Moscow 17th October 1941
The room went silent as the phone beside Joseph Stalin rang. He listened intently to the message from the Workers' Defence Zone, Moscow district. Looking around the table he made deliberate eye contact with Andreyev, Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Mikoyan, Molotov, Khrushchev, Beria and Shvernik. The Politburo had been summoned in haste and they knew by the look on his face the news was the worst.
Stalin replaced the receiver slowly, his face sunken in disbelief. The Russian revolution had lasted twenty-four years and it was almost over. We’ll be the laughing stock of Europe, he thought reaching for his pipe. He looked up at the sitting Politburo’s faces. ‘German panzer tanks have been spotted at the city limits. Let’s get Comrade Lenin out of Moscow while we can.’
Below the city, an armoured train sat low on the rails, steam billowing into the frigid night. The locomotive was camouflaged and the carriages were filled with elite NKVD Internal Troops. Ninety soldiers, fully armed and provisioned, led by their political officers and commissars, boarded quickly.
The largest carriage was reserved for ‘The Boss’, Lenin in his tomb. The interior resembled something between a funeral parlour and a chemist’s laboratory. Constructed to survive tank shells, it sat between two heavily armed troop carriages. A custom gantry had been assembled to allow the sarcophagus to glide into it along a runway. Once the embalmers and chemists had boarded, it was then sealed with double-blast doors. The locomotive slipped out of the underground cavern, gradually increasing speed, out beneath suburbs, bursting out into the open five miles past the city limits.
It was seven minutes past midnight.
The remaining troops, who had escorted the coffin returned to the city barricades in readiness for the German troops.
On board, Dr. Zbarsky and his team set to work on the body with a sense of urgency. The journey was going to take at least 24 hours depending on whether or not they encountered enemy forces. Any exposure to air would lead to further deterioration, though the sub-zero Moscow air was of help.
They worked quickly, injecting preservatives and chemicals into the body. Under the artificial light, Lenin looked fragile and hollow, like a dead moth’s exoskeleton. Using a mixture of glycerine, potassium acetate and hydrogen peroxide for the skin's dark spots, they brought Lenin back to his former glory.
The new sarcophagus was fixed to an on-board generator keeping it at a temperature of 61 degrees and at a constant humidity. On arrival at the new facility at Tyumen, the body would be immersed into a chemical bath consisting of alcohol, glycerol, distilled water, and quinine. With a special suspension system to allow for the rolling of the train, Lenin almost seemed to smile beneath the glass. He appeared for all the world as if he were a day-tripper going to his favourite health spa, enjoying a nap.