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Written by YULIA TARARUTA , on 17-05-2007 12:58 Yesterday [11-01-02] at the Miussk cemetary they buried Maxim Mitin, a cadet from the Moscow military academy. They had searched for him for 4 days, and found him in the morgue at Lefortovo prison - he had been mistaken for a terrorist. There were a lot of people in uniform at the cemetary, and a military band played. Friends who had come for the funeral gave him a final salute. Maxim Mitin was 20 years old. He received a ticket to 'Nord-Ost' from his school as a reward for good marks. There were few tickets, only 5. A classmate of Maxim's, the son of the head of the foreign language department of the school, recalled how Maxim was worried about having to dress up for the play. The classmate's father, Colonel Zaharov, gave Maxim's memorial toast: "Forgive us for not saving you." It was the colonel who had located Maxim in the prison morgue.     "We were calling around to the hospitals and morgues for four days," recalls Maxim's uncle. "We checked the lists. He wasn't on any of them. Not as alive, or dead. We went to identify one that had a similar desciption, but it wasn't him. They told us to go to Lefortovo, while the school checked through their channels. So they (Colonel Zaharov) found him, as like they say, through connections. Maxim was taken there with the terrorists." A hostage from Yaroslavl named Ksenia came to the funeral. She had reserved a ticket 3 weeks in advance to 'Nord-Ost', and at the show she made Maxim's acquaintance, since they were in adjacent seats. "While we were sitting there, Maxim described to me how to field strip a rifle. And how he crashed his dad's car."    "He was," recalled Maxim's father, almost smiling. "almost twenty years old. And didn't get a scratch. But there (at 'Nord-Ost')..."    When the gunmen said that they would shoot military people in the audience, Ksenia had a hard time talking her neighbor into giving her his military ID card. She hid it in her purse, and the only document Maxim had was for the school library. Maxim did not call his parents. He was from Cheboksar, and did not want to alarm them. Ksenia talked him into giving her the phone number of a friend. She called her husband, who was working that day and had not gone to the show. Her husband called Maxim's friend, and the friend called the university. Ksenia was discharged on Sunday, with a diagnosis of pulmonary inflammation. "Before they stormed the theater, we had gone to sleep. I woke up a few minutes before the gas attack, but Maxim wasn't there. Perhaps, that's why I'm here, while he..."    Relatives of the victims know that those who were asleep at the time of the gas had better chances, since they did not hyperventilate out of fright. Ksenia says that all those who were sitting alongside her survived. Maxim's parents believe that their son was carried out of the building much later that the other hostages, among the terrorists. "Perhaps they mistook him for one," the elder Mitin guesses. "He was very powerful, and tall. I heard a rumor that some of the boys were suspected of being accomplices. But how could they mistake our son? He had a kind face. Why did they think he was a traitor?" There were six others like Maxim at Lefortovo. A young man in camouflage looks out from a photograph in a black frame. In the coffin lays a university student in military uniform. The silence of the funeral is broken by a volley of gunfire. Ksenia shudders: "At the theater, they were always shooting in the air. To keep us in suspense." At the funeral dinner, Maxim's teachers and classmates all had the same things to say: he was a nice person, a good comrade. Alexander Zaharov raises his glass: "We are a fighting school, our boys serve in the 'hot spots'. They know foreign languages, and are useful in special missions. This spring they are going to Chechnya. While there... all of them will remember the face of their fallen comrade."