Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Eleven

Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna Romanova
in Happier Times

Governor’s House, Tobolsk

As winter settled over Tobolsk, Dostovalov and Chekov were reassigned to day shift. Kobylinsky informed them of the change himself in his office, across the street from Freedom House.

“Aside from the minor incident with that samogon,” he said. “You lads have done excellent work, and the Romanovs seem comfortable with you, so I’m transferring you to day shift. No need to freeze your asses off.”

This was, perhaps, optimistic of the colonel, as it was perfectly possible to freeze one’s ass off, in Siberia, in the winter, in broad daylight.

As he spoke, Kobylinsky’s eyes shifted to the window and his fingers drummed on the table. He was in a dark brown suit and coat. After an incident in which one of the men had torn off his epaulets, and the soldiers’ committee had demanded the abolition of rank insignia, Kobylinsky had taken to wearing mufti, even during duty hours.

“Thank you, sir,” Dostovalov said.

“Right,” Kobylinsky said, his tone vacant. “Well, off to it, men.”

The sun shone bright and clear on the morning of their first day. The air was still cold, but nowhere near as punishing as the Siberian night. The Romanov family, minus their mother and Tatiana, were out in force on the grounds. The children played while Nicholas and Prince Dolgorukov sawed firewood out back behind the mansion.

The change of duty was an agreeable turn of events, but Chekov noted with alarm that Dostovalov’s mood was entirely too buoyant for a minor improvement in their situation. Moreover, he noticed that Olga Romanova seemed equally cheerful, and glanced every chance she could at “Antosenka” when she thought no one was looking. Dostovalov, for his part, simply smiled and smiled and smiled like a smitten jackass.

Of course Dostovalov would develop a crush on the tsar’s daughter. Of fucking course he would.

Chekov forced himself not to glare at Dostovalov as they walked their paces around the Freedom House. Not that the moron would’ve noticed. While Maria and Anastasia made use of their swing set, kicking up snow with each forward swing, Olga ran around the yard, pulling her brother Alexei on a sledge through the snow. Dostovalov watched their antics with a beatific grin. Brother and sister were laughing uproariously as they careened to a halt in a snowbank on the edge of the lawn. Laughing along with them, Dostovalov walked over to the bank to help them extricate themselves.

“It’s all fun and games until they kill the hemophiliac,” Chekov muttered.

“Sergei, would you stop being such an ass?” Dostovalov hissed over his shoulder.

Dostovalov gently helped disentangle Alexei from his big sister, and then pulled Olga to her feet. Olga accepted his help to stand up. The pair smiled and held onto one another’s hands for a long moment, close enough to kiss, before Olga broke away and began brushing snow off of Alexei’s uniform. Dostovalov still looked on, grinning.

Idiot!

Something hard and cold hit Chekov in the back of his head, interrupting his fuming. He whirled about to find the youngest Romanov daughter, Anastasia, regarding him with a haughty up-turned nose and a second ball of ice and snow in her hand. Chekov regarded her with annoyance as he tried to scoop the snow out of his collar before it melted and trickled down to his shirt.

“And what was that for, you little assassin?” he demanded.

“Your ungentlemanly conduct, Comrade Feldfebel,” Anastasia said. “Your big friend went to my sister’s aid while you stood about doing nothing. What sort of guard are you?”

With that, the incorrigible teenager threw her next snowball, but Chekov stepped aside and the projectile whizzed past his head, thunking into the wooden fence behind him. A snort of genuine laughter escaped Chekov. He scooped up a handful of snow, and with practiced ease, packed it into a tight sphere, then pitched it expertly, hitting Anastasia right in her grinning mouth.

“Pah!” Anastasia ran a hand across her face and spit out a mouthful of snow; her now reddened face bore an immense grin. “This means war, good sir! Maria! To arms!”

Chekov sprinted around the corner of the mansion, boots sliding on the ice and snow, as the third and fourth Romanov sisters concentrated fire upon him. Snowballs splatted against Freedom House’s façade while Chekov furiously crafted more ammunition.

“Maria, go around back!” Anastasia shouted. “We’ll outflank him!”

Chekov ran and turned the corner around the back of the mansion himself before Maria could get there. He greeted her with a face full of snow. Maria laughed good naturedly as she shook her head to clear off the snow, and returned fire, but Chekov was already back around the front of the house, just in time to pelt Anastasia in the back of the head with another snowball.

Anastasia used a decidedly unladylike word and chased after him with another snowball. Chekov ducked away, laughing loudly. He laughed so much and so heartily that his abdomen ached from the unaccustomed exertion and, out of breath, he soon succumbed to a barrage of well-aimed and vengefully propelled snowballs.

“All right, all right, ladies!” He shouted, holding up his hands and tucking his chin into his shoulder to protect his face. “I surrender. Your victory is complete.”

Maria joined Olga, Alexei and Dostovalov who stood upon the front step laughing at the battle, but Anastasia let out a whoop and favored them with an impromptu war dance, circling around the defeated Chekov. Anastasia’s rendition sent everyone, Chekov included, into peals of mirth.


Chekov posted himself by the window to the balcony while Dostovalov stayed with the family. He trusted even Dostovalov wouldn’t be so stupid as to do something untoward in front of Olga’s father so he didn’t join them. Besides, Nicholas’s children were one thing, Chekov had no desire to associate with the deposed tsar, no matter how refined the former autocrat’s manners were.

His quiet vigil was interrupted only a few minutes in, however, by Nicholas’s cultured voice.

Feldfebel Chekov, would you come here, please?”

Chekov sighed, but came as called to the study. The five children were arrayed about the room, Olga and Tatiana on the sofa, each with a book in her hand, Maria worked some brightly colored yarn with knitting needles while Anastasia and the boy, Alexei, played on the floor with his cocker spaniel, Joy. Dostovalov stood in the near corner, well away from Olga, thank God. Nicholas himself sat at a lovely chess board with intricately carved ebony pieces for the black and sandalwood for the white.

“Yes, Citizen Romanov?” Chekov said.

“Your friend tells me you are an excellent chess player,” Nicholas said.

Chekov glanced from Dostovalov’s grinning face back to the ex-emperor.

“Well, I wouldn’t know about excellent,” Chekov said. “Since the war started I’ve only had rubes like Anton here to play, but I do enjoy the game.”

Nicholas and Dostovalov chuckled good naturedly, but Olga shot Chekov an annoyed glance.

Oh, climb down, Your Highness. Your boyfriend is terrible at chess.

“In that case, please, have a seat.” Nicholas gestured to the leather upholstered chair in front of the ebony chessmen.

Chekov hesitated a moment longer but found no valid excuse not to play.

“Thank you, sir,” Chekov said as he placed his rifle gently against a nearby bookshelf and settled into the comfortable chair on the black side of the board. Nicholas moved King’s Pawn to King’s Four, Chekov immediately responded by sliding Queen’s Bishop Pawn two squares forward.

“The Sicilian Defense,” Nicholas commented. “Very bold.”

“Fortune favors us,” Chekov said, evenly. “Or so I’m told.”

Nicholas played well, making excellent use of pawn, rook, and bishop, but Chekov found him overly cautious with his queen, and his knights were an after-thought at best. After several minutes of forcing Nicholas to retreat from unfavorable exchanges into suboptimal positions, the former monarch smiled amiably at Chekov.

“Your friend was quite correct, Feldfebel,” he said. “You are an excellent player. Who taught you the game?”

“I played at university quite a bit, but I learned most from my father,” Chekov said. “He was a surgeon, but I think he would’ve loved to have been a chess grandmaster more than anything. He made it to the Moscow City tournament once and played Ossip Bernstein. He only lost as opposed to being massacred like most of Ossip’s opponents that day.”

“No small feat,” Nicholas said, nodding appreciatively. He moved his bishop to threaten Chekov’s knight. “Were you studying medicine at university? Following in your father’s footsteps?”

“No, I was studying economics,” Chekov said, responding to Nicholas’s threat by positioning a rook to threaten the sandalwood queen. “At least until the war broke out.”

Nicholas backed down from his attack as Chekov suspected he would, moving the knight directly in front of the queen to block Chekov’s rook. The resignation of impending defeat clouded his eyes.

“Papa,” Anastasia spoke up from the carpet. “Can we read more Sherlock Holmes tonight?”

“Oh, dearest, we only have a chapter left in The Great Within the Small,” Nicholas said. “I know detective stories are more fun, but it’s important to understand our situation and Nilus has the best read on all of this.”

Chekov’s pulse quickened and a hiss escaped his lips unbidden. Rather than complete the elegant trap he’d been setting to checkmate Nicholas he went on the offensive and began forcing exchanges of pieces.

“I take it you disapprove of Nilus?” Nicholas said as he removed Chekov’s rook with his queen.

“I wouldn’t dream of venturing opinions on such lofty matters,” Chekov said, moving a bishop to check Nicholas’s king. “I’m just a common soldier after all.”

Nicholas moved a pawn to obscure the bishop’s line of attack unsupported, Chekov took the pawn with a knight.

“Clearly you’ve impressive faculties, Feldfebel,” Nicholas said. “Speak your mind, good man.”

Chekov clenched his teeth. Dostovalov, who stood behind Nicholas, shook his head emphatically.

“If you insist, Citizen Romanov,” he said. “Nilus is a bigoted crackpot who scapegoats the relatively tiny population of Jews here in Russia for problems that have little to do with them, arguably that are even somewhat ameliorated by their presence.”

Chekov threw his queen across the board into the midst of Nicholas’s defenses.

“You know who did an actual scientific study on Jews in the Pale of Settlement?” Chekov continued, as Nicholas stared at the board, looking for some escape. “A fellow named Bloch. You’re familiar with him? One of the reasons Russia has any railways to speak of?”

“Yes, I know Bloch,” Nicholas muttered as he castled his king with this queen’s rook. “I was the one who saw to it his Future War and Its Economic Consequences was distributed at the Hague Conference. If only my idiot cousin had read it, perhaps we would’ve avoided this whole catastrophe. I know that Bloch had Semitic sympathies, but I’m unfamiliar with any such study of the Jews.”

“I’m glad you recognize the man’s talent,” Chekov said. “Bloch and a team of researchers compiled a five-volume study that comprehensively proved that not only do Jews do little harm; they enrich every single community of which they are a part, both culturally and economically. We were just praising Ossip Bernstein, for example, were we not? And he is, indeed, Jewish.”

Chekov took Nicholas’s rook with his own queen, cornering the sandalwood king behind a line of his own pawns and demanding the former tsar’s queen as a sacrifice to remove the threat.

“Your father’s ministers banned the study, of course,” Chekov continued. “And I’ve only ever seen but one copy of the full study while I was at university in Yaroslavl. Bloch’s research partner, Subotin, was able to publish a summary, titled, ‘The Jewish Question in the Right Light.’ It is somewhat easier to find, and infinitely superior to half-baked, self-serving mystical nonsense.”

“Come now,” Nicholas said, taking Chekov’s queen with his own. “You mustn’t think I hate all Jews, there are many who contribute to Russia, but clearly there are a larger proportion of malcontents amongst them than in the Christian, or Mohammedan populations. Surely, you’ve noticed the raw number of Jews among the Bolsheviks!”

“I think perhaps you’re confusing cause and effect, Citizen Romanov,” Chekov said as he removed Nicholas’s queen from the board with his own rook. “For generations Jews have been brutalized and murdered and you and your ancestors have done little but scapegoat them, eat away at their rights and reduce the sentences of the bastards who prey upon them, then you have the audacity to wonder why revolution might appeal to some of them.”

The room was absolutely silent until Anastasia stood and faced Chekov, hands balled into fists.

“You can’t talk to my father that way,” she said.

The remaining children were silent, Maria and Alexei looked uncomfortable, Olga’s features mirrored Anastasia’s fury. Tatiana’s expression was inscrutable, her gray eyes contemplative. Dostovalov’s eyes were bulging, his eyebrows threatening to retreat into his hairline.

“I can, miss,” Chekov said, quietly maintaining eye contact with Nicholas. “I can because he isn’t the emperor anymore, and he isn’t the emperor anymore because he refused to hear the things he didn’t want to hear.”

Chekov took the pawn in front of Nicholas’s king with his rook, which was backed by one of his bishops.

“Checkmate,” Chekov said, standing up and grabbing his rifle. “Dostovalov, you stay here. I’ll post on the balcony. Good night, Citizen Romanov. Thank you for the game.”


Dostovalov walked his paces in the main hall for several hours until a familiar silhouette detached itself from the staircase and hurried across the hall, out into the passageway. Olga poked her head back around the corner into the hall and grinned at him, beckoning with an ivory-skinned hand. She then tiptoed to the kitchen. No sooner had he stepped into the kitchen than she flowed into his arms, kissing him fiercely.

“Oh, Antosenka,” she murmured, her voice low to avoid waking anyone else. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting, it took forever for Tatiana to fall sleep tonight.”

“It’s all right,” he said, leaning back a bit to look into her eyes. “I just thought perhaps you found better company.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Olga said. “And that’s my joke, plagiarizer.”

“We’re just lucky Sergei is still sulking out on the balcony,” Dostovalov said. Olga leaned back, frowning. She withdrew from his arms, leaving Dostovalov with a confused expression.

“Why was your friend so rude tonight?” Olga said. “I know Papa is hard on the Jews, but why did he take it so personally? Is he Jewish?”

“Sergei isn’t a Jew, but it is personal for him,” Dostovalov said, his brow furrowing. “He has his reasons, but they are his to tell, not mine.”

Olga stared at Dostovalov’s unusually serious expression for a long moment.

Antosenka, I’m not sure I trust him,” she said. “He sounded so hateful.”

“Sergei is a good man,” Dostovalov said. “You can trust him as much as you trust me.”

Olga frowned, but then her expression softened as she visibly changed her priorities. She smiled impishly as she pulled loose the sash on her thick winter robe, letting it fall loose in the center to reveal the silken nightgown clinging to her body underneath. Dostovalov sucked in a large breath through his nose and stiffened instantly at the reveal.

“As much as I trust you,” she said. “Really?”

“Well,” Dostovalov said, then stopped, coughing lightly to clear his throat. “Perhaps not that much.”

Antosenka,” Olga said, her voice low and serious. “I want you to do it to me.”

“Do what?” Dostovalov said, then realizing his stupidity, shook his head. “Oh! Olga, we can’t.”

With a boldness that set Dostovalov on his heels, Olga stepped forward and grabbed his hardened cock through his pants.

“Oh, I think we can,” she said quietly, her breath taking on the same rapid cadence as his.

It would be so easy. Olga was easily the most beautiful girl—woman—in face and form he’d ever seen much less laid hands on. So easy to pull aside their clothes and have each other. God, he’d never wanted anything more.

“No, Olga,” he said, his deep voice tremorous. “God, what if your parents found out? What if you got pregnant?”

“I’m twenty-two and have never known a man, Anton,” she said, her voice shaking with passion and fear. “I won’t live long enough to marry; we both know that. I want a man, and I want it to be you.”

“You will,” Dostovalov whispered fiercely. “You will live to marry. I’ll see to it. I will kill anyone who touches you.”

“But you won’t touch me yourself,” Olga said, bitterly, turning away and putting her hands on the kitchen table. Her shoulders heaved as she took several deep breaths, keeping her back to him.

Dostovalov hesitated, then put his arms around her and pulled her back against himself. Olga resisted only briefly before leaning back into his embrace.

“I absolutely will touch you,” Dostovalov said, and Olga gasped as he gently cupped her breasts with his hands. “And just because we can’t consummate doesn’t mean you have to go to bed in agony.”

His left hand lifted the lacy hem of her nightgown and slid up the smooth skin of her thigh. Olga’s words were lost in a low moan of pleasure.


Tatiana awoke in the middle of the night from a terrible dream, shadowy figures shouted accusations from behind gravestones, hurled litanies of sin against her with judgments of death and worse as her sentence. The black wraiths ripped her father and mother to shreds with flashing teeth, they cut little Alexei at the wrists and left him to spill his life onto the floor. They engulfed and consumed Olga, Maria, and Anastasia, leaving behind only contorted, broken corpses.

Worst of all, she was sure in her dream that the litanies were true, the crimes they laid before her real. She sat bolt upright, breathing fast, sweating despite the cold. Taking several shuddering breaths, Tatiana steadied herself.

Just the same room we were in last night, and the night before that and the night before that.

Tatiana swung her legs out from underneath the layers of heavy blankets and put her feet on the cold planks of the floor. A search of the room revealed two gently snoring mounds where Anastasia and Maria lay, but on Olga’s bed . . . 

Oh, damn it.

Tatiana rose hurriedly and draped herself in a heavy fur coat. She stepped out into the hallway, determined to catch her idiot sister in her ill-considered assignation with the big guard and force her to put a stop to it. A flicker of light, movement from beyond the glass door to the balcony caught her eye. The shorter guard, Chekov, the one who’d spoken kindly to her and brutally to her father stood on the balcony. Compelled by dreadful curiosity, the same kind of curiosity that leads one to poke at a sore tooth or pick at a scab, Tatiana diverted course and, on unsteady legs, walked down the hall to confront the guard who had dared snap at her father like an unruly recruit.


Chekov relished the bitterly cold night air out on the balcony. Anything was better than the company inside. The cold, unyielding stars were far superior in their silent regard to conversation with a delusional former autocrat, no matter how lovely his family.

How could he have been so stupid? Chekov shook his head at his own folly; letting himself get drawn into a conversation with Nikolashka. The man who’d ignored and avoided his duties as sovereign until the country was starving and on the brink of collapse. The idiot who’d played tennis even as the Imperial Fleet sank during the war with the Japanese. The simpleton who had the temerity to take personal command of armies engaged in the largest conflagration in human history when he wasn’t fit to manage a mess tent.

But most of all, the bastard who spared my mother’s murderers.

Chekov slammed a fist into the stone of the balcony railing.

I hope the Reds do shoot the sonofabitch.

Hours passed in silence. The Romanovs retired for the evening shortly after the chess match. The Red Guards across the street appeared to have bedded down. Chekov was left alone with his dark thoughts until well past midnight.

The balcony door creaked open behind him. Chekov turned expecting to find an angry Dostovalov coming through the door to confront him now that the Romanovs were asleep.

“Save the lecture, Anton—”

Instead of his tall, burly friend, Tatiana Romanova regarded him steadily from the doorway, starlight glinting in her sad, searching eyes.

“You hate us, yet you guard us,” she said, without preamble. “Why?”

“I don’t hate you, or your siblings,” Chekov said, looking back out into the night. “You’re children; children who should be in bed. It’s very late and it is freezing out here.”

“I don’t think you’re much older than me,” Tatiana said. “And you didn’t answer my question. If you hate my father so much why aren’t you across the street with them?”

She nodded at the Kornilov House, which now held some of the Red Guards.

“I’m older than you’ll ever be,” Chekov said. “And I don’t owe you an answer, miss.”

“No, you don’t,” Tatiana agreed, but still she stood there, staring at him.

Chekov held her gaze for a long time, jaw clenched. In the end the words came, useless as they were, because he wanted this beautiful, good, brave girl to know the truth of the world she lived in, the one her parents had sheltered her from her whole life. Perhaps it was unnecessary cruelty, but he wanted her to understand.

“What do you know about the Kishinev Pogrom?” Chekov said.

Tatiana just shook her head and pulled her fur coat tighter about herself.

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” Chekov said, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “I’m not Jewish, but my mother was. Or at least she grew up a Jew, she converted to marry my father.”

“Oh,” Tatiana said.

“Yes, ‘oh,’ ” Chekov said around the cigarette as he flicked his lighter open. “When I was seven years old, she went to visit her parents in Kishinev. She had just convinced them to talk to her again after she left their faith.”

Chekov took a long drag on his cigarette and his eyes lost their focus. Tatiana stood silently watching him, her expression grim. Chekov blew a cloud of tobacco smoke through his nostrils that mingled inextricably with the icy vapor of his breath.

“Father wouldn’t tell me what really happened,” Chekov said. “Just that mother had died and gone ahead of us to heaven. It wasn’t until some years later I found out how she ‘went to heaven.’”

Tatiana’s face was deathly pale now, her eyes wide as she listened to him. Chekov hesitated, then, his features settling into something cold, bitter, almost alien, he continued.

“Seven men broke into my grandfather’s home in Kishinev, slit his throat and stabbed my grandmother in the chest. My mother was still young enough to catch their eye, though. They held her down and took turns beating and raping her. She died of internal bleeding somewhere in the process,” Chekov said, his voice utterly hollow. “But the bastards did a sloppy job on grandmother. She survived her stab wound and brought charges of rape and murder before a magistrate. Miracle of miracles, they were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.”

Chekov took another deep drag off the cigarette.

“That is, they were sentenced to life in prison,” Chekov said. “Until one of your father’s ministers quietly commuted their sentences to five years each.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tatiana said in a small voice. Tears glistened in the corners of her gray eyes.

Chekov took in a lungful of the frigid night air and then another drag off his cigarette. He unclenched his fists.

“None of this is your fault, Tatiana Nicholaevna,” he said. “And it is only natural for a girl to love her father, as he so clearly loves you all. But all this misery, this happened because your father is a weak, stupid, bigoted man. As emperor he led his people so poorly that millions now side with madmen and murderers against him. Whatever happens, you need to know that truth if you are to survive in this new world.”

Tears spilled freely down Tatiana’s cheeks now. She gulped once, then turned on her heel and retreated into house, leaving Chekov alone to contemplate the stars and the all-encompassing night.

* * *

Tatiana shut the door behind her and leaned against the wall, burying her face in her hands, trying not to sob.

Even in her sheltered palace life, Tatiana knew about the pogroms in the abstract the way one knows about an unfortunate historical event or bit of news. The young, plain-faced soldier with the vocabulary of a scholar had made it real for her, put the human cost right in her face in a way no one else ever had. And as she mulled over the dressing-down he’d given her father, a cold sliver of doubt pierced her soul.

What if he’s right? What if Father failed us all? Heavenly Father, what if we deserve this?

Tatiana dried her tears and squared her shoulders, remembering what had drawn her out of bed.

Where the hell is Olga?

A search of the second floor revealed only her sleeping parents and siblings. Tatiana crept down the stairs, each creaking board setting her teeth on edge for fear it might wake Mama or Papa, or one of the other children. She slipped silently down the hall, past Gilliard’s room.

Heavy breathing and hushed voices punctuated by a low cry from the dining room drew her onward.

“Olga, you have to quiet down,” a deep male voice hissed.

“How can I?” It was Olga’s voice in the whispered reply, but as Tatiana had never heard it before, low and throaty and dripping with something primitive. “I’ve never felt this way in my life, oh, God, Antosenka . . .”

Tatiana rounded the corner into the dining room. Her sister stood, hands braced on the dining room table, her back to the big, handsome guard, Dostovalov. The tall, mustachioed man fondled her exposed breasts with one hand, while his other caressed steadily between her thighs. He lavished kisses on her neck as she rotated her hips and ground her rear back against him.

Tatiana’s limbs seemed to be made of lead, her tongue too thick in her mouth to talk. She stood, mouth agape, until Olga’s eyes met hers and her older sister screamed, snapping the surreal back to reality, albeit a reality in crisis. Dostovalov stumbled back against a cabinet, rattling the china and wine bottle inside.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Tatiana asked.

“What does it look like, Tatya?” Olga snapped as she jerked her clothes back into place. Her cheeks were bright red. Dostovalov stood in a corner next to a full wine rack, halfway across the room from Olga, his eyes firmly fixed anywhere but on Tatiana.

Chekov was the first to arrive, he took one look at his friend and strode right over to him and started laying into him in a low voice, Tatiana only caught, “you stupid ass.” Dostovalov kept his eyes on the floor.

Pierre Gilliard followed close on Chekov’s heels, black hair and thick handlebar mustache in disarray, a robe cinched over his pajamas. The sisters and soldiers fell silent instantly.

“Tatiana, Olga,” he said in clear but Swiss-accented Russian. “What is going on here?”

“I’m sorry, Pierre,” Olga spoke up immediately. “I . . . saw a rat.”

“Indeed?” Gilliard said, looking to Tatiana for confirmation.

Tatiana took a deep breath, allowing the moment to rest on the knife’s edge, waiting on her decisions.

Damn it, Olga.

“That’s right, Pierre,” she said. “Olga and I couldn’t sleep, we came down here to chat so as not wake up Maria and Anastasia. Olga saw a rat and yelled, then Chekov and Dostovalov here ran into the room. I assume because they heard the scream?”

She made eye contact with Chekov and saw in his nearly black orbs profound gratitude.

“That’s right,” Chekov said, his tone level. “And since things seem to be under control here, we should really get back to our posts. Good night.”

Without waiting for a reply, Chekov and Dostovalov beat a hasty retreat.

“Girls, you should head back to bed as well,” Gilliard said.

“What is going on here?”

Tatiana gasped a bit as her father rounded the corner behind Gilliard.

“I’m sorry Papa,” Olga said. “I’m afraid I woke up everyone up for nothing; it was just a rat.”

Nicholas looked at his eldest, then stared at Tatiana for a long second.

“Why were you down here in the first place?” he demanded.

Tatiana’s breath caught a little. Lying to Gilliard was one thing, but to her father.

Perhaps some of the truth . . . 

“It’s my fault, Father,” Tatiana said. “I had a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep. Olga came downstairs too, she saw a rat when we walked into the dining room.”

Nicholas held Tatiana’s gaze for several heartbeats. Tatiana allowed her eyes to fall in contrition, thinking it appropriate to the story she revealed to her father. Apparently detecting no duplicity, Nicholas exhaled through his nose and his expression softened.

“I’m sorry you had a nightmare, dear,” he said. “But you shouldn’t wander the mansion at night.”

“I’m sorry, Papa,” Tatiana said.

“I apologize too,” Olga said.

Nicholas’s gaze shifted from Tatiana to Olga then back again.

“All right, girls,” he said. “Back to bed with you.”

Olga preceded Tatiana up the stairs. Tatiana stared at the back of her sister’s head in mute rage as they made their way as silently as possible back to their beds. She wanted to yell at her for cavorting like a whore with a soldier she barely knew, but even a whisper might be audible to their father when he came back to his bedroom. Angry as she was, she wasn’t ready to inform on her sister to their parents.

What the hell is the matter with you, Olga?

Certainly she and Olga had flirted with a number of charming young officers. They’d danced a little closer with their favorites than what was required by a proper waltz, and Tatiana herself had even allowed one of the boys to kiss her when her parents weren’t looking. But what Olga and that soldier had been doing . . . 

Tatiana’s pulse quickened in arousal, just as it had sometimes during the innocent flirtations of her adolescence. This lust, though, made her feel perverse in a way previous thrills never had. She had seen her own sister in the grip of Eros and the only thing more disturbing than Olga’s stupidity was how badly a part of Tatiana now wished she’d gone further with one of her favorites.


“Chekov, what the hell were you thinking?” Dostovalov said in a low voice, glaring at Chekov from across the table in the canteen sometime later. It was early morning yet and they were the first ones through the door. They had already shoveled their stew as fast as possible to avoid letting it go lukewarm. Now they sat, hunched against the cold in the drafty building, conferring in low tones so as to avoid being heard by the cooks.

“What was I thinking? What the hell were you thinking?” Chekov hissed. “Screwing the tsar’s daughter in his own house? Are you out of what little mind you have left?”

“We weren’t screwing. I know you have little experience in such things, but one generally has to pull out one’s cock to screw a girl. My pants were up and buttoned,” Dostovalov said.

“Okay, you got caught before you could finish the deed,” Chekov said. “You want a medal for your restraint?”

“You think a little love-play is worse than calling the tsar a fool to his face?” Dostovalov said.

“Yes, you moron, it is,” Chekov said. “And, again, you got caught. What happens if Tatiana decides to confess everything to her papa after all?”

“She won’t,” Dostovalov said, maddeningly confident. “The Big Pair are too close to drive a wedge between. Tatiana would never inform on Olga. Face it, it’s not my pecker but your mouth that got you earmarked for every shit detail the First Rifles can find.”

Chekov frowned. He knew Dostovalov had a point. He’d been stupid to let himself lose his temper with Nicholas; private citizen or autocrat he was still a much more powerful man than Chekov. Kobylinsky, with Matveev standing behind him, had informed Chekov that he was off close guard duty and onto sanitary detail, VD inspection, and other such menial and degrading tasks until further notice. Despite that, Chekov knew that his friend getting entangled with Olga could only end in tragedy.

“It was still an inexcusably stupid idea to try to make love to Olga one floor down from where her entire family was sleeping,” said Chekov.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Sergei, what happens even if Nicholas does find out?” Dostovalov said. “He’s not the tsar anymore, he doesn’t rule a damn thing. For all that Kobylinsky kisses his ass, we all know the only real power in Tobolsk lies with that boy Matveev and that Latvian Jew and his Red Guards. Nicholas can do nothing to us without their say so.”

“Assume you’re right, assume the unit won’t punish you because of Nicholas. How quick before the Bolsheviks label you an Imperialist for consorting with Olga?” Chekov retorted. “How much quicker that I join you in a labor camp or in front of a firing squad for associating with counterrevolutionaries? They don’t even need a court-martial anymore for God’s sake.”

Dostovalov stared at Chekov for several seconds; the lines of frustration on his face eased and a resigned expression replaced them.

“You’re right. I know it’s dangerous,” Dostovalov said, “And you didn’t volunteer for more danger. But I love her, Sergei. I love her as I have never loved a woman before. I won’t stop. If you need to distance yourself from me, I understand, and I don’t hold it against you.”

“Distance myself?” Chekov said. “You damn fool. I—”

Overcome, Chekov stopped speaking and glared at his friend for several seconds. Then he stood up from the wooden bench and stormed out of the canteen without another word, pulling his thick coat closer around himself.


Outside the mess hall, less than a block from the door, Yermilov took stock of Chekov’s hunched shoulders and furious stride. When Dostovalov left and started walking the opposite direction from his short, ugly friend, his countenance clearly troubled, Yermilov smiled. He leaned closer to the two men standing close to him and jerked his head toward Dostovalov’s broad, retreating back.

“Lover’s spat, eh?” Yermilov said. His cronies laughed roughly.

“Let’s keep an eye on Dostovalov,” Yermilov said. “He tries to meet the Romanov peezda for another little tryst and this will be the time we have a little fun ourselves.”


A long day of emptying outhouses and staring at other men’s cocks looking for signs of chlamydia or syphilis left Chekov exhausted and despondent. He slept fitfully that night, waking several times at odd intervals. He hadn’t spoken to Dostovalov since breakfast and he was still furious with his big friend.

I should. I should cut ties and look out for myself. That moron has been trying to get us in trouble ever since we got here. He couldn’t just stick to whoring like a tomcat, he had to fall in love with the one girl likely to get us both killed.

Turning in his bunk, Chekov’s eyes fell upon on Dostovalov’s empty bunk.

Empty. He didn’t have the duty tonight . . . 

Chekov rolled back onto his back and glared at the timber ceiling.

Not my business. He said as much. I’m not his father, and a doomed affair with Olga is more important to him than survival. He won’t listen to reason. If I try to stop him he’ll just tell me to piss off. He’s on his own.

Chekov took several deep breaths, willing himself back to sleep.

Son of a bitch.

Chekov swung his legs off the side of his bunk and slid quietly to the floor. He reached for his socks and pants and, swearing softly to himself the whole time, began to dress for the cold Siberian night.


Dostovalov peeled off a few bills and handed them to the guards on duty at Freedom House’s back door, both of whom grinned and slapped Dostovalov on the back before trudging off through the snow. Yermilov shifted slightly, let his rifle rest on the ground, and put restraining hands on the men lying on either side of him under the hedge.

“Almost,” Yermilov breathed. “Wait just a bit more.”

Yermilov kept his companions still until the bribed guards were around the corner of the Freedom House and then for twenty breaths more.

“Now,” Yermilov hissed.

The three men sprang from the snow-laden red bushes and charged. Dostovalov whirled to face them, but it was too late. Yermilov brought the buttstock of his rifle crashing down on the bridge of the man’s nose, sending him crumpling to the snow, blood erupting from his broken nose and busted mouth. The big man lay still on the ground, knocked cold by the blow.

“Take him to the river,” Yermilov said. “Break a hole in the ice and dump his body, then you can come back for your turns.”

“Wait,” the bigger of his cronies said in a thick voice. “No chance, we want to—”

“Do what the fuck you’re told, Ilyin,” Yermilov said. “We stay here arguing about it, someone will spot Dostovalov here and none of us will get a chance.”

Ilyin looked mutinous, but he and Yermilov’s other henchman grabbed Dostovalov by wrists and ankles and began to drag him through the snow, west toward the river.

Hopefully, the idiots don’t get caught by some Red Guard assholes. Assuming any of them are awake and sober enough to care at three in the morning.

Yermilov turned away from the door. From behind his size and stature were very similar to Dostovalov’s. He wanted to save Olga’s surprise for the last possible moment. From a sheath on his belt he pulled a knife, not his issued bayonet, but a smaller blade for closer, more intimate work. The kind of work he’d plied in Petrograd’s alleys since long before the revolution. Fortunately, the chaos of the Bolshevik coup had given him an opportunity to make an honest living out of his thuggery—at least it had until he’d been transferred to this outfit.

Kobylinsky and Matveev, those prigs, had kept him on a short leash since he’d been assigned to First Rifles. He’d been expected to stand his post and treat the reviled Romanovs with courtesy. Even after the men ripped off Kobylinsky’s epaulettes and “abolished” rank, the First had kept too many vestiges of its dreadfully dull discipline and standards for a man like Yermilov.

Now, though, all that dreary waiting was going to pay off.

The door creaked open behind him. Olga, her blue eyes aglow with excitement, stepped onto the back porch. Yermilov relished the split-second transition of her lovely face from anticipation to confusion to terror as he turned to face her. Before she could scream Yermilov stepped into her, pulling her body to his with his left arm and pressing the knife to her ivory skinned throat with his right hand. He propelled her back into the house. Keeping the knife to her throat, he used his left hand to pull the door quietly shut behind him.

“Don’t worry, Your Highness,” Yermilov whispered, grinning. “You’re going to get what you came for all the same, scream or struggle, though, and I’m afraid I’ll have to cut it short; then maybe I’ll go looking upstairs to finish. Nod if you understand.”

Olga, lips quivering, tears streaming down her face, nodded jerkily.

“Good girl, now into that bathroom,” he said. “And lock the door behind us, I’d hate to be interrupted.”


Ignoring the threat of falling on his ass, Chekov sprinted up the icy steps to the front door of Freedom House and into the mansion. Inside, he heard nothing at first, then faint sobbing from down the hall. Treading as lightly as possible, Chekov strode down the hall to the dining room where once he’d caught Dostovalov with Olga.

Rounding the corner, he found not his friend and Olga en flagrante delicto, but Tatiana, standing with her arms around Olga. Olga sat in an upholstered chair, her face in her hands, shoulders shakings, the small, quiet noises of a wounded animal issuing from her throat at irregular intervals.

“What happened?” Chekov said, his eyes wide. “My God, Anton didn’t—”

“No,” Olga choked out. “Anton wasn’t here. It was the ugly one, with the beard and the crooked teeth.”

“Yermilov,” Chekov said.

“He’s still outside,” Olga said. “He said his friends are coming back for theirs, and if I don’t let them, he said they’ll do the same to all of us and kill Papa, Alexei, and the rest.”

Olga took a deep breath, and curled into herself, her teeth clenched, holding back a wail.

Tatiana let go of her sister, and with quick, decisive movements opened a drawer in a nearby cabinet and withdrew a large carving knife. Chekov stepped in front of her and grabbed her wrist.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Tatiana regarded him with eyes that might have been chips of gray ice for all the warmth they held.

“I’m going to kill him,” she said. “Or he’s going to kill me.”

With a deft move, Chekov wrenched the knife from Tatiana’s hand and put it on the table. She reached for it again, but he put a restraining hand on her shoulder and shook her once firmly.

“No, you’re not going to kill anyone,” Chekov said, drawing his bayonet. “I am. Listen carefully; all either of you know is that you heard a crash and someone yelling. Yermilov shouting drunkenly, and then I came in and fought him off. Unfortunately, I had to kill him because he wouldn’t stop.”

“What if he kills you?” Tatiana asked.

“Then do the best you can,” Chekov said, already on his way to the door.

Chekov flung the door open and dove out into the frosty night, leaving the door swinging wildly behind him. Yermilov turned at the sound, his face twisted with contempt.

“Cunt, I told you to wait in—”

The rapist’s eyes widened at the sight of Chekov, bayonet in hand, death in his eyes, charging him. He tried to bring his rifle to bear, but the small, wiry veteran was far too quick, the distance between them too short. The steel tip of Chekov’s bayonet penetrated through uniform cloth, flesh, and sinew into Yermilov’s very bowels.

Yermilov’s hands clenched reflexively and the air rang with the crack-thwit-shhing report of his rifle as he fired, the bullet ricocheting uselessly off the stone steps of Freedom House. Chekov bore the bigger man to the ground, throwing all his weight behind the seventeen inches of steel lodged in Yermilov’s belly.

“Drop your rifle, Yermilov!” Chekov shouted into the still night air as he dragged the bayonet around inside the wound, then pulled it out and stabbed again. Warm, dark, almost black blood coated his hand and spurted up onto his uniform, it instantly began to congeal into a gory slush.

“Don’t make me do this, Yermilov!” Chekov said, and he withdrew and plunged the blade into Yermilov’s guts a third time, angling up, under his rib cage. The man’s eyes rolled back in his skull, he gave a gurgling gasp, jerked spasmodically three times, then lay still.

Chekov stood, his bayonet coming free of Yermilov’s destroyed abdomen with a slurping noise. He looked around as he took several ragged breaths. In the doorway of Freedom House Tatiana stood, looking upon the scene, her eyes calm and clear, her back straight. Her face might have been carved from marble.

As his heart rate declined, something occurred to Chekov he hadn’t thought about since finding out that Yermilov had raped Olga.

If Anton isn’t here, where the hell is he?

As the question spiked his heart rate once again, he noted a splash of blood on the snow on the steps, too high up to have been Yermilov’s. Scanning about rapidly it took mere seconds for him to recognize two sets of foot-prints and a large drag mark leading west, toward the waterfront.

Fuck, no, no, no.

Chekov wiped his bayonet clean on the skirt of his coat, sheathed it, slung his rifle and picked up Yermilov’s. He worked the bolt of the Model 1891, ejected the spent case and chambered a live round, then handed it to Tatiana, who took it with a quizzical look.

“I think they dragged off Dostovalov when he came to see Olga,” Chekov said, pointing to the wide trench in the snow flanked by two sets of boot prints. “I have to go after them. Wake everyone. The rifle is just in case Yermilov’s cronies get back before Kobylinsky gets more guards here.”

Tatiana nodded. Behind her light spilled into the hall, and Pierre Gilliard’s disheveled form emerged from the bedroom closest the dining room, followed shortly thereafter by other forms, male and female in their dressing gowns.

“Thank you, Sergei Arkadyevich,” Tatiana said, gravely.

Chekov shook his head, took his rifle in both hands and sprinted west as fast as his legs would carry him, praying he wasn’t too late.


Chilk-chilk-chilk

A cloud of relentless pain filled Dostovalov’s head as consciousness returned. The throbbing in his skull was quickly accompanied by sharper jets of agony radiating from his ruined nose and upper gums. His nerves inundated his foggy mind with further reports of damage and discomfort; he was lying on his face in the freezing snow and tightly bound with twine around his wrists and ankles that had cut off circulation to his hands and feet.

Chilk-chilk-chilk

“This ice is too fucking thick,” a dull voice complained from Dostovalov’s left. “Yermilov will have bored the girl out like a howitzer by the time we’re done here.”

Olga!

Dostovalov opened his eyes and rolled onto his side. He was lying on the riverbank in thick snow turned red and pink by his own blood and melted into slush by his body heat. Yermilov’s two cronies were poking away at the river ice with their bayonets. Dostovalov struggled against his bonds, pulling so mightily that the twine cut into his wrists, and blood fell in rivulets over his clenched fists. He coughed involuntarily, spewing out a sludge of his own blood, snot and snow that had invaded his mouth and misshapen nostrils.

His captors turned at the sound.

“Shit, he’s awake,” the same dull voice said. The taller of the two men stood, picked his rifle up off the ice and walked toward Dostovalov.

Dostovalov tried to shout, but hacked up more blood and phlegm instead, he strained harder against the bonds, felt a hand start to slip out of position.

Pull harder, Anton.

“Fuck this,” the shorter man said in a laconic voice. “Shoot him in the head and let’s get the fuck out of here. We can say we were never here and didn’t have anything to do with Yermilov’s crazy-ass plan.”

“Why don’t you do it?” The big man snapped back. “You want to keep your hands clean, tell them it was all me and Yermilov? Is that it?”

Dostovalov gritted his teeth and yanked his right hand free of its bonds, scraping a layer of skin off the back of his hand from wrist to knuckles. He screamed his pain and rage.

“Fuck,” the little one shouted and leveled his rifle at Dostovalov’s face. The big man felt every beat of his heart as he scrabbled frantically at the ground with his brutalized hands, trying to pull himself behind a tree stump for cover.

The crack of a rifle shot split the frigid night air.

No! Dostovalov shut his eyes reflexively. Olga, forgive me . . . 

But Dostovalov felt no projectile pierce his body. Instead, when Dostovalov opened his eyes, his would-be murderer was lying flat on his back, the contents of his skull splayed behind him onto the ice. Another crack, followed by the sound of an overripe melon being sliced, and the tall one who’d been whining fell beside his comrade. Dostovalov craned his neck around to see a slight man, rifle leveled, emerge from behind a nearby cypress and march toward the dead men. Chekov worked the bolt on his rifle and examined each body in turn. Apparently satisfied that both men were dead, he turned back to Dostovalov.

Unsheathing a utility knife, Chekov started cutting the twine binding Dostovalov’s legs.

“Thank you, Sergei,” Dostovalov slurred through his missing teeth.

“Don’t talk,” Chekov said, his voice cold. “We need to get you to a doctor to see what can be done about your face.”

“No time,” Dostovalov insisted, dribbling on himself as he spoke. “Yermilov—”

“Dead,” Chekov said, pulling his larger friend to his feet. “I killed him.”

“Thank God,” Dostovalov said, leaning gratefully on the shorter man. “Then Olga is all right?”

Chekov exhaled sharply and shook his head.

“She’ll live. She’ll recover, but no, Anton, she’s not all right,” he said. “I got there after Yermilov had finished.”

“No, oh, Jesus, no,” Dostovalov moaned. “This is my fault.”

“Yes.”

Dostovalov stepped away from Chekov and glared at his friend in shock, swaying as the pinpricks of nerves reawakening shot through his feet and legs.

“What, Anton? You expect me to comfort you?” Chekov said. “I told you fooling around with the tsar’s daughter was dangerous and it was. You were nearly killed, you stupid bastard.”

“Yermilov singled us out because you humiliated him our first week here,” Dostovalov shot back. “And then, when I wanted to take care of him, you insisted we wait. So, yes, I nearly got killed and Olga—”

Dostovalov stopped, tears choking off his voice, he stood silently for a second, composing himself.

“Did it occur to you, Sergei, for one instant, that maybe you’re not so fucking smart as you think you are?” He continued when he had a modicum of control. “That this time, if we’d done it my way, none of this would’ve happened?”

“Maybe,” Chekov said. “And maybe we’d be standing trial for murder. The Bolsheviks have no problem shooting men for the encouragement of others.”

“I’d rather that than have allowed the woman I love to be raped,” Dostovalov grated.

The muscles in Chekov’s neck and jaw worked for a moment as he returned Dostovalov’s glare, but finally he looked away.

“What’s done is done,” Chekov said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time to stop Yermilov. I really am. But now, if you don’t want Olga to suffer any more than she has to, we need to get our story straight. I’m assuming you paid the guards on duty to take the night off?”

Dostovalov, tired of talking, just nodded.

“Okay, can you stay on your feet awhile longer?” Chekov said. “Can you make it back to Freedom House on your own?”

“Yeah,” Dostovalov said, despite the agony reigning in his skull and the lesser pains shooting through the rest of his body.

“Good, I’m going to find the boys you paid off, here’s what we’re all going to tell them—”

* * *

An hour later, in the deposed tsar’s study, Chekov and the two guards, Blokhin and Virkhov, stood at attention while Kobylinsky, Matveev, and Nicholas all listened to Chekov’s version of the night’s events with intense interest. Tatiana sat in the corner wearing her customary inscrutable expression. Nicholas’s own doctor, Botkin, was working on Dostovalov’s face downstairs. When Chekov was done speaking, Kobylinsky turned to the two guards who were supposed to have been on duty.

“Is this accurate?” Kobylinsky said.

“Yes, Comrade,” the younger of the two men, a boy named Virkhov said. His pal, Blokhin, nodded vigorously.

“Yermilov told you the guard roster had been changed mid-shift and you didn’t think to check with me or the colonel?” Matveev said, his face screwed up in incredulity.

“We’re sorry, Comrade Ensign,” Blokhin said. “We didn’t want to wake you, it being so late. Yermilov is one of the senior men, we didn’t think he had a reason for lying.”

“Get out of here,” Kobylinsky said. “We’ll figure out a proper punishment for you idiots later.”

Blokhin and Virkhov needed no further encouragement; staggering just a little, for Dostovalov had found them at the bottle, they made their way hastily toward the stairs.

“It seems I owe you a great debt, Feldfebel Chekov,” Nicholas spoke up. “I must ask, though, how you knew to come here so late at night?”

I was afraid you might ask that. Chekov had concocted an answer, of course, but it was the weakest part of their alibi.

“I’m afraid it was mostly a matter of providence,” Chekov said. “I’ve had trouble sleeping lately, so I was out late myself. When I saw two lads who I knew were on the guard roster for the night, I knew something was amiss. Them already being in their cups, I grabbed Dostovalov and we got here as fast as we could.”

Nicholas turned to his daughter.

“Tatiana, dear,” he said. “Is all this reconciling with your memory of events?”

“As far as I could tell, Father,” Tatiana said. “I awoke to hear the big ugly one screaming, then I heard a rifle shot and Feldfebel Chekov begging him to put his rifle down. Then Feldfebel Chekov gave me the man’s rifle because he had to go after the others.”

“Speaking of that rifle,” Matveev interrupted. “While I applaud your initiative, Chekov, handing over a rifle to one of the Romanovs was a poor choice. While we will protect the former emperor and his family and will, of course, continue to extend them every courtesy,” Matveev nodded at the ex-emperor, “they are still in our custody.”

“Apologies, comrade Ensign,” he said. “But Yermilov’s co-conspirators had assaulted and carried off Dostovalov by that point. I needed to act fast to save his life but did not want to leave the Romanovs defenseless until new guards could arrive.”

“You obviously did the best you could with a terrible situation,” Kobylinsky said, his voice much firmer than Chekov had ever heard it. The incident seemed to have put some fire back in the man. “You are to be commended.”

Matveev glanced sideways at the colonel but said nothing.

“Indeed,” Nicholas said, standing up. “Feldfebel, I have misjudged you. You are, indeed, every inch the hero your war record indicates you are. I am deeply in your debt. If there is anything within my diminished power that I can do to repay you, I will.”

The former emperor thrust his right hand out at Chekov. Chekov looked at the hand, then into Nicholas’s eyes for a long moment before he grasped his outstretched hand and shook once, firmly, before letting go.

A tall, thickset man with graying brown hair receding from a widow’s peak, a beard just long enough to curl at the chin, and round spectacles walked into the study.

“Well, Yevgenny,” Nicholas said to the newcomer. “How is our other hero?”

“I set his nose as best I could. He’s likely to have noticeable scarring but he shan’t be horribly disfigured,” Dr. Botkin said. “I gave him something for the pain. I also gave Olga a mild sedative, she was very upset by the disturbance.”

“Yes,” Nicholas murmured. “My eldest has always been very sensitive.”

Tatiana made eye contact with Chekov then for first time since entering the study. The sadness and terror in the girl’s face pierced Chekov’s heart, but he clamped down on the emotion.

I killed the bastard who did it. I’m not sure what else I could’ve done.

“Very well, gentlemen,” Nicholas said. “If there is nothing else you need of us, Tatiana and I shall go speak with the rest of the family.”

“Nothing else,” Matveev said. “Thank you, Citizen Romanov. Chekov, I want to see you and Dostovalov downstairs in my office.”

Once Dostovalov joined them, face covered by thick white bandages and his eyes hazy from narcotic effect, Matveev shut the door to his office and regarded the two soldiers with a grave expression on his round face.

“Lads, you did the right thing,” he said. “But I have to tell you I’m a little worried about your relationships with the Romanovs.”

“How’s that, Comrade?” Chekov said, frowning.

“Look, men, there are rumblings the Imperialists may try to take the Romanovs,” Matveev said. “The Central Committee is sending a new commissar to take charge here, and if you are caught fraternizing with the Romanovs, they may assume you will be a liability in the event of a rescue attempt.”

To Chekov’s relief, Dostovalov said nothing in response, but his eyes, though hazy from morphine, narrowed.

“We understand, Comrade Ensign,” Chekov said.

Matveev shook his head.

“I’m not sure you do, Chekov,” he said. “The new commissar will have the authority to summarily execute men for counterrevolutionary activities—no trial. Get in his way and I will not be able to save you. If you cling to the Romanovs, you will likely be buried with them.”

“This isn’t right,” Dostovalov said. Chekov glared at him, but Matveev nodded.

“It isn’t right,” he said. “But it is nonetheless.”


Back | Next
Framed