'What are you doing here Comrade?' He asked their leader, an ugly beast of a man who looked as though he had lost half his face in a bar-room brawl. His anger increased as he smelt the alcohol on him. He didn't need drunken idiots stuffing things up even further.
'We were told you needed help with the killings. Where are they?' Half- Face asked, looking towards the truck.
'They're already dead and in the back of the truck. I'm on my way to dump them.'
'What the hell do you mean?' Half- Face replied angrily. 'They were meant to be brought out here alive and then killed, and the boss has told us that we would get to have a go at them. My men wanted to have fun with that bitch Alexandra and her whore daughters!'
The leader took a step towards Half- Face, at this close distance, the stench coming off him was rank.
'I'm in charge of this Comrade, and I'm telling you they're already dead. Now stand aside and let me get on with it.'
Half- Face obliged, begrudgingly stepping aside, but the leader was concerned at the unrest and anger he could sense within Half- Face's group of men, so he quickly decided to allow them to be involved in the disposal. This new group outnumbered him and his men, and he genuinely feared that he ran a considerable risk of losing control of the situation if he didn't allow them to assuage their blood lust to some extent.
'I could do with your help in getting rid of them, though.' He gave Half- Face a thin smile, indicating towards the truck. 'Get your men to unload a couple of them and put them in your carts. The bloody truck's overloaded, and I don't know if it's going to get us there'.
Half-Face seemed satisfied at this and gave him a leering grin before ordering a couple of his men over, and the leader watched as they climbed up on to the back of the truck and threw down three or four bodies. They then picked them up and heaved them into the carts. He remained standing with Half- Face and so did not see which of the corpses the men threw from the truck, they were just a jumble of arms and legs.
He heard the other men laughing and making crude jokes, their earlier anger dissipated at the sight of the dead men, women, and children. They didn't seem to care anymore that they had missed out on the slaughter; the proof of death and opportunity to debase the dead was sufficient.
When completed, the truck rumbled forward again, with the carts and mounted horsemen falling in behind, and they continued moving slowly further into the forest. The easing of the load in the truck had not had the effect the leader had wished for, however, and before long, just as they entered an area of the forest that was dense with trees and undergrowth, it ground to a halt, stuck fast in an area of boggy, marshy ground. He swore and jumped down from the cab again, walking around to inspect where it was stuck.
'You men!' he shouted. 'Get down and push it out.' His men obeyed, assisted by some of Half- Face's group; however, despite their efforts, they were unable to move the vehicle.
'Unload it then!' He ordered furiously. Three of his men jumped back onto the tray of the truck and started heaving the remaining bodies over the side, where they tumbled through the air, landing with sickening thuds to lie in the long, wet grass at the edge of the track, their limbs tangled grotesquely. After that, they tried pushing the truck again; the driver working the engine hard; however, all this produced was a spinning of the wheels, which sent lumps of boggy earth flying in every direction, splattering the men, and eventually, only served to result in the overheating of the engine.
He had noticed that they had passed a railway guard station a way back, and so sent the truck driver off with the instruction to bring back some water for the overheated engine. As he watched the driver disappear into the gloom of the forest, the leader wondered with wry detachment if he would bother to return or take his chance and take off. He thought that he wouldn't blame him if that were the case.
The two groups of men rested, sitting slightly apart from each other on the wet ground, smoking, and grumbling quietly amongst themselves. Someone shared around a flask. He hoped it was just water, but didn't have the energy to enquire. He knew that his men were tired; it had been a long night.
He, too, was exhausted; he had not slept in hours and did not think he would be going to any time soon either. He rubbed a hand over his face, knuckling his aching eyes, and wondered what else could go wrong this night.
To his surprise, the driver returned with a container of water, which he carefully poured into the truck's radiator.
'There's a pile of old wooden railway ties over there that we could use to get us out of here.' The driver told him, and so he once again ordered the grumbling, weary men to their feet, and they hauled the sleepers over to the truck, laying them to form a bridge over which the stuck fast vehicle could find purchase to cross the boggy ground.
To his intense relief, this was successful, and the men were finally able to push the truck out of the bog and get it moving again.
The leader did not hold out much hope that this would be the end of his problems; the floor of the forest was potholed and filled with muddy water from the recent rains. He doubted that the truck would be able to move through such conditions without further incident.
And just as he had feared, a bit further on, the truck again lurched off the road, this time falling sideways and becoming stuck between two trees. Cursing, he decided to give up on using it as it was turning out to be more trouble than it was worth and was costing them valuable time.
He had the men load the remaining bodies from the truck into the rest of Half- Face's carts, leaving it where it was so that they could recover it later on.
Before they moved off, he made two of his men stay back with the truck, telling them to turn away anyone that may come along. 'Shoot them if you need to,' he snarled.
As the horrible caravan of carts, piled with dead bodies travelled slowly further into the forest, he borrowed one of Half- Face's horses so that he could ride ahead to try and find the exact location of the old disused mine that he had selected earlier as the preferred dumping site.
Accompanying him, also on horseback, was one of his men who had been with him initially when they chose the location, who was now horribly drunk.
'What do you mean you can't remember where it is, you fool?' the leader screamed, 'just keep riding until you do!'
The sun was up by the time the carts finally arrived at the mineshaft. He was horrified to see that a group of local peasants had made their overnight campsite there, and worse, hadn't yet moved on. The peasants eyed the group of horsemen and carts with interest, and as it was still too early for them to pack up their campsite and continue to the city, where they were heading to market, he sent them back to their village, telling them that no-one was to travel into the city that day under pain of death.
They looked into his wild, bloodshot eyes and decided against an argument, quickly packing up their camp and dispersing quietly into the forest.
The men rested then, eating the hardboiled eggs that had been delivered to the Ipatiev House for the family by the convent nuns the previous morning. Although it would be another glorious warm day, the early morning forest was still chill, and the men warmed themselves by the remnants of the peasant's fire.
The long trip through the forest to the mine had given the leader plenty of time to think, and he had decided that he did not want Half- Face and his men there anymore. His main reason for this was because he wanted to strip and search the bodies before consigning them to the mine, and he was pretty sure that this search would find more valuables. He didn't believe for a moment that they had recovered everything back at the house, and he did not want Half- Face and his rabble of men around during a proper search; if they saw jewels and other treasure, they would want them, and he would not be able to control the situation if things got nasty. God knows he didn't even know if he would be able to keep his men in line.
He called Half- Face over, and trying to be civil said, 'Comrade, I appreciate your help in getting us here. My men and I can finish this.' He could se
e that the other man was about to protest, so quickly added, 'You and your men shouldn't know anything of what happens to them from here on. Just in case there are questions asked later, you can say in all honesty that you don't know.' He could see the other man thinking hard about it, and then to his relief, Half- Face smiled and slapped him on the back.
'All right then. They're dead, and my men have had their fun, that's enough for me'. He spat on the ground, turned, and shouted to his men who mounted up and rode away.
The leader sighed in relief. It was almost over, and he felt better knowing that he only needed to worry about his men from here on. Most of his men couldn't be trusted either, but at least he knew he had authority over them and that they would obey his orders.
He ordered the men to unload the carts and strip the bodies. As they started removing articles of clothing, jewels and gemstones were shaken loose. At the sight of so many priceless valuables within their reach, the men grew frenzied, ripping and tearing at the clothing with their knives, some even using their bare hands.
It was as he had long suspected, the women had hidden their jewels by sewing them into their camisoles, and under buttons and fastenings. The boy's undergarments too had been filled with jewels, and gemstones concealed in the base and peak of his forage cap.
He stood in amazement at the sight of the precious stones, diamonds, rubies pearls, and amethysts, spilling out onto the ground from the blood-encrusted clothing.
He understood then, as did his men, why during the killing their bullets and bayonet thrusts at the prisoners, and in particular the girls and the two women had had so little effect. The jewels had provided them with protection, like a coat of mail, he thought. He laughed mirthlessly at the irony of this; he very much doubted that it would have been the kind of protection they would have expected or wanted.
They found ropes of pearls and a thick spiral of gold wire concealed on Alexandra's body, and he began to fear that the frenzied actions of his men trying to locate more loot would cause some valuables to be damaged, smashed or lost in the long grass.
He ordered them to stop.
'Pile the clothing together and burn it.' Soon a thick spiral of black smoke curled its way into the still early morning air. He noticed some of his men surreptitiously slipping some smaller items into their pockets, and he warned them again, as he had done at the house to give them up, and add them to the growing pile by his feet, otherwise, he would shoot them, and they would join the corpses laying on the ground waiting for consignment to the mine shaft.
Every retrieved item was recorded in the small notebook he carried in his pocket, and once he was satisfied that nothing was left, ordered the men to start lowering the now mangled bodies one by one into the mine shaft.
To his horror, he quickly discovered that the shaft was not going to be deep enough. He had thought that the water at the bottom would be deep enough to cover all of the bodies, but it soon became evident that this would not be the case.
'Throw some acid over them.' He ordered, and then he threw a couple of hand grenades into the shaft in the hope that the explosions would serve to collapse the sides and bury them. In despair, he discovered that sturdy planks of timber had been used to reinforce the dirt sides of the mine and that the only effect his grenades had was to mutilate the bodies even further.
He was going to have to leave the site and return later with proper equipment and tools, shovels and ropes, which made him even more frustrated and angry.
'Cover it up,' he ordered, motioning for the men to cover the shaft with small branches and earth.
Leaving his men behind to stand guard, he headed back to the city, cursing at the additional time this was going to take, his biggest worry was how this further delay could increase the risk of discovery before the completion of their task of properly disposing of the bodies. The men, while uneasy at the thought of having to stay with the remains, were exhausted, and settled themselves in the long damp grass to sleep.
'I'm going to the village to look for food, milk. Is anyone coming with me?' asked one, glaring around. 'Anything I find will be mine if I go alone.'
Two other men wearily got to their feet, and all three disappeared into the forest.
The leader returned some hours later with additional supplies, including dry firewood, petrol, and sulphuric acid.
'We need to recover the bodies, disfigure them with the acid, then burn them to ash,' he told the men, 'there are deeper mine shafts further in the forest, so we'll take the ashes there and dispose of them. No-one will ever find them there.'
He noted that it had been four in the morning of July 18 when he arrived back to the mine, and much to his further annoyance discovered that while he had been away, some other men had come, apparently sent from headquarters in Ekaterinburg to observe. He did not know them, and most certainly did not want them there. He sent some of that group to watch the road, telling the rest of them to go back to the village to warn the villagers again that they were still forbidden from going anywhere near the area.
The forest was still dark, and the men worked by torchlight, laboriously removing the bodies from the mine shaft. One of his men climbed down into the opening and grabbing body parts; an arm, or a leg, whatever came to hand in the darkness, tied them with ropes and hauled one by one back to the top of the mineshaft. The naked, bloated bodies lay grotesquely in the wet grass, their washed white skin gleaming eerily under the light of the torches. Once they had been all raised to the surface again, he had them covered with tarpaulins.
He began to worry that they would not have enough time to take them further into the forest, and his men were now beyond exhaustion, hungry, and starting to show signs of anger and frustration.
'We'll bury them here,' he said, giving up the battle, and handing a shovel to one of his men, motioning for him to start digging a grave.
'I can't dig this, it's rock hard with stones.' the man soon complained, giving the shovel to his companion, who also found that the ground was impossible to dig to any useful depth, so after eventually also having to abandon this plan, the leader had the bodies loaded back on to the carts and taken back to the truck, which by now was pulled free from where it had been stuck.
It was breaking dawn on July 19 by the time they got back to the truck, and he registered almost without surprise, that he had not slept for seventy hours. He felt beyond tired now, almost mechanical. He was in a nightmare that had no end.
His men loaded the bodies back onto the truck, and they slowly started heading back down the road to the city, often stopping when they needed to give it a shove across the deeply rutted surface. When they arrived at a dip in the road in the area known as Pigs Meadow, the truck again lurched to a halt, stuck firmly in the mud.
He cursed. This thing continued to be a nightmare, and he could not go on with it. He decided to bury the bodies right there where they had stopped, and he knew they had to do it before the sun came up in order to avoid discovery. The corpses were thrown down from the truck once more. He ordered his exhausted men to start digging.
He inspected the hole when they could dig no more. It was barely two feet deep, and as they dug, it kept filling up with dirty water. 'It will have to do.' He snapped, knowing that he couldn't push them any further.
To try and make the corpses unidentifiable should they ever be discovered, he had the men smash their faces with their rifle butts before throwing them into the hole, and they then poured the ceramic containers of sulphuric acid over them as they lay tangled together. Following that, they covered them with quicklime, a layer of boggy earth, and brushwood, then trampled the whole thing down. They laid the rotting old railway ties which had served as a bridge for the truck so many hours before over the grave, and he had the driver run over them several times to flatten the entire area.
He stood back and looked. The place looked natural and undisturbed. Apart from the railway ties which had obviously not been in that part of the road before, he didn't think that
anyone would find the area suspicious.
He was confident that nobody would ever locate this final pitiful resting place.
Five
Site of the Ipatiev House
Ekaterinburg, Russia
1991
Agni parked his car outside of the Chekhov Hotel in central Ekaterinburg. It was the place where the members of the Russian investigation team were staying, and he had just assumed that May would have been booked in there too.
He looked over at her, sitting in the passenger seat of his car. She had been quiet and had not said a word on the drive back, but he thought she looked a lot better now that they had left the Koptyaki Forest behind. Some of the colour had returned to her cheeks, and she didn't look as tense.
There's a tea house across the road,' he said, as they got out of the car, 'let's go there first and get you something to eat, then we can decide what to do next.'
The tea house was warm and cosy inside. He ordered for them, and he could see the instant therapeutic effect that the hot coffee and sweet apple cake had on May as her colour quickly returned, and she began to look herself again.
'I'm sorry to have given you such a fright, Agni. I don't know what came over me.' She felt and sounded embarrassed. 'I hope you don't think that I'm some neurotic woman who can't deal with tough situations because I'm not.' She looked at him as if daring him to challenge her.
'I don't think that at all,' he said quickly. 'I hardly think you would have survived this many years in a career which has seen you become an esteemed forensic examiner if you were.' He was relieved to see her return his smile.
'Do you have any idea why I am here, Agni? I mean, why your government invited an expert from Britain?'
'I have to admit that some of my team found it strange, and are not too happy about it. Some of my colleagues see your inclusion as foreign interference and wonder if it is because they are not considered expert enough to do a good job. Please don't be offended if you sense some coldness, or mistrust towards you when you first meet them. I assure you; it won't be personal.'
The Girl With the Crystal Soul Page 4