The King's Commissar Read online

  'I wish we could hang him.' Goloshchokin gave a sigh. 'But the chairman believes him.'

  Ruzsky laughed. 'Maybe the chairman has Moscow ambitions. No, Comrade, I don't really mean that. I admire Beloborodov.' He turned to me. 'You should be grateful to him, too.'

  'Why?'

  'Why? Because you're free. Who says there's no Soviet mercy, eh? A Tsarist provocateur, and what do we do? We let you go! We won't let them go, though, will we, Comrade Goloshchokin?'

  Goloshchokin looked at me sidelong. 'Not even to Moscow. And be careful, Yakovlev, or you'll be back in here.'

  He stalked out, Ruzsky slouching after him. I followed, and found myself standing close to Ruzsky, apparently by accident, by the road outside the prison gate. He didn't turn towards me, or even acknowledge he knew I was there. He spoke, though, quietly and clearly. 'Behind the Palais Royal Hotel at nine o'clock,' he said, and slouched away.

  It was two hours to nine.

  I wandered in the dark, found food and drink in a tavern, and listened to the talk there, anxious for news of the Imperial Family. Nor were tidings long in coming, for talk in the tavern was of nothing else. Every snatch of it seemed to tell more.

  '. . . I saw them at the station. Just shoved off the train, they were, like sacks of grain. I thought for a bit the crowd would grab them, but . . .'

  '. . .My God, they looked frightened!'

  '. . . Wouldn't you? Did you see who drove the car, though? Parfeny, yes. Oh, you know him, yes, 'course you do. Head of the Railwaymen's Punitive Detachment. Real swine, wouldn't want him driving me."

  '. . . They say Professor Ipatiev was given only six hours' notice to get out. Six hours, that's all.'

  ' . . House is too good for them. It's like a bloody palace! Big white place up on Vosnesensky Avenue - the one with the archway. And Nicholas still has servants with him!'

  I sat very quietly in a dark corner, absorbing it all, astonished at how easy it was to learn. I heard that the Family was now guarded by detachments of men from two local factories.

  I rose when they began to go over it all again; from the excitement in their voices they'd spend the night repeating it all endlessly. In the street outside I stood for a moment, wondering at the whereabouts of the places they had spoken of: Ipatiev's house and Vosnesensky Avenue. But they were not difficult to find. The city of Ekaterinburg buzzed with the knowledge of the Romanov's presence, and I quickly realized many in the streets were sightseers bound for the house. I simply followed.

  No one was allowed nearer to the house than the other side of the Avenue: There was a high palisade built of logs before the entrance, close against the building so that nothing could be seen, and a few armed militiamen stood in the roadway moving along the many passers-by.

  I looked as long as I could. It had been a house of some style, but was a prison now and unmistakably so. Guards in the streets, guards at the gates, guards no doubt in the house itself. Around me, in the talk of the townspeople, there was nothing but hostility. Why keep the Romanovs alive? Why not shoot them now? It was all talk of that kind. I thought of the quiet courage of the Tsar, of his refusal to go with Dutov when he could so easily have done so. I thought of the marvel of that hour I had spent with the Grand Duchess Maria. No, not Maria. Marie.

  Then I thought of the paper - Zaharoff's paper - the paper that was supposed to be vital to so many: with a value of millions in money plus the weapons for an army; and on top of that, God alone knew how many human lives!

  The Tsar had signed it, he'd told me so! And everyone was waiting for it; everyone from Ruzsky to Lenin and Trotsky; everyone from my own humble self to Zaharoff and my Sovereign, King George.

  Many men's worlds hung upon that piece of paper!

  As I trudged along towards my meeting with Ruzsky, my thoughts whirled. Oh yes, everyone wanted it; but only I knew where it was, the Tsar and his son excepted. Well, I would keep it so, keep it above all from Ruzsky until I understood his purpose more clearly. For my tumbling thoughts were now presenting me with strange notions and stranger conclusions.

  Lenin and Sverdlov had sent me to Siberia to bring the Tsar out. And I had done so, or nearly. If I hadn't been stopped at Omsk, had not been sent back to Ekaterinburg , then both I and the entire Imperial Family would by now be halfway to Moscow.

  The questions drummed in my mind: Had I really been stopped by the rivalry between provincials and metropolitans? Could it really be true that the men of Omsk and Ekaterinburg took no notice of Lenin and Sverdlov?

  Or was it something else? Did those devious and clever men in Moscow actually want the Romanovs to be held in peril in Ekaterinburg rather than safe in Tobolsk or Moscow? And then I saw it, or thought I did. The Germans were the key; camped as they were, menacingly and in army strength on Moscow's doorstep. Suppose there were negotiations; suppose the Germans were demanding that the Imperial Family be surrendered to them; suppose Lenin and Sverdlov had no alternative but to agree? Yes, suppose all that - what then if Moscow did not want to hand over the Romanovs? Oh yes, now it was simple enough. Send me to bring them (and kill two birds with one stone!) and then arrange for the Romanovs to be detained by wild men in far Siberia, and say to the Germans, Oh, we're trying to persuade the local Soviet, but they won't even listen.

  Was it all conceivable?

  Certainly it was. That explanation fitted all the complexities, answered all the questions. Yet I could barely believe a word of it. Too outlandish, I thought. But as I approached the Palais Royal Hotel I was resolved to play matters close in future. And to learn more of Ruzksy.

  He was waiting in the shadowed street behind, and was not a sight to give any man hope: drink in him, and bearing and manner scruffy. Yet when he spoke, it seemed his mind was more or less clear - and entirely concerned with the paper.

  'Have you got it?' he demanded.

  I shook my head. 'It had to be left with the Tsar. Then -when the train was halted - there was no chance to ask him.

  'Precious little chance now. But we've got to get it.'

  'We?' I said harshly. 'You're the one who must recover it.'

  'You imagine he'd give it to me? He knows me, remember. No, you're the only one he'd trust.'

  I did not tell Ruzsky the Tsar's view of me now. Instead: 'I could give you a note to him,' I said.

  'A note of hand?' Ruzsky laughed sharply. 'If the guards search me and find it, what then? I'll tell you - I'm the bearer of clandestine messages between you, who tried to take the Tsar to safety, and Nicholas himself. And my life then would be worth nothing!'

  We regarded each other warily. At last I said, 'What will happen to them?'

  Ruzsky shrugged. 'Do you care?'

  'Yes. I care.'

  'My guess is that there is a majority of the Soviet in favour of killing them.'

  'Cold-blooded execution?'

  'It is a difficult question. There is a lot of discussion. Good Bolsheviks should not molest women and children, some say. But others say this is the German woman, and that's different.'

  He knew more of the circumstances of imprisonment than I. 'Is there,' I asked him, 'any chance of freeing them?'

  He gave me an amused glance. 'White horses to the rescue, you mean? No, my friend. They're as good as dead, that's my view, unless they have value in bargaining. And yes, that they have, but only with the Germans.'

  'So?'

  'So they will be there for a long time, unless a rescue is attempted. In that case the guards will pull triggers at once. There are White Russian armies loose in Siberia and you may be sure of one thing, my friend: neither Nicholas nor his son will be allowed to fall into White hands. There are still some who would restore the Throne.'

  'You have suggestions, then?'

  'Yes, wait.'

  'And do nothing?'

  He gave me a look. 'Be patient. What is there to do? If he'd signed that paper you could have been off to England now, but you didn't force it!'

  T couldn't force it. But it se
ems to me I might just as well set off for England, anyway. I have no position here. You have, though. Whatever's to be done, you'll have to do it!'

  'I told you, be patient! Remember the purpose. It is not to save the Tsar's neck, it is to get his signature on the paper. Don't forget that. The paper, signed, and off to Moscow and London.'

  'I wish I knew what was in it!'

  'You know enough,' Ruzsky said roughly. 'Remember this: the only thing that will save the Romanovs' necks is that paper, signed and on Lenin's desk.'

  'If Lenin wants it he can -!'

  He shook his head. 'That's not the way of things. Think, man, can you see Lenin coming here, in person, to bicker with men like Beloborodov and Goloshchokin and even be refused? By yokels like that? And then have word spread through the country that Lenin himself betrays the Revolution by talking to the Tsar. No, not in a thousand years. So it comes back to you, whom the Tsar may trust. He'll certainly trust no one else! If you leave now, his death-warrant is signed.'

  'I'm helpless,' I said.

  Ruzsky made that odious gesture: finger laid along his nose. 'Nobody is ever helpless,' he said. 'Time creates opportunities.'

  We parted then, I to return to the train for I had nowhere else to go and it ought to be standing at Ekaterinburg station, still. The arrangement for the future was that we should meet nightly, at the same time, in the same shadowed place behind the Palais Royal Hotel.

  But when I reached the train there was a guard on it and I was given instructions to report at once to the office of the station-master. When I got there it was quickly apparent that this was no professional station-master, but a nonentity in unfamiliar shoes too large for him. He had orders for me, though: orders I did not like, that came from the Urals Soviet under Beloborodov's name. I was to take the train forthwith out of Ekaterinburg and return it to Tyumen where the engine and rolling stock rightly belonged. In no circumstances was I to remain in the city. If I did, I would be subject to arrest and trial on suspicion of pro-Tsarist activities.

  I found my engine-driver and roused him. He grumbled a little, but it seemed he was not sorry to be going, for in Ekaterinburg he had found himself in an odd position, caught between those who wanted low gossip from the driver of the Imperial Family's train, and those who regarded him as a criminal for even driving it. He had been offered both drinks and threats.

  The train had been shunted into a siding after the removal of the royal passengers and my own arrest, and it was there still, guarded in two ways. The Urals Soviet had a couple of men by the engine and two more at the rear: factory workers with rifles, from the look of them. Aboard, there remained several of the cavalrymen who had been with me since my first arrival in Tyumen, including the sergeant, Koznov, who made it abundantly clear he was pleased to see me.

  'Where to, sir?' he asked brightly.

  'Tyumen. You have no other orders?'

  'No.' He looked at me expectantly, in that way every officer in a fighting force knows: he would obey any order.

  But orders were needed. A good man but without initiative.

  It was a characteristic of those chaotic days that nobody believed anybody else, and the next events at Ekaterinburg station proved it. Though I was under direct instruction from the highest local authority - Beloborodov and his Soviet - and their instructions had been transmitted to me via the man in charge of the station, the lone guards did not believe any of it. There was a long debate about which of them should be sent to the station-master to make a check on the matter, and when a man had been chosen and despatched and had at last returned, he was not believed either. So, in the finish, all four of them made separate forays to the office.

  At last they were all convinced and we could set about getting steam up. I «could also ask Koznov the question it had been impossible to ask in their presence.

  'The contents of the two locked carriages,' I said anxiously, 'have they been disturbed?'

  'No,' Koznov told me. 'One of the guards wanted to look inside and was greatly insistent. For a minute I thought I might have to restrain him by force, bat it was his companions who prevented it. The Tsar's property was community property now, they said, and must remain so.'

  I thanked God for that, and busied myself as fireman, thrusting wood into the engine's furnace and keeping my eye on the steam pressure gauge. Those two locked carriages, to which I had the keys, must hold things of great value, and I was deeply concerned at having responsibility for them.

  It must have been two or three o'clock in the morning when, with a full head of steam and the signal clear, the train hissed and clanked out of the station, and began its journey east from Ekaterinburg, back towards Tyumen.

  As the city fell behind and the train came out on to the wide lonely spaces, I found myself standing in the corridor of the

  no royal coach, in the very place where I had stood once before - for that single magical hour with the Grand Duchess Marie. Then the night had been black dark, so that I could barely see her; now there was a trace of moonlight. Oh, had she only been with me now . . .

  I was overcome for a little while by melancholy and then by a fearful sense of helplessness. For what could I do? By staying in Ekaterinburg I would be putting myself at risk -and pointlessly, too, for it was already obvious the Tsar was to be sealed away from any outside contact. If I went to Moscow it would be to report complete failure - and where was the sense in that? I must somehow contrive a purpose for remaining in the region: a purpose which would stand up to all examination.

  I brought my thoughts back to reality and considered my situation. The paper was in Tobolsk. I had the train. Simple: I must go and get the paper! If the paper was itself a weapon, perhaps I could use it, too.

  What were the realities? I had been ordered out of Ekaterinburg. Very well, I had obeyed orders. But those orders gave me justification for remaining in the wider region, for they required me to return the train to Tyumen and keep its contents intact. The reason was obvious enough: if I were with the train in Tyumen, I would not be stirring trouble in Ekaterinburg. And further, since the contents of the train were valuable, having Yakovlev stand guard over them in a place as remote as Tyumen was one way to keep them safe. So both ways I was secure. I was armed with Urals Soviet written orders concerning the train and Sverdlov's laissez-passer concerning my own person. Anyone who would not accept the one ought to accept the other.

  And what, anyway, was I guarding? I had seen it loaded as we prepared to leave Tobolsk, but then it was just boxes and bags, chests and parcels and cases. What lay inside? I decided to find out.

  And it was dazzling. Nicholas Romanov had been monarch of one-sixth of the earth, and Alexandra his queen. Their possessions were bound to be of the grandest. I found the carriages contained not only silks and velvets, china and crystal, not only a number of the most exquisite paintings and icons, but also a great many jewels. A great many? Boxes of them! Just how many I do not know, for I opened only a few of dozens of containers of various kinds. One was a chest of wood perhaps eighteen inches long by a foot wide and five to six inches deep: and it was full of gold coins in huge variety: Austrian thalers, English sovereigns, American 50-dollar pieces, Mexican, Spanish. It was too heavy for me even to lift from the floor.

  In one suitcase lay a small leather-covered octagonal box which, when I opened it, proved to contain only jewellery of a religious nature: crucifixes, small enamelled icons and the like. But it was all of immense richness, with large precious stones used liberally for decoration.

  To find oneself responsible for such a treasure is, I can assure you, an extraordinary and unnerving experience. Soon I realized that something must be done: the treasure had to be hidden or buried or taken to a place of safety if such could be found.

  I made haste to close everything up and lock the carriage doors. The first light of dawn was showing as I began to make my way forward towards the locomotive.

  And it was at dawn that the ambush must have happened, for on
ly a few minutes afterwards, as I stood beside the driver on the platform of the locomotive, looking ahead along its sleek, steel side as we rounded a bend, a battle came sweeping into view.

  A train stood halted on the track ahead, perhaps half a mile away, and was clearly engaged in a furious fight with attacking troops. We had heard nothing of the firing, naturally, for the sound of our own locomotive was more than enough to drown out anything else. The driver's hand flew to the brake and I swung off along the handrails at the side of the tender to warn Koznov and his men. Before I had even reached the first carriage, a bullet clanged upon steel close by and went humming past me; turning my head, I saw horsemen riding hard towards us.

  Koznov, it turned out, was already alert and his men stood in the corridor with rifles trained upon the approaching riders. Similar scenes are commonplace in these modern days in cinema films about the West in the United States of America. The difference here was that the attack was not by a tribe of painted savages, but by cavalrymen. Whose were they? I snatched a look through binoculars at them, and at the far larger group surrounding the train ahead. Suddenly I noticed a milk-white horse . . .

  Dutov!

  'Don't shoot,' I told Koznov, but it was a useless instruction, for even as I spoke we ourselves were under fire, and Koznov's men were firing back.

  'Hold your fire!' I shouted, and snatched up a white pillow from a compartment and waved it from the window. I had them drop their rifles then, and descend to the track with their hands raised. They were resentful, but this was the only thing to be done: it would have been slaughter otherwise.

  We were then made to sit by the track and wait as the battle raged farther ahead. But even at that stage it was clear enough that Dutov's troops must carry the day, for it was a couple of hundred against a thousand or more: revolutionary guards against highly-trained men. Determined resistance was certainly put up, but at last the red flags at either end of the Red train were torn down and the inevitable surrender occurred.

  It was a full hour after that that I was prodded to my feet with a cavalry sabre and marched to where Dutov sat, on horseback still, beside the surrendered train.