him, be careful. Don`t go in there.
And finally, they waited until the staff were desperate. The staff kept ringing, saying, we`ve got to have a
doctor. you know, we think he really is ill. So finally the leaders drove up outside.

LAMB: The four?

MONTEFIORE: The four. And they have this frantic negotiation about what, who would go in.
And then in the end, they crept in, Beria and Malenkov, the dominant people, really, sort of the two leading
officials, crept in. And Beria was typical Beria, sort of arrogant and haughty. Malenkov, who was sort of
Melanie Malenkov, as he was nicknamed by the other leaders, took his shoes off, typically, and carried
them. So he was walking along in his socks. He was terrified of -- terrified of Stalin waking up and asking
whatIn fact, when they started to examine him, their hands were shaking so much that
they couldn`t get his shirt off. He was wearing a shirt now, they put on a -- they put a dressing gown on
him, he was cold when they found him, you see.

And so they -- they said, go on, examine him. And this -- this specialist, this professor started sort
of trying to -- just -- he had these scissors, he was going to try and cut the shirt off. And he just dropped it.
So Beria said to him, pull yourself together, examine him properly. He`s your patient. So...

LAMB: By the way, how old was Vasily, his son, then?

MONTEFIORE: Oh, Vasily was 1921, so he was 30, you know, he was in his 30`s. `21