The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith

their sermons. Undoubtedly there’d been the cult of dictator and he’d been a loyal worshipper. What of it? If this speech pointed to a future of pointless introspection then so be it-but it wouldn’t be his future. Was he responsible for the Church’s persecution through the early decades of Communism? Of course not, he’d merely reacted to the circumstances in which he found himself and his beloved Church. His hand had been forced. The decision to surrender some of his colleagues was unpleasant although not difficult. There were individuals who believed they could say and do as they pleased simply because it was the work of God. They were naive and he’d found them tiresome, eager to be martyrs. In that sense, he’d merely given them what they wanted, the opportunity to die for their faith.
    Religion, like everything else, had to compromise. The pomestny sobor, the council of bishops, had shrewdly put him forward as patriarch. They’d needed someone who could be political, flexible, shrewd, which was why his nomination had been State-approved and why the State had allowed elections in the first place, elections duly rigged in his favor. There had been those who had argued that his election was a violation of Apostolic canon law; church hierarchy was not supposed to be consecrated by secular authorities. To his mind, that was an obscure academic argument at a time when the number of churches had shrunk from twenty thousand to less than a thousand. Were they supposed to disappear altogether, proudly clinging to their principles, as a captain might cling to the mast of his sinking ship? His appointment had been intended to reverse that decline and stem their losses. He’d succeeded. New churches had been built. Priests were trained rather than shot. He’d done what had been required, no more. His actions had never been malicious. And the Church had survived.
    Krasikov stood up, weary of these recollections. He picked up the photos and piled them on the fire, watching them curl, blacken, and burn. He’d accepted reprisals were a possibility. There was no way to govern an organization as complex as the Church, managing its relationship with the State, and not create enemies in the process. A cautious man, he’d taken steps to protect himself. Old, infirm, he was patriarch only in name, no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the Church. He now spent much of his time working in a children’s sanctuary he’d founded not far from the Church of the Conception of St. Anna. There were those who considered his sanctuary a dying man’s attempt at redemption. Let them think that. He didn’t care. He enjoyed the work: there was no more mystery than that. The hard graft was done by the younger members of staff while he provided spiritual guidance to the one hundred or so children they had space for, converting them from a path of chiffir addiction, a narcotic derived from tea leaves, to a life of piety. Having dedicated his life to God, a dedication which forbade him from having children of his own, this was compensation of a kind.
    He shut the door to his office, locking it, descending the stairs to the main sanctuary hall where the children ate and were schooled. There were four dormitories: two for the girls, two for the boys. There was also a prayer room with a crucifix, icons, and candles-a room where he taught matters of faith. No child could remain in the sanctuary unless they opened themselves to God. If they resisted, refused to believe, they were expelled. There was no shortage of street children to choose from. According to secret State estimates, which he was privy to, some eight hundred thousand homeless children were scattered across the country, mainly concentrated in the major cities- living in train stations or sleeping in alleyways. Some had run away from orphanages, some from forced-labor colonies. Many had traveled in from the countryside, subsisting in the cities like packs of wild dogs-