sole focus was the Vatican and its officials. Few Russians besides Petrov knew about the operation. Over the years he and the Jesuit had cooperated many times, and a close relationship had developed, first on a professional basis, later on a more personal and amicable level, with the strongest bond being the fact that both had survived various purges. Petrov had always found the priest's information impeccable, as were his analyses; for his part, the hulking priest had come to the same conclusion about the mysterious Petrov, who enjoyed the same kind of shadowy reputation in the Kremlin. They were similar beasts, and to the extent that their secretive and independent natures permitted, they trusted each other.

Father Grigory had been born a White Russian and had served in the Vatican before being reassigned to the Czar's court as part of the Church's state delegation. From his position he saw graphic evidence of the vast gap between the aristocracy and the peasants; the serf class had been liberated in 1861, but with little real effect. Grigory had written many reports on the plight of Russia's poor, but the Vatican had shown little interest. Its power brokers were more concerned with the goings-on at the court, including the maintenance of a list of upper
echelon dalliances among relatives and confidants of Nicholas
II,
and in finding ways to take advantage of this knowledge, than with the disposition of mere pastoral matters. Lenin had been secretly returned to Petrograd by the provisional government; soon he took control of the Petrograd Soviet, denounced all "imperialist wars" and demanded peace. Nicholas II had already abdicated when, in October 1918, massive strikes ensued. Kerensky bolted from Petro grad, hoping to rally the army behind him, but it was already too late; Lenin had outflanked him and the Bolsheviks had complete control of Russia's principal cities. The Revolution was over; what blood would flow would be spilled in the civil war that followed.

Father Grigory watched as sides were drawn: White-pro-Czar and pro-European intervention-against Red. He chose the latter, disavowing his order and his Church, and declared himself on the side of those who fought to improve temporal conditions. Petrov had discussed the history and events of the Revolution many times with his Jesuit colleague. Both observed that as the revolt dimmed in memory, great gaps still existed between layers of society; even so, it was apparent that a much greater number of Russians were better off under the party than they had been under the monarchy. In the end, this was all that counted. In this the two men were in complete agreement; for both of them the nobler goals of the Revolution still burned.

As always, the priest heard Petrov's approach and turned his head.

Though Grigory wore glasses with thick lenses to pore over his papers, Petrov was certain that they were no more than clever props to mislead visitors. "Petrov," he said brightly, "I figured you for dead in one of your own intrigues. What do you need? You never come to Father Grigory until you need him. If I were a young pup, my ego would be bruised by your lack of attention."

The priest's table was in the area of the church where Russian aristocrats had once knelt in reverence for the Holy Trinity. The desk was a cluttered affair, piled with papers, magazine clippings, newspapers and notes of many sizes, most of them torn from larger scraps of paper. Nearby were gray metal filing cabinets with their drawers open. On the periphery were thousands of boxes crammed with papers; throughout the area cartons were stacked more than twice a normal man's height. Father Grigory had no staff or personal bureaucracy; when he needed to write, he scratched his words on paper by hand in largely illegible strokes with broad-tipped pens carved from goose feathers. Despite the absence of worldly trappings, the politically aware in Moscow knew Father Grigory well and were respectful. Through various political purges he had retained his power, and this fact did not escape interested observers; they recognized direct access to the top when they saw it.

"Always the same greeting, priest," Petrov said. "Age is squeezing your arteries closed. It's never 'How are you, Petrov?' or 'Good to see you, Petrov.' You never change."

"I lend stability to ideological curmudgeons such as yourself." "I need information."

"Ah!" shouted the old man happily. "You see? I rest my case." "You take pride in small accomplishments."

"Consider me admonished. What's it to be this time?" the Jesuit asked. It was an unusual day when Petrov came calling.

"The Roman Church. It's said that the current Roman pontiff is predisposed toward the Nazis. What can you tell me about this unusual predisposition?"

The priest gestured animatedly toward a packing crate near the table, wiped a soiled porcelain cup with a dirty rag, filled it with hot tea and motioned for Petrov to drink.
"Nazdorovya,
bottoms up," Grigory said before draining his own cup. "Pope Pius the Twelfth, born Eugenio Pacelli, is a hopeless, shameless Germanophile. He speaks German better than you, even inside his personal apartment in Vatican City. It is amazing to think that the highest level of business in the Mother Church is conducted in German. Pacelli was papal nuncio in Munich during the First World War, and from 1920 to 1929 served in Berlin in a similar capacity. His foreign experience enabled him to ascend to the office of secretary of state under his predecessor, Pius the Eleventh, and gave him the recognition he needed to become the most recent manifestation of Saint Peter. His staff is entirely German
,
virtually all laymen. I sometimes think Pacelli is more German than Bismarck!"

"Hitler is also a Catholic; he was educated in church schools in Austria," Petrov observed.

"Bravo!" the priest croaked. "You don't disappoint me. You've been studying again."

"Only a little reading," Petrov countered, embarrassed because he understood that this was the priest's way of telling him he was a neophyte in such matters.

"Don't think for a moment that the circumstances of Hitler's youth translate into adult Catholicism. They don't. The link is far more temporal and insidious. It reeks of opportunism on both sides of the Alps. I am certain that Pacelli supported Hitler's invasion here."

"The lesser of two evils: Hitler or the Bolshevik atheists." "That, friend Petrov, is the heart of it. Further, the Germans, in their cultural fastidiousness, have a law that says that if citizens formally declare their religious preference-and, as you might expect, they are encouraged to do scr-they must be taxed. This tax's specific origins are obscure, but date back to long before Hitler, and you can bet that a Jesuit was involved!" Father Grigory retained great pride in the accomplishments of his former order, if not for its religious mission or fervor. "Imagine this, Petrov. From each good little German's weekly paycheck the state extracts a tax for the Church. At year's end the government transmits the money-and the accrued interest-in one huge lump to Rome. The tax is called the
Kirchensteuer,
and it has been paid by the Nazis throughout this current war, as well as by previous political regimes. The most recent payment was forwarded to Rome in December of last year." Father Grigory clasped his hands together. "Here's another curious thing: the German government extracts no fee for doing this-undoubtedly an oversight due to the absence of Jewish accountants in the Nazi bureaucracy."

"How much money is involved?"

The priest grinned. "There are an estimated thirty million Catholics in Germany-at least there were before their army ventured across the Bug River. I estimate one billion Reichsmarks annually from the tax. Before the war, America was the largest contributor to Rome, though the funds came in haphazardly because the government there is not involved. But during the war American contributions have fallen off sharply, and for the past five years the Germans have been the primary source of foreign revenue for the Vatican. It will be interesting to see how the Western press reports this story."

"Which you undoubtedly will provide them in a tidy package." "I do what I can," the priest said with mock humility. "But there's more to it-much more. It's complicated, and even with effective fieldwork and careful analysis, I can only get to the edges of it. The Church was curiously silent as Hitler grabbed the Continent a piece at a time. In return for such considerations, Hitler has made only minimal-it could be characterized as token-interference with Vatican activities. The Church in Germany is much the same as it was before Hitler ascended to power."

Petrov closed his eyes and shifted on his seat.

Father Grigory sipped his tea. "Here we enter the netherworld of behavioral analysis, a new but promising tool for the historian. I can understand the Vatican's position, but why would Hitler be so cooperative? Could it be that he didn't want to risk the anger of thirty million citizens?"

"You think there's more to it?"

"There is much more," Father Grigory told Petrov. "It is clear that early in the war Pacelli had definitive evidence of the death camps and their function. Did the Church and its Pope speak out? Not until the end, when they could avoid it no longer. Did this signify fear of Hitler-or worse, tacit support for his ends? My answer is that the Church under the Pacelli regime had strong historical antecedents for what the Nazis were doing. It was the Church, after all, that first forced Jews to wear the yellow star and forbade them from mixing with Christians. That was in the twelfth century. It's a blemish on the Papists' self-proclaimed humanitarian image."