by Glenn Meade
Andrev produced his letter but the guards, probably illiterate, didn’t examine it, and instead looked to Yakov for reassurance. “The komendant gave orders for no one to enter.”
“I gave him those orders. Now raise the barrier. We have urgent business.”
Anastasia almost jumped as the door burst open and the komendant reappeared.
Behind him were more of his men. She got a strong smell of alcohol. She felt a catch in her heart: something about this was not right. She looked at her sisters, and all of them appeared frightened.
Her mother stiffened, her father bravely stepped forward, but there was an anxious note in his voice. “Well, here we all are. What are you going to do now?”
The tiny room seemed even smaller, crowded to extreme, and whether it was the enclosed space or her nervous reaction to all the men suddenly storming into the room, she found it harder to breathe.
Yurovsky held a piece of paper in his left hand, his other hand stuck in his pocket. Anastasia noticed tiny beads of sweat on his forehead.
“Will you please all stand?”
Anastasia saw her mother struggle to her feet. Only Alexei remained seated, unable to raise himself.
The komendant took a step forward, his voice raised as he read from the note. “In view of the fact that your relatives and supporters, and enemy agents, continue to try to rescue you, you have been sentenced to be shot.”
Nicholai Romanov stared at the komendant blankly before he turned to his family, incomprehension on his face. “What … what?” He turned back, deathly white. “I don’t understand. Read it again.”
Yurovsky repeated his words and added, “The revolution has decreed that the former tsar, Nicholai Romanov, is guilty of countless bloody crimes against his people and is to be shot.”
Anastasia saw her sisters cross themselves, fear in all their faces now, for it all seemed to happen so fast as the komendant drew a pistol from his right pocket. He shot her father point-blank in the chest.
Anastasia shrieked in horror.
And then sheer madness broke loose as the room erupted in a torrent of gunfire and screams …
109
Yakov drove into the courtyard. Another truck was already parked there, its engine running, a driver at the wheel, smoking a cigarette. He acknowledged them with a nod.
“Get out, leave the engine running,” Andrev whispered to Yakov.
Yakov obeyed. Andrev joined him.
With both truck engines running, it took a moment to register but then they heard an explosion of gunfire from somewhere inside the house.
Andrev’s face drained of color and he felt his heart sink. “No …”
“I told you, Uri.”
Andrev was rooted to the spot as the gunfire raged inside the house, a savage volley, followed by sporadic shots and hysterical screams, then came complete silence.
Yakov said, “Turn back now and no one will be the wiser. It’s not too late.”
But Andrev kept his hand on his revolver and grimly urged Yakov toward the entrance. “Inside, quickly.”
Boyle stumbled through the tunnel. He carried the sledgehammer and pickaxe on one shoulder, the lamp held high in his hand, shadows flickering on the walls.
Beside him, Lydia consulted Markov’s directions.
Boyle said, “Well?”
“The storeroom can’t be much farther.”
They heard a ferocious crack, like thunder. Lydia recognized a gunshot and at the same instant Boyle stiffened and their eyes locked. His face looked deathly as an eruption of gunfire echoed like an avalanche in the passageway.
“Dear God, no …” Lydia put a hand to her mouth.
Boyle’s face was desolate as he wrenched the pistol from his pocket and they hurried on.
The house seemed in chaos as Andrev followed Yakov through several rooms toward the basement.
A stench of gunpowder choked the air and there was mayhem as about a dozen guards appeared from one of the basement rooms, all of them armed and gasping for breath. Most carried pistols, but a few grasped long bayonets dripping blood. They covered their mouths and noses with their jacket sleeves and coughed and spluttered. There was no mistaking the stink of alcohol as the men staggered toward the guardroom.
The komendant looked badly shaken, his face bleached. He stuffed a handkerchief over his mouth, his eyes streaming red from the choking smoke, and he barely recognized Yakov and his comrade.
“What’s wrong?” An ashen Yakov gripped his arm.
Yurovsky gave a hacking cough and glanced over his shoulder toward the basement double doors, one of them half open, the view inside obscured by a gray cloud of fog.
“We couldn’t see for gunsmoke … there were ricochets everywhere. We had to stop shooting … it’s like hell in there. There’s blood everywhere.”
“Are they dead?”
Yurovsky looked ill as he fought to breathe, his lungs rasping. “As far as I could tell—I checked pulses. It was brutal—our shots didn’t seem to penetrate the children. It got very bloody toward the end, we had to use bayonets.” Just then the komendant threw up into the handkerchief, vomit spewing onto the floor and Yakov’s boots. The komendant wiped his mouth. “I—I’m sorry, Commissar.”
“Go to the guardroom and remain there with your men,” Yakov ordered. He pushed past, Andrev following stone-faced as they both strode toward the basement’s double doors.
EKATERINBURG RAILWAY STATION
Markov halted the hearse with a jerk of the reins. A couple of carriages were parked outside the station, the drivers curled up in the back, asleep, sheepskin blankets pulled over them.
Past the entrance archway, the platforms looked crowded, mostly with peasants hugging their belongings, some awake, some sleeping, all of them waiting for trains. A stench of stale food and sweaty bodies wafted out on the night air.
Sorg climbed down. “Wait here.”
A jittery Markov tied the reins to a tethering post. “Forget it. I can’t leave this town fast enough. I’m coming with you.”
Sorg moved through the crowded station and found the train parked in a siding by platform number three.
Markov said worriedly, “It looks deserted.”
They approached the carriage nearest the locomotive, and its blinds were down. Sorg tried the door. It was locked. He rapped on the glass. No response. He rapped again.
Finally, the carriage door snapped open. A short, stocky man stared warily at his visitors.
“I’m looking for Zoba.”
“I’m Zoba. What do you want?”
Sorg said, “I have a written order from Commissar Yakov. He wants the train made ready immediately for departure.”
The man named Zoba glanced over his shoulder, as if he had company, then finally said, “You better come aboard.” He stepped back, admitting them into a spacious private lounge with a bedchamber leading off. A woman lay on a cot at the far end of the carriage. Her eyes looked red from crying, a deadness in her, as if her senses had lost their sharpness.
A medic was kneeling over her, a black doctor’s bag beside him. He had an anesthetic gauze mask in his hand and he was holding it over the woman’s face, pouring drops of clear liquid from a bottle onto the gauze, the sickly smell of ether cutting the air. The woman’s eyes flickered and closed.
Sorg offered Zoba the written note. “You’ll want to see this.”
A voice from somewhere said, “Everything comes to him who waits.”
A door was slammed.
Sorg spun round. His heart chilled.
An armed, leather-jacketed man appeared out of nowhere to cover Zoba and the woman. Two others stepped from the carriage annex, and they roughly grabbed a frightened Markov.
Kazan followed, holding a pistol, a sly grin on his face. “Well, well. Will you look at what the cat’s dragged in?”
110
The room looked like a slaughterhouse.
Through a fog and stench of gunsmoke, Andrev entered behin
d Yakov and closed the doors. Andrev’s voice choked with despair, “Dear God …”
It was a scene to shock the hardest of hearts. Eleven bodies lay in a twisted, pitiful sprawl—the family, their doctor, and their servants. A sea of blood covered the wooden floors. Bullet holes gouged the walls, which were spattered with crimson splashes and flecks of brain matter.
Two of the sisters, Olga and Tatiana, lay almost entwined together, as if in a last, pitiful embrace. Both had been shot and bayoneted, their white blouses drenched in blood still flowing from gaping head and body wounds.
The boy, Alexei, lay slumped on the floor beneath an upturned chair, his crippled legs twisted beneath him, the back of his skull shattered by bullets. Crumpled on the floor, the ex-tsar and his wife were covered in blood. Nearby were the family doctor and the maids, their eyes open in death, their agonized expressions testament to their brutal death.
Anastasia lay slumped against the wall on the right, near her sister Maria. Both had their arms outstretched, as if they had tried to fend off their killers until the very end. Anastasia’s head was bleeding, her skull slashed by cuts.
Yakov stared blankly at the spectacle until he was forced to cover his mouth with his sleeve.
As Andrev stood clutching his revolver, the fog of gunsmoke catching in his lungs, he felt completely revolted. The grisly scene was almost too much to take in.
A scraping noise sounded from behind the storeroom. He waded between the corpses, slipping on the blood-soaked floor until he managed to reach the doors. He gave three sharp raps and almost instantly the doors seemed to cave in.
Boyle appeared in the doorway, Lydia behind him. They gaped at the hideous scene. Lydia already had tears in her eyes.
Boyle dropped the pick he carried. Enraged, he stumbled through the carnage toward Yakov, as if to strike him. “I ought to shoot you here and now. You and your kind are nothing but butchers.”
An almost eerie groan sounded from the mass of bodies.
Boyle froze, they all did, nobody uttering a word.
And then another groan shattered the silence …
EKATERINBURG RAILWAY STATION
“You two showing up here may be the perfect end to my night.” Kazan had a sadistic look on his face. He nodded to one of his men, who wore a gray slouch hat. “Tie him. He’s a slippery customer, this one.”
Kazan’s man produced a length of rope from his pocket and tied Sorg’s hands together.
The medic, still kneeling beside an unconscious Nina, screwed the top back on the ether bottle and stood, ashen-faced. “Please—this is not my business. I’m only here to treat the woman. She lost her child—”
“Shut up,” Kazan said and strode over to Sorg. He held up Yakov’s note. “Where did you get this? Is it real or a forgery?”
Sorg was tight-lipped, his hands tied in front of him, unable to grasp the steel-bladed pen in his pocket.
Kazan leaned into his face. “Yakov’s one of you, isn’t he? A traitor.”
Zoba interrupted. “You’re out of your mind, Kazan. He’s no turncoat, not like you.”
Kazan’s mouth tightened and he aimed his gun at him. “If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Speak another word unless you’re told to, and it’ll be your last.”
Zoba fell silent.
Kazan addressed Sorg. “I’m waiting for an answer.”
This time, Sorg actually replied. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
Kazan’s expression was a cross between a sneer and a grimace. “Is that a fact? Violence may be wasted on you. But your friend here might be different.” He crossed to Markov, trembling as the two men held him up by the arms.
Kazan aimed his pistol at Markov’s left knee. “Tell me the truth. If you do, I promise to let you go.”
Markov stood rigid with fear, too petrified to even speak.
Kazan fired.
The round shattered Markov’s kneecap and he let out a terrifying scream. He jerked violently as he was held up by Kazan’s men, blood spewing from his wound onto the floor.
Kazan aimed his pistol at Markov’s other knee. “It seems you’re determined to become a cripple.”
“No, please,” Markov begged, agony beading his face with sweat. “I’ll tell you—”
“Everything. Or it’s your brains on the floor.”
111
“Check all their pulses—be absolutely certain,” Boyle ordered.
The fog of gunpowder lifted as Andrev and Lydia negotiated their way through the bodies, trying not to slip on the blood. They checked for pulses, feeling necks or wrists or both.
Boyle’s anger was like a fast-burning fuse, and he brandished his Colt at Yakov. “What kind of men could do this? Look at your dirty work. Look at it!”
“The boy’s still alive,” Andrev cried, carefully moving the chair from under Alexei. “His pulse is weak, but it’s there.”
The announcement sent a jolt through them all. Just as Lydia went to feel Anastasia’s left wrist the girl emitted a tiny shriek, her body jerking as if she’d received an electric shock. Crimson spewed from her mouth in an obscene gush and then her body fell still again.
Lydia recoiled.
“Feel her pulse—feel it, for heaven’s sake,” Boyle said desperately.
Lydia dropped to her knees and gripped Anastasia’s left wrist while her other hand felt her neck. Blood flowed from an obscene purple wound in her side. “She—she’s still alive.”
Hope sparked in Boyle’s eyes. He knelt over Nicholai Romanov’s body, feeling for a heartbeat. “Hurry, check them all again. And try and stem that wound …”
EKATERINBURG RAILWAY STATION
“You better not be lying.” When Markov finished talking, Kazan pointed his pistol at the undertaker’s head while the men held him up. “Are you, Markov?”
“I swear. Every word’s the truth.” Markov looked in agony, blood running down his leg and spreading in a pool on the floor.
Victory lit Kazan’s face. He stepped back, his brow furrowed, his mind working feverishly.
Markov looked close to fainting. “You—you said you’d let me go.”
Kazan grinned, “So I did. But I didn’t say it was to hell,” and his pistol came up and he shot Markov point-blank in the heart.
His body slumped, and the men let him go.
Kazan turned his attention to Sorg, saying with a smirk, “So, now I know. You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, you know that?”
Sorg stood silent and pale as one of Kazan’s men, the one wearing the gray slouch hat, asked, “What do you want to do with them?”
“I’m thinking about it.” Kazan turned to look at an unconscious Nina, then at the medic who trembled with fear. “Tie these two up. Give the medic some of his own ether. That ought to keep him quiet. Find somewhere to lock them both up. The woman may come in handy to bait Andrev.”
“There’s a sleeper wagon four carriages back.”
“Do it.”
Zoba moved protectively in front of Nina. “I wouldn’t lay a finger on her if I were you, or you’ll have Yakov to answer to.”
Kazan’s smile was forced. “Yakov’s for the firing squad. And I thought I told you not to speak unless spoken to.” Kazan shot Zoba in the head and he reeled back, collapsing against the wall.
The medic screamed. The two men who had been holding Markov now grabbed the medic by the arms.
Kazan told them, “Leave the bodies. Do as I say, then bring the car round.”
He turned to Sorg. “You’re coming with us to the tunnels. I’d hate to miss the final tragic act of this stupid farce. What a waste of time—the Romanovs are dead by now. Including the little witch whose interrogation you interrupted. What do you have to say to that?”
Sorg went cold, but then rage consumed him. He spat in Kazan’s face.
Kazan actually grinned and wiped away the spittle. “We’ll see how spirited you are when I get you back to the hotel basement.” He nodded to his man.
“Take him out to the car. I’ll join you in a minute.”
Kazan strode along the platform. He came to the engine, a lazy wisp of smoke rising from its funnel. Kazan dragged himself up some metal steps to the driver’s cabin.
A grimy-looking man badly in need of a shave was seated on a three-legged wooden stool. He was smoking a cigarette and wore soot-stained clothes, a shovel resting across his knees. He rose when Kazan appeared and tossed away his cigarette. “Can I help you, comrade?”
“You certainly can.” Kazan studied the maze of pressure dials, glass water-level indicators, and brass and copper pipes that crisscrossed the locomotive’s panel. “You must be Yakov’s driver.”
The man nodded. “That’s right. What can I do for you?”
Kazan produced a pistol and held out his free hand. “You can start by giving me the shovel.”
The shocked driver wasn’t arguing with the gun. He handed over the shovel.
Kazan held it sideways, like a machete, bringing the blade down hard, slicing into several narrow pipes, a spray of steam escaping. He pounded the glass dials and indicators, smashing them with the shovel’s butt until they were a shattered mess. “This train’s going nowhere,” he spat, tossing the shovel aside.
The driver looked distraught. “You fool! Yakov will have your life.”
Kazan callously shot him twice in the chest, and he crumpled.
Kazan nudged the man’s body with the tip of his boot. “You got that wrong. It’s the other way round,” he said, and he climbed down the cabin steps.
112
“Alexei and Anastasia are barely alive. The others are dead,” Andrev announced.
Lydia crouched beside Anastasia, holding her wrist. “Her pulse is still there, but it’s weak.”
“And the boy?” Boyle demanded. “Will he make it?
Andrev shook his head. “I don’t know. His heartbeat’s faint.”