Alexis looked at Sergei's immigration record. She found his patronymic, Ivanovich, which meant his father was Ivan Kanishchev, and when she looked harder she saw where Sergei had filled in the whole name on one of the forms; Ivan Pavlovich Kanishchev, and the name of his mother, Maria Aleksandrovna Ovchinnikova.
According to Sergei, they had all been born in Saratov, a city on the Volga about 200 miles north of Stalingrad.
It might not be impossible to find out what happened to them. The Soviet Union couldn't be accused of not keeping records, anyway. Too much of a police state to let things just hang, disorganized. There must be some way of finding out who Sergei's cousins were, between these and their descendants, maybe there would be enough for Monica Quartermaine.
Alexis looked on the internet and became satisfied that people who were doing their Russian genealogies didn't seem to give it up as hopeless when people had been sent off to the gulags. In fact, many of them had certificates of "rehabilitation" - some sort of restoration of their civil rights, along with apologies from the modern government, all in writing.
She made a few more searches. To her utter amazement, she was able to find the name Ivan Pavlovich Kanishchev on a list published a few years back - which meant that if this was the same guy, Sergei's father was a Red Army officer shot in 1939.
"Oh lovely," Alexis thought. "The Long Q-T Syndrome might not have even gotten the chance to kill anybody who might have had it."
When she got to talk to Sergei on the phone - Tom Zemsky had been good enough to set up a three way call - she only learned what she feared - he was raised on an orphanage, didn't know what had become of his mother and said his father was taken out and shot in the Red Terror. He said he knew this, because the government opened all the records and admitted all the murders they had done; he'd suspected it, and found his father's name on some list, and the records on his death.
"They send me a letter apologizing and making him a person again," said Sergei. "I never see this guy, not even in picture." He didn't know a thing about his mother. Alexis asked him how he'd gotten her name for the immigration papers. Sergei said it was always on his birth certificate. His knowledge of his family had come to an end right there - the names of both parents.
Alexis marveled at the resiliency of blood ties - they may have been able to raise somebody in an orphanage and brainwash them all they wanted, but it still didn't work. She asked him why he had chosen to defect, and he said he had no family there, he knew the Soviet Union was "a fake," and Oksana had wanted to stay in America. Alexis asked when they had gotten married, and where, in the Soviet Union or in America.
"In America, right after," he answered.
He'd had little interest in his relatives, and had not thought of looking for cousins. One just didn't do that. No one else did. You'd be suspect for trying. He just accepted that he had no family. He didn't know where to start to try to find out who they were and what had been their fates, but he did vow to find out whatever he could.
"Some people, they study all that stuff, I can find somebody like that," he said to Alexis, over the phone. He told her he'd bring her everything. Tom warned him that Port Charles was a quagmire for him. Peter and Zander were there and Oksana would surely go back.
"You sure there can be somesing wrong with my sonce a-heart?" he asked. His accent was heavy, but it didn't stop him. Every "th," - a sound not existing in Russian - was an "s" or a "d" and every "j" was a mix of "z" and "d" for the same reason. Most of his "w's" were "v's." He threw "a's" in the way Italian speakers of English did, as if he didn't think words should end just where they did. He tended to accent the wrong syllable. But he forged ahead fearlessly with every sentence, and was really fairly easy to understand. "Maybe she try to get me to go to Peter to get me back in jail. I have private detective agency on this for years, and they come up with nothing."
"No, this came up first," Alexis said. "I already knew Zander, and he didn't want to contact his family. I found you and Oksana, and that got her detective to find us."
"I can't believe anything is wrong with that kid," he said. "There isn't any healthier kid in the world. Athletic, like me."
"Were you? And you've had no heart problems?" she asked.
"No. Nothing wrong with me ever in my life. Nothing wrong with Aleksander, ever. He's the best one at baseball in Babe Ruth league in Daytona. He go wind-surfing all the time. He run around all the time. He play tennis all the time. He ride a bike all over the county. Over in Moscow, he's the best one on the soccer team for kids that age. He get some award, I forget which. He get some medal for swimming. He get another award for playing tennis over there, too. In summer, they have a league. You name it, he can play it."
"This all sounds like pretty good news," Alexis said. "At least, you and he are in good shape. But maybe you should be careful. This thing cuts down athletes, even."
"I do ice skating, no big wins, but the reason I don't is they tell me I go too fast, too hard. I do all this for years and I don't get cut down. Still here. Still run every day. But if you think it could knock down Aleksander, I gonna go and look them all up."
