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REQUIEM OF A SPY
By Chris Adams
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Chris Adams
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-4432-3
Chapter One
Sasha "Ahhh, there you are, Lieutenant! It's a boy! Your wife is fine. Are you awake, Lieutenant?"
Lieutenant Viktor Katsanov was startled by the nurse's words as she came rushing up to him, jolting him out of a restless nap in the uncomfortable chair in the stark waiting room.
"Uh, Uh? Dah, Dah! Spasee'ba! (Thank you!) It's a boy? It IS a boy!" Viktor shouted. "Is Tatyana, my wife ... is she well?"
"She is fine and so is he, a very handsome young man. What will you name this youngest new Russian?"
"I am not sure. I will have to consult with my wife. When can I see her?"
"You may come with me now and see them both," the nurse beckoned.
Viktor Aleksandrovich Katsanov was born on May 1st, 1930, May Day, in a Soviet military hospital outside Stalinabad, a small city later renamed Dushanbe', the capital of Tadzhikstan, and near the Afghan border. His father was a young officer in the Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily - VVS, Soviet Air Force, at a training base instructing young pilots. The whole of Russia was in turmoil as Josef Stalin orchestrated a reign of terror against his people in an attempt to drive them into a single-minded communist society. The recovery from World War I had left the country devastated, as had the numerous wars before in Russia's checkered history. Military families, such as the Katsanov's, suffered equally with the masses. Food was in short supply. Wages were so poor that they could barely purchase what little was available. Living away from Moscow, though, had some advantages. There was the appearance of more freedom and less oppression, and occasionally more fresh produce was available. It was not a good time, in any event, to bring a child into the world, especially in Russia.
The newborn Katsanov was named after his father, who went by his given name, Viktor, so it was decided that his son would go by his middle name, Aleksandr and would be called Sasha, the Russian equivalent of Bill for William or Dick for Richard. Sasha's mother, Tatyana, was a school teacher in her mid-twenties. She taught English and social studies at a local school of mostly military dependent children. Her added income helped the family to live slightly above most of the others. Sasha was the Katsanov's first born and promptly became his father's idol. Viktor envisioned a great military future for his son. He would grow up strong, intelligent, and become an officer and pilot in the Russian Air Force. He would be a loyal communist and a part of making Russia great again. Viktor knew that growing up as a devoted communist would be necessary in order to fully achieve the military goals he had conjured up for his new son. He had learned well as an officer in the Krasnaya Armiya, Red Army, that one's politics and allegiance came first and were the only route to better positions. To believe otherwise would lead nowhere.
Sasha's father, Viktor, was born shortly after the turn of the century during the reign of the last czar, Nicholas II. His parents and their parents before them were peasant farmers within a rural and very poor village commune south of St. Petersburg. They had known no other life beyond the dictatorship and oppression of the czarist regimes. Tatyana, his mother, was born and raised in Moscow where her father served in the administrative offices of the Czar. Consequently, she had the benefit of more formal education and training as she grew into womanhood than would have, say, the daughter of a serf. There was considerable unrest in the early 1900's in Russia.
Viktor had avoided being conscripted to fight in the Czar's army in World War I against the Germans because he was considered necessary to the communal farm work and producing food for the army. But, he found time to join a secret band of young revolutionaries from his and surrounding villages. On the eve of the showdown with the Czar's army in the streets of Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) in March, 1917, he and members of his village revolutionary group made their way to the city and joined up with Lenin's Red Guards to bring the downfall of Nicholas II and the czarist monarchy. In the aftermath and turmoil following the take-over by the communists, Viktor earned recognition for his loyalty and obedience to the revolutionary leaders.
In November of that year, Viktor participated as one of Lenin's soldiers in the final raid to overthrow the Provisional Government set up after Nicholas' abdication. He witnessed the storming of the Czar's Winter Palace by out of control Bolshevik mobs; he joined with the Red Guards in quelling the riot and stopping the looting of the Palace and the murder of the remaining Czarist ministers hiding there. Viktor matured quickly during the several months he served with the Red Guards. He witnessed the brutality of the new Bolshevik government-the mass execution of czar ministers and loyalists, and the disarming and execution on the spot of citizens considered suspects. He remained in Petrograd with the Red Guards, and in July, 1918, he was assigned to a military contingent to escort Czar Nicholas II and his family to an exile location in Ekaterinburg.
The weakened Provisional Government had petitioned Lenin's Bolsheviks to permit the family to relocate safely to England, but instead lower level henchmen decided to take them to a house in the distant city. Lenin agreed and gave his word to the Russian people that the Czar and his family would be safely cared for. The Guards delivered them to a confiscated home in Ekaterinburg known as Ipatiev's House with the understanding that they would be kept there until the unrest in the country settled down. There was another family also staying on the ground floor in the house for security purposes. Their name or status wasn't known to the guards accompanying the Czar.
Viktor was on duty outside Ipatiev's House on July 16th when Pavel Medvedev, the Sergeant of the Guard, came out of the house and collected the revolvers from each of the twelve guards on duty. No one knew why. Medvedev told them that it was for their own protection. He didn't want anyone to mistakenly shoot one of themselves. He also told the guards that if they heard gunfire later during the night, they should ignore it and forget it.
About midnight, the commandant of the Red Guards, a belligerent Bolshevik named Yurovsky, entered the Czar's family quarters. "Sir, I am sorry to wake you in the middle of the night, but I must ask you to get your family up and for all of you to get dressed. We must leave," Yurovsky politely ordered.
After they were all dressed and assembled in the main room, Yurovsky led them downstairs and out of the house into the courtyard, and then back into an entrance which led to the basement. Inside the dimly lit and damp basement, there were three wooden straight back chairs aligned side by side.
Yurovsky pleasantly directed: "Your Excellency, you, the Czarina and your son may sit in these chairs. You girls and the rest of you, come and stand behind the Czar."
The Czar's four daughters, his personal physician, Doctor Botkin, a maid and two servants, all of whom had traveled with the entourage from Petrograd, quietly moved in behind the chairs with their backs against a stone wall. They were all situated as if they were about to pose for a photograph. Suddenly, the basement door swung open and in rushed six Red Guards each holding a Kalashnikov repeating rifle with bayonets fixed in place.
No orders were given, no one spoke. The Guards quickly lined up side by side and commenced firing at the startled and helpless forms before them. They continued firing until all were riddled with bullets and their blood flowing in streams across the floor. The last czar of Russia and all of his potential successors were dead.
Shortly after one a.m., Viktor and the other guards heard several volleys of muffled rifle shots. No one spoke. A short while later, Medvedev ordered Viktor and the guards to come to the basement. None of them could believe what they saw. The bodies of the Czar and his family lay in a bloody heap, sprawled atop one another. Some of them had their eyes fixed in an open stare. Yurovsky and the firing squad were nowhere to be seen. The guards could not be sure who did the grizzly work.
Medvedev broke the silence. "Okay, you men, pick up these bloody wretches and drag them outside."
Still in shock at the sight of the carnage, the Red Guardsmen began to slowly pick up the bodies and half carry, half drag them out of the basement and into the outside yard.
"Bring them this way!" Medvedev, also visibly shaken by the scene, his voice dry, quietly ordered.
The guards carried the bodies, one by one, to an open pit several hundred meters into the nearby forest. Viktor remembered that he had seen peasants digging in the area the day before but paid them no mind.
"Lay them out in a row in the pit," Medvedev directed.
Some of the guards were still retching as they carried out the vile work. After the bodies were in the pit, Medvedev instructed four of the guards to fetch the several bags of lime that were stacked innocuously next to the house.
"Spread the stuff over them," he ordered. "Use up all of it. And throw the bags in as well. Katsanov! Get out of your stupor, and help the others to lay those railway cross ties across that mess."
Viktor was still nauseated from the ordeal and moved slowly with the others to pick up the heavy cross ties which had been prepositioned nearby. They laid them across the lime-covered bodies.
"Well done, men," Medvedev acknowledged as he viewed the neatly accomplished horror before them. "Now, get those shovels and cover all of this up. Then rake it clean and scatter brush and leaves over the whole area. I want this place to look like no one has ever been here. Make it good, and we'll be gone.
The memory of the bullet-riddled bodies, the streams of blood covering the basement floor and the distorted figures lined up in the pit remained a deeply imbedded secret within Viktor for the rest of his life. The Red Guards detachment at Ekaterinburg was disbanded, and the members dispatched in different directions all over Russia with a warning to forget everything about the events of that bloody night. Viktor was more fortunate than some, he was dispatched to Moscow. He never spoke of the incident at Ekaterinburg to anyone ever, and when on a few occasions he would come face to face with one of the other guards from that ill-fated period, neither would acknowledge the other. He continued to serve as a soldier in the Red Army, and he was later awarded for his loyalty and deeds with an appointment to the revolutionary officers' academy. While he had little formal or substantive education, it didn't matter. Loyalty to the new Communist Party was sufficient to prove his worth.
It was in Moscow that Viktor met Tatyana at a social gathering arranged at the officer candidate school when he was in his third year. She was smitten by his bravado and tall, dark and ruggedly handsome features, as was he by her extraordinary intelligence and beauty. She was tall and thin with light skin texture, and she had penetrating blue eyes. The fact that he was a loyal and devoted communist bothered Tatyana, but she managed to overcome her doubts in favor of love. She was an accomplished student of Russian literature and languages, particular the prose and poetry of Fyodor Dostoevsky, an early day Christian who maintained certain mystical beliefs. The influence of his works upon Tatyana persuaded her that she could move Viktor away from his communist leanings. Sergei Aksakov and Tolstoy also inspired Tatyana's hopes for a new Russia, but her devotion to Alexandr Pushkin's incarnate Russian spirit was perhaps the most influential in her beliefs.
Tatyana's mother, Bonita, a stern woman and bitter survivor of the revolution, had guided Tatyana's learning. She told her daughter that her name had been drawn from Pushkin's, "EUGENE ONEGIN." In the story, Pushkin described one his characters, Tatyana, as an immortal heroine. "She captured beauty, youth, freshness and angelic innocence." Tatyana was a "Madonna", as the story was told. "She was a peerless ruler of sanctity, perfectly self-possessed, proper in all things and faithful to her husband." These things Bonita impressed upon her daughter to indulge. Accordingly, Bonita did not approve of Viktor for Tatyana. He was ruggedly handsome but with a peasant crudeness and complete lack of appreciation for noble finery. Nevertheless, Tatyana allowed herself to be pursued through the next year and married Viktor upon his graduation and commissioning as an officer in the new Soviet Red Army. It would, nonetheless, be her strong influence that cultivated his bearing and military career, although it could not diminish his devotion to the communist cause.
The honeymoon of freedom from czarism was short lived. The provisional government set up by Lenin lasted only eight months. The brief respite from autocratic and totalitarian rule ended as the Bolshevik Communist leaders promptly reinstituted the secret police, censorship and suppression of all citizen rights. The communists moved quickly to restore order. In doing so, tens of thousands of former soldiers and government officials serving the Czar were rounded up and either sent to detention facilities or executed on the spot. Carrying a weapon was automatic death to the offender. Extremism was always a Russian trait, but the communists went far beyond that because it was necessary to bring the revolutionary chaos under control.
Lenin established the Chrezvychayna Kommisiya, the Cheka, secret police, to enforce his rule. A renewed reign of terror was levied on Russian people, even greater than that during the era of the czars. The Cheka had a free range of authorities extending from arrest, to interrogation, to torture, to prompt execution, if deemed warranted. The Cheka would eventually evolve into the Narodnyy Komisariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD) and finally the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) with off-shoots and collateral agencies all combining to keep the Russian people captive and terrorized.
Lasting Contempt
Viktor's new wife, Tatyana, told him shortly after they were married that when she was fifteen years old, and at the height of the revolution, a knock came at their door in the early hours one morning. Her father was told to get dressed immediately, and he was hustled out by four sinister looking men who identified themselves as police. Tatyana's mother tried for days to make contact with her husband, and then in a week, a dark-suited man came to their door.
"Your husband is fine," he told my mother. "He was being detained for political reasons and would likely be released shortly. However, in the meantime, you must begin now making payments for his care. He requires warm clothes, food and personal necessities. The normal things, you know."
He continued, "The amount payable now is two hundred rubles, and I will continue to come by and collect the same amount each month until he is released."
"But how long will that be?" Bonita asked. "We have no money. Since the revolution my husband has not been paid. He has had to do odd jobs just to feed us. I do not even have two hundred rubles to pay you now."
"Madam that is your problem; perhaps I can arrange to take some jewelry or similar valuable item in exchange for this first payment. I am sure my superiors will understand, but I must return with some representation of your concern for your husband. You do understand, don't you?"
Bonita was frantic. She made quickly back into her bedroom and took a gold and amber broach which had belonged to her mother. It had some obvious monetary value but also great sentimental value to her.
"Here is something to begin with," she said, handing the broach to the grim looking secret policeman. "It is all I can come up with at this moment."
"Dah, dah," he responded, "but you must begin paying in rubles after this, or your husband will have to do without his necessities. I shall be back in one month unless, of course, your husband is released by then. Goodbye!"
Bonita went to the Cheka headquarters numerous times to try to visit her husband only to be told that he was in detention and could not have visitors until the magistrate had ruled on his case. When she petitioned to try and determine what the charges were against him, she was given only vague answers.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from REQUIEM OF A SPY by Chris Adams Copyright © 2010 by Chris Adams. Excerpted by permission.
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