The Pope's Men

Peter Tarjanyi, Rita Dosek

• Éditeur: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781643678054
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Teologia e religione
• Sous-sujet: Istituzioni e organizzazioni religiose

Serious secrets hide within the walls of the Church: priests no longer loyal to the cloth, lobby groups vying for position, underworld connections. The Pope’s Men paints a very real portrait of Pope John Paul II’s secret war with the KGB. With tales of conspiracy, recruitment and crimes dating back through the years, the mysterious past of priests employed by Moscow is at last out in the open. This thriller presents a detailed and true depiction of Eastern Europe as the Iron Curtain crumbles, the KGB’s unique method of pulling informers into its web, and the workings of the secret services as they plan a series of strikes that personally involve bishops positioned frighteningly close to the Pope. The recent Vatileaks scandal and the ensuing cover-up only represent a fraction of what actually goes on behind closed doors in Rome. By the end of the book, readers will also know what could possibly lead to a pope resigning his throne.

Chapter One

1940

Death is the solution to all problems.

No man – no problem.

Joseph Stalin

Temporary NKVD1 headquarters, Soviet Union

March 13, 1940

The sound of the pencil plowing across the page veritably echoed through the vast hall as the stenographer diligently scrawled down what she had just heard. The members of the general staff seated across the conference table dared hardly breathe while their chief was lost in thought. The stenographer’s gaze did not leave the white sheet in front of her, as though she were hoping that she could remain invisible as long as she did not look up. Not that anyone gave her a second thought; she was sitting on a wooden chair by the wall at some distance from the table, her back forced into a straight line, her thighs tightly clasped together as if she were standing at attention. She didn’t dare look up, she didn’t dare move. Even so, she felt as if she were the only one disturbing the profound silence. She was desperately trying to wish away the agonizing fifteen minutes that remained of her shift before she would be relieved and could return to her station to type up the proceedings and be free of this oppressive atmosphere.

Judging by its size, the conference room was large enough to house a village parade. The long conference table covered only about a third of the floor, but it could still seat around fifty. The walls were draped in bright red swatches of canvas, and the drab, faded wallpaper behind the diagonally arranged red flags was sooty from the dust that had settled there through the years. The omnipresent symbols of the USSR graced what was left of the walls: the red star, the hammer and sickle, the latter painted gold despite the fact that they were supposed to stand as symbols of the working class.

The whole back wall was covered by a huge portrait of Stalin. The light that was aimed at the center gave the painting an air of awe, while the interplay of light and shade made one feel that the great man himself was hovering over the proceedings. He was everywhere – on the walls, in the air, but first and foremost, he was there in people’s thoughts. His rule was total and stretched from his immediate circle through thousands of kilometers without losing any of its fearful authority, for the executioners of his will were held in as much reverence as the head of the Soviet Union himself.

Accordingly, a tense aura of humility and fear hung over the room. Only Chief of State Security Beria felt at ease in this stifling atmosphere. Situated atop a platform, his oversized desk stood flush against the far end of the conference table – a further sign of his superiority.

The thirteen officials sitting around the table in their buttoned-up uniforms were waiting for his orders in watchful discipline. No one stirred, but even so they could hardly hear what their chief was saying because in keeping with custom, he began in a near undertone. The issue at hand was the fate of the prisoners of war captured in Poland. Beria, who at first drummed his fingers absent-mindedly on his desk, now stood up, and having removed his glasses while he paused between two sentences, started wiping them. He briefly paced up and down, then sat down again and turned to the stenographer.

“Read it back! How many POWs have we got altogether?”

Unaccustomed to being addressed directly, the stenographer looked up at the head of the NKVD with terror in her eyes. Beria had in the meantime put back his frameless glasses, which lent further emphasis to his deep-set, black eyes. The bushy eyebrows that offset his bald head lent an air of implacable cruelty to his countenance. Compounded by the presence of the general staff, his murderous glance further aggravated the stenographer’s unease. She was so disconcerted, she jumbled up the sheets in front of her, and was now groping around for the figures with trembling fingers. She hoped she’d find them quickly, because on no account did she wish to incite the wrath of the NKVD’s top dogs. Luckily, she soon found what she was looking for, cleared her throat, and her voice raspy with fear, she began reading from the notes:

“We hold fourteen thousand seven hundred Polish soldiers captive in Western Belarus and the Western Ukraine. There are a further one thousand two hundred Polish officers in our jails along with nearly seventeen thousand Russian political prisoners.”

She looked up, even straightening her posture a bit to increase the semblance of professional discipline.

“Pass the documents around,” ordered the head of the secret police, then stood up once again as the heavy gold stars decorating the front of his uniform jangled in the strained silence. The urgency in the chief’s voice nearly petrified the stenographer, but she soon managed to draw the documents from the folders she had brought with her and headed towards the chiefs of staff to hand them out. In her attempt to remain inconspicuous she was nearly walking on tiptoes, but the heavy silence of the room amplified her tentative footfall all the same, along with the shuffling sound of the papers in her hand. She was terrified of making the slightest mistake, which could cost her life. She had hardly gone around the table with the documents when the door opened and the stenographer and typist who’d come to relieve her entered the room to take her place on the chair by the wall. The stenographer felt a sense of relief. She cast a last timid sideways glance at the Chief to see if he was likely to ask anything else of her, but Beria ignored her. She slipped out of the room unobserved, gingerly closing the door behind her.

* * *

As he watched the pathetic antics of the terrified stenographer, Vasilyevich Semyonov, who was sitting facing the door, was secretly enjoying himself. “She must be thanking her lucky stars for having gotten off so lightly,” he reflected with disdain before he turned to scan the documents lying in front of him. They contained an inventory of the Polish POWs along with a list of confiscated German military equipment. Fyodor loathed people who quivered with fear. He held them in contempt even though at times, like now, he had to put up a show of fear himself if he wanted to be safely out of harm’s way. As he looked through documents in front of him, he took a quick mental assessment of the officers sitting around the table. He was the youngest of the lot and, as a major, also of junior rank among them. The fact that he was present as their peer surely rankled the generals and colonels on the committee. However, Beria had requested that he be present at the meeting. Semyonov was well aware that this could turn out to be his death sentence, but he had no choice. He had to obey his orders.

Leaning on his desk, Beria studied the portrait of Stalin for effect. Then his eyes wandered back to his men, who were diligently going over the reports that had been handed them. He paused briefly as he studied his chiefs of staff, then circled his desk, came up to the table, and leaned his hands against the back of a chair.

“There are too many of ...