The Tsar repeated the instructions, twice. He was right both times. There was now hope. Gibbs and Cambeuil returned.
‘Is all ready?’ asked Gibbs, a smile masking his apprehension.
‘I hope so,’ replied the doctor earnestly.
The three Britons went to the door as the Royal Family took their leave of each other. The Britons simply shook hands.
As the doors opened, Watson became the Tsar and was immediately surrounded by soldiers. They would not allow him to go to the car, but he was allowed to descend halfway down the steps. ‘We don’t want you escaping us, Citizen Romanoff,’ they jibed.
Colonel Kobylinsky stood by and observed the Tsar and the way he walked. Something was amiss.
Cambeuil and Gibbs descended the palace steps, the chauffeur a respectful two paces behind but he moved swiftly ahead and opened the door for his passengers. He then made as though to go to the driver’s side but remembered to enter from the passenger door. For a long moment he looked at the controls of the great car. He moved the knobs and levers on the steering wheel but as he did so Watson could see that he had not put the gear lever on to neutral. If he put the advance-retard lever on to full without putting the gears into neutral the car would stall and their deception would be discovered. The advance-retard reached full and the engine burst into life, but it did not stall. The chauffeur had obviously put his foot on the clutch pedal at the last moment. He then reached for the gear lever but released the hand brake instead. If he took his foot from the clutch pedal now the car would start in a very low first gear and probably stall if he tried to negotiate the other gears. The car drew slowly away. It was travelling at less than five miles an hour, each individual cylinder’s firing clearly discernible. The chauffeur revved slightly, the car’s engine note increased but the speed remained low. As though in slow motion the car turned onto the drive, the spokes of each wheel barely blurred by speed.
Inquisitive soldiers left their posts and went to peer at the car and its driver, clad in such strange clothes. Watson’s heart beat faster. Some Cossacks on their high-spirited horses rode round the car, whistling and shouting to each other. They were now halfway along the drive. Watson took a deep breath as the sluggish scene receded in perspective.
Three quarters of the drive, the car was now only a speck in the distance to Watson’s straining eyes. Only a matter of yards to go to the gate.
Then there was a flash of red and a moment later the sound of a loud bang. The soldiers cocked their guns. The car had backfired! Had the Tsar tried to change gear? Another backfire! Watson’s heart was in his mouth. A horse reared, the car swerved off the drive into soft soil. The engine revved, the wheels spun, the rear of the car fishtailed and skidded, catching the gate pillar a glancing blow. Watson broke into a cold sweat, the soldiers took aim. The next second took an hour as the car spun 180º in a grotesque adagio pirouette and faced back to the palace, its Parthenon grille glinting in the distance.
It was then that Watson felt the game was up. He had not shown the Tsar where reverse was and the gateway was too narrow for the car to turn fully.
Time stood still but the car did not. The grille grew slowly larger — it was coming back to the palace! Was the Tsar giving himself up? At a speed no more than walking pace the car returned to the palace steps. The chauffeur alighted and nimbly ascended the steps and in Oxford English announced to the surrogate Tsar, ‘My sincerest apologies, Your Majesty, please send the British Embassy a full claim for the damages.’
Tsar and chauffeur bowed and Soviet soldiers raised their rifles above their heads — and cheered. The chauffeur swiftly descended the steps and leapt into the car. Driving slower than ever he finally steered the Ghost into the mists beyond Tsarkoe Selo.
‘Thank God he did not use the foot brake,’ thought Watson as he turned to rejoin the Royal Family who stood colourless on the top step. Surgeon Cambeuil calculated how he could dine out on the story for the rest of his life.
The next few days were full of difficulty for the new Tsar. Although he was cognizant of the old routine of the royal apartments the new conditions were alien to him, but the Tsarista was constantly at his shoulder to assist him. She advised him not to go for walks in the park on his own as the real Tsar had done. But the old soldier refused in case it was thought that the Tsar was afraid of his own people. He continued to cut firewood, stacking it in neat piles, watering the newly planted vegetables, and digging over the soil, all projects started by Nicholas himself.
In the evenings the family gathered to read to each other. Dr Watson’s Russian improved as did the Romanoffs’ understanding of the science of deduction.
Each day they waited for news, each day they were disappointed. Then one evening a group of soldiers burst into the room as the family was busily occupied sewing, knitting and reading. A sentry had seen someone signalling with two lights from the room. The soldiers looked threateningly at each member of the family. One of them approached the Grand Duchess Anastasia to see what she had been sewing. There was a cry from a sentry in the courtyard. The explanation of the mystery was that the lamp next to Grand Duchess Anastasia had two shades, one green and one red, so that each time she moved she obscured one of the lights. Grudgingly the guards departed.
‘Why does he not come?’ intoned the Tsaritsa. ‘It is three weeks since we sent word to him.’
‘Perhaps he did not believe us,’ the doctor replied.
Before the sentence had fully left his lips the door burst open again and in strode the Russian Premier, a surprisingly spare man who seemed constantly on edge. He marched straight to the Tsar and looked hard at him. After several seconds of close scrutiny he smiled. ‘So it is true, Dr Watson. You are now the Tsar. What are your terms?’
‘Freedom for the Imperial family,’ he replied.
‘I too wish for that and have worked for it, but I cannot guarantee my own freedom!’ he cried with emotion. ‘The Bolsheviks aim to destroy us all. They are fanatics.’
‘I can arrange for finance,’ the doctor advised. ‘With money from my Government, you will be able to pay the army to support you and destroy your Bolshevik enemies.’
‘It is possible, but where is the Tsar?’
‘On British soil.’
‘Your Embassy?’
‘That is correct.’
‘This is very dangerous.’
‘Indeed. If anything were to happen to him, while he was there, the British Empire would be forced to act.’
‘And if anything happens to you the same result would follow?’
‘I believe so.’
‘This is blackmail.’
‘No, merely concentrating the mind. The Provisional Government has vacillated too long.’
‘I have spoken to Mr Gibbs and Sir George and agree with your idea. Pack in secret and take warm clothes with you. I will prepare everything.’
With that he turned on his heel and was gone.
‘Can we trust him, Your Highness?’ the doctor asked.
‘My husband believes so,’ she replied.
‘Then so must we.’
‘I don’t like it,’ reflected Sir George as he sat before the British Embassy fire. ‘I don’t like it at all. There are too many strident dissident voices in the Duma. There is even a Soviet now, dominated by Bolsheviks. And who is this Sverdlov who calls for the execution of the Tsar?’
The Tsar shrugged his shoulders. ‘I do not know him, but it seems that there are many shadow people who form opinion here. We must move quickly.’
Meanwhile, Kerensky’s preparations were almost complete as were Sverdlov’s. Kerensky’s plan was to take the Royal Family to Tobolsk, a complete backwater in NW Siberia where they would be safe from revolutionary fervour; Sverdlov envisaged a more permanent solution.
Jacob Sverdlov was an implacable enemy of the Romanoffs and there was no love lost between him and Kerensky. Like many Bolsheviks, Sverdlov was of Jewish stock, and he possessed a brain of astute political aw
areness and a ruthless intellect. He was President of the Central Executive Committee of the All Russian Congress of Soviets. It was also said that he could carry the whole of Congress’s business in his head. (A worthy adversary for Mycroft Holmes.) He had developed a system of spies throughout the garrison and servants at Tsarkoe Selo, and he was willing to use them against fellow revolutionaries of any party as much as he was against the Tsar.
Kerensky kept the evacuation plans as secret as he could, but when he recruited soldiers for a new regiment to guard the Royal Family and gave them their uniforms as well as higher pay the soldiers themselves became worried. They feared that they were returning to the Front. The whisper was heard by Sverdlov who planned accordingly.
On the night of August 12th 1917 Kerensky arrived at Tsarkoe Selo to escort the Royal Family onto the train but Sverdlov’s henchmen were at work. First the soldiers refused to help move the royal baggage until they were paid and the railwaymen refused to prepare a train. This gave Sverdlov’s agents time to carry out their long rehearsed plans.
What did Sverdlov hope to gain from this?
Once in Sverdlov’s power the Romanoffs would be imprisoned where no-one could reach them. It meant that they could become puppets but historical precedent suggested a more final fate. Cromwell had had Charles Stuart executed to remove the focus of opposition to this revolution, to unite his own forces so that they knew that there was no turning back, and to show all observers that he meant to carry his revolution to its logical conclusion by employing the most ruthless methods. His illegal, ungenerous, ignoble act had one virtue — success. It was a precedent that Sverdlov found compellingly attractive.
Kerensky and Kobylinsky urged and cajoled. The soldiers were paid to move the baggage. The railway workers set up the train but refused to drive it. Kerensky reported to the Tsar and after a brief consultation telephoned Petrograd. An hour later a heavy-shouldered man with long arms and brindled beard appeared at the marshalling yard and built up a head of steam in the locomotive that was to pull the carriages of the royal suite which bore Japanese flags and the legend ‘Japanese Red Cross Mission’. Before long a procession of cars appeared surrounded by mounted Cossacks. The royal suite alighted and embarked on the train. One old retainer asked Kerensky in a loud voice that many overheard, ‘How long are we to be in Tobolsk?’
The agitated and by now utterly exhausted Kerensky replied, ‘Until the Assembly meets in November and then you shall all be free to go wherever you wish.’
Thus assured, the royal suite left on its journey to Tobolsk in the Siberian wastes. As the party left, Kerensky gave Kobylinsky a piece of paper. That piece of paper and the train driver were to save the lives of the entire royal suite.
The journey to Tobolsk takes four days and involves passage through many small villages. There is only one large town on the route, Perm, a day out from Petrograd.
On the train the daily routine returned to what it had been for the Royal Family before the Revolution, with tea at four a high spot of the day.
It was then that the children voiced their fears but Watson’s stories from medical life of grave illnesses stoically borne and overcome acted as heartening cordials to depressed spirits. But they all missed the Tsar, their father.
When the train passed through villages the curtains were drawn at each window and no-one was allowed to show themselves.
At Perm the local officials insisted that the train stop. Honest farmers, these men did not like this secrecy. Their leader was a dignified old man with a white beard. He approached Kobylinsky who showed him the paper that Kerensky had given him. It read, ‘Colonel Kobylinsky’s orders are to be obeyed as if they were my own. Alexander Kerensky.’ The old man rubbed his chin. ‘I must consult with my council,’ he replied.
‘Why?’ thundered the Colonel.
‘We have received other orders,’ came the reply.
‘From whom?’ continued the Colonel no less belligerently.
‘Moscow.’
‘Moscow?’
Before he could finish Arthur Rowbotham appeared. ‘There’s summat up here. I know these tracks. The points have been changed. If we go on now we go to Yekaterinberg, not Tobolsk.’
‘Yekaterinberg,’ gasped the Tsaritsa. ‘But they hate us there. That is why we are being sent to Tobolsk.’
‘Old man,’ said Kobylinsky, his tone hardening. ‘Show me your authority.’
The venerable figure took a piece of paper from his pocket and held it up.
‘There is no official identification, old man,’ snarled the Colonel. ‘It hardly compares with a handwritten authority from the Premier of Russia. Alter those points immediately or it will be the worse for you.’
‘I’ll go and see that they do,’ added Rowbotham. ‘I won’t be long.’
When they had gone, Colonel Kobylinsky turned to the Tsar and said, ‘Thus it is that the honest are made dupes by evil men.’ Watson’s Russian was not quite up to that so he simply nodded sagely. ‘The Jezail bullet still pains you, Dr Watson?’ Kobylinsky asked in English.
‘Only occasionally,’ the doctor replied and regretted it instantly.
‘I thought as much,’ cried the Colonel triumphantly.
‘You know me?’ Watson asked.
‘I have seen you in Petrograd. You are very good at billiards, I noticed in the Officers’ Club.’
‘What will you do with us now?’ inquired the Tsaritsa apprehensively.
‘My duty is to protect the Royal Family. I always do my duty.’ He clicked his heels and saluted. Just at that moment there was a cry from outside.
‘It’s Rowbotham,’ said Watson. ‘He’s in trouble.’
The two men rushed outside and saw Rowbotham being set upon by a group of men with scarves drawn up round their faces. The Lancastrian was putting up a good show as two men fell to his fists; the others fled when they saw help arriving.
‘I think we’d best be going, gents,’ the train driver cried, gasping for breath. ‘They play it rough round ’ere.’
‘What happened, man?’ Watson urged.
‘When I came out there were two fellows in the cab and another changing the points to Yekaterinberg. Yuri my relief driver is dead, and I feel a bit poorly.’ With that he pitched forward, a knife jutting from his back.
They took him into the royal carriage and laid him on a soft bed. The Tsaritsa said that she and her daughters would nurse him as they had nursed many a wounded soldier at the Front and indeed were fully qualified nurses. The Colonel was in a towering rage which none of the locals dared to exacerbate. A relief crew of drivers was soon assembled and the train made off for Tobolsk.
Watson’s admiration for the Royal Family grew as they showed genuine concern for their charge. He came to revel in their company and Alexis became like the son he never had. Alexis grew fitter and stronger despite the tedium of travel and Nagorny became the doctor’s friend although they had few words of each other’s language.
When the suite arrived in Tobolsk they were reasonably well housed in the old governor’s residence. Security was not too strict and conditions were bearable.
Then in November the dam burst. Kerensky fell from power as the Bolsheviks took over. November, the month they had hoped would see their freedom, instead became the bitterest time of all as it was snatched away and hope floundered.
In Petrograd, the day that Kerensky had resigned all power, Sir George Buchanan went for a walk to the Winter Palace. He noticed that life appeared normal. Shops, markets, restaurants, even cinemas, were all open as though nothing had happened, but Tsar Nicholas in the British Embassy had a different view.
‘I have condemned Dr Watson to death. I must return to my family.’
Despite Sir George’s remonstrations he would not budge. He felt that the British Government had no sympathy for him and that they would not lift a finger to help him. He also knew that the Bolsheviks hated him.
‘If you do not help me to return to my family, Sir George,
I will go to the Supreme Soviet and declare myself before them.’ In the face of such obduracy Sir George could only acquiesce.
News had just reached the Embassy that Arthur Rowbotham had died of his injuries and so Sir George arranged for a train to go to Tobolsk to bring back the remains of the valiant engineer. Bolsheviks stood aside at the sight of the Union flag and the train made fast time. The Tsar hoped that he had not changed too much.
The coffin for the driver’s remains was very large and heavy. So much so that the newer more militant Bolshevik guards insisted on checking it for a false compartment. In their keenness to disturb the dead they missed the quick. With Kobylinsky’s help the second substitution was easier than the first. Only the faithful Colonel recognized that the ‘Tsar’ had recovered from his limp, although he also noted that the Dr Watson who had alighted from the train had had a limp as well as the one who embarked on it. The Tsar was a very talented man, for everything except being a Tsar. He was Russia’s Charles Stuart.
The train did not return to Petrograd; instead it made for Murmansk where the HMS Torquay and a Scottish naval surgeon awaited the cortège.
As soon as he boarded the train Dr Watson shaved off his beard leaving only his small moustache. Nicholas had brought Watson’s bag. This the doctor unstitched and secreted into the lining an envelope bearing the crest of the Romanoff given to him by Grand Duchess Marie as he left.
The journey was a lugubrious one. The flat landscape which was lashed into featureless uniformity by the icy winds from the Arctic reflected his spirits. Despite the fact that he was going home he could not help thinking of the family he had become a part of and which he was leaving behind to the mercies of bigoted, ignorant self-seekers who operated under the banner of revolution. When his thoughts left them for a moment he had no light relief to comfort him. In the next compartment lay the corpse of Arthur Rowbotham accompanied by his sobbing wife and children. Russia was a mournful place.
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