When cellist Mstislav Rostropovich fled the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, taking refuge in New York’s Mohawk Valley, he first chose divine protection for his home, and then one of the tightest security systems available.

Rostropovich paid $174,000 for the Gelston Castle estate in Jordanville, a village on the southern edge of the valley just above Little Falls . It stood less than a mile away from the golden domes of Holy Trinity Monastery and Seminary. The largest monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia, Holy Trinity, seemingly guards the road intersection leading to Gelston Castle.