“Don’t mock me, Charley.”
“I wasn’t. I was asking a question.”
“Our ancestors, Charley,” Anna said softly.
“Some of those who went with Ivan were minor nobility, and some were soldiers, like you and me.”
“You were a soldier?” Castillo asked.
“Former Polkovnik Pevsner of the Soviet Air Force at your service, Podpolkovnik Castillo. I was simultaneously, of course, a colonel in the KGB. My father and Anna’s father were generals. Anna’s mother was a podpolkovnik. My mother never served. Her father, of course, did. Are you getting the picture, or should I go on?”
“What did you do?” Castillo asked.
“Is that important?”
“If you feel uncomfortable telling me, don’t.”
“I was in charge of ensuring the loyalty of Aeroflot aircrew, service personnel working outside the Soviet Union for Aeroflot, and the transmission—the protection—of diplomatic pouches sent by whatever means.”
“For all of Aeroflot?”
“I was considered one of the very reliables,” Pevsner said. “And I was. But let me get back to what I was saying: In the beginning, it was the women who kept their faith—their faith, not the Church per se; after Ivan had Saint Philip, the Metropolitan of Moscow, strangled”—he paused to see if Castillo was following him, then went on —“the women understood that being too good a Christian was about as dangerous as harboring disloyal thoughts about Ivan, so while paying lip service to the Church, as was expected of them, aided by some clergy, they kept their faith private, within the family. You understand?”
“I think so,” Castillo said.
“It was impossible to really be a Christian—standing up to Ivan and the others we served over the years would have been suicide—but it was possible, here and there, from time to time, to act with great caution and, for example, warn the Jews of an upcoming pogrom so that some of them would survive, or arrange for someone about to be executed or sent to the gulag to make it out of Russia to China or Finland. . . . You understand?”
Castillo nodded.
“That’s what I meant, Friend Charley, when I said that the best that people like you and me can do is stop a little here and a little there.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Because the opportunity was there. Half of what would become the FSB left as Soviet Russia started coming apart.”
“Half of the Oprichina left?”
“Not everybody. Probably less than one-quarter, one-fifth of the FSB—or the Cheka, or the NKVD, whatever, by whatever name—was Oprichina.”
“In other words, a state within a state within a state?”
“Precisely.”
“Okay,” Castillo said. “So why, if you were a card-carrying oprichniki, and doing pretty well, did you leave?”
“I told you, there was the opportunity.”
“To swap the good life to make a few bucks as an arms smuggler, which would have not only most of the world’s police departments trying to put you in jail, not to mention your former pals in Moscow and in Saint Petersburg trying to whack you and your family, as an example
This time it was more than twenty very long seconds before Pevsner replied.
“It is only recently—since I have met you, as a matter of fact, Friend Charley—that I have been—my family has been—in any danger from the FSB.”
“ ‘He’s pals with Castillo. Kill the bastard!’?” Castillo said sarcastically.
Pevsner looked at his wife.
“Tell him, Aleksandr,” she said. “Or I will. You are alive because of Charley. He is now our family.”
Pevsner considered that a long moment, then waved his hands, signaling,
“The Communist Party, Charley, was very wealthy,” Anna began. “Another state within a state, if you like. There was more than one hundred billion—no one really knows how much, and I’m speaking of dollars; no one cared then or now for rubles—some in cash and some of it in gold and platinum. Tons of gold and platinum. The Communists had no intention of turning this over to a democratically elected government. They planned to take power again, and they would need the money to do this.
“The first thing they did was authorize what was then the KGB to go into business in Moscow—regular businesses, car dealerships, real estate, everything. The idea wasn’t to make money—although that happened—but to find places to hide the money.
“But what to do with the gold and platinum? It had to be taken out of the country and hidden somewhere.
“So how to do that?” Anna asked rhetorically, then gestured at her husband. “ ‘Ask Comrade Polkovnik Pevsner of the KGB and Aeroflot. He has spent more time out of the Soviet Union and been more places than just about anybody else.’ ”
“And I was a respected oprichnik,” Pevsner interjected, “one who was trusted by them. So when they came to me, I suggested that I knew where to hide it. Saudi Arabia, the U.S., places like that. And I even had a cover story. I would leave the KGB, it would be arranged for me to buy several Ilyushin transports, and I would grow rich transporting small arms around the world and bringing luxury cars and French champagne into Russia. No one would notice—and no one did—that when my Ilyushins left Moscow or Saint Petersburg, several of the wooden crates ostensibly holding Kalashnikov rifles or ammunition for them actually held gold bars. Or platinum.”
“Jesus Christ!” Castillo said.
“And, to make sure everybody believed that I had really left the Oprichina, it was arranged for Anna and the children to escape.”
“What did you do with the gold and platinum?”
“After taking my agreed-upon fee of five percent—”
“You took five percent of a billion dollars’ worth of gold?”
“I took five percent of a lot more than
He saw the look on Castillo’s face.
“Is true,” he said, chuckling. “And when that was over, I began to spend a very great deal of money ensuring that no one I formerly knew would ever see me or hear of me ever again. So you’ll understand my annoyance, Friend Charley, when I heard that a young American colonel—no, a young American
He smiled and reached out and touched Castillo’s arm.
“Who would have thought the night we met in Vienna that one night we would be sitting together halfway across the world, as Anna put it, as family?”
“Jesus Christ, Alek!” Castillo said.
“If I tell you what I know about—and what I can learn about—the chemical factory outside Kisangani, you will not tell anyone where you got the information?”
“You have my word.”
“And maybe you will be able to convince your superiors to do something about it?”
“It’ll go, if I have to take it out myself.”
Pevsner nodded his approval.
“You heard about the factory from your journalist? Is that what started you on this? ‘If it’s rotten, Aleksandr Pevsner will certainly know something about it’?”
“Actually, Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky told me about it.”
