Chapter Twenty-seven
Tsarevich Alexei Romanov
Log house, north of the Governor’s House
Surprise, when achieved, can be a considerable force multiplier. The men of the old guard force, tired, out of sorts, humiliated by their treatment from the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks, were just barely coming awake from the firing to the southeast when some of their windows were smashed in, followed by a flurry of concussion grenades, exploding in the air, on the floor and, in one case, on someone’s belly. He didn’t scream but the two men who saw him coming apart in the center certainly did.
This was followed by a chorus of banshee howls as two dozen men burst through the door, hacking, stabbing, shooting, and bludgeoning everyone they came in contact with. The limited light that came in with those men, from the couple of carbide lamps issued to the lieutenant and platoon sergeant, added to the terror.
Not that there were many casualties from this; there were not. As almost a single being, the men on the first floor ran outside through the northern door and windows, in their underwear, without even any boots on, where they were swept by the fire of three Lewis guns and ten rifles. The rifles hit nothing; one has to see to aim and, with the moon so low, there wasn’t much to see. Conversely, the Lewis guns, just maintaining a steady fire and not shifting in the slightest, let the fugitives run into their bullets. Perhaps a few escaped through that storm of lead, but they’d have been very few, and disarmed and quickly freezing rabble at that.
That still left the men on the second floor, of whom it could be well presumed that they would be armed and ready. The third platoon leader didn’t relish the prospect of charging up a tall flight of steps to try to winkle them out.
The orders are no prisoners, but, what the hell, it’s not like I’m a professional or anything. What do I know about orders? And we can always shoot them later, if necessary.
The lieutenant found his way to the stairs and shouted up, “You’ve got two choices. You can drop your rifles, bayonets, or any other weapons you have, and come down, one by one, to become our prisoners. Or you can stay here while we set the building on fire. If we set the building on fire, you will also have two choices. You can stay inside here and burn alive—and that’s going to really hurt—or you can try to escape, in which case you will be shot down without mercy. You’ve got five seconds to decide!”
“Don’t shoot,” came the reply. “We’ll come down. Don’t shoot and for the love of God don’t burn us. But let us get some boots and coats on.”
“Best be quick, then, we’re standing here with kindling and matches . . .”
Governor’s House, Tobolsk
The very last room to be cleared, on the upper floor, was the one on the northeastern corner containing the four grand duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, along with a few of the others forced out of the Kornilov House. Telling Olga to get the younger two, the “little pair,” as they were called, into the clothing with the jewels sewn in, Tatiana donned her own and then opened the door, shouting, “Romanovs here; we’re coming out! With friends!”
She emerged into a corridor lit by the strangest light she’d ever seen, a bright, sunny yellow glow that seemed to come from a dozen spots in the corridor and to drown out all shadows. Even without the benefit of the flash grenades, Tatiana was almost blinded.
“How many friends?” asked Sergeant Tokarev.
“There are seven of us, total,” answered Tatiana, still blinking against the light. This wasn’t exactly the answer to the question asked, but it was close enough.
From farther south, the tsar shouted out, “Tatiana, is everyone all right? Alexei?”
“I’m fine . . . we’re fine . . . scared but fine.”
“Thank God!”
“No time for chit chat, Your Majesty,” said Tokarev. “You and your family need to get downstairs. Lieutenant Collan will direct you from there.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” agreed Nicholas.
“First Squad,” shouted Tokarev, “positions around the royals!”
“Second squad,” echoed Yumachev, “fall back and cover the evacuation of the royals.”
Daniil noticed the build up of some kind of group, just to his north, west of the log house. Leaving Chekov and Dostavalov with their guards, he went to investigate.
“Sir,” said the lieutenant, “I had a choice. I could fight my way upstairs—maybe—and win over superior numbers and—maybe—come out alive with as many as two men, or I could tell them to surrender. I chose the latter.”
“It’s all right, son,” said Kostyshakov. “The no prisoners order was based on a set of circumstances that changed on us. You did exactly right. How many of them are there?”
The lieutenant gave an unseen shrug. “Dunno, sir. Haven’t had a chance to count them yet. Maybe about fifty.”
“Okay do you know where your company is?”
“Yes, sir; I’ve studied the diagrams and maps. They’re over by the girls’ gymnasium, northeast of the corner of Yershova and Slesarnaya.”
“Good, very good. Leave one squad to guard your prisoners and you take the rest of the platoon to reinforce your company commander. I suspect he’s having all he can handle.”
Girls’ School, Tobolsk
Three times the Omsk men had tried to break out, and three times Dratvin had been able to hold them. The last one, though, had ended up in hand to hand and at bayonet point to the south of the school. That had only been driven back with the aid of the cross-firing Lewis guns.
And, at that, thought Dratvin, half of the platoon here is down. We can’t hold another one, if they really try. May be time for the flamethrowers.
A shout came from the building. At first, half deaf from the shooting, Dratvin couldn’t make out the words. Eventually, he was able to hear, “We want a parley.”
Hmmm . . . I wonder if they can see where we are? Maybe time for . . .
“Engineer?”
“Here, sir.”
“Have one of your flamethrowers give a short spurt of fire, almost straight up. Just enough for them to know you’re here.”
That side of the school was suddenly lit up, almost as bright as day, by a long tongue of flame.
“No terms are offered,” Dratvin shouted back, “but immediate and unconditional surrender.” He decided to try a tactical lie or, rather, two of them in one. The lie was made credible, first by the sheer number of machine guns Dratvin’s company had in play, and second by the rather large battles and the amount of fire to be heard coming from the west. It was enough to make credible his tacit claim of having a battalion and that another one would be arriving shortly. “I am about to be reinforced by a second battalion. Once they arrive, there will be no mercy.”
“We’ve got a lot of wounded.”
Dratvin answered, “We’ve got limited medical capability, ourselves, but the town has its share of doctors. Bring your wounded out with you. Bring everyone out with you because when we go in to search the building we will give no second chances.”
Governor’s House, Tobolsk
It didn’t help any, when the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks forced the front door open, that Sergeant Bogrov was dead and Third Squad had lost half its strength. One of them was shot down more or less instantly and, while a second one emptied a magazine into the horde pouring through the sundered doors, and it was not enough. The third, Vasenkov, inside the officers’ room, threw his back against the thick wall between the room and the corridor, waiting for an opportunity to . . . I’m not sure just what.
The Bolsheviks shot those two down, bayoneted the prone bodies, then knocked off their Adrian helmets and smashed their skulls for good measure.
Farther in, Lieutenant Collan, trying to direct the rescued prisoners, took one look and simply forced them bodily back through the door and into the staircase area. That cost him his life as his headlamp became a beacon for the fires of over a score of men who had not previously been blinded by flash grenades. Collan’s immediate guard, Lopukhov, dropped to one knee, firing into the mass charging down the hallway. He, too, was felled, just as his lieutenant had been, given away by both his muzzle’s flash and the light on his head.
The little French Bulldog, Ortipo, meanwhile, continued his running back and forth, accompanied by furious barking. He had no idea what was going on, but knew for a fact that he didn’t like any of it.
Farther up the main floor hallway, Sergeant Kostin, the Second Platoon Sergeant, and the few men with him, took cover in the doorways of previously cleared rooms. Shots then slashed back and forth, between Kostin’s men and the Yekaterinburgers.
Then two grenades—and not relatively harmless flash grenades—sailed out from the Bolsheviks. One landed in the hallway, not far from the dog. The other bounced off the doorframe leading to the stairwell, then fell to the stairwell’s floor.
His sisters, of course, made a great fuss over Alexei, borne in Nagorny’s sturdy arms, petting him and covering his face with kisses. He bore it with as much dignity as any hemophiliac crown prince could be expected to.
“I’m FINE, I told you,” he insisted, to absolutely no effect on his sisters.
The boy’s eyes darted around the little area. There was a press, he saw, by the door opening to the passageway that led to the kitchen. It created, in effect, a kind of traffic jam.
I’ve got to get one of those lights, he thought, as well.
In the light of the carbide lamps he saw something fly against the doorframe, then bounce off to land on the floor under his sisters’ feet. Not every adolescent boy would have recognized it, but Alexei did. Grenade, he thought. Grenade! My sisters!
I’ve lived as a mere shadow of a boy, a Pinocchio that bleeds . . .
The boy didn’t think about it, any further. Instead, he simply pushed and rolled himself out of Nagorny’s arms. The fall might have killed him to internal bleeding, anyway.
. . . but I die like a man.
Falling to the floor he pushed himself over the grenade and then lay on top of it. Just before the explosion came, with his body between it and his beloved family, Alexei’s last thought was, Thank You for my deliverance, Lord.
The pooch didn’t really need the light from the headlamps to see the stick thrown at his feet. His night vision was naturally better than any mere human’s.
Finally! The dog thought, something I can understand. Someone wants to play fetch.
The dog picked up the slightly more than one pound grenade with his teeth, then bounded in the direction from whence it had come. Unseen, he dropped it as the feet of the crowd of soldiers there, then ran back up the hall, expecting it to be thrown again. He was almost as far as Kostin when the grenade went off. After stunning the Bolshviks silly, the blast and shock wave roared down the hall. The dog was picked up bodily and tossed a dozen feet.
That, it thought, is the last time this little puppy plays fetch with anyone . . . ever.
The four girls and their mother let out a collective scream sufficient even to drown out the sound of firing. “Alexei!”
Nagorny, being closest, was the first one to get to the boy. On his knees, weeping, “My boy, my boy, my little prince,” the sailor rolled Alexei’s body over. “Oh, my God . . .”
The sight of that was sufficient to set the women to screaming again but, to be fair, even the normally placid former tsar joined them at seeing what the grenade had done to his only son.
As Nagorny lifted the corpse back up into his arms, blood simply gushed and splashed on the floor from the boy’s virtually disemboweled midsection. His skin was ghastly pale, even in the yellow light of the carbide lamps. One arm, his right, hung free, fingers lightly curled. His face was unmarked and smiling. In a way, that made it harder on his family, as, despite being so pale, he looked otherwise like he might have been merely sleeping. At least, he looked that way until one’s eyes glanced down at his abdomen.
Daniil finally found something to make himself feel useful during the rescue. Arriving at the door from the kitchen passageway to the main house, he began physically dragging some through and pushing—and punching—others back to make room for people to leave.
“Behind me to the kitchen!” he shouted. “My sergeant major is waiting with a security detail to escort you away! Behind me to the kitchen! No dawdling, now; run!”
He hardly noticed when Olga passed, one arm around Tsarina Alexandra, supporting her. Behind Olga came a flood of maids and other servants. After that came the tsar—or, technically, ex-tsar. Then came Maria and Anastasia, weeping profusely.
Oh, Lord, please no, don’t let Tatiana have been . . .
Kostyshakov was so relieved to see Tatiana pass by that he almost wept, himself. With the light shining above his head and in her face, she didn’t recognize him.
Or it could be that she was crying, too.
Then came the sailor, with the pale, torn form of the tsarevich cradled in his arms.
Daniil took a single look and thought, with sinking heart, And that’s why. I have failed, failed miserably.
Out in the hallway, he heard someone shouting commands.
With the explosion among the Bolsheviks—Where it came from I haven’t a clue—Sergeant Kostin saw his chance. Shouting, “Guards! Follow me! Urrah! Urrah!” he leapt from his position in a doorway and charged down the corridor, his men following and, likewise, shouting the old Russian battle cry, “Urrah! Urrah!”
They fired from the hip as they came on, ghost-clad and having an even more terrible effect on the Reds than actual ghosts might have. The twenty or so Bolsheviks still living and inside the hallway fled south, back out of the Governor’s House and into the open area.
By this time Molchalin had one squad, one Lewis gun, and the flamethrower in position along the stockade and at the eastern gate to it.
“Is that thing reloaded?” he demanded, when the Bolshviks began to run out.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then send them to hell.”
Almost at the same instant as the order, a long tongue of flame lanced out in an arc from the gate. The operator played it around, long and short and left to right, until every man among the Bolshviks trying to escape had been burnt. In some cases, the burning was so thorough that that they ran off, living roman candles, toward the opposite side of the stockaded compound, waving their arms and shrieking.
“Don’t shoot them,” said Molchalin. “Let the communist bastards burn!”
The lieutenant was to be deeply disappointed, when some Second Platoon men appeared at the doorway and began putting the burning Reds out of their misery.
“Well, hell,” muttered Molchalin, “go on and ruin everyone’s fun, why don’t you?”
His platoon sergeant then came running up, two squads in tow. “Sir, no chance anyone’s still alive in the Kornilov House now.”
Molchalin turned to see that, indeed, the entire building was a mass of flames and the roof shuddering as if it, too, was about to collapse.
“Right. Have all the bodies out here searched. If any of them are still alive, I suppose we can let them live for any intelligence we might squeeze out of them. But collect the living somewhere they can be watched and post a guard. Medic for their wounded; they might as well be healthy before we shoot them for treason. I’m going to go report to the company commander.”
Thought the platoon sergeant, That’s the most he’s ever said to me at one time in the last four months.
Vasenkov took a little, but only a little, satisfaction at not having killed any political co-religionists except in point self defense. That was something, he thought, but not much.
What am I to do now? I have helped to free the . . . .the ex-tsar? No, I suppose he’s the real tsar again. And I helped free him and restore him to power. Great is my sin, vast beyond all accounting. The revolution is probably doomed now, and I’ll have helped kill it. What am I to do? What is to become of me?
“Vasenkov, you idiot,” shouted Sergeant Kostin. “Come join us, son; we still have a job to do.”
Church bells were ringing now all over the town. Whether they were ringing in alarm or in joy remained to be seen. Certainly few, if any, of the clergy could have any intimation of what had just transpired or who was in command of the town, now. Tobolsk being a hotbed of traditional monarchism, if the bell ringers had known, the bells would have been ringing in sheer joy.
The plan was to collect and organize all the royals, aristocrats, and other rescued people in the kitchen, surround them with security, and then move the lot to the warehouse before moving the force on to help out Dratvin at the Girls’ School.
That latter part seemed unnecessary; Kostyshakov could see and hear that the fight at the Girls’ School was over. But did Dratvin win or lose? If he lost we’ve still got to get the royals out of here.
Chekov and Dostovalov were let in, with their guards behind and keeping close watch. The kitchen was lit almost brightly as day, what with thirty or more carbide lamps spreading their golden light.
All six of the remaining Romanovs, as well as a half dozen of their friends and retainers—the distinction often blurred with them—were clustered on their knees around Alexei’s body. They wept; they prayed; they crossed themselves in Orthodox fashion, right to left. The Tsarina leaned heavily against her husband, head bowed and body trembling with what had to have been nearly the ultimate in psychic anguish.
Others stood around that small knot of grieving humanity, alternately looking at and turning their eyes away from the ghastly damage done to the boy’s midsection.
Kostyshakov, ashamed at the partial failure, stood back, leaving them to grieve for a moment in peace.
Over toward one corner, some of the men of Fourth Company were preparing stretchers, not only for Alexei’s body, but also for the tsarina and the few other wounded—all lightly so—in attendance.
Dostovalov exchanged glances with the guards, then inclined his head toward Olga. The senior of the guards, a corporal, shrugged his indifference. He walked over and took one knee down behind her. Leaning forward, he said, “I am so sorry, so terribly sorry, Olga. He was a fine boy.”
Spinning in place, she threw her arms around him, pressed her face into his chest, and redoubled her sobbing. He held her in one arm, stroked her hair with the other hand, and whispered whatever words of condolence came to mind, certain that none of them could possibly be adequate.
Chekov, on the other hand, just stood behind Tatiana, as a friend might, then reached down and patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
For her part, Tatiana dried her eyes on her sleeve and then stood up. Crossing herself again, she then turned, took a single step forward, and leaned her head forward, into him . . . also as a friend might.
She then lifted her head and said, “We wondered where you two had gone to. We were worried.”
With a sigh, Chekov told her the very short version of his story. “We went to a place we know to think about how to rescue you. We were kidnapped from there by . . . the people who actually could rescue you—most of you—and did. They were afraid you and Olga would become uncooperative if we’d been shot down before your eyes.”
“How would they know that?” she asked.
“The new servant girl, Natalya, was working for them.”
“Ah.”
Chekov’s eyes widened. Shouting, “No, dammit, no!” he reached out and grabbed Tatiana by both shoulders. Shocked, she instinctively tried to draw back but was foiled by the strength of his grip.
Suddenly, when he arrived in the kitchen and saw the Romanovs under the yellow light, Vasenkov knew exactly what he had to do, the only way he could make up to the revolution the disservice he had done it. Arc of vision narrowing, he raised his machine pistol to his shoulder and took aim at Nicholas, the former tsar. He fired a short burst, two rounds of which entered Nickolas’ torso and one of which basically exploded his head. The former ruler of Russia fell in a heap.
Vasenkov didn’t even have to adjust his aim; as Nicholas fell Alexandra, now unsupported, fell on top of him. Another burst ended her medical complaints forever.
Sweeping left, he fired a long continuous burst at the two youngest Romanov girls, both of whom fell over at the force of the blows. Next he took aim at the older one. A large man in uniform tried to interpose himself between them, but he was too late. Olga fell over.
Exultantly, Vasenkov took aim at where the last of the Romanovs stood . . .
Chekov saw the white-clad, machine pistol-bearing soldier open fire. It was preternatural, how quickly he fired and then took up a new aim. He couldn’t stop the shooting; all he could do was grab Tatiana and spin them both around, so that he stood between her and the shooter. He was also able to push her down a bit—she was a tall girl—so that her head was below the level of his shoulders.
A half dozen submachine guns fired just as Vanakov squeezed the trigger on the last of the royal enemies of the people. Though he felt bullets tearing into him, none of that mattered. He kept the trigger depressed and his point of aim on the back of the traitor shielding the Romanov girl. Finally, though, with half his organs ruptured or simply gone, he fell backwards. Even as he did, the last few bullets in his magazine sprayed the high ceiling of the kitchen, knocking out chunks of wood and plaster to rain down on the scene of slaughter.
It was only sheer force of will that had kept Chekov on his feet as long as he’d managed to stay on them. The hits had come close together, but not so close that he couldn’t feel them as individual blows. He continued to stand, for just a few seconds after the murderer had been taken out. It was actually the absence of more penetrating body blows that told him he could let go now, and fall.
Letting go of Tatiana, he did fall, like a sack of wet noodles, sinking to the floor and then flowing outward in the direction of Alexei. For a moment, Tatiana tried to hold him up. Failing that, she did her best to ease him to the floor.
“The bells,” he said. “Mother, I can hear the bells. Mother! No! Don’t leave me again!”
“I won’t leave you,” Tatiana answered. “I’m here, Sergei.”
“You waited for me, Mother, all these years. I doubted . . . but the bells . . . the ang . . .”
Chekov’s breath rattled in his throat. His body spasmed, twice. And then he was no more.
Tatiana sat back on her haunches. It was just too much. Her parents were dead. All her sisters had been gunned down. Even her little brother was a bloody ruin. And now, Chekov had died for her. Chekov, who owed her nothing, but had defended her and avenged Olga. Chekov, whose family had been treated like vermin under her father’s rule, but treated her with kindness. Chekov, whose loyalty she had done nothing to earn and whose forgiveness she would never be sure of now.
She couldn’t scream anymore. What she could do, and did, was let her head fall onto her chest and the tears to flow freely.
“I am so alone now,” she whispered, but not so lowly as she couldn’t be heard by her surprisingly still living sister, Maria, who knelt down beside her.
“No, you’re not, Tatiana. Ana and I are still here.”
“Was I hit then, too?” she asked. “Am I dead and talking to spirits?”
“No,” said Anastasia, kneeling on her other side. The youngest of the Romanovs had something shiny in her hand. “It was this . . . or these,” she said. “The jewelry Mama had us sew into our clothes. That stopped the bullets that hit me. This sapphire, in particular; it was over my heart and stopped the bullet cold. And, yes, I’m sore, but I’ll live.”
“Same with me,” added Maria. “Olga’s didn’t save her because she was too busy getting us into ours to put on her own.”
None of the girls wanted to look at their dear dead. Maria, on one side, Anastasia, on the other, they closed in from the flanks, creating a troika, of sorts. And then all three, their arms about each other, buried their heads in each others’ shoulders, and then broke down into sobs and howls of pure grief.
The sun was rising as Dratvin deposited the more than one hundred and fifty hale and wounded prisoners he’d taken in the open area south of the Governor’s House. He put his men in a ring around them, sending a runner to inform the guards on the prisoners taken by his third platoon to bring their charges to join the larger group.
While this was going on, Cherimisov, just north of there, in the Governor’s House, shouted down the stairwell leading to the basement, “My orders are to kill you all, but I’m willing to take a chance on saving your lives. Come up with your hands in the air, your mittens or gloves, hats, coats and bedding, your mess kits and canteens, and nothing else. You will be searched. If we find a weapon on you, you will be shot on the spot. You have two minutes to get your gear and start coming up. After that, we burn you alive.”
With the example of the Kornilov House, across the intersection, plainly visible from the east side basement windows, none of the men in the basement of the Governor’s House doubted but that these men could and would do as they threatened.
Led by Ensign Matveev, they began filing up. On the main floor, Molchalin’s platoon took charge of searching them. The fourth man up was found with a sap in his pocket.
“You were told ‘no weapons,’ ” said Molchalin.
“Yes, but . . .” the former guard on the Romanovs began. He never got the chance to finish as Molchalin’s runner shot him through the midsection.
“ ‘No weapons,’ ” I told you,” shouted Cherimisov. “That one didn’t listen. He’s dead now.”
From the main floor, the company commander could hear the sound of what he guessed were between twenty and thirty metal implements, hitting the stone floor of the basement.
“What the hell are we going to do with all of these?” Cherimisov wondered aloud.
“The other warehouse,” said Malinsky, “since the former prisoners are being housed in the one we used as an assembly area until we’re done securing the town. It doesn’t have any heat, mind, but at least it’s out of the wind. There aren’t any windows and only the two doors, so it won’t be hard to watch from the outside. And the ground is way too frozen for them to dig out.”
“Makes sense,” Cherimisov agreed. “See to it, would you, Top?”
“Yes, sir.”
Molchalin’s platoon sergeant reported to him that the prisoners and bodies had been searched. He also passed over a sheaf of papers, saying, “And sir, you need to read the one on top. Why don’t you do that while I take over here?”
Molchalin read by the rising sun. His face remained cold and expressionless until he got to a particular passage. At that, his eyes widened and his lips curled into a rictus grin. He walked immediately to Cherimisov and pointed to that particular passage.
“Bring them to Kostyshakov,” Cherimisov said. “He’s at the warehouse to the west.”
The bodies of the Romanov dead, plus Chekov, cooled rapidly in the freezing siberian air inside the warehouse. It was the warehouse previously used as an assembly area cum assault position for the rescue. Fully conscious of the great weight of guilt now resting on his shoulders, Kostyshakov sought out Tatiana. He began to say, “I’m sorry . . .” but then she cut him off brutally.
“You beast!” Tatiana exclaimed, standing in the crowd of rescued people in the western warehouse. “You murdering monstrosity on two legs! You incarnate idiot! Yesterday I had a full family and a good friend. Now, thanks to you, I’ve lost two parents, my closest sister, my little brother, and my friend. Great job, Daniil Edvardovich Kostyshakov. Great job. You could have left things alone, but noooo, not you . . .”
Daniil simply stood there and took it. Nothing she said could possibly make him feel worse than he already did. Shoulders slumped, he turned away and walked off.
Lieutenant Molchalin, standing in the warehouse’s small personnel door, heard it all. He shook his head. Talk about ingratitude. He walked directly over to where Tatiana stood and, as was his wont, wordlessly passed her the pertinent document, the one taken from the now one-legged Yurovsky.
As Tatiana read her normally pale skin turned even whiter. “They were going to . . . oh, my God . . .”
“God had abandoned you all,” said Molchalin, speaking loud enough for everyone in the warehouse to hear. “Only one man had the guts and vision to try to save some of you. And you just insulted him. Well done, Your Highness! Oh, that was so well done.” As loudly as he’d spoken, Molchalin began to applaud and sardonically to bow.
Maria and Anastasia came up. “What’s . . . ?”
Wordlessly, Tatiana showed them Yurovsky’s orders. They both read through, quickly.
“They intended to murder us all?” wondered Anastasia. “Even the children of the staff? What kind of monsters . . . ?”
“I think maybe you owe him an apology,” said Maria.
“A private apology for the public wrong I did him?” asked Tatiana. “No.” She looked around and, in the light filtering through open doors and cracks in walls, she spotted a dozen hay bales, piled against one wall. She went to them and climbed.
“People . . . oh, God, do you have any idea how much I hate speaking in public? People, listen to me. Come here, gather round, and listen.”
When they had, all of them. She began to read from Yurovsky’s orders, with particular emphasis on framing the tsar and his family members, as well as on the open statement that all, and all witnesses, must die.
“So the only reason any of us will be alive in two weeks’ time is that some brave Guards, under a brave commander, risked their lives to save us. And I, I, Tatiana Nicholaevna Romanova, am a total and complete and unforgiveable bitch for insulting him.
“That is my public apology. Now I am going to seek him out for a private one.”
Tatiana found Daniil, sitting alone on a pile of logs, facing the Irtysh River, with his back to the warehouse and the town.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she began. “I can only ask you to . . .”
“I screwed it all up,” answered Daniil, before she could finish. “A million things I should have done differently and . . .”
Tatiana went and sat down beside him. “You got the important thing right.” She handed over the orders to Yurovsky given her by Molchalin. “Read. We’d all have been dead within a couple of weeks, anyway. If I have any family left at all it’s because of you and your men.”
He did read, muttering and cursing as he did. “Communist bastards!”
“I’m not just sorry,” Tatiana said. “I also owe you an explanation. Yes, of course I was—am . . . always will be—hurt by the loss of my parents, sister, and little brother. But there was something else going on, too. You see, I was—and, again, am—absolutely terrified of what it meant that I was now the senior Romanov.
“My father had, before Alexei was born, made up a new rule, countermanding the old rule against a woman succeeding to the throne. It was supposed to be Olga if there was no male heir. She never let on to anyone but me—we were extremely close, you know—but she did not want to be tsarina.
“Well, she’s gone; Alexei is gone; and the new-old rule remains. I am going to have to be tsarina if anyone is. And that scares me to death, Daniil. I am so frightened of it that I can hardly think straight. And half of the fear is knowing that my father’s huge mistake, worse than all the others, was in signing too many pardons and not enough death warrants.”
She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I think I was more angry at that than I was about the loss of my family.”
“I think you can do it,” Daniil assured her. “Moreover, though it pains me to speak ill of the dead . . . well . . . you can hardly fail to do a better job than your father.”
“I know,” Tatiana agreed. “He was a fine father but I don’t have any illusions about what a disaster of a ruling couple he and my mother were. But . . .”
“Yes?”
“Not all of my mother’s family were such complete . . . I’m not sure what the word would be. Idiots doesn’t cover it; my mother was intelligent enough. Is there a word to describe those completely lacking in wisdom? I confess; I don’t know it.”
He shook his head, not sure where the conversation was going.
“My aunt Ella. She is the best candidate for sainthood I know. And she is terribly intelligent. She is also, quite despite having become a nun, ruthless enough when the situation demands ruthlessness. She may have begged the tsar for the life of her husband’s murderer, and prayed for him, too. That’s because the deed was already done, no one would be deterred by the execution, and so it would do no good.
“But she knew they were going to murder Rasputin, knew it and let it happen because he did have to go.”
Daniil shrugged, not understanding.
“If I am going to be stuck with this job,” she explained, “I need my Aunt Ella’s shoulder to lean on, her advice to rely on. I need you to take your men and go save her. Quickly, because, if the Reds ordered us murdered, orders to get rid of her cannot be far off.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “We know she’s in Yekaterinburg, or was, a few weeks back. Now? Now it’s anybody’s guess. I’ll kick Strategic Recon out this afternoon. Third Company should be showing up here soon. But . . . no, there’s not a chance of catching the zeppelin before it goes back for the next lift. It’s supposed to come into Tobolsk with that final lift. We’ll stop it then and use it to get near Yekaterinburg. That’s the best chance we have.”