The Romanov Conspiracy

by Glenn Meade

  Yakov removed his revolver and handed it across. The aide placed the revolver in a desk drawer.

  Almost on cue the floor-to-ceiling doors burst open and an arrogant-looking man appeared.

  He bristled with restless energy and was dressed in a black military uniform and polished knee-high boots. In one hand he carried his trademark officer’s baton, in his other he held a stiff paper envelope. His full head of untamed, wavy hair, his black Vandyke beard, and wire-rimmed spectacles gave him the look of an eccentric academic.

  Yakov recognized Leon Trotsky, the defense minister and Lenin’s ruthless right-hand man. He had the glittering, dark eyes of a fanatic, and coldness emanated from him like a physical force. Yakov always found something slightly chilling about him.

  He snapped to attention, clicked his heels. “Comrade Trotsky.”

  “Come.”

  The balcony overlooked Moscow. The tall French windows were already open and Trotsky stepped out. He fitted a cigarette into a long cigarette holder, lit it, and blew out smoke.

  Yakov joined him. Farther along, he glimpsed another French-windowed room where a man with a balding head was hunched down over some paperwork. He recognized the unmistakable figure of Vladimir Lenin.

  “You’re proving very capable. Comrade Lenin is well pleased with you, Yakov. But I wonder if you’re up to the task he has in mind for you.”

  “Comrade Minister?”

  Trotsky delicately balanced the cigarette holder between slim, aristocratic fingers. He removed the envelope from under his arm, opened it, and handed Yakov a photograph. It was a picture of the tsar and his family, the kind of royal memento commonly sold in street kiosks and stores before the tsar’s abdication.

  Trotsky said, “Your wife was one of the first to be shot during the uprising, I believe. What do you feel when you look at that photograph, Yakov? Hatred? Fury? Bitterness? Answer honestly.”

  “For the children, the wife, I feel nothing. For her husband, hate is too mild a word. I despise him.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Personally, I’d put the tsar on public trial and hang him, but Comrade Lenin has other plans.”

  Yakov went to hand back the snapshot.

  Trotsky shook his head. “Keep it. Let it be a reminder of your hatred, never to allow your loathing to diminish, even for a second.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we want you to administer the execution of the entire Romanov family.”

  31

  LONDON

  It was easy to believe that the most brutal war in world history was happening a million miles away that evening.

  The gala fund-raising concert in Albert Hall was attended by the usual dignitaries, the ladies in their finest silks, the gentlemen in formal evening wear.

  The London Symphony was playing Sibelius and just before the interval the American ambassador, Walter Page, left his wife’s side and stepped out of his box. He was guided by an usher to a private room at the end of a hall.

  The lights were out and the curtains open, the room faintly illuminated by the amber streaks in London’s evening sky. A figure stood in shadows.

  Page lit a cigar and strolled over. Someone had placed a silver tray on a side table, champagne already poured for the interval into a half-dozen flute glasses, the bottle stuck in a silver bucket of crushed ice.

  Page selected a glass and knocked back the champagne in one gulp. “I always find these things so terribly boring, don’t you, Mack?”

  The American ambassador’s aide, John MacKenzie, appeared out of the shadows. He was tall, immaculately groomed, his hair well oiled, his Brooks Brothers suit crisply pressed. “What can I say, Mr. Ambassador? It’s a diversion.”

  Page took a couple of pills from a bottle in his pocket and washed them down with another glass of champagne. “It’s giving me the headache from hell. What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to talk with you about our agent in Russia, sir.”

  “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  “I’m afraid not. What do you know about Philip Sorg, sir?”

  “Only what our friends in State tell me. That he’s kept a watch on the Romanovs since their imprisonment, following them from Tsarskoye Selo to Tobolsk, and on to Ekaterinburg. That his efforts are a vital part of our plans. Why?”

  “What do you know about Sorg personally?”

  “Very little, except he must have had his nerves surgically removed to do what he’s doing.”

  Mack looked out at London’s rooftops. “I met him once when I worked in Washington. He’s a strange character. Thrives on danger. I heard whispers that he spied for us in Russia in 1913, when we were following the rise of the socialist groups, and that he was picked up by the Ochrana and tortured. He had a very rough time of it by all accounts, before he escaped and managed to flee the country.”

  “And they sent him back in? Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “He volunteered, sir. But here’s the thing—his nerves are shot to pieces. The only way he can cope is by using laudanum, apparently.”

  Boyle looked askew. “You’re not serious. Can we rely on this fellow?”

  “State says we can. But it brings me to our problem.” Mack unfolded a typed page. “This came over the secure telegraph, sir. I’ve decoded the original.”

  Page put down his empty glass and took the typed sheet.

  Mack added, “In Dimitri’s last report he suspected that he was being hunted by the secret police. It seems he may have run out of luck.”

  Page looked worried as he finished reading the paper. “You’re sure of this?”

  “I’m afraid our man in Ekaterinburg may be finished before we even start.”

  PART THREE

  32

  EKATERINBURG

  Everything was going fine until Sorg had to stab the woman to death.

  That morning he dragged a wooden handcart behind him, its wheels bouncing over the cobbled backstreets. He was dressed in a worker’s cotton smock, a worn cap, coarse woolen trousers, and scuffed high boots. With his bushy beard and greasy hair he looked every inch a Russian peasant.

  The handcart he found in a secondhand huckster shop in the markets. A wheel was damaged and one of the handles loose, but for eight rubles the man in the shop had thrown in a hammer and nails to cement the deal.

  Sorg fixed up the cart and piled in some scraps of wood and a few red bricks, his frayed black overcoat draped over the handles. A man with a handcart was a man with a purpose, the kind of busy worker who thronged Ekaterinburg’s streets. Under the pile of scrap Sorg had hidden the revolver he’d taken from the landlord, Ravich.

  In the space of a year, Ekaterinburg had been occupied by the Whites, then overrun by the Reds, then seized by the Whites again, and now retaken by the Reds in fierce and bloody battles. The bustling Siberian city at the crossroads with Asia was in turmoil, the streets teeming with refugees, poor and wealthy alike, desperate to flee Moscow and St. Petersburg.

  Everyone looked wretched. Electric streetcars were crowded, the backstreets narrow and noisy, and the gutters choked with filth and stinking to heaven. The population of over a hundred thousand was swelled by almost half that again, and an air of panic saturated the city.

  The industrial heartland of Siberia, with the richest mines of platinum, gold, and valuable metals, was under constant siege. Each evening at eight the sirens signaled the commencement of curfew, which lasted until 5 a.m.

  Sorg dragged his cart past the log houses of the working class and came to a warren of backstreets teeming with workers’ tenements, where the stench of uncollected garbage hit his nostrils. Here and there along the city’s three-mile-long Voznesensky Prospect, lined with linden trees, the stucco fronts of mansions, businesses, and churches were blistered by gunfire.

  It was now illegal to sell maps in Russia—the Reds feared they could be of use to enemy spies. Simple possession was punishable by execution, so Sorg took mental note of streets, alleyways, and brid
ges.

  He paid special attention to the hotels, lodging houses, and barracks that garrisoned restless gangs of Red Guard units. The idiots made it easy for him: everywhere they stayed, they hung fluttering red flags. After a couple of weeks, Sorg was familiar with every back alley.

  In one side street he came across a grotesque sight: five bodies slumped against the wall of a merchant’s grain store. What looked like an entire family, father, mother, and their three juvenile children, had been executed, their corpses riddled with bullets and left to rot. A message daubed in white paint on the grain store wall said, “These traitors tried to starve the revolution! All traitors will be executed!”

  Nobody was safe from the Reds’ paranoia and carnage. And yet despite it, every hotel and lodging house in Ekaterinburg was filled to bursting.

  Arriving in late May, Sorg found a ruin of a lodging house on the edge of the markets area, laundry hanging from its upstairs balconies. But it had a huge rear garden that backed into thick woods, perfect if Sorg needed to escape in a hurry. He bought a sturdy lock and chain and fastened his handcart to a backyard drainpipe each night.

  He shared a squalid room with three other men, a wooden bunk each and a filthy toilet and washroom down the hall with a chipped enamel bath and a cold water tap that didn’t always work.

  Two of the men were railway workers; the third was a twitchy young man with a wispy beard, whom he sometimes played cards with to pass the time. Sorg suspected that he was a White deserter.

  What cash Sorg had left, he stashed in his boots and buried in an oilskin bag in the woods behind the lodging house. He kept his steel pen handy at all times.

  That morning, as he dragged his cart toward the snaking Iset River and its broad lake, Sorg heard a church bell tower chime 10 a.m.

  He hurried his pace.

  With luck, today I’m going to contact Anastasia.

  Sorg turned up a hill into a cobbled alleyway of dilapidated old warehouses, most of them boarded up. He halted outside one of the buildings, checked that the alleyway was empty, then lifted the latch on a pair of double doors and dragged the cart in after him.

  The warehouse he entered was covered in rotted hay that smelled of excrement, the lime-washed walls daubed with revolutionary slogans: “Down with the rich.” “Kill the bourgeoisie who bleed us.”

  Sorg lowered the door latch again and wedged a wooden plank lengthways against the door to prevent anyone from entering. The cart would act as an obstacle in case he needed to flee out the rear. From under the scrap wood he took the revolver and stuffed it in his pocket.

  He climbed creaking wooden stairs to a huge loft, stacked with piles of old birch logs. Four glass panes sprayed frosty light into the room. The window looked down toward the Iset River. He had discovered the loft two weeks ago when scouring the city for an observation position.

  Sorg crossed to a woodpile in a corner and removed some logs. Underneath was hidden the brass spyglass. He took it over to the window, wiped condensation from a fogged window pane with his sleeve, and saw in the distance the southern side of the Ipatiev House and its gardens.

  Ekaterinburg’s streets babbled with Chinese whispers. Within a day of arriving he heard about the “House of Special Purpose” near Voznesensky Prospect. The house once belonged to a wealthy local business before it was seized by the Reds to house the Romanovs.

  He settled himself down on the grimy floor and peered through the spyglass. The two-story Ipatiev compound was guarded by a double wooden fence, parts of it over three meters high. Sorg spotted three bored-looking guards armed with rifles wandering the grounds. The view was so restricted by the high fence, he could only make out the heads or torsos of anyone strolling in the garden.

  More guards patrolled a wide street outside. And in the soaring bell tower of nearby Voznesensky Cathedral was a Red Army machine-gun nest, the weapon trained on the Ipatiev House.

  Sorg had no fear of the machine-gunner—every time he trained his spyglass on the tower, the gunner was either asleep or scratching himself.

  Sorg checked his pocket watch: 10:20 a.m.

  Anastasia and her family usually took their daily exercise twice in the gardens: at 11:30 a.m., and again about 3:30 p.m., on each occasion for half an hour. Sometimes it lasted longer, depending on the whim of the guards. It was over a year since he last communicated with her. It seemed an eternity. But today he hoped to change that and his heart soared with anticipation.

  He settled down to wait, his nerves on edge.

  In his pockets were stuffed a bottle of beer, a block of hard cheese wrapped in greaseproof paper, and the laudanum tincture. He removed the bottle, shook it, and twisted open the dropper cap.

  He made his meager supply last by watering it down with vodka, until it became a weak, watery brown mixture. On occasions when his supply ran out, he chain-smoked cigarettes and drank vast amounts of tea and coffee.

  But even coffee and cigarettes were getting scarce with rationing. He squeezed a few drops into his lower gums, screwed back on the stopper, and ran a forefinger around the inside of his mouth, vigorously rubbing the laudanum into his gums.

  Within minutes he began to relax.

  An image floated in front of him—Anastasia’s face—and his mind drifted back to their last meeting.

  33

  Sorg could never forget that final day. It was seared into his mind like an open wound.

  Every Wednesday afternoon for almost four months he would take the train to Tsarskoye Selo and just before 4 p.m. would present himself at the palace gate.

  The sentries checked his papers—Sorg’s special pass was stamped with the Romanov crest, along with a letter stating that he was a piano tutor by royal appointment. A palace aide would escort him across the courtyard and up some stone steps to the royal family quarters.

  He and Anastasia would spend two hours together in a cold palace room with wooden floors, seated on two stools in front of the piano.

  The family lived simply. Sorg learned the tsar was no believer in an easy life for his children; they slept on hard beds and were obliged to do daily chores.

  Despite Anastasia’s enthusiasm, it took only one lesson to discover that she was a terrible pupil—she preferred to distract him with mimicry, palace gossip, and news about her relatives and family, which helped Sorg fill his reports.

  “I’ve decided,” Anastasia announced after a month of lessons, “I don’t have the talent to be a good musician. But can we keep it our secret, Philip? I enjoy your company so much. Life gets so boring here. My sisters say we children can never have a normal life. It’s like living in a gilded cage—we almost never go out.”

  She laid the ground rules on their second meeting. “Please don’t call me Princess or Grand Duchess. I hate formality. Just call me Anastasia and I’ll call you Philip. How’s that?”

  She said, “Tell me more about America. Would I really like it there, do you think?” She laid her hand on Sorg’s arm and the touch of her fingers felt like silk.

  Her infectious spirit always lifted his mood, but that afternoon he knew something was wrong.

  All week St. Petersburg was in chaos, the government in turmoil, troops everywhere. When Sorg approached the sentry post he noticed soldiers all over the palace grounds. His documents got him past the sentry, but there was no sign of the aide and Sorg strolled toward the courtyard that led up to the royal quarters.

  An elderly palace officer with a monocle halted him. “What’s your business here?” he demanded.

  “I’m expected.” Sorg showed his pass and letter.

  The officer squinted through his monocle at the pieces of paper as if they were worthless currency. “No more lessons, all that’s over now. Haven’t you heard the news? The tsar’s abdicated. He’s under house arrest.”

  So that’s it. Rumors flew for days in St. Petersburg that the tsar might abdicate. Sorg worried it might be his last opportunity to see Anastasia. “If you could summon a member of the royal h
ousehold, I’m sure they’ll—”

  The officer went to reach for his revolver. “Are you deaf?”

  “No, please! Don’t harm him.”

  Anastasia hurried down the steps, carrying a brown leather pouch. She wore a simple white muslin dress, a pearl choker around her neck, black shoes, and white socks. Her blue eyes begged the officer as she said, “Please, sir, this gentleman’s my tutor and I need to speak with him in private. I thank you for being so kind as to allow it.”

  Disarmed by her plea, the officer snapped off a salute. “As you wish, Grand Duchess, but please remain within the courtyard where I can see you.”

  “I knew you’d come; that’s why I had to meet you. Papa’s heard that we may eventually be moved east to the Urals, so I wanted to say good-bye.”

  Strolling in the distance of the gardens, Sorg caught sight of the tsar. He wore his trademark tunic and hat and pushed a wheelchair in which sat his invalid young son, the tsarevitch, Alexei. “Why the Urals?”

  “They think we’ll be safer there, whoever they are. Mama is worried that it’s so far away we won’t have a proper doctor for Alexei. He’s often ill these days.”

  “I thought the officer said you weren’t to leave his sight.”

  Anastasia smiled as she led him toward a private garden with a stone fountain, out of view of the officer. She swung the leather pouch she carried and plucked a flower as they walked, smelling its scent. Sorg realized that she had never once mentioned his lame pace.

  “You mean old Squinty? He knows I break the rules, but he won’t cause a rumpus. Anyway, I wanted us to talk.”

  They came to a bench and she gestured for him to sit. “I won’t be able to see you again and I’m going to miss our friendship and our talks. I’m sorry for being such a terrible pupil, Philip.”

  “I’ve known worse but none as entertaining.”