![]() ![]() ![]() A KGB man, conspicuous in his 'uniform' of felt hat and dark grey overcoat, stared in across the truck's lowered tailgate at its contents and shuddered. Outside the roofed courtyard stood a canopied ten-ton Army truck, the canvas flaps at its rear thrown back and its exhaust puffing acrid blue smoke into the frosty air. But it was hardly that, even though the towers were not the only things in a state of decay. From the air, the Chateau would seem a gaunt old ruin. ![]() In keeping with the generally run-down aspect of the rest of the place, the upper sections of these towers were derelict, decayed as rotten fangs. Bedded at their bases in massive, steeply gabled end walls, twin minarets raised broken bulbous domes high over the landscape, their boarded windows glooming like hooded eyes. A once-courtyard in the 'U' of polyglot wings was now roofed over, its roof painted to match the surrounding terrain. A house or mansion of debased heritage and mixed architectural antecedents, several recent wings were of modern brick on old stone foundations, while others were cheap breeze blocks camouflaged in grey and green paint. The Chateau Bronnitsy stood central on open, peaty ground in the middle of a densely wooded tract now white under drifted snow. middle-European time, and a telephone in the temporary Investigation Control Room ringing. Afternoon of the fourth Monday in January 1977 the Chateau Bronnitsy off the Serpukhov road not far out of Moscow 2.40 P.M. ![]()
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