The Caligula Curse

By Andrei Kozyrev

Patricia is a young American doctor who comes to Russia during the raging years of the country’s attempt to create a democratic nation after the specter of Soviet totalitarianism. As an emerging democracy makes everything seem possible, Pat meets a brave security officer named Victor, and they fall in love. However, their romance begins to crumble as the KGB regains power and forges an unholy alliance with a priest and his shadowy cabal, which is but a fraction of an international conspiracy that professes, and practices, centuries-old black magic known as “the Caligula curse.”
The noose of corruption and anti-American sentiments tightens around Pat and Victor. The couple tries to save their love as dark forces seize Russia. Danger arises in America. Powerful conspiracies, an ancient curse, and modern fallacies work against democracy and personal freedom. Pat, her love and friends are in mortal danger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jun 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665705639

Andrei Kozyrev

Andrei Kozyrev was the former Foreign Minister of Russia from 1990 to 1996 and an active participant in the historic decision in December 1991 to dissolve the once mighty Soviet Union. He has been a pro-democracy voice for decades, both in Russia and around the world. Among contributions to The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and other publications, Kozyrev has lectured on international affairs and served on the boards of several Russian and international companies. He is the author of The Firebird, a captivating first-hand account of history-changing events by a Kremlin insider.

Book preview

THE

CALIGULA

CURSE

ANDREI KOZYREV

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Copyright © 2021 Andrei Kozyrev.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents,

organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products

of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0564-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0565-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0563-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021907560

Archway Publishing rev. date: 6/26/2021

CONTENTS

Prologue

Part One   A New Land

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Part Two   Meeting Julia In The Old Land

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Part Three   Goodbye, New Land

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Part Four   Pat In The Cursed Land

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Fifty-Eight

Fifty-Nine

Sixty

Sixty-One

Sixty-Two

Sixty-Three

Sixty-Four

Sixty-Five

Sixty-Six

Sixty-Seven

Sixty-Eight

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

YEAR 33 AD. OVERSEAS FLIGHT #33.

Pat boards intercontinental Flight #33 and falls asleep …

A young lady gazes through a window at the cobblestone road snaking through an olive tree plantation. A view Pat has loved since childhood.

The lady in the dream wears a light gray dress, a pala, lovely, fashionable attire for Roman women.

She hears the old lady’s voice behind her. Soldiers?

Soldiers, yes. But not just ordinary soldiers: Caesar’s pretorians! I can see their gilded helmets. It’s my death coming! The bright red color of their chitons is soaked with the blood of my siblings!

No, my dear. It is your glory coming! her nanny’s cracked voice suddenly gains power. My vision is dim, but my mind is clairvoyant like never before. I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life and prepared you for the destiny that is coming to you. Go now to your bright future, and I will go to my grave where the divine currents of Earth will take my soul. Run, Drusilla, meet the gilded helmets, open the door and your mind to the new day!

Drusilla and her siblings were born in Rome shortly before their father, a Roman emperor, passed away. Their uncle, the succeeding Caesar, dogged them as potential future contestants of his power. He adopted only the youngest kid, a fragile boy. Drusilla escaped and lived in exile with her mother, who soon passed away.

As the soldiers approach, a deep-seated fear drives Drusilla under the old massive wooden table, the only available shelter. Yet down there she would be in the same position her little sisters were when they were stabbed by pretorians. That horrible picture pops up before her eyes, even if it was probably just implanted by her nanny’s account of the gory event. How could the old woman be so sure now that the coming Death is Life?

Loud pounding on the door returns her to reality. No escape. The end is nigh—I will approach it with head held high, she thinks. Yet, she flings the door open and faces the unexpected guests sheepishly.

Drusilla had grown up with guilt shrouding her like a tunic. Guilty of the very fact of being alive. She would have perished young, if not for the old woman. The nanny grew up in the distant northern woods, in a tribe of shamans hunted by Roman legions like wild animals. Her parents were killed before her eyes, and she was enslaved. She sympathized with the little girl and took tender care of her, as both the old and the young suffered from different but equally damning invisible birthmarks of rejection and persecution. That tragic fate pushed them to each other even when Drusilla had grown up.

For most of her life the nanny seethed with a desire for vengeance, not against anyone in particular but at each and every human being.

He was simply naïve or, I suspect, conniving, that Josue of Judea, the nanny said just a few days ago when a drifter had passed by their house and told them about a Jew who claimed to be a prophet of compassion and empathy.

He was your age, 33 years old, and got crucified for his sermon. ‘Love thy enemy.’ A foolish notion. I don’t want you to be naïve prey for the wolves. Better you be a wolf yourself. There is only one way to achieve that—to climb to the top of state power, Nanny said, after the drifter left, and repeated her mantra: Homo homini lupus est. Man to man is a wolf.

The nanny hums a rhythmic incantation in her native shaman dialect. Her father, an outstanding magician, taught her this one of the most powerful elements of the Shaman craft. In its basic form the chant has the power to unleash ardent inner currents that run deep in the human spirit, especially the will to live, and heal. It could even revive the dead. But an addition of just a couple of secret words turns the remedy into a curse, and a heady concoction of mushrooms called fly agaric, helps to arouse raw evil desires.

Obsessed with vengeance, the nanny taught Drusilla that black magic too.

Drusilla! We come to you on the order of the new Caesar! the commander of the Roman cohort said stepping over the threshold with an impersonal nod. The glorious Caesar is ready to recognize you as his sister. But a witch from the northern woods is said to dwell with you. Tell us where she is …

You are right, she is a witch. Don’t move. I’ll kill her myself and clean my body and soul with her blood! Drusilla picked up a dagger from the table and rushed to her nanny, lying supine on a low hay cushion that served as a bed and bent over her.

Her eyes met the fiery gaze of the old woman and saw approval and joy. Do it! Clear your path! the nanny whispered. Her gaze changed to one of pure hatred, and she added, Homo homini lupus est. Treat your royal brother as I taught you and get revenge on them all!

The old woman’s eyes dimmed as Drusilla plunged the dagger into her heart.

When she turned to the legionnaires, a miracle happened: the pretorians whom she had feared and hated all her life bowed to her in the most respectful and obedient manner.

Hail Princess! Allow us to escort you to the palace of our beloved Caesar!

In Rome, Drusilla found her brother sick but in a benevolent mood towards the pretorians, civil servants and the people. By her order, a skillful merchant traveled to the northern outskirts of the empire and brought back a bevy of supplies, including fly agaric unknown to the Romans. She treated Caligula in accordance with the nanny’s magic and became his incestuous mistress.

The nanny’s prediction came true—following her teaching Drusilla reached the top of power and glory.

Her brother the emperor felt physically strong, but his mood changed too.

Gossip about the Caligula curse began to spread all over the enormous empire. Capricious and boorish, he offended people at will and appointed his horse to be consul of the Senate, whose members lacked the spine to stand up to his abuse of power.

The Caligula curse pursued Roman Caesars who one after the other displayed arrogant narcissism and astounding thirst for power. A curse unbroken, for centuries.

PART ONE

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A NEW LAND

ONE

56446.png Pat woke up with a start, as the vision faded, and her consciousness returned to the cabin of the plane. She was struck by the dream, but after a brief contemplation smiled sadly. What she saw was hardly more than a strikingly realistic animation of a horror tale from her childhood - an antique family legend of the Caligula curse. In her mind the story was bound to the land that laid before her, despite it being separated by a time gap of two thousand years from the Caligula’s tyranny in the ancient Rome and by a distance of two thousand miles from the Eternal City. Pat would have been shocked though had she known how real the danger related to the curse was and how close it would come to her and to her American homeland.

The flight attendants made the usual preparations for landing. Pat buckled her seatbelt, inhaled, exhaled. Waited. Soon, she would really, finally be there.

As the plane touched down with a lurch, Pat sighed, and trembled with anticipation: lastly, she arrived in that fascinating and enigmatic country of her childhood dreams. She was ready for the bizarre and the unexpected, and it was waiting for her.

Pat was a recent graduate of an American university with a degree in medicine, and she had volunteered to join a group in charge of delivering U.S. humanitarian assistance. She declined to be met on arrival by colleagues, because Maria, a girl of the same age and also a young graduate of a university with a major in history, promised to pick her up with her husband Serge. Maria and Pat had been longtime pen pals through an international letter exchange program.

She found a phone in the dingy arrivals terminal and dialed, waiting for her friend to pick up.

Pat! It’s really you! Are you calling from America?

America? No! I’m in the airport!

What airport?

In your airport, right here! I just arrived in your country.

But I thought you weren’t arriving until next month! Maria exclaimed.

It had been an honest mix-up, and Maria and Serge insisted on leaving that instant to pick her up in a cab—it was not safe for a young woman to travel alone, they said—but Pat dismissed their concerns. She didn’t want to idle any longer in the depressing hubbub of the airport terminal.

It was easy—worryingly so, perhaps, given the leering eagerness of some of the men there—to find a driver willing to take her. One man offering his services as a private driver attracted her attention. He was about thirty, stocky, modestly but smartly dressed in blue jeans and a blue jacket.

He looks too gentlemanly and intelligent to be dangerous, she thought.

In the car, he told her through rudimentary English words that he was building a private business and only occasionally worked as a driver to earn money on the side, just until his business took off, which he expected would happen very soon.

Suddenly she lost consciousness, which symbolically marked a break with the life she left behind, and woke up to a new, utterly different world.

When Pat came back to reality, momentarily the fresh memory of the attack crossed her mind. First a hand and then a heavy body pressing her down to the lowered car seat. The rapist! His face distorted by physical effort and determination.

Slowly gaining a clear view in the daylight, she realized that there was a young man bent over her. The worried look on his surprisingly nice face with chiseled features quickly changed to an expression of gentle compassion. He had the smile of an inherently good person.

I would not have fought too hard with this one, she thought and hurried to censure herself.

I am glad you are not hurt, the man said. You are in my car now, as I carried you here because the one you’d been riding before was in an accident. With your permission I’ll drive you home … or wherever you want to go. Probably a hotel, since you are a foreigner, obviously.

Foreigner? And what language is he speaking? For a moment Pat was puzzled. Ah, yes! She is on the road from the airport to the city. Now it all came back to her. Welcome to a bizarre new land!

As he drove her to her friend’s house, she hurriedly and a bit hazily told the story of her unexpected arrival and why she hired the private driver.

I would never have imagined that a guy like that would jump on me. I assume you’ve taken care of him.

Yes, don’t worry, he’s been taken care of and carried to a hospital.

I can imagine. Pat looked at him: a strong guy.

Were you afraid to face the nasil’niki? she inquired.

A bit surprised by the question, he interpreted it in a general sense rather than related to the specific circumstance, since Pat mistakenly used the plural for thug. So, he answered, Not really. I am a security officer.

As simple as that. A Zorro, she thought with amusement.

Why had he been at the airport? To see off his colleague, Vlas, who was returning to a city, where he had been working for the last few years. In fact, he was just making a brief trip in order to collect his belongings and say goodbye to friends and co-workers. The central office had given him a new appointment in the second capital of the nation and his native town.

Please don’t think that it is like the Wild West here, and that thugs run amok. He continued, Of course, anyone, especially a beauti—a girl, should be careful to avoid suspicious people and places.

Sounds familiar, she said, we have to watch out back home in America, too. It did not escape her that he almost said a beautiful girl but swallowed the word. He definitely had an inner sense of tact.

It struck her that Zorro was not only handsome but remarkably her type. A man with simple looks, but no simpleton—quite the opposite. She enjoyed watching his intelligent face and sensitive eyes.

And his smile. Affable, humble, and forthcoming.

She unmistakably felt that he was quickly getting drawn to her, too, but tried to restrain and conceal his interest out of decency. His expressions changed quickly and genuinely. They betrayed his thoughts and feelings, which were evidently responsive to the swings of the situation, particularly to her reactions. He seemed to be able to read her, too.

You are too much of an open book, her mother once told her. That’s okay. Good people are usually like this. But it is also important to be able to conceal your feelings. Imagine, you see an accident and rush to help a wounded person but cannot contain the initial shock and disgust at the sight of his or her wounds! It was advice Pat took seriously and practiced consciously. She even joined a theater club in college to learn how to perform and manage expressions.

Now in the car with this guy, Pat enjoyed his vivid and sincere responses. Her mother’s words came to her mind: Good people are usually open and expressive. Yes, mom, she responded to the memory. And this is the case!

It was a long ride. The airport was deep in the suburbs, and they took the ring road to avoid crossing the entire city to reach her friend’s apartment. Still the path was crowded. Twice traffic jams forced the car to a crawl, and Pat could see from the window a dusty industrial neighborhoods or rows of concrete block residential buildings, a kind of images she saw last time on the way from the airport in suburbs of Mexico City. Neither she nor the driver minded or even noticed the delays and gray surroundings. They enjoyed being immersed in conversation, but even more so into the interplay of looks, smiles, and gestures which spoke even louder than words that they were young, full of life and interested in each other. And that’s what mattered.

Finally, they arrived at a nine-story building made of concrete blocks. The end of the journey came unexpectedly: like a jarring alarm in the middle of a sweet morning dream. Pat almost regretted it, but her mood changed with the first hint of what awaited her.

Maria, her husband, and a handful of other people who turned out to be neighbors were waiting for Pat’s arrival outside. The gathering was cheerful and noisy. Serge held a bouquet of flowers. She jumped out of the car and was overwhelmed by kisses, hugs, and new faces. She hardly noticed when Zorro—that was her name for him now—quietly waved goodbye and drove away unnoticed.

TWO

56446.png About 20 miles away, around the time Pat and her rescuer were getting acquainted in his car, another vehicle had an accident while approaching the capital. The car was on a bumpy, narrow road just off the highway from the airport, transporting a priest from a small local church from the ancient, dusty provincial town of Suzdal. Father Dmitry, as he was known to parishioners, was a tall man in his early thirties with slight shoulders and a beer belly to match his round face. The premature wrinkles surrounding his eyes and creasing his forehead betrayed a precarious life, perhaps one with an excessive affinity for alcohol. Yet, this also managed to project a certain wisdom and authority, which he tried his best to maintain.

Despite the fact that the car was a shabby yellow sedan of poor domestic quality, Father Dmitry was enjoying the ride as he rested in the back seat amidst an air of importance and pride which bordered on arrogance. The tiny man driving him could barely see above the steering wheel, but was proudly wearing a professional driver’s hat, which only added to the cleric’s sense of his own gravity.

Suddenly, the vehicle ahead of them braked hard, and the yellow sedan collided with its bumper.

Before the priest could even react, a gangster jumped out and demanded that Father Dmitry provide an enormous payoff as compensation for damages. The priest’s display of pride must have caught the gangster’s eye, and now he was trying to take him down a notch with a roadside robbery.

At first the priest tried to meet the assault with reciprocal haughtiness and rudeness, but quickly changed his tone when noticed a handgun nested in the gangster’s tracksuit. He begged for mercy as if he were a poor monk, and finally dropped to his knees, reduced to pathetic hiccups and sniffles. Reminded