Shortly after breakfast on the second day in Warsaw, Alexi Vasilyev, with one of his protection officers seated next to him and the other behind the steering wheel of a Russian embassy vehicle, drove away from the hotel heading north to the Powązki Cemetery, where once again he paid homage to his mother.
The Russia analysts’ desks on the seventh floor at Vauxhall found a record of five previous visits he’d made to this cemetery on this exact date each year. They were also able to validate the story of his mother’s death being precisely fifty years ago, to this very day.
Nevertheless, this day differed in ways unknown to the analysts. The first difference came when a small procession of robed clerics, gently swinging scented thuribles, followed by a handful of elderly mourners, approached
