Leo Demidov

In 1933, a child orphaned during the Ukrainian Holodomor runs away from his orphanage and is taken in by a Red Army unit and adopted by its kindly commander, who gives him the name **Leo Demidov**. In 1945, now a sergeant with the unit, Leo becomes an icon across the Soviet Union when he is photographed planting the Soviet flag atop the Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin. He becomes a Hero of the Soviet Union.

In 1953, Leo, now married to Raisa and living in Moscow, is a captain in the Ministry of State Security (MGB), commanding a unit tasked with tracking down and arresting dissidents. They arrest a veterinarian, Anatoly Brodsky, and during the arrest, one of Leo's subordinates, the cowardly but ambitious Vasili Nikitin, shoots a farmer, Semyon Okun, and his wife in whose barn Brodsky has been hiding, orphaning their two young daughters. Angry, Leo strikes Vasili, who harbours growing resentment against Leo and the other officer in the unit, Alexei Andreyev; all three were in Berlin together in 1945. Vasili is in charge of Brodsky's interrogation and execution, and one of the names he gives to their superior, Major Kuzmin, is that of Raisa, a primary school teacher, several of whose colleagues have recently been arrested for dissident views. Kuzmin orders Leo to investigate his own wife.

Meanwhile, Alexei's young son, Jora, is found dead near a railway yard. Although the initial pathology report shows injuries consistent with torture, the surgically precise removal of organs, and drowning, the authorities declare that he was hit by a train, as Stalin has decreed that murder is a capitalist disease; there is no murder in a communist paradise. Alexei is forced to accept the official conclusions to save himself and the rest of his family.

Knowing what the consequences will be, Leo tells his superiors that his investigation has shown that Raisa is innocent of any crime and steadfastly refuses to denounce her. They are both later arrested by Vasili and Alexei and sent into internal exile in the provincial city of Volsk. Leo loses all rank and is forced to become a lowly policeman under the command of General Nesterov, while Raisa is humiliated by becoming a cleaner in a school.

When the body of another child is found near the railway line in Volsk with similar injuries to Jora, Leo begins to realise that a serial killer is on the loose. After discovering that Alexander Pickup, the man who found the body, is a homosexual, Nesterov forces him to denounce every local homosexual he knows; when Pickup, a railway ticket collector, commits suicide by walking in front of a train, the authorities say the case has been solved. However, Leo persuades Nesterov, who has young sons himself, to investigate further, and the two discover that the bodies of at least 43 more children have been found along the railway line from Rostov-on-Don to Moscow.

Meanwhile, Vasili, who now has Leo's old job, calls Raisa and attempts to persuade her to leave Leo and join him in Moscow. When she refuses, Vasili orders an MGB agent to abuse her. Raisa later admits to Leo that she only agreed to marry him because she was afraid to refuse the proposal given his status as an MGB officer.

Leo and Raisa travel in secret to Moscow to interview a woman who reported seeing Jora with a stranger in the railway yards. Although Alexei helps them, the interview is unproductive, as the woman is too frightened to talk. Due to a large MGB and militia presence at the station, the pair ask Raisa's former colleague and friend Ivan Sukov, who she knows has contacts among dissident groups, to help them get out of Moscow. However, in his apartment they discover clues that he is in fact an undercover MGB officer (the cause of the arrests in Raisa's school) and that he has called the authorities; Leo kills him and they escape just before Vasili arrives. Leo tells Raisa that she can leave him if she wishes, but she chooses to stay with him.

Leo and Raisa manage to return to Volsk, but there they are arrested by Vasili and his men for Sukov's murder. After being interrogated, Leo and Raisa are put on a train to a gulag. During the train ride, they are attacked by killers on Vasili's orders; after killing their assailants, Leo and Raisa jump off the train. They hitch a lift to Rostov, where the highest concentration of the serial killer's victims has been found; they correctly reason that the killer must work close to the rail yards there and travel the railway lines to Moscow in the course of his work. Vasili forces Alexei to tell him where they are likely to have gone, promising his family will be safe if he does so; Alexei tells him that Rostov is the likely destination before Vasili shoots him.

In the Rostov tractor factory, Leo identifies the killer by cross-referencing workers' travel assignments with the location and date of the murders. Leo and Raisa pursue the killer, Vladimir Malevich, into the woods and corner him. He surrenders to them and says he cannot control his urges to kill children, but is suddenly shot in the head by Vasili, who has followed Leo and Raisa. Vasili tries to execute them, but, after a vicious struggle, they kill him. Leo cleverly tells the MGB agents who arrive that Malevich killed Vasili and that he then shot Malevich.

Leo and Raisa are both reinstated in their old jobs and Kuzmin is removed for his failures. Leo is offered a promotion and a promising political position by his new superior, Major Grachev, if he will agree that Malevich, a former army doctor who spent two years in a German POW camp, was 'turned' by the Germans and sent back to the Soviet Union to wreak havoc there. He refuses the promotion, but requests permission to set up and lead a homicide division in Moscow within the newly created KGB, with the help of General Nesterov. Grachev agrees and Leo in return agrees that Malevich was clearly a Nazi agent. At least he will now have the ability and power to track down and deal with murderers, even if he still cannot openly admit that they are simply murderers and not enemy agents.

Leo and Raisa track down Tamara and Elena Okun, go to the orphanage where they have been living, and adopt them.

## Gallery

Leo Demidov and Vasili Nikitin.Nesterov and Leo Demidov.