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She picked up a grainy picture—they were all grainy pictures, as though violent death could never have any fragment of color—and stared down at the face there. Colonel birdman had had his David Rosenbergs and his Frau Koches, photos Mirabel had selected from countless others to show the man at the moment of his death. Well, Fedir Kuchin had his own testaments to a level of insane cruelty that all these men seemed to possess. The photo she was looking at now was that of a man with an unpronounceable surname. He’d been neither wealthy nor well connected. He’d lived nearly a thousand kilometers from the capital city of Kiev. He was a simple farmer with a large family, one that he worked long hours to support. His crime against the state had amounted to his refusal to turn in his friends to
- Writer
