The King's Commissar Read online

  They were immovable. Sympathetic to my dilemma, yes; pleasant and even polite to me, yes. But implacable. The train must go west to Ekaterinburg.

  'I must telegraph Moscow.'

  'By all means inform Comrade Sverdlov. Give him our greetings. Inform him that the Omsk Soviet grows daily in stability and authority.' This was the secretary speaking.

  I did all that, adding these words: 'Therefore returning Ekaterinburg. Your urgent intervention required there. Yakovlev.'

  After that there was nothing I could do save leave. I rode back at no great speed, endeavouring with some desperation to work out in my mind some means to avoid the unwelcome requirements of the two Soviets - some way to keep my charges out of the hands of the Ekaterinburg men. Several crossed my thoughts. A return to Tobolsk, for example, and some attempt to travel north from thence up the Ob river to the Arctic.

  But it was hopelessly impracticable. There was no boat at Tobolsk, I knew that from Kobylinsky, who must clearly have had the same thoughts. The boats would come with the spring thaw. Soon, but not yet.

  What else? Go on foot? Take the Imperial Family and head south? Try walking to meet the White Russian army? It could be tried, but the snow was thick yet, and the distances great. To try was to ask for death in another form.

  At last, as the barrier by the track came into my sight, a decision had to be made. I made it. The Moscow leaders, the great names, Lenin, Trotsky and Sverdlov - they wanted arms. Nicholas was part of the price of the arms. They must save Nicholas! After all, could it really be true that Lenin and Trotsky could not persuade a rabble of uneducated peasants and workers? No, they would do it. For the sake of their Revolution, they must do it!

  The railway workers' leader strode towards me as the locomotive came to a stop. 'Well, Comrade Commissar?'

  Sourly I said, 'Well, what?'

  'Where do you go now, eh?'

  'Ekaterinburg.'

  He nodded with satisfaction. 'I thought you would. Now the Tsar does as we say, eh Comrade?' Then as I turned away from him he said, and it must surely have been out of habit, Go with God."

  I told him sharply that I had very little doubt some of us would go to God as a result of his actions.

  So far in this telling, I have referred always to 'Nicholas' or 'the ex-Tsar'. I can do so no longer, for truly he was a king, that one. Faults he certainly had, many of them, and deep. I know what history says: that he was weak, dominated by his wife; that he never grew up; that he was too blind to see where the autocratic road must lead. All true, no doubt. But I am a sailor and we judge a man also by his courage. There I cannot fault the Tsar.

  He must have waited for me in the corridor of the train; I could see him standing there as I swung myself up to the carriage; there was a cigarette in his hand and a grave, sad look on his face. As I approached, he threw down the cigarette and ground it beneath his boot.

  'They've turned us back?'

  I had no need to answer, for he had read it in my face. He gave a little resigned smile, it's Ekaterinburg, isn't it?'

  'Yes,' I said, and went on: I have informed Moscow and the Central Executive.'

  'Thank you.' He gave that little inclination of the head, if you will excuse me, I must tell my family.'

  'Of course. Sir.'

  As the door closed behind him, I went angrily in search of Ruzsky to tell him what had happened. To my surprise the man was unconcerned. 'Don't worry about Ekaterinburg,' he said. And then he laid his finger against his nose in the manner of cunning men.

  So we set off. There is a town on the track between Omsk and Tuymen, its name Kulomzino: a place of no great size or importance and it figures in this story only as a marker, for we passed its lights at night and the train was perhaps ten miles beyond it when suddenly the air was filled with the sound of gunfire! The driver slammed on the brakes, and the train ground abruptly to the sort of halt that flung people from their seats.

  Coming to my feet, I hurled open a window to look out. Soldiers milled around us in great numbers, many of them with sabres drawn. We must have fallen across one of the dangerous small armies that were ravaging the country behind the Urals!

  As I stood looking out at them, a mounted officer suddenly lunged at me with his sabre, pinning my coat to the woodwork.

  'And who the devil are you?' I yelled at him.

  He gave a bold grin, and well he could afford to. 'Not so noisy, my friend. We're White Cossacks - don't we look like it?'

  'Who is in command?'

  The grin widened. 'Fond of questions, aren't you?'

  'Who commands?'

  He laughed at me. 'What's it matter to a dead man, eh?'

  'You must take me to him!'

  Something in my voice or my face must have told him there was urgency, for his expression changed. "Open the door and jump down!'

  I did so, and felt his sabre at my back as I was propelled along the track.

  'Halt and be still!'

  I stood. Ten yards away, mounted upon a milk-white horse, a shako on his head, sat a lean figure with a flowing moustache. My captor called, 'Sir!' and the man's head turned towards me.

  'Well?'

  I said, 'May I speak to you in private?'

  He flung back his head and laughed. 'With a thousand men around us?'

  I put my hands in my pockets for paper and pencil, and wrote a message quickly. My captor handed it on. In a second the leader slid off the horse's back and strode over to me. 'Nicholas Alexandrevitch here - on board?' he asked incredulously.

  I nodded. 'Also the Tsarina and the Grand Duchess Marie.'

  'Great God!' He swore and slapped at his thigh. Truly, he was a weird and melodramatic figure there in the night with his hat and his horse and his recklessly extravagant gestures. 'I swore an oath of loyalty to Nicholas once. Never expected to be held to it now, though! Where? Take me to him!'

  So I did, still not knowing his name. Nicholas knew him, though, knew him at once. I knocked upon his door; he opened it a crack, saw our faces and flung it wide. 'General Dutov!'

  Dutov fell upon one knee.' Your Majesty, how can this be? Where are you bound.'

  'Ekaterinburg,' the Tsar said.

  'No, you're not Too damned dangerous,' Dutov roared. 'Come with me. I've men to keep you safe.' He had, too. And nothing in his way. I am certain now that had Nicholas gone with Dutov that night he could have ridden off to safety.

  But he would not. 'Thank you. General, but no.'

  'Great God, why not? You could go to your death in Ekaterinburg, Sir!'

  Nicholas's quiet voice seemed all dignity beside Dutov's roaring. 'My children are in Tobolsk, General. I cannot depart and leave them."

  'Sir, they won't harm children!" Dutov insisted. 'But you and the Tsarina are another matter. Come with mí!'

  But he would not. Instead he said to Dutov, 'Once my family is united I will be glad of any help you can offer. But as you see - at the moment. General, I am helpless.'

  Shortly thereafter Dutov withdrew with his band of marauders. Without robbing us, either! It was a still night, and very dark, and now unutterably lonely in the great spaces of Siberia. I shuddered suddenly in the chill, signed to the driver to restart the train, and climbed aboard.

  I was standing in the unlit corridor of the Tsar's carnage when the door opened and a head emerged, said 'Oh!' as though startled and then asked hesitantly, 'Commissar Yakovlev?' I needed no telling whose voice this was. Very quietly she said, 'May I talk to you?'

  The second part of Dikeston's narrative ended there. Instructions as to the means of obtaining Part Three were appended in an envelope, paperclipped to the last page. In his panelled office at 6, Athelsgate in the City of London, as Sir Horace Malory picked up a silver paper-knife and slit the envelope, he found his hands were trembling . . .

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Deeds and Mr Grace

  Everybody who has ever purchased a house is familiar with the airy ways and dilatory habits of lawyers. Most people
are aware that it is the profitable practice of those who specialize in the conveyance of property to discover great thickets of difficulty where few truly exist. Even a solicitor who is not trying to cause delay will often do so, out of habit or lethargy, for months at a time. The lawyer with his heart actually set upon spinning out time will make a limpet look as lively as a thoroughbred stallion.

  Dikeston's brief instructions began the trouble, and it was perfectly clear to Malory that that was how they had been designed.

  'The deeds of Carfax House,' ran Dikeston's relevant sentences, 'are to be presented for inspection to the manager of the Liverpool branch of the Irish Linen Bank together with the sum of fifty thousand pounds. Both are to be passed on to the holder of a special account numbered X253.'

  'And in return, what we get is packet three?' Pilgrim asked.

  'Yes.'

  'Horace, where does it say so?'

  Malory's lips tightened. 'It says so on the envelope, Laurence. In typescript. It actually reads, if you're interested, "Instructions for obtaining part three of the narrative of-"'

  'Yeah, okay. Now, how about these deeds? Tell me the English legal set-up.'

  1 1A 'Have you read Dikeston's narrative?'

  'Well, I kind of skimmed it. The guy's in a fix, sure. Look, Horace, we all know it's a sad story. When they get to Ekaterinburg, the Romanovs get slaughtered, that's how it ends. You can read it for nothing in the library. You can even see a movie. Tell me about the deeds, huh?'

  'I told you about Yakovlev - that he went off with a trainload of treasure and then vanished?'

  'Sure you told me.'

  'Very well. Now I'll tell you about Dutov. He was a warlord, a law absolutely unto himself on the far side of the Urals.'

  Pilgrim held up a hand. 'I've got the picture, Horace. I understand, believe me. There's chaos, and all these people are milling about in the middle. There's a fortune in various kinds of treasure. There's Zaharoff's document. Now we have warlords. Okay, it's exciting. But tell me about the deeds. You get them when you buy a house, right?'

  'Well, yes. After the purchase is complete.'

  'I thought so. After! We have to buy this damned house.'

  'Yes.'

  'Okay, Horace,' Pilgrim sighed noisily. 'Go right ahead. You don't need my say-so.'

  'I'm simply informing you. The house can probably be sold later. That isn't important.'

  'How much so far, including the house?'

  'Two hundred thousand, I suppose. But as I say, the house can be sold.'

  'Better check first,' Pilgrim said, 'that it can be bought.'

  'Oh, it can.'

  'Sure, at a price.'

  Business talk over luncheon was preferable, it seemed to Malory that day, to further discussion with Pilgrim of South London property values. Accordingly he ate his salmon and drank his Mosel with one ear swivelling like a horse's in the direction of whichever of the partners had matters to raise. In the partners' dining-room at Hillyard, Cleef it had long been the custom to discuss openly any matters which might benefit from a general airing. One partner, recently married to an actress half his age, had received what he described as 'an interesting opportunity' to invest in a film. Smirks were exchanged across the table and thumbs turned down. General approval greeted an application from one of the great civil engineering concerns for a six million advance towards its costs in a Saudi building project. And Fergus Huntly's revised bid price for the seed and fertilizer company got a thumbs up. Privately, Malory thought it to be pitched unnecessarily high but was not disposed to say so. His thoughts were anywhere but in the City of London. One moment they would be sweeping like a satellite across the Urals; the next pointing like a finger at a neat, if not authentic, Georgian house some six miles from where he sat.

  Mr and Mrs Denis Abrahams, their house in Blackheath by now newly-decorated and repaired, were not anxious to sell.

  'It's such a sweet house,' Mrs Abrahams told Jacques Graves, gushing extravagantly. 'We're frightfully attached to it. And it's so convenient. All our friends are near by.'

  Her husband took a slightly different line. He was prepared to consider a good offer.

  But not an independent valuation. 'I am, after all,' he said, 'a creature of the market place. Supply and demand, and all that.'

  Graves knew all right: Hillyard, Cleef was bent backward over the barrel, and standing upright again would come expensive.

  'The actual worth?' Sir Horace Malory asked him.

  'Value to us,' said Graves flatly.

  'There must be a figure.'

  'I got two local estate agents to give me an idea. One said a hundred and five thousand, the other a bit higher.'

  'Offer the higher figure.'

  'Okay.'

  Mr and Mrs Abrahams accepted. The higher figure was one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds. Graves, sitting in their gleaming drawing-room, rising to shake hands on the deal suddenly thought Abrahams's eyes looked shifty.

  And so it proved. Abrahams's solicitor was a Mr Thomas Plantagenet Grace, a partner in Holdfast & Grace, of London Wall. He was also Mrs Abrahams's brother-in-law.

  'The point is,' Abrahams told Grace, 'that they must want it badly, but I don't know how badly.'

  Grace nodded wisely. 'We'll find out - if somebody else comes in with an offer,' he murmured.

  Solicitors acting for Hillyard, Cleef, and this was a firm accustomed to enormous fees in recognition of its willingness to match its* pace to the urgent needs of a banking house, then approached Mr Plantagenet Grace. Their letter was opened and acknowledged by Mr Grace's secretary, and then placed in a folder marked 'Abrahams conveyance' to await his return. Mr Plantagenet Grace was away for a while; it was his custom, at that time of year, to recharge his batteries with a trip to Barbados.

  Hillyard, Cleef's solicitors informed Jacques Graves, who consulted Abrahams. Abrahams was surprised and regretful, but having instructed Mr Grace felt unable to do more than wait.

  To nobody's surprise, not Graves's and certainly not Sir Horace Malory's, the Barbados hiatus produced a further offer. Mr Thomas Plantagenet Grace discovered it on his desk upon his return. It upped the ante to £130,000.

  'This,' said Malory grimly, 'can go on for years. Damn fella will be in Timbuctoo next, and the new offer'll be a million. Offer one hundred and thirty-two conditional upon immediate acceptance.'

  But the hostage had by then been given, and it had been examined with pleasure. It was now very clear that Hill-

  11Q yard, Cleef not only sought to possess Cavendish House, but did so with great ardour. 'And Hillyard, Cleef,' as Thomas Plantagenet Grace observed, 'are rich, rich, rich!'

  The riches, however, had not been accumulated by succumbing very often to essentially simple lures. Malory and Graves could play this game, too, and frequently did. The Hillyard, Cleef offer was suddenly lowered. Neither Graves nor Malory was subsequently available when Mr Grace telephoned to enquire if he understood the reduced offer aright. A further and genuine bid then materialized from another source altogether; this for one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds. It was made by an elderly lady who marched up to the white-painted door one evening, said she was from Australia, and would buy the house there and then. 'Here,' she said, 'is my cheque. And here, because there are crooks in this world Mr Abrahams- and I'm not saying you're one of them because I don't know whether you are or not - is a document for you to sign. In the event you call off the deal, you pay me ten thousand. Fair?'

  It was fair, Abrahams thought. But Mr Thomas Plantagenet Grace was privately doubtful. He suspected that the elderly lady was a plant, an agent of Hillyard, Cleef. What is more, he was right. She was herself a director of a Hillyard, Cleef subsidiary in Australia. Mr Grace could prove nothing. What he could do was delay matters.

  He did.

  At Hillyard, Cleef the effects of the delay varied according to the individual. Laurence Pilgrim, with a somewhat irritable Malory haunting the building seven hours a day, began
to hope that part three of Dikeston's memoirs would surface soon, if only to get Malory off his back.

  Malory passed his day harrying lawyers, Graves, and anybody else within reach. He was, by now, thanks to the historian from Oxford, as well-informed as it is possible to be about the question of what happened to the Romanovs after Yakovlev was compelled to turn back outside Omsk. Evenings at Wilton Place tended to be spent in his study with a volume of Romanov reminiscences, rather than at the bridge table. He read the memoirs of Romanov uncles, cousins, aunts, teachers and friends. In some areas all said much the same thing. In others they differed.

  Not one mentioned a meeting with Dutov - nor was there mention anywhere of the possibility that Commissar Vassily Yakovlev was a British agent.

  There were other mysteries, too.

  When at last Cavendish House changed hands- and it took a full month despite all the pressure exerted by the no-nonsense lady from Australia - Graves heard the news without pleasure. A most useful part of Graves's make-up was a pronounced node of suspicion which probably came from his French ancestry, and which told him that there was a great deal more to Dikeston's story than might be gathered from a first and superficial view. Dikeston, he thought, was obsessive; Dikeston had taken trouble with his arrangements, and had carried his grievances a long time. Dikeston had also liked setting traps and Graves, thinking about all the years Dikeston had had to set them and all the money available for them, viewed his own future involvement with no enthusiasm at all. He had originally accompanied Laurence Pilgrim to London because working for Pilgrim in international financing projects would provide the challenges to which he best responded: locking horns with clever and energetic men on a familiar battlefield and according to rules universally comprehended. But Dikeston's legacy - and Graves by now felt this strongly - was something very different. Had he been able to avoid further involvement, he would have done so, but Pilgrim had made clear his own aversion to what he described to Graves privately as 'Malory's senescent flourish', and had indicated that Graves must bear the load. The load had been borne quite lightly for several days, since Hillyard, Cleef's solicitors were taking the weight. Jacques Graves, temporarily freed as a result, had been in Vancouver. British Columbia, tying up a profitable deal involving the building of two ocean-going tugs. He was sitting in the dining-room of the Bayshore Inn, picking with pleasure at a handsomely arranged plate of Crab Louie, when he was paged. There was a telex from Malory. It read: 'Return at once.'