Black Ops

either confusion or curiosity.

“That reincarnation of the Oprichina lasted until 1917, when the Soviets renamed it the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of Counterrevolution and Sabotage—acronym CHEKA.”

“That sounds as if you’re saying that the Tsar’s secret police just changed sides, became Communists,” Castillo said.

It was his first real comment during the long history lesson.

“You’re saying two things, you realize,” Svetlana said. “That the Oprichina changed sides is one, that the Oprichina became Communist is another. They never change sides. They may work for a different master, but they never become anything other than what they were, members of the Oprichina.”

With a hint of annoyance in his voice, Castillo said, “Svetlana, the first head of the CHEKA—Dzerzhinsky—was a lifelong revolutionary, a Communist. He spent most of his life in one Tsarist jail or another before the Communist revolution.”

“Challenge your sure and certain knowledge of this with these facts, Colonel,” Svetlana said. “Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky was born on the family’s estate in western Belarus. The Dziarzhynava family was of the original one thousand families in Ivan’s Oprichina. The estate was never confiscated by the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks or the Communists after they took power. The family owns it to this day.

“The Tsar’s Imperial Prisons were controlled by the Third Section. How well one fared in them—or whether one was actually in a prison, or was just on the roster—depended on how well one was regarded by the Oprichina. The fact that the history books paint the tale of this heroic revolutionary languishing, starved and beaten, for years in a Tsarist prison cell doesn’t make it true.”

She lit another cigarette, considered her thoughts, then went on:

“And don’t you think it a little odd that Lenin appointed Dzerzhinsky to head the CHEKA and kept him there when there were so many deserving and reasonably talented Communists close to him?”

Castillo said what he was thinking: “I’m going to have to think about this.”

She nodded as if she expected that would be his reply.

“The CHEKA was reorganized after the counterrevolution of 1922 as the GPU, which was renamed later the OGPU. A man named Yaakov Peters was named to head it. By Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, who was minister of the interior, which controlled the OGPU.

“Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack in 1926. And there were constant reorganizations and renaming after that. In ’34, the OGPU became the NKVD. In ’43, the NKGB—People’s Commissariat for State Security—was split off from the NKVD. And in ’46, after the Great War, it became the MGB, Ministry of State Security.”

“And you are suggesting, are you, that this state within a state . . .”

“The Oprichina,” she furnished.

“. . . the Oprichina was in charge of everything? Only the names changed and the Oprichina walked through the raindrops of the purges they had over there at least once a year?”

“You’re putting together things that don’t belong together,” she said. “Yes, the Oprichina remained— remains—in charge. No, not all the oprichniki managed to live through all the purges. Enough did, of course, in order to maintain the Oprichina and learn from the mistakes made.”

“You’re saying the Oprichina exists today?” Castillo said.

“Of course it does. Russia is under an oprichnik.”

“Putin?”

“Who else?”

“And you and your brother were—are—oprichniki?”

“And my husband is.”

“I’m a little confused, Svetlana. From what I understand, the intelligence services live very well in Russia. And from what you’ve just told me, you and your brother and your husband are members of this state within a state that lives very, very well.”

She nodded.

“So then why did you defect?”

She replied by asking a question.

“What do you really know about Vladimir Putin?”

Plenty—far more than you think I do.

“That, for example,” he replied somewhat defensively, “while Putin’s grandfather might really have been Stalin’s cook during the Second World War, he was also a political commissar in the Red Army. Including, among other places, Stalingrad.”

I said that because her attitude pisses me off.

What I should’ve said was, “Very little.” And the look in Jack’s eyes confirms that I should have.

She smiled. “So you have read a little about my country?”

She’s trying to make me mad. And succeeding.

“Colonel, you had best stop thinking about Russia as your country,” Castillo said. And then his mouth ran away with him. “But since you seem so curious about Mr. Putin, I know that his father was not foreman in a locomotive factory, or whatever the official bio has him doing, but was at least a colonel in the KGB.”

“Actually, a general. I’m impressed.”

“Charley, why don’t we call this off for tonight?” Davidson asked. “I don’t know about you, but I’m beat.”

Meaning, of course, that you think I’m about to lose it.

And my behavior suggests that I am.

What the hell is the matter with me?

“Yeah, me, too. It’s been a very long day. Couple of days,” Castillo said, then stood.

Svetlana said: “You said your question is, ‘Why did we defect?’ I am about to tell you.”

“Okay, tell me,” Castillo said more than a little sharply, and sat down.

“Because we came to the conclusion that sooner or later, Mr. Putin was going to get around to purifying us. We know too much. We have one family member who has, if not defected, done the next thing to it.”

“Really?” Castillo asked sarcastically.

“Really,” she said. “I don’t think Putin would throw us to starving dogs or off the Kremlin wall, but keeping us on drugs in a mental hospital for the rest of our lives seemed a distinct possibility.”

Castillo looked into her eyes.

I’ll be damned if I don’t believe her.

Svetlana smiled wanly and shrugged. “I told you that you weren’t going to believe me.”

“And why did you want to come here?” Castillo asked.

“We have a relative here, who saw what was going to happen long before we did. And got out in the chaos, when the Soviet Union was falling apart.”

“And he’s here?”

“Somewhere here. I don’t know exactly where. I was hoping, frankly, that you’d help me find him. His name is Aleksandr Pevsner. His mother and my mother were sisters.”

Castillo was quiet a long moment, hoping that he appeared to be in thought, not caught off guard.

“I’ve heard the name, of course,” he finally said as he stood up. “The last I heard, there were thirteen Interpol warrants out for him.”

He motioned for her to go to the door.

“Agent Britton will take you to your room, Colonel. If you need anything, ask her. Breakfast will be served at seven-thirty. I expect you and your brother to be there.”

She ground out her cigarette, stood, and walked through the door to the bedroom without saying anything.

Davidson followed her, and Castillo heard murmured conversation between Davidson and Sandra Britton, and then the sound of the door closing.

Davidson came back into the office.

“Thanks, Jack,” Castillo said.

“For what?”