by Glenn Meade
“No one’s asking you to. Just get yourselves out of Russia. I presume you have a strategy?”
“Boyle does. He’s an expert on the railway routes.”
Andrev stepped over. “I hate to be a pessimist, Leonid, but as soon as the komendant sobers up he may notice there’s a body missing.”
“Leave the komendant to me. Once I find out what he does or doesn’t know, I’ll deal with it then. There’s no shortage of corpses in the tunnel, if need be.”
Yakov removed his cigarette case from his breast pocket and held up a box of matches. “A spark to the fuel ought to take care of any loose ends.”
“That’s not going to explain Kazan’s death.”
“Kazan was despised. I caught him stealing. He paid the price, end of story. That’s my version of events and I’ll stick to it.”
He turned to address Sister Agnes. “I’d suggest you get out of here immediately. Whether the girl lives or dies is beyond any one of us right now, but my medic will do his best.”
Sister Agnes made a sign of the cross, took the back of Yakov’s hand, and kissed it. “Thank you, my son. Thank you for what you’ve done.”
“A word of advice. I’d get your nuns out of this city if I were you. I have a feeling that when all this is done, I’ll have no say in what comes afterward. Leave now. Don’t delay.”
Sister Agnes patted Anastasia’s hand, hugged Lydia, and bid good-bye to the others.
When she’d left the carriage Yakov pulled down the blinds. “I’d leave these down if I were you, at least until you’re well clear of the station.”
Andrev said, “Why the change of heart, Leonid?”
“You’re right. There’s been enough death, enough killing. Let it end here.”
“Come with us?”
“Not possible right now. I’m expected at the Kremlin to make my report. Besides, how could I abandon Katerina?”
“Boyle wasn’t lying when he said he could get her out of Moscow.”
“And I intend to accept his offer. Explanations later. First, do something for me?”
“Anything.”
“Go make sure Nina’s all right. But hurry. This fog’s only going to get worse. I want you out of here while there’s still time.”
Yakov opened his cigarette case and offered a cigarette to Boyle, who accepted. Yakov lit them both and said to Lydia, “Your friend here doesn’t speak much Russian, so I’ll ask you to translate. I want my daughter taken out of Moscow.”
“And you?”
“That’s not important right now. I no longer trust Trotsky or Lenin. If I can, I’ll arrange the release of Nina’s parents. Can he do it? Can he get them all out?”
Lydia translated, and when Boyle answered, she replied, “He says it can be done.”
“How soon?”
“Within weeks. You have his word.”
Yakov considered. “I’ll need more than that. After what’s happened tonight, I’ve no idea if I’ll be alive for much longer. That’s why I have a condition in return for my help. One of you must come with me to Moscow and keep Katerina safe until you take her out. I’ll arrange for you to both stay somewhere secure. Anything less may only jeopardize her life.”
“What about you?”
“If I’m still alive, we can all leave together.” Yakov took a notebook from his pocket and scribbled an address. “That’s the apartment where your people can make contact.”
When Lydia explained to Boyle, there was a sound behind them. Andrev returned and was leaning against the doorway, listening.
Yakov said, “You heard?”
Andrev stepped away from the doorway. “Enough of it. I’ll stay, Leonid.”
Yakov shook his head. “No. Nina’s going to need her son’s father close to her for now. Be good to her. Her heart’s broken. Otherwise, I fear she’ll go over the edge. Besides, you’re a wanted man; your presence would be risky.” Yakov gestured to Sorg. “He needs medical attention. And Boyle’s your ticket out of here.” He turned to Lydia. “I’m afraid it’s down to you.”
She said, “I’ll stay.”
Boyle said, “Would someone care to explain?”
Lydia did so, and when Andrev went to protest, she said, “I’ve made up my mind, Uri. It won’t be long, weeks at most.”
A look passed between them, something close to distress.
A locomotive engine whistled, the carriage jerked a little, and then came the brittle, metallic noise of buffers shunting.
A sharp rap came on the door, and the barrack commander poked his head round. “We’ve shunted another engine in place. Whenever you’re ready, the train can depart, Commissar.” The man snapped off a salute and disappeared.
Boyle said, “Lydia’s right, Uri. It won’t be long. I really hate to rush this, but we need to move.”
Yakov peered out at the thickening fog, descending rapidly like a gauze veil.
Off in the distance, cathedral bells rang out 3 a.m.
Yakov turned back, put a hand on Uri’s shoulder. “There’s nothing more to say. Go, before it’s too late. With any luck, we’ll meet again.”
On the platform, the fog was thickening. It shrouded everything in a gray steam.
Andrev, Lydia, and Yakov waited as Boyle checked the dials in the engine cabin, then he scurried down the steps. “The steam pressure’s good, we’re all set. You’ve said your good-byes?”
Andrev nodded grimly. “As best we could under the circumstances.”
Boyle offered Yakov his hand. “Here’s to our reunion, and with any luck cracking open a bottle in London.”
Andrev translated, and Yakov told Boyle, “I may hold you to that.”
Boyle took Lydia’s hand, kissed it, and winked at her. “As for you, young lady, keep your head down, watch that Irish temper of yours, and try not to get in any trouble. Do what Yakov tells you, and I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Good-bye, Boyle. I hope you make it.”
Boyle smiled tightly. “One interesting aspect of life is that whenever we endure a terrible experience, everything that comes after seems like a bonus. Until we meet again.” He turned to Andrev. “We leave now, before this fog gets any worse.”
Boyle climbed up on the engine again. As the locomotive started to move, he gestured to Andrev. “Don’t delay. Time waits for no man, Uri.”
The carriages jerked forward.
Andrev produced a silver locket and pressed it into Lydia’s palm. “I meant to give you this in Moscow. But then everything got muddled and there never seemed to be the right moment.” He closed her fingers around the locket, then kissed her on the cheek. “A small memento. Look after her, Leonid.”
Yakov nodded. They shook hands.
The train picked up speed. Andrev jumped on board. He stood on the carriage footplate, staring back at them as the engine drew away.
As Lydia watched it go, she touched a hand to her cheek, let it linger and fall, then looked at Yakov. “Why? Why let them go?”
He lit a cigarette. “Life is always one thing on the surface, but something else beneath, don’t you think? Perhaps sometimes we never know how deep feelings run until they’re tested. And you and Uri, I sensed something, if I’m not mistaken.”
She didn’t speak but unclenched her hand and looked down at the silver locket. On the front were the double-headed Imperial eagles, inlaid in gold. She turned it over in her palm. There was an inscription. She studied it.
Yakov said, “It means something to you?”
She nodded and looked up. Yakov thought he saw tears at the corners of her eyes. “Yes, it means something,” she said hoarsely. “And you and Nina?”
The question caught him by surprise. She said, “Don’t look so shocked. Women sense these things.”
He took another drag on his cigarette. “There are many kinds of love, I think. There’s passionate love, and there’s dutiful love, though often we don’t realize that really they’re just different sides of the same coin.” He pulle
d up his collar. “And then there’s another kind of love. The kind we can only show by setting someone free.”
Lydia shivered in the early morning chill. “Is that why you did it?”
“Who knows? Who knows anything, anyhow? Except what our hearts tell us.” Yakov removed his coat and placed it around her shoulders to ward off the cold. “Allow me.”
They heard the fading rumble of the train, and then a haunting, sad whistle as it was swallowed up by the fog.
They both stood staring into the cold gray veil of nothingness, until finally Yakov offered his arm and Lydia took it, and let him lead her back toward the platform.
THE PRESENT
118
The rain had stopped. Yakov threw another log on the dying fire and a volcano of sparks erupted. “Now you know how it ended. It certainly ended brutally, and with bloody and violent death, but not exactly as history records.
“Not that we’ve ever had a watertight account of the Romanov executions. The story’s always been murky. We had the bones that were eventually discovered, minus two of the family. We had the executioners’ confessions, which varied over the years. And we had lots of speculation about the events of that night—some of it insane, some credible. It’s often been hard to know where truth began and falsehood ended.”
He looked at me. “But I can tell you this with certainty. It ended with Anastasia and the boy not dying at once. Even the written evidence offered by the executioners tells us that. And it ended with Anastasia not being buried with the rest of her family.” Yakov paused. “The DNA experts can speculate all they want, but they still can’t say with absolute certainty that any of the bones later found belonged to her. I doubt they ever will.”
I felt dazed. “How can I know that your version of events is true?”
Yakov stood, resting a hand on his hip, looking frail. “The truth is out there if you care to look. Every one of my claims can be proven.”
I heard the conviction in his voice. “How?”
“Uri Andrev, Joe Boyle, Hanna Volkov, Lydia Ryan, Leonid Yakov, Philip Sorg—they’re all real people. And there are so many clues that the truth screams out at you. You simply have to look and find them.”
“Where do I begin?”
Yakov took a notebook from the shelves and tore out a written page. “Start with these people. They can validate the strands of my story. I’m sure you know that the Ipatiev House was demolished in a single night in 1977. Uri Andropov, the head of the KGB, and later Russia’s president, gave the order.
“All of which was really quite baffling, seeing as the house was attracting no great attention. But within two years of the demolition the first of the Romanov bodies were unearthed. Quite a coincidence, I’ve always thought, considering that in the previous sixty years they could never be found.”
He handed me the page. I saw what looked like a list of names and international phone numbers and addresses. I recognized Russian, American, and British prefixes among them.
Yakov half-smiled. “It’s all about finding strands, doctor. Irrefutable strands that weave a different story from the one we’re led to believe. It will mean some plane-hopping. But I think you’ll find the air miles well worth it.”
I asked the questions that burned on the end of my tongue. “And Anna Anderson, the woman rescued from a Berlin canal whom many people believed to be Anastasia. You said you’d explain about her.”
“Her truth is out there, too—not the fabricated one we’ve all come to know.”
“The body I discovered. It’s Lydia’s, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. She died in Russia.”
“How? What happened to her?”
I had so many more questions, but before I could ask, he indicated the page. “Talk to these people. Many are experts in their field. They won’t know the bigger picture, although some may have their suspicions. But they’ll know individual pieces of the puzzle—the secrets and lies I spoke about. Track them down. Listen to what they have to say.”
“Then what?”
“Come back and see me. This story’s not over yet.”
All during my eighty-mile drive from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport to the pretty Victorian town of Woodstock, I thought about Joe Boyle.
His remains were repatriated to his hometown in Canada in 1983 from the graveyard in Hampton Hill, London, where he was buried in April 1923. Woodstock is still home to some of Boyle’s descendants, but Frank Evans isn’t one of them.
A slim, academic-looking man with a furrowed, high forehead, Evans is a former history teacher who has long been fascinated by Boyle’s exploits.
It was sunny as he walked me to the Presbyterian cemetery on Vansittart Avenue. Boyle’s burial site is marked by a new granite headstone in the family plot, a stone that replaced the original ancient urn and slab—donated by Queen Marie, of Romania, a cousin of the Romanovs and a friend of Boyle’s—which now reside in a local museum.
“They called him ‘Klondike Joe Boyle,’” Evans told me, “and he was a swashbuckling character, straight out of an adventure novel. The term ‘larger than life’ doesn’t do him justice. Boyle was a remarkable figure, a man who experienced enough escapades in his life to fill several books.”
Evans knelt and brushed away some gravel from the tombstone. “But he’s been largely forgotten by history. All those stories about him—running a spy network with hundreds of secret agents in Russia and helping to rescue royals—they’re all factual. The spy ring was secretly financed by the U.S., French, and British governments.”
“What about the rumor that he took part in a rescue of the Romanovs in Ekaterinburg?”
Evans smiled. “I believe it’s true. Boyle was familiar with several figures in the Tobolsk Brotherhood. He also kept detailed lists of his expenses. His private papers show that in early July 1918, he spent considerable sums on travel, photography, hotels, and clothes for more than one person.
“They also record that he was involved in a mammoth amount of flying and train travel. His daughter Flora always maintained her father led a last-ditch Romanov rescue, and while she didn’t know the outcome, her father claimed that he was one of the last people to see the tsar on the night he died.”
“You accept that?”
“Yes I do. It’s just the kind of audacious adventure that Boyle relished. He was really the only man for the job. He also had an intimate knowledge of the Russian rail system, and had spies all along its main routes.”
“Tell me more.”
“He’d already proved his mettle by helping retrieve the Romanian royal jewels from the Kremlin, using not much more than his Irish blarney and fleeing by train over a two-thousand-mile journey. On another occasion, he liberated kidnapped Romanian royals from under the Bolsheviks’ noses. Later, he took part in the rescue of the tsar’s empress mother.”
“You really believe he was in Ekaterinburg the night of the massacre?”
“I’ve absolutely no doubt. And that he fled to Bucharest by train. But his part in it all was kept completely secret.”
“Why? And how can you know that for certain?”
“Several reasons. For one, Boyle’s fortune was on the wane and he had several business investments in Russia he didn’t want to lose. He also feared retaliation by the Reds, especially Trotsky, whom he met and distrusted. So his involvement was covered up neatly.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“It’s said that Boyle suffered a stroke in June 1918 and recovered in a Bucharest hospital. That’s certainly true, but the timeline was a lie.”
“What do you mean?”
“He definitely suffered a stroke but it was in late July 1918, after his mammoth flight to Russia and the drama of the rescue attempt. Boyle was a sturdy character, but he wasn’t a young man anymore. His body couldn’t take all the stress, and after he made it to Bucharest by train on July 23, 1918, he was immediately hospitalized.”
“And afterward?”
&n
bsp; “The brutality he witnessed affected him greatly. He was never quite right. It’s remarkable, really. Look at any photographs that exist of Boyle taken soon after Ekaterinburg, and you can see it in his face. He has the look of someone who’s witnessed an unspeakable horror. He died less than five years later, a broken man.”
“If what you say is true, why weren’t his incredible efforts recognized?”
Evans smiled knowingly. “They were. Joe Boyle was awarded the DSO—the Distinguished Service Order. It was conferred on him by none other than King George—Tsar Nicholas’s cousin—at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in November 1919.
“The order was only given at that time to officers who served under fire in battle. The Ekaterinburg episode was the only incident in Boyle’s life that really qualifies in that regard. It’s recorded that he was given the award ‘for services rendered.’ It was an extraordinary honor, but it’s a mystery, because no one ever explained what ‘for services rendered’ really meant.”
“So nobody knows what he did to earn the king’s respect?”
Evans gave the granite stone a gentle pat and looked me straight in the eye. “Me, I’m convinced it was for Boyle’s brave efforts that bloody night in Ekaterinburg.”
It was raining three days later in Riga, Latvia, when I met Maxim Petrovsky. A graduate of Moscow State University, Petrovsky is a quiet, pleasant civil engineer with a wispy gray beard. He once worked as one of the senior demolition engineers on the Ipatiev House destruction.
Now retired, he lives with his wife in their small apartment on Riga’s outskirts, and it was chilly that afternoon when he invited me in. Reluctant to talk at first, he grudgingly agreed when I told him over the phone that I was researching the Ipatiev House.
Once the Bushmills whisky I’d brought as a gift was opened and our glasses poured, Petrovsky soon warmed. In particular, I wanted to talk about the rumors of tunnels under the house.
“The tunnels existed, for sure,” he told me. “It’s no secret that there were many passageways that crisscrossed old Ekaterinburg. One we discovered during the demolition ran underneath the house, coming from the east, and led down near the River Iset’s City Pond. There were natural caves in the rock that had been expanded upon, you see.”