Winter Palace (2 page)

Several times the medic raised up from his thrusting and prodding and listening to Alexander's chest to shout in some strange tongue at the two drivers up front. The sounds were then repeated into a microphone and repeated back to them through a metallic speaker. Jeffrey understood none of it.

All he could see was the needle in Alexander's bared arm and the closed eyes and the electric voltage exploding his gray-skinned body up in a pantomime of painful exertion.

Jeffrey felt bleak helplessness wrap itself around his own heart and squeeze. And squeeze. And squeeze.

He gripped the end of the stretcher with both hands, leaned over as far as he could, and screamed out the plea, “
BREATHE!
”

No one even looked his way. His action was perfectly in order with the controlled pandemonium holding them all.

The hospital appeared, announced by a dual shout from
both people in front. The driver misjudged the emergency room entrance and hit the curb so hard that Jeffrey's head slammed into the unpadded metal roof. Stars exploded in his head.

The ambulance stopped and the back doors slammed open. Impatient hands threw him out and aside with practiced motions. Through blurred eyes Jeffrey saw the stretcher slapped onto a gurney and wheeled away. He reached forward, but his rubber legs would not follow. They could not.

He did not know how long he stood there before the perky little nurse came out to ask, “Did you come with the gentleman with the heart?”

He nodded, then groaned aloud as the movement sent a painful lance up his neck. He gripped the ambulance's open door for support.

“Don't worry yourself so,” the nurse said, misunderstanding his reaction. “You'll only make matters worse, going on like this. The gentleman needs your strength just now.”

His eyes did not seem to want to focus. He strained, saw the young woman growing steadily more impatient, then his eyes watered over.

“You'll have to stop that, and right smart,” she snapped, and raised her clipboard. “I need some information on the gentleman in there. What's his name, now?”

Jeffrey opened his mouth, tried to reply, wanted to say, that man is my boss and my relative and my best friend. But the blanket of blackness rose up and covered him.

****

Jeffrey awoke to a blinding white light.

“Don't move, please,” a professionally cold female voice ordered. “Can you tell me your full name?”

“Jeffrey Allen Sinclair,” he replied weakly.

“Do you know where you are?”

“At the hospital. Is my friend—”

“Just a moment. Look to your left, no, move only your
eyes. Now to your right. Up, please. Can you flex your fingers? Fine. Now your toes.”

“How is Alexander,” he demanded, more strongly this time.

“The gentleman you arrived with? Cardiac arrest? He appears to have stabilized.” Fingers probed his head, the back of his skull, his neck, worked down his spine. “Any discomfort?”

“No,” he lied. “How long was I—”

“A few moments only.” She then spoke to someone Jeffrey could not see. “No immediately visible damage to skull or vertebrae. Possible mild concussion, probable muscle contusion in the cervical area. Have a complete set of spinal x-rays done, then fit him with a neck brace.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“You'll be staying with us for a bit, I'm afraid.” A tired woman's face came into view and gave him a brief smile. “We'll need to keep you under observation for a day or so. Anyone who passes out at our front door can't be allowed to get off easy.”

The longer he was awake, the more his head and neck throbbed. Even blinking his eyes brought discomfort. “All right.”

“Popped your head on the ambulance roof, did you?”

“Yes.”

She was not surprised. “The casualty department's entranceway is too narrow by half. You're the third one this year who's knocked his noggin. First time we've had one delivered on a gurney, though. You must have caught it right smart. Well, not to worry. Anyone we should contact for you?”

Jeffrey gave the number for Katya, his soon-to-be wife. “Are you sure my friend—”

“He's as well as can be expected, given the circumstances. Now, off to x-ray with you.” The weary smile reappeared briefly. “And, Nurse, best give our patient something for the pain he claims he doesn't feel.”

Chapter 2

Цáрю небéсний, утiш
и́
телю, Дýше ícтини, що вс
ю́
ди єс
и́
i все наповн
я́
єш, скáрбе дiбр i житт
я́
подáтелю, прийд
и́
i всел
и́
ся в нас, i оч
и́
сти нас вiд ус
я́
коï сквéрни, i спас
и́
, благ
и́
й, дýшi нáшi.

“
Heavenly King, Advocate, Spirit of Truth, who are everywhere present and fill all things, Treasury of Blessings, Bestower of Life, come and dwell within us; cleanse us of all that defiles us and, O Good One, save our souls
.”

The newly reopened Ukrainian Rites Catholic Church of St. Stanislav sat on the outskirts of Lvov, the second largest city in the newly reinstituted nation of the Ukraine. When the congregation had intoned their amen, the priest continued with the liturgy from John of Chrysostom, reciting the words as they had been spoken in more than a hundred tongues for over fifteen hundred years: “Blessed be our God, always, now and for ever and ever. May the Lord God remember you in His kingdom always, now and for ever and ever. Lord, you will open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise.”

Ivona Aristonova stood with the others waiting before the bishop's confessional and droned another amen, her thoughts elsewhere. She did not much care for confession to the bishop, and was grateful that the man was normally too busy to perform this duty himself. Yet today he was here, and as his private secretary she was obliged to stand and wait; to do otherwise would have set a hawk among the pigeons.

It was not that the bishop would ever refer to something from the confessional in their daily life; he was too good a priest ever to suggest that he even remembered what she spoke. No, her discomfort came from the fact that inside the confessional the bishop took his role seriously. He asked questions for which she had no answer. He probed where she did not care to look.

The priest conducting Mass stood before the altar table,
separated from the congregation by a frieze of ancient icons. It was one of only three such tableaus, from over two thousand, which had survived the Communist years. He droned, “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and always and forever.”

“Amen.” Ivona held the prayer book in a limp hand, the words so often heard that she could recite virtually the entire book from memory. To take her mind off what was to come, she cast her eyes back and forth around the scarred and pitted church. For the past forty years, it had seen service first as a stable for the horses that drew the streetcars, then as a garage and oil depot. Only two months earlier had it been reopened as a church.

“For peace from on high and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.”

“Lord, have mercy.” The air was awash in the incense burning before the altar, the church full to overflowing. Every seat was taken, the back area packed with those who arrived too late to find seats. A church made for a maximum of six hundred now held well over a thousand souls.

“For the peace of the whole world, for the well-being of the holy churches of God, and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord.”

“Lord have mercy.” It was like this virtually every service. They were holding seven masses on Sunday, and still people arrived a half hour early to be sure of a place.

“For this city, for every city and countryside and for the faithful who live in them, let us pray to the Lord.”

“Lord, have mercy.” Every side altar was a solid wall of flickering light, fueled by countless candle flames. Worshipers were going through devotional candles at a rate that even two months ago would have been unthinkable. Locating a reliable source was yet another of Ivona Aristonova's unending worries.

“For good weather, for abundant fruits of the earth, and for peaceful times, let us pray to the Lord.”

“Lord have mercy.” The bishop's assistant had recently departed to study abroad, and to Ivona's mind this was no great loss. The young man was like most of the Ukrainian Rites priests who had been consecrated in secret—poorly trained and suspiciously hostile toward all outsiders, including the bishop, who had recently returned from exile. Still, his absence meant that Ivona and the bishop and the priest saying Mass today were basically alone when it came to coping with the unending problems of resurrecting a church that had been outlawed for forty-six years.

“For those traveling by land, sea, or air; for the sick, the suffering, the imprisoned and for their salvation, let us pray to the Lord.”

“Lord have mercy.” Ivona chanted the words as she did most things in church—by rote and without feeling. Her mind remained fastened upon the incredible changes that had taken place within the Ukrainian Rites Church over the last few years and the overwhelming difficulties that accompanied them.

When Stalin convened the 1946 Ukrainian bishops' synod and declared the entire church illegal, worship according to traditions founded in the fourth century became a crime against the state. Following the decree, the church's leaders—the Metropolitan and all bishops—were gathered and shipped off to Siberian concentration camps. Only two survived, so battered in body and soul that neither would ever walk again.

All cathedrals and churches were declared state property. Many worshipers followed Stalin's orders and joined the only church officially tolerated within the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church. Stalin and his henchmen held no special affection for the Orthodox; they simply wished to bring all believers into a single unit so that they might more easily be monitored, dominated, and eventually exterminated. The Russian Orthodox Church had the singular advantage of being based in Moscow, and thus could be more easily controlled.

Josef Stalin harbored a violent hatred for Christian churches, the Ukrainian Rites Catholic Church in particular. It was too nationalistic, and it owed allegiance to a foreign-based pope. As soon as World War II ended and the need for the church members' assistance in defeating the Nazi invaders was over, Stalin began his infamous purge.

In the decades that followed, however, the Ukrainian Rites Church did not die as Stalin and his successors demanded. Despite the harshest possible punishments leveled against convicted believers, the church survived.

It moved underground. Mass was celebrated in cellars. Priests were taught and consecrated in absolute secrecy. Weddings and christenings and baptisms were performed in the dead of night. Bishops lived ever on the run, ever watchful for the KGB, often trapped and tortured and sentenced and imprisoned. The toil and terror and tears of its priests and believers earned the Ukrainian Rites Church the title of the Catacomb Church. Within the Catholic hierarchy, the two names became interchangeable.

Through it all, the Ukrainian Rites Church still did not die. When it again became legal in 1991, four million, five hundred thousand people claimed membership.

“Help us, save us, have mercy on us, and protect us, O Lord, by your grace.”

“Lord have mercy.” It was Ivona's turn to enter the confessional. She knelt, recited her rehearsed lines, and waited. She dreaded what was now to come.

From behind the intricately carved wooden screen, Bishop Michael Denisov sighed and spoke in his ever-gentle voice, “So, so, dear sister Ivona Aristonova. And have you made peace with your husband?”

But Ivona was saved from both answering and receiving more of the bishop's painful probing by shouts rising above the chanted service. She and the bishop started upright as the priest cut off in mid-sentence.

“Gone, all gone!” A chorus of voices wailed their distress through the sudden silence.

“The treasures have been stolen!”

Chapter 3

Jeffrey awoke to find familiar violet-gray eyes peering down at him with a worried expression. “Are you all right?”

He nodded, or started to, then moaned as the pain brought him fully awake. “How?” he croaked, or tried to, but was stopped by the dryness of his throat.

Katya reached beyond his field of vision, came up with a cup. “Don't try to raise up.” She fitted the straw in his mouth and said as he drank, “You've had a neck strain and possibly a mild concussion.”

He managed, “Alexander?”

“He's alive,” she answered, and took a shaky breath. “It's almost ten o'clock. I went to your apartment and waited almost an hour, but when you didn't show up for dinner I went by the shop, and when I saw all the police outside the door . . .” Katya had to pause. “I never want to go through anything like that. Not ever again.”

Jeffrey lay still and recalled the events. It had been almost closing time at the Mount Street antiques shop. Just another day. He had been giving the antique table on the front podium a careful polish when the sudden thump had echoed from the back office-alcove. He had called Alexander's name. No response. He had set down his polish and rag and walked back, feeling an icy touch without knowing why. Then Alexander's legs had come into view.

He remembered screaming into the telephone, though he could not recall having dialed a number. He remembered trying to resuscitate the old man for what seemed like several lifetimes, but he had no recollection of the ambulance's arriving or of anyone gathering them up or starting off. Or closing the shop.