"When is this going to end already?" Chee demanded of nobody in particular. Latreya didn't look up from her typewriter. Decius didn't blame her, though even Thirteen was preferable to the deserts her mind was currently exploring. "Ugh. I thought there'd be no more bombings once I got back."

"Are you a child?" the person who had the terrible luck to have the bunk under Chee demanded. "Even the children aren't whining as much as you!"

"Oh, lay off them," Felix, Chee's husband, said quietly.

Decius was stuck on the top bunk with Miryam. Looking over the side gave him vertigo, and he was afraid to roll over despite the barriers all around him - barriers he now clutched in a white-knuckled grip as he looked down at his friends. The ground was horribly far away, and when that bomb had fallen, he had nearly passed out from terror as the bunks had shook.

Latreya didn't have the same problem. She had slid open the barrier and now sat on the edge, legs dangling in front of Chee as she worked on her first book - a biography of Talaat Pasha. Her wife, Georgina, was looking over her shoulder. Decius envied his friend - he couldn't bear the thought of anyone but himself seeing his first drafts.

Slowly, Decius rolled back over, holding out a hand to make sure that he didn't roll too far and nearly having a heart attack when his hand went through the bars and touched empty air. Only then did he let go of Miryam, shaking out his sweaty hand and staring at the ceiling, which wasn't too far above him.

"We can ask for a different bunk," she offered for the tenth time, voice full of concern.

"No, no, it's alright."

The bombardment of undefended habitations had been illegal since 1907. Thirteen was, of course, well-defended. He couldn't hear it from down here, but he could imagine the sound of the AA guns. He had heard enough of them in Eight.

Eight had also been defended. But did that make it right? Of course not. The capital city - oh, if only they would settle on a name for it soon! - hadn't had any kind of military installation at all. Thirteen did, though, so Decius was fairly sure that bombing Thirteen was perfectly legal. That did not improve his mood.

"Really, Decius, I can tell you're terrified." She patted him on the arm. He envied her the ability to sit upright.

"I can tough it out," Decius said, gritting his teeth and sitting up as well. He felt like he was going to fall over the side at any moment, but looking at Miryam made him feel a little calmer. "Look, I said it ten times already, I don't want to be a bother."

Miryam chuckled. "You mean you're too lazy to go ask."

There was some of that, too. "Yep."

"Of course." She reached out and began to massage his shoulders. "Aw, come on, I can feel how tense you are."

Decius tried to relax, but it was hard to not be tense when he was sitting so close to the edge. He lay down and stretched out, still feeling anxiety deep within his chest. "Backrub?" he suggested. He and Miryam had a massive advantage over most couples - they were panromantic asexuals, so the lack of privacy wasn't as much of an issue for them. Backrubs could be done in the open.

It was rather odd, how most people seemed to have their priorities backwards. Decius could get sexual satisfaction on his own. But a nice massage? You needed another person for that. He relaxed, enjoying the feel of Miryam's hands on his shoulders and tried not to think about how high up he was.

"Excuse me?" someone asked from the ground before the backrub could really get going. "Are you the legal historians Coin was talking about?"

Decius had never known Coin to talk about them specifically. Latreya was one of many advisors and he and Chee may as well have not existed. Reluctantly, he slid open the barrier and slid backwards, holding on tightly to the barrier, until his feet were on the ladder. He wiped off his hands, one by one, and climbed down to Chee's bunk. Chee nodded sympathetically at him and moved over. They had been reading a copy of Folktales and Storytelling in Post-Cataclysm South America 1985-2105, which they now closed and handed over to Felix.

"We are," Latreya said, putting aside her typewriter. "Do you need us for something?"

The man shook his head. He was middle-aged and had a military bearing, but his hair, though short, was by no means buzz-cut, and he wore a mustache. A defector, most likely.

"I have some information you might be interested in hearing," he said, and Decius heard a faint Capitol accent. "I'm Major Zhao, former General Zhao - until Talvian made it clear she did not want me around."

Decius recognized the name. The entire defector community knew of Zhao, who had leapt off his second-floor balcony when the knock on the door came and managed to run all the way to Two, where he linked up with smugglers who took him to Thirteen. He had gone abroad after that, and must have returned recently. Many emigrants were coming back now that the struggle for unification had begun.

"It's very good to meet you," Latreya said. "What is this information?"

Zhao took a deep breath. "Before my defection, I worked on the staff of the Chief of Police." There was a special group of Peacekeepers dedicated to the regular policing of the Capitol. The Districts had, of course, lived under de facto military occupation. "I worked together with the National Committee of Internal Affairs. Once, Snow invited me for a conversation."

Decius leaned forward, clutching the railing tightly. The ground seemed to swim in front of him, and he gulped.

"He told me I was to help participate in a round-up of traitors. I was already in the Rebellion by then, so I was obviously hesitant. Snow told me - you must obey any order coming from me. I replied - Mr. President, I will not line people up and shoot them. I will not go against the Constitution. He told me that if I did not follow his orders, I would find myself in handcuffs." He spread out his hands slightly. "I did not realize yet that that would be the least of my problems."

"Wow," the person on the bottom bunk said.

"You should go to Tom Lamont for that," Latreya said. "He's overseeing a team that collects evidence." The three of them were involved in sorting through the flood of affidavits that were being collected every day.

"Of course." Zhao looked up at the ceiling, unaware that his heroism merited, at the very least, a statue in the middle of the Capitol. "Once the raid ends, of course." He looked back at Latreya. "If I may ask, what are you writing?"

"Book about Mehmed Talaat Pasha. In early twentieth century Turkey-"

As Latreya talked, people who had been chatting quietly in the nearby bunks fell silent, listening closely. At least the Armenian Genocide was more interesting than rehashing gossip about who was sleeping with whom.

Stephen's superiors would be pleased. His younger charges had behaved well (aside from that one time they had tried to jump off the top bunks) and the older ones enthusiastically confessed to all sorts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They had had to send for more paper, to type up all of the statements.

The destruction caused by the bombing had been minimal. The only deaths had been twenty-four hovercraft pilots and crews, and no major structural damage had been incurred. Already, it was being repaired. Some farmland had been destroyed, but the destruction was by no means catastrophic. His charges were already outside and working just minutes after the all-clear, as they were desperate for fresh air.

The problem wasn't a lack of testimony - it was an excess of it. Over in the archives, a team led by Tom Lamont was going through the reams of paper and trying to match them up to documentary evidence. What for - nobody knew. Rumours of war crimes trials flew around, but around eighty-five percent of the officers were war criminals, going off their own testimonies. Stephen hoped Coin wouldn't simply have them all shot, not after putting so much effort into treating them well.

Stephen walked down the path, wondering when someone would finally tell him something concrete. They were close to the forest - he was there to keep an eye on a group of the kids as they ran around and climbed trees. He sat down on a stump, next to two legless kids playing chess. They weren't very good at it. As soon as he sat down, they glanced at him as if they wanted to tell him something.

"Nice to be outside again, isn't it?" he said, reaching into his pockets for two packets of peanut paste. The first thing he had done was replenish his supply. As an interrogator, he had some leeway when it came to the tools of the trade, even if rather unorthodox.

"Weather's nice," one of the kids agreed and moved a pawn. Her hair was starting to grow back in, but he could still see the massive scar on her temple. Her legs were standing next to her - she was still getting used to the prosthetics. Her name was Tiffany, and she was thirteen years old.

"I hated it down there," the other one said. Garry was the same age as Tiffany and was likewise missing both legs at the knees. They had been captured after the same battle in Six but hadn't known of each other before. "Made me feel like a rat, or something."

"I like rats," Stephen said absently. "They're smart. When we win the war and can move above ground, I think I'll get a pet rat."

Garry laughed. "You'll be all alone with a rat?"

"Of course not," he replied in a tone of mock-indignation. "I'll find myself a handsome man, we'll build ourselves a nice house, adopt ten children, and live happily ever after. With a rat." And his parents would finally stop trying to micromanage his personal life.

Tiffany moved a pawn. "I like girls," she said. "But they don't like me. I already asked three, and they all said they're not interested in girls."

Had someone told Stephen when he'd begun training to be an interrogator that he'd end up a therapist for adolescents, he'd have laughed in their face. "That's bad luck," he said sympathetically. He had been there at that age.

"I saw people be set on fire," Tiffany said all of a sudden. She picked up two of Garry's pawns she had captured and rubbed them against each other. "They screamed so loudly. And the smell was weird. I thought for a second someone was frying meat. But it was frying people. When they gave us pork last week, I could smell it." Her hands shook as she spoke. Garry started at the ground, fidgeting with a blade of grass. "Is it okay to denounce someone if they did something really bad?"

"Of course," Stephen said, taking out his notebook and pencil and starting to write. Hopefully, Tiffany would actually provide information useful to the researchers. "You wouldn't want to live next door to someone who hurts their spouse, right? Covering up for them only hurts others in the long run."

Garry looked up. "It's the Major with the blue eyes," he said, words tumbling over each other. That wasn't specific enough to identify them. "I don't care that you have to obey your commanding officer. I don't want to obey the Major. He's fucking freaky. Did you know that he made the guerrillas bring the oil into the barn themselves? Just made us stand there with guns."

"He made me set it on fire," Tiffany whispered in a voice so quiet, it was nearly carried away by the wind. "It all went up - fwoosh - just like that." She waved her hands around for emphasis. "Does that mean I'm a war criminal?"

Stephen shook his head. "You're under sixteen. It would have been unreasonable to expect you to be able to speak out." Adults had been able to say 'no', but children had often been beaten into compliance with slaps and punches. "The real war criminal is the major who ordered this. What's his name?"

"Major Smith," they said in unison. Realizing that, they looked at each other and giggled.

A male Major Smith with blue eyes - that still wasn't enough. The blue eyes narrowed it down, because of how rare that was, but he would need more. "He is here?" They nodded. "Is he from Two or the Capitol, or a collaborator from somewhere else?"

Garry shrugged, but Tiffany said "Capitol" hesitatingly. "When he's drunk, he has an accent."

"How old is he?"

"He kept on complaining about how he should have been in the civil service, so I guess he has to be on his second deployment." After serving their twenty years, Peacekeepers had been given jobs with the government, in the postal service or on the railroads or whatnot - the main reason why the poor had signed up. That was the only way to rise in society in the big country. Enlist, waste two decades of your life, go work as a courier, join the lower middle class, have your kids get a highschool diploma and become white-collar workers or attend teachers' college, and if they were willing to drown in debt, their kids could potentially go to university.

Or, like this Smith, you could realize that the armed forces can give you more than the job of a small-town mail clerk and re-enlist.

"Could he be on his third?"

"No way," Tiffany said, "he's not that old. And he told me once he went to the Academy when he was my age."

Attended military school and on second deployment, thus thirty-nine to fifty-nine years old, assuming his first deployment hadn't been delayed for some reason. That was better. To solidify his claim, though, Stephen continued. "How long did you serve under him and how often did you see him?"

"I don't know, but it was the entire time," Tiffany said. Garry nodded. "I think we saw him a normal amount of time."

"During the burning of the locals, did you see him up close?"

Tiffany nodded. "I did. He was a metre away from me or something like that. I remember his face really well."

"I don't," Garry grumbled.

"That's normal," Stephen said consolingly. "Most people are unable to remember faces clearly. Tiffany, can you try?"

"I guess." Tiffany ran a pawn up and down the back of her hand. "He wasn't very tall. He had decorations for bravery, I don't remember which." She fidgeted with her own, a small medal ribbon on her chest. "He was pretty dark for someone with light eyes, but he was still light."

Stephen took out a stack of cards on a small metal ring from his bag. He carefully spread it out, showing the spectrum of human skin colours to her, from albino-white to the darkest brown. "Can you try to pinpoint his skin colour?"

Tiffany took the cards and went through them. "Something like this," she said, pointing to a light-tan.

"Excellent. Now, what was the shape of his eyes?"

"Kind of narrow-ish. Narrow for a round-eyed person." So probably no epicanthic folds.

This was shaping up to be a very detailed description. Hopefully, Tiffany was remembering accurately. "Did he have any scars?"

"I saw him once in the bunker, he has a fresh scar on his face."

"Perfect," Stephen said, closing his notebook. "Why don't you come with me? If you can identify him from a lineup, that will be very helpful."

The child seemed reticent all of a sudden. "But he's my commander," she protested.

Stephen leaned down just a tiny bit, careful to not crowd her. "He was your commander," he said, "and proved himself to be completely undeserving of the proud title. What he deserves is to be tossed before a court-martial to plead for his life. Not to get away with everything and move back to the Capitol once this is all over, and get on with life just because we couldn't find anything on him."

"But can you not say it was me?"

"Of course. If you do not want anyone to know, they won't. I take people to my office for interrogation all the time, nobody will suspect a thing. Garry, do you want to accompany your friend?"

Garry shook his head. "I'll just get in the way."

"Alright. Tiffany, get your legs on."

Tiffany did so, carefully. Out of the tall grass, she fished out her crutches and stood up slowly.

"How are the legs?" Stephen asked as they set off down the trail.

"Great," Tiffany said with a wide, real smile. "I can't believe I'll still be able to walk. The PT says I'll even be able to climb trees and run and everything!"

Her happiness made Stephen want to cry. She was too small to be a disabled war veteran with decorations for bravery. "Of course you will be," he said encouragingly. "Who's ever heard of having to miss out on things just because you don't have legs?" Most of the POWs from Two had grown up thinking that not having legs meant spending your time sitting in an armchair watching television and shouting at your niblings to bring you more tea.

"That's nice," Tiffany said. "You know, it's a good thing I'm here. Back home, all of the girls would think I'm not pretty anymore. But here, half the people have something missing, so I'm still pretty."

Given the ferocity of the fighting in Two, Stephen suspected that already, small children were being maimed for life. "Mmm-hmm."

They made their way to Stephen's office, Tiffany failing to hide a smile when the elevator started to move sideways. By the time they were sitting down, it was clear that her legs were paining her. The girl exhaled with relief and sank down onto the chair, carefully leaning her crutches against the table.

The plan was quite simple - take photographs of captured soldiers who fit the description and have Tiffany choose. There were only a couple of male majors with the given physical description, so Stephen added some different ranks. If she picked someone who was not a major, that meant she could not be used as a reliable witness. Even if she picked someone of the right rank, that was not necessarily proof that this person was responsible for the massacre.

In the storage room that his office was attached to, Stephen took a small stack of photographs. Their numbers were written in pencil on the back, so it would be easy to return them to the right folder. He went back, sat down at the table, and spread out ten of the cards. "Is he here?"

Tiffany looked at the cards, face twisted from concentration. "No."

"What about here?"

"That one," she said confidently.

Stephen went back to the storage room. He returned all of the photographs and took the file of the indicated man. Major Ernest Smythe - in all likelihood, the pronunciation was the same. His records had been wiped, but during the brief interrogation upon intake, he had claimed to have been posted to Six, though the locations he had admitted to fighting in did not include any massacre sites.

A brief chat with Tiffany later, Stephen was reasonably sure that she was describing the same area that Smythe had openly admitted having been posted to. Now, he would have to go interrogate Smythe himself.

Mary had no idea how to put a regime on trial. She had some ideas - a few years back, a few of them had held a mock trial of Snow, and she had won that one - but the idea still seemed completely crazy to her. For her entire life, she had lived expecting the regime to fall one day, but now that it was happening, she felt like all her preparation had been for naught.

"It's rather simple," Coin said. The two of them were sitting at a table in Command. The Victors had just been rescued, but everyone knew that that was so much window dressing. Mary's heart clenched thinking about the political prisoners who weren't national celebrities. "You will get in touch with the team of researchers working with smuggled documents. You will then take command, figure out whom to indict, and get a structure in place to try everyone."

It had been agreed that once the war was won, an inter-district committee would be set up to manage the transition back into civilian life and govern the country until a new government could be set up. In the Districts, such a committee was already taking shape to deal with reconstruction and handle inter-District issues such as transportation and communication. Perhaps trials could be held under its auspices. In liberated areas, collaborators and captured Peacekeepers were being tried, but those were rather hurried and messy affairs.

The main question, however, was why her? Mary could think of no reason to pick her over anyone else. Why a professor instead of a star prosecutor? "And what of the resources needed for such an undertaking?" she asked instead. She had to admit that the thought of being in charge of something so important was very tempting.

Coin made a dismissive gesture. "For something so important, we will find a way. The criminals we seek to overthrow must be tried before they are executed." That set Mary's teeth on edge - despite all the issues, local commanders were pushing for maximum due process.

It could certainly have been worse. "Does that mean I am taken off the active duty roster?"

"Yes, and so will be anyone else you need if they are above forty-five. Get a team together and put the documents lying in the archives to good use." Coin looked at her as if trying to read her mind. "Do you think we can win this?"

"We are guaranteed to win this," Mary said honestly. "The bigger issue will be how much will be left standing at the end."

Coin nodded. Mary began to wonder how to approach the situation. Rebuilding came first, of course, and fixing problems such as a lack of sewers and social elevators, but that did not mean that they should simply lynch anyone who had allegedly done something terrible, or leave someone completely off the hook just because they were an engineer. What she'd need to do is get in touch with local authorities, and see how much they agreed with her own ideas.

The phone rang. Dora rolled out of bed and went to pick it up. "Hello, Dora Rescu speaking."

"I found a fascinating book about the Bashkortostan shihans," Ashley said in lieu of greeting. Even the shrieking of jeep-mounted rocket launchers and the thunder of bombs hadn't made her youngest daughter become serious. "I could bring it for you next time I visit."

Ashley was the only one of her four kids who actually visited Dora and her husband Jack. It was scant compensation for the fact that Ashley was thirty-one and still refusing to grow up. "Why are you calling?" Dora asked as Jack stirred and rubbed at his eyes. It was four in the morning.

"When's your trial over?"

Dora was currently presiding over a group trial of particularly infamous collaborators who had been lucky to escape lynching - or worse. Up in Six, five collaborators had been sentenced to death by exile. That had caused a scandal, especially when it was discovered they had reached Thirteen posing as displaced persons. Due to the double jeopardy rule, they had been let free - hopefully, the overly creative judge was kicking themselves at this very moment. "Verdicts will be two days from now."

"I heard that the IDC wants you for one of their trials."

In Dora's opinion, the Inter-District Committee had better things to concern itself with. Established a few days ago in the liberated Districts, including her native Ten, it claimed to be a transitional government that would be responsible for communication, transportation, and inter-District issues in general. There was chaos in the governments, as they were being forced to rebuild an entirely new type of structure - one that wasn't reliant on the Capitol in everything. "The IDC? Can this wait for later?" Who did they want her to try? Some general? Had the former District mayor been found?

"Um, I thought you'd want to know?"

Bull, Keisha, and Wesley never called. Ashley called, but it was at absurd hours of the night and without rhyme or reason. "Is this really why you called?" Dora asked.

"What's going on?" Jack muttered. When he was tired, his accent came back. After so many decades of being married into the upper crust, even the onetime janitor spoke like he belonged, but being awoken at four in the morning made him slip.

"Um, yes?" Ashley said hesitantly. "I thought it's important."

Ashley had never been like everyone else. She was in that awkward range where she was normal enough for people to treat her as normal, but different enough to annoy people with her quirks. She hadn't meant to wake up Dora out of malice - she had sincerely thought that she needed to know that information as soon as possible. Why Ashley was awake at this hour of the night was a question best not asked. "It's a bit early, though, don't you think?"

"Oh. Yeah. I guess. Sorry. Bye!"

The line went dead.

Jack lay back against his pillow, hands behind his head. "That's the second time this month." Despite being sixty-three, he still had something of that lanky youth Dora had fallen in love with about him. Still short, still so skinny she could count all of his ribs. He still had his curly hair cut so short it looked straight, even though it was fully white now. "Um, what are you staring at?" His upper-class accent was back now.

"You," Dora said simply and kissed him on the cheek.

Jack turned over to lie on his side and smiled at her. In the faint light, she could see the playful smile on his pointed face. When she had first walked up to the Justice Building janitor and asked him out, her friends had thought she was insane for going out not only with someone so far beneath her, but also someone who looked so much like a rat. They were right - while Dora ended up paying to have his teeth fixed, there was definitely something furtive and ratlike about him. Even now, two beady eyes crinkled with amusement as they looked at her.

"Not much to stare at," Jack said, yawning. "I'm not going to go back to sleep today. You?"

"No," Dora said ruefully.

Jack sat up and tossed back his blanket. They had always used separate ones. Shivering in the cold air, Jack stood up and turned on the lights. They had once shelled out so much money for keeping the Peacekeepers away from their solar panels, but now, they were one of a handful of households that had electricity for more than half an hour every day.

That was both a blessing and a curse, if it meant Ashley could call whenever she wanted, which was often between midnight and sunrise. Squinting against the bright light, Dora also got up, put on her warm bathrobe, and shook out her limbs. After a quick stretch, she got cleaned up and dressed.

"So, what's going on with the IDC?" Jack asked as she sat down at the table in the kitchen. They usually ate at that microscopic table when it was just the two of them.

"They want me for some trial of theirs." Dora took the plate of potatoes from him. She as a judge dealing with the criminals of the old regime got a little bit extra, but she was still skinnier now than she had been in years. Jack, of course, was the stick he had always been. "Yesterday, someone from Thirteen called the boss and told him to get ready for inter-District trials. Didn't think he'd pick me." The boss was a onetime defector who had returned in triumph from India last week, and Dora had thought that any high posts would be given to defectors like him or proven Rebels.

Jack put two mugs of steaming-hot chicory on the table. "They'd have to be crazy not to pick you. Are you going to accept?"

Dora took a bite of her potatoes. They were horribly underseasoned, but aside from that, they were great. Jack could cook something out of nothing. "I've got this trial to finish up," she said. "After that - why not?" Forty years in the justice system had taught her many things, one of them being that any opportunity to advance had to be grabbed with both hands.

There was a knock on the door, and Ernest Smythe was peeking his head in. "Sit down, Ernest," Stephen said. "Peanut paste? Tea?"

Ernest nodded. "Tea would be great." He sat down hesitantly, as if aware that he was not here for a simple confirmation of someone else's identity.

"Excellent." Stephen put a fresh teabag in a cup, took the kettle off the hot plate, and poured some hot water into the cup. Then, he took out the teabag and used it to make himself a cup. "Here you go."

"Thank you."

After the former major had taken a few sips, Stephen spoke up. "I have invited you here so that you may clarify a few things for me."

"What things?" Ernest put down the cup, warming his hands against it.

"A few biographical details. Records were destroyed, so we need your help in reconstructing what happened."

Some would have never fallen for such a trick, others would have taken Stephen at his word even now. Ernest was somewhere in the middle. "What exactly?" he asked skeptically, neither voice nor body language betraying any anxiety.

Stephen took out a paper map of the area of Six Ernest had admitted to serving in - and where the Fivefalls massacre had happened. It was just one of a series of massacres in Six, and nobody was sure if that was the same unit or different ones. "Where exactly did you serve?" he asked, handing him a pencil and a piece of paper. "Draw the route of your movements or list off dates and places - it's up to you."

"I can't. We were all over the place, stumbling around."

"I'd accept that from one of the kids. Not from a major."

Ernest drank some more tea, using those few seconds to think of a response. "I'll try, but it won't be too accurate," he said. He put down the cup and used the pencil to circle a few villages. On the paper, he wrote down approximate dates.

Now, was he lying? Stephen was under no illusions - he was certain that many of the officers, and probably even the kids, had successfully lied to him. He was quite good at a time when he needed to be perfect. Stephen took a small sip of his tea, savouring the slight bitterness.

"Here you go."

Stephen had gone through the records of everyone who had served under Ernest. His alleged recollections matched up with those of a few who had listed off several villages, none of them with the unofficial name Fivefalls. "What about before this?" he asked.

"I was with a different unit."

"Which one?"

"A security one. That had been my second deployment. When hostilities broke out, I was reassigned."

The dates did not match up. "What about the missing two weeks?"

"We were under fire that entire time, so I was unable to leave my unit."

"What sort of engagements were you in?"

Ernest shrugged. "A skirmish." He drank his tea.

"Where?" Two weeks to fight a skirmish?

"Here."

Stephen did not outwardly react. "There were no skirmishes here, only a massacre."

"They attacked us first," Ernest said simply. "Had we not defended ourselves, we would have been the ones massacred." He scratched the scar on his face.

"Was this the only such operation you took part in as part of that unit?"

"No." He pointed to several places on the map and wrote down some unit numbers. Then, he wrote down several names. "These were my commanders," he said. "They were the ones in charge of punitive operations."

Stephen drank some tea and studied the map. Another day, another confession. He had heard the rumours of war crimes trials, but no structure would be enough to deal with every single one of the criminals currently in custody. "Now, how were the operations conducted?" he asked. "Your cup is empty. Would you like some more tea?"

A/N: There is a deeper reason to Latreya's interest in Talaat Pasha than just me picking a random name. Talaat Pasha was one of the main instigators of the Armenian genocide, was sentenced to death in absentia for 'subverting the constitution, profiteering from the war, and organizing massecres against Greeks and Armenians' (Wikipedia) after the war, and was assassinated by Soghomon Tehlirian, an Armenian who lost his family in the genocide. So a perpetrator who managed to evade justice only to be killed by a vigilante - hmm, I wonder why Latreya thinks this is important? :)

General Zhao is a shout-out to Yuri Zaharenka, who was murdered on Lukashenko's orders in 1999. In an interview he gave a few years before his death, Zaharenka recalled how Lukashenko told him - you must obey my every order. Zaharenka replied - Aleksandr Grigorievich, I will not shoot people, I will not go against the Constitution. Lukashenko then threatened him that if he did not obey, he would be arrested. Lukashenko later chose to murder him instead.

The Bashkortostan shihans are indeed interesting.