5Barracks Number Two
Solovetsky Island
The Same Day
Nikolai lay in his comfortable rack, quite upset. He couldn’t believe the news when they told him that his underling, a vor v zakonye, a thief-inlaw, had been murdered by one of the political prisoners. As the head of the vors at Solovetsky Monastery, he had total dominance over all of the prisoners. He was the most feared man on the island, and he was not used to having his will thwarted. Especially galling was the fact that one of his vors had been killed. The guards were out of the building, as usual, so they couldn’t identify the killer. According to their reports to the guards, none of the political prisoners allegedly saw anything. Nikolai’s fury grew as he lay there, and he had his suspicions about who the culprit was.
It had t
