“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 until the fall of the communists. Kuchin received orders directly from the Kremlin to do all in his power to crush any opposition. While his superiors largely reaped the historical credit, he became, in essence, the man in the field who would keep Kiev in line with Moscow. And he very nearly succeeded.”

“How?” asked Whit.

In answer Mallory opened his file folder and motioned for the others to do the same. “Read the first report and then look at the series of pictures accompanying it. If that doesn’t answer your query I’m afraid nothing will suffice.”

For several long minutes the room was silent, except for a few gasps whenever someone encountered the photos. Reggie finally closed the folder, her hand shaking a bit as she did so. She had faced many monsters that stood on two legs, and yet their depth of pure evil still managed to astonish and even unnerve her at times. She was afraid that if the day came when it didn’t, she would have lost all trace of her humanity. Some days she worried she already had.

“His own version of the Holodomor,” commented Whit in a subdued voice. “Only he used aerial poisons, toxins placed into water supplies, and thousands of people at a time forced into pits where they were burned alive. The foul bastard.”

“And Kuchin carried out the sterilization of thousands of young girls,” added Reggie in a hushed tone, the spiderweb of lines around her eyes deepening as she said this. “So they could never bear males who might fight against the Soviets.”