of wanton murder of serfs and tenants, and the more rarefled manipulations of the Imperial banks, causing thousands to be unemployed, casting thousands more into the ranks of the starving. The prince had been sent to Southern Europe for his higher education, a grand tour that lasted five years, solidifying his pursuance of imperialistic dominance and the suppression of the people.
"Where?" TaIeniekov spoke out loud.
"Referring to whatT' asked the scholar, reading the same page.
"Where was he sent?" Mikovsky turned the page. "Krefeld. The University of Krefeld. Here it is." "That bastard spoke German. Ich sterbe flir unser Vereinl Ffir unser Heiligtuml It's in Germanyl" "What is?" "Voroshin's new identity. It's here. Read further." They read. The prince had spent three years at Krefeld, two in graduate studies at DUsseldorf, returning frequently in his adult years when he developed close personal ties with such German industrialists as Gustav von BohlenHolbach, Friedrich Schotte, and Wilhelm Habernicht.
"Essen," said Vasili. "DUsseldorf led to Essen. It was territory Voroshin knew, a language he spoke. The timing was perfect; war in Europe, revolution in Russia, the world in chaos. The armaments companies in Essen, that's what he became a part of." "Krupp?,.
"Or Verachten. Krupp's competitor." "You think he bought himself into one of them?" "Through a rear door and a new identity. German in. dustrial expansion then was as chaotic as the Kaiser's war, management personnel raided and shifted about like small armies. The circumstances were ideal for Voroshin." "Here is the execution," interrupted Mikovsky, who had turned the pages.
"The description starts here at the top. Your theory loses credibility, I'm afraid." Taleniekov leaned over, scanning the words. The entry detailed the deaths of Prince Andrei Voroshin, his wife, two sons and their wives, and one daughter, on the afternoon of October 1, 1917, at his estate in Tsarskoye Selo on the banks of the Slovyanka River. It described in bloody particulars the final minutes of fighting, the Voroshins trapped in the great house with their servants, repelling the attacking mob, firing weapons from the windows, hurling cans of flaming petrol from the sloping roofs-at the end, releasing their servants and in a pact of deathusing their own gunpowder to blow up themselves and the great house in a final conflagration. Nothing was left but the burning skeleton of a tzarist estate, the remains of the Voroshins consumed in the flames.
Images came back to Vasili, memories from the hills at night above Porto Vecchio. The ruins of Villa Matarese. There, too, was a final conflagration.
"I must disagree," he said softly to Mikovsky. "This was no execution at all."
`Fhe tribunals' courts may have been absent," countered the scholar, "but I daresay the results were the same." "There were no results, no evidence, no proof of death. There were only charred ruins. This entry is false." "Vasili Vasilovitchl These are the archives, every document was scrutinized and approved by the academiciansl At the time." "One was bought. I grant you a great estate was burned to the ground, but that is the limit of existing proof." Taleniekov turned several pages back. "Look. This report is very descriptive. Figures with guns at windows, men on roofs, servants streaming out, explosions starting in the kitchens, everything seemingly accounted for." "Agreed," said Mikovsky, impressed with the minute details he read.
"Wrong. There's something missing. In every entry of this nature that we've seen-the storming of palaces and estates, the stopping of trains, the demonstrations-there are always such phrases as 'the advance column was led by Comrade So-and-So, the retreat under fire from the tzarist guards commanded by provisional Captain Suchand-Such, the execution carried out under the authority of Comrade Blank. As you said before, these entries are all bulging with identities, everything recorded for future confirmation. Well, read this again." Vasili flipped the pages back and forth. 'The detail is extraordinary, even to the temperature of the day and the color of the afternoon sky and the fur overcoats worn by the men on the roof. But there's not one identity. Only the Voroshins are mentioned by name, no one else." The scholar put his fingers on a yellowed page, his old eyes racing down the lines, his lips parted in astonishment. "You're right. The excessive detail obscures the absence of specific information." $jt always does," said Taleniekov. "The 'execution' of the Voroshin family was a hoax. It never happened." 5
"That young man of yours was quite impossible," said Mikovsky into the telephone, words and tone harshly critical of the night duty