Alan Churchill,
young British diplomat based in Moscow, queues at the
Lenin Mausoleum to check if the body is really Lenin
or the substitute they planted in his place. In flashback,
he tells how he became involved in the plot to steal
the most sacred relic in the Soviet Union.
Churchill meets Larissa Bukova at a trade fair in Sofia.
Her brother is in a gulag, sick, and she tells Churchill
she is determined to free him. Under her spell, he is
drawn into the plot. One by one, he meets the other
conspirators—an Armenian medical orderly, a Jewish
architect, an airport maintenance man and his airhostess
girlfriend, an orthodox priest.
With Shapirov, the Jewish architect, he explores the
hidden corners of the Kremlin; he disguises himself
as Larissa’s newly-wed husband to reconnoiter
the inside of the Lenin Mausoleum, film the body and
the security systems.
Larissa persuades him to bring back two waxwork effigies
of Lenin, and reveals part of her scheme: they will
steal Lenin’s body and substitute a wax dummy
on one of the two great parade days—May the First—when
the guards are looking after Politburo members at the
march-past. But when the day arrives, Lenin’s
glass coffin is empty.
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