Mikhail Frunze, a leading Bolshevik revolutionary and a contender for power after Lenin’s death in 1924, dies mysteriously during a stomach operation “ordered” by the Politburo. This occurs after another “strange” car accident in which Frunze’s driver dies. After Frunze’s death, an investigation is ordered, but the doctors involved in the operation all mysteriously die, and the investigation doesn’t get far. A writer attempts to publish his novel “The Story of the Moon,” in which he reconstructs the events, but he too is killed. In 1926, Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, is renamed Frunze by Stalin himself (who has since become president), a name it will keep until 1991, when it reverts to Bishkek.
