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“Ukrainian
     born, he served in the military and then in the national secret police that reported directly to the KGB.” When even this
     revelation did not generate any comment he added sharply, “Have none of you heard of the Holodomor?” He looked at the opposite
     end of the table. “Dominic, surely at university you must have,” he said imploringly.
    Dominic shook his head, his expression pained at having failed the older man.
    Reggie spoke up. “ Holodomor is Ukrainian for ‘death by hunger.’ Stalin killed nearly ten million Ukrainians in the early 1930s through mass starvation.
     That included nearly a third of the nation’s children.”
    “How the hell did he manage that?” asked a disgusted Whit.
    Mallory answered. “Stalin sent in troops and secret police and they took all livestock, poultry, food, seeds, and tools, with
     particular emphasis on the Dnieper River region, long known as the breadbasket of Europe. Then he sealed the borders to prevent
     escape and replenishment of the stolen articles, and also to stop the news from getting out to the rest of the world. No Internet
     back then, of course. Entire towns starved to death; nearly a quarter of the rural population of the country perished in less
     than two years.”
    “Stalin rivaled Hitler in the atrocity department,” said Liza Kent pointedly. In her late forties, she looked very old-fashioned
     in her long skirt, clunky shoes, and white blouse with a frilly collar. Her light blonde hair, interlaced with strands of
     silver, was very fine and cut to her shoulders, but she wore it back in a tight bun. Her face had no memorable features and
     she kept a penetrating pair of amber eyes mostly hidden behind thick lenses housed in very conservative frames. She would
     blend nicely into virtually any crowd. In reality, she had served with British intelligence for a dozen years, ran high-level
     counterintelligence ops on three continents, and had a Romanian-manufactured rifle bullet perilously near her spine. This
     injury had forced her premature retirement on a modest government pension. She’d quickly tired of puttering around her small
     garden before joining the professor.
    “Why did he do it?” asked Dominic.
    “You ask why Stalin killed?” snapped Mallory. “Why does a snake bite? Or why does a great white shark devour its prey with
     nearly inconceivable savagery? It was simply what he did, on a larger scale than almost anyone before or since. A madman.”
    “But Stalin was also a madman with a motive,” interjected Reggie. She looked around the table. “He was trying to wipe out
     Ukrainian nationalism. And also to prevent the farmers from resisting collectivization of agriculture. It is said that there
     is not one Ukrainian living today who did not lose a family member through the Holodomor.”
    Mallory smiled appreciatively. “You are an excellent student of history, Reggie.”
    She gave him a stony gaze. “Not history, Professor. Horror .”
    Whit looked confused. “Am I missing something? Because all that happened as you said in the 1930s. If he’s only sixty-three,
     Waller, or this Fedir Kuchin bloke, wasn’t even alive back then.”
    Mallory made a steeple with his hands. “Do you think simply because Stalin died that the genocide stopped, Beckham? The communist
     regime persisted for several more decades after the monster breathed his last.”
    “And that’s where Fedir Kuchin comes in?” said Reggie quietly.
    Mallory leaned back, nodding. “He joined the army at a young age and rose relatively quickly. Being uncommonly bright and
     unflinchingly ruthless, he was fast-tracked early on for intelligence work, ending up in the secret police, where he rose
     to a position of despotic power. This was around when the Red Army was meeting both its match and downfall in Afghanistan.
     In addition, other Soviet satellite countries, like Poland, were making a hard push for liberation and would continue to do
     so up