The Romanov Conspiracy (3 page)

Everything a man possessed now belonged to the Soviets. If anyone protested, they were imprisoned. If they protested still, they were shot, all part of the brutal Red Terror that swept Russia once Lenin seized power.

Fleeing for their lives, my grandmother’s family traveled across the frozen landscape one malignant winter and boarded a rusty steamship in St. Petersburg, bound for America. The only memories they carried in their cloth bags were some faded sepia family photographs and postcards of Imperial Ekaterinburg, the brittle pages yellow with age and smelling of wood smoke. I still recall that peaty wood smell when as a child I would leaf through the family album, filled with the faded images from another world.

Once, as a child, among the album pages I found an old black-and-white photograph and next to it a crushed handful of dried flowers, kept in an ancient fold of greaseproof paper, the edges stained with age.

“What’s this, Nana?” The photograph showed an imposing railway station, decorated with fluttering Imperial Russian flags. On the steps of the station stood the unmistakable image of the Romanovs: the tsar and his wife waving to a crowd, next to them their son and daughters. I recognized Anastasia wearing a white dress and shoes and a simple bow in her hair, a bouquet of flowers clutched in her hands.

“That was the day in 1913 when the tsar and his family came to visit Ekaterinburg. Before the war, before everything turned bad in Russia.” Her blue eyes watered, as if she recalled some long-cherished memory.

“And the flowers?”

“Of all the royal family, Anastasia was the most rebellious, the most sparkling. That day on the station steps she threw her bouquet to the children in the crowd. You can imagine there was such a rush, I was almost killed, but I managed to grab some of the bouquet. I’ve always cherished it.”

I looked down at the photographic images and gingerly used the tip of my fingers to barely touch the fragile handful of dried flowers. “You
saw
Anastasia? She actually
threw
these flowers?”

“She was an imp, that one, full of life, a real tomboy, and we children loved her. The family affectionately called her
Kubyshka
, meaning ‘dumpling.’”

And now here I was, part of an international archaeological dig, spending my summer in jeans and grubby sneakers in a walk-in tent on the outskirts of Ekaterinburg. Absurdly, it seemed as if my family’s past had come full circle.

My curiosity eating me, I pressed the harness control block. The motor whirred. The harness lowered me into the pit and I was devoured by shadows.

At first I descended into blackness, but after about twenty feet the shaft’s sides were lit by electric lightbulbs. Here and there, I kicked against the walls with my worn Reeboks to keep from hitting the sides.

Below me I saw a blaze of light and suddenly Roy gripped the harness. “Okay, baby, you’re at rock bottom.”

I let go of the rope and my feet hit a floor of muddied wooden planks. I maneuvered out of the harness and shivered. It felt intensely cold. I rubbed my arms. A cube of aching blue light shone down from the shaft mouth.

Nearby, a couple of powerful halogen lights illuminated the chamber floor, which expanded for at least twelve feet in all directions, wider than the shaft. Some of the chamber was lost in deep shadow and it felt
eerie. Roy had engineered a lattice of struts and beams to prevent a cave-in but that didn’t comfort me—I hated enclosed spaces, especially tunnels, which in my profession didn’t help.

A heavily built man with a thick gray mustache and wire-rimmed glasses was busy hacking away at the icy peat of one of the chamber walls, using a lump hammer and a broad chisel. He stopped hammering and grinned. “Hey, Laura, how’s it going?”

Tom Atkins, from Boston, had a toolbox open at his feet and his breath clouded in the chilled air. He wore a thickly padded Columbia ski jacket, heavy woolen gloves, and earmuffs. Next to him was a trestle table covered with an assortment of tools and brushes, as well as a couple of powerful electric flashlights. He removed the earmuffs.

“You came prepared, Tom.” I nodded toward a pile of unopened Budweiser and Heineken beer cans stacked in a corner.

“Hey, don’t knock it, this place is better than my refrigerator.”

“So what have you two found besides the perfect place to chill beer?”

“Take a look over there first.” Tom nodded to a wire sifting tray.

I picked it up. In a corner of the tray was a collection of badly tarnished military brass uniform buttons. I saw some copper kopeks and silvered rubles and could just make out the dates: 1914, 1916, and one 1912. There was a yellowed comb made from ivory and the remains of a luggage clasp. The sight of a child’s hair band sent a poignant shiver down me.

During the Red Terror—the revolution’s purge designed to keep a grip on power and instill fear—the Bolsheviks were known to execute entire families. I shook my head. “Sad, but interesting.”

“The real jackpot’s over here.” Tom jerked a thumb toward the side of the chamber he was working on. “Better take a deep breath, Laura.”

“Why?”

“It’s kind of uncanny. Macabre almost.”

I picked up one of the flashlights from Tom’s table and moved deeper into the chamber. I shone a powerful cone of light onto the frozen soil and experienced a moment of pure terror. A human hand protruded from the permafrost. The flesh was intact, bleached white,
the fingers lightly caked in mud, the fist tightly clenched. It appeared to be clutching something. “What the … !”

“You ain’t seen anything yet. Look right there.” Roy pointed to the permafrost wall.

And then I saw it. Connected to the hand was a body—a woman’s face stared out grotesquely from the peaty earth. Her clothes were exposed, some kind of pale-colored blouse and a dark woolen top that looked from another century.
“Jeepers.”

Tom said, “Creepy, isn’t it? The permafrost’s acted like a deep freeze.”

Roy added, “Baby, it doesn’t surprise me. They’ve found woolly mammoths intact in this kind of soil. Take a look over to the left.”

I did, and saw the remains of a dark, coarse jacket protrude from the rich brown earth, about a foot of the cloth exposed, and what appeared to be the vague shape of a small human torso underneath the fabric.

Roy said, “There’s another body in there. We can’t be sure if it’s a child or an adult, but it’ll take us some time to get it out. We’ll concentrate on the woman first.”

I turned my attention back to the woman, shivered, and peered closer. The preserved head was plainly visible. Her eyes were closed. I could see her nose and lips, ears, and cheeks, locks of dark hair curled across her features and forehead. She had good cheekbones. I shone the flashlight on her alabaster face and it was a disturbing experience. I knew I was looking at one of the most remarkable finds ever discovered at Ekaterinburg. “It’s astonishing. I wonder who she was?”

“Heaven only knows. But there’s something else,” Roy offered.

“What?”

“Take a look at what’s in her hand.”

I shone the light on the still clenched bones, held firm for how many decades? It appeared that she was clutching some kind of metal chain. “What is it?”

“Looks like a piece of jewelry,” Tom said.

“I’ll take your word for it. Anyone want to try to pry the hand open?”

Roy grinned. “We thought we’d leave that to you.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“You’re the boss, baby.” Roy handed me a pair of disposable surgical gloves.

“Here, hold the flashlight while I try.”

Roy held my light and shone it on the clenched hand. I slipped on the gloves, steeled myself, closing my eyes a moment, and then I went for it. I gripped the index finger and the wrist and pulled gently, trying to open the hand.

The flesh felt marble cold and solid.

I was afraid that I might tear the skin apart or the entire hand would shatter like delicate porcelain. To my surprise, the bones uncoiled silently, just a fraction, but enough to see what it held. “Aim the torch here.”

Roy shone it on the open hand. In the palm’s bleached white furrows I saw a chain and locket.

It looked nothing extravagant or expensive like some of the jewelry found at Ekaterinburg, hidden away by royal relatives or the wealthy merchants who were executed here. I lifted out the locket and wiped it gently with my fingers. I could see it had some kind of raised image on the front, but the locket was part covered by peaty earth, the chain fragile.

Roy offered his penknife. “Here, try this.”

I took the knife and scraped away caked dirt. There was no mistaking the raised Romanov family seal in gold, inlaid in front. It showed the double-headed imperial eagle. I could tell there was an inscription on the locket’s rear, but it was obliterated by corrosion. My heart skipped.

Tom said, elated, “You think we got lucky?”

“Great minds think alike. I wish I knew.”

Roy said, “Hey, baby, you think maybe we’ve found Romanov remains?”

I didn’t reply, just stared at the locket, mesmerized.

Tom rubbed his frozen hands as if trying to set them on fire with friction. “Who knows? But we better inform the Russians. We’ll have to cut her out of the permafrost. Hopefully a closer look can tell us if her body suffered any trauma and how she likely died.”

The Russians had control of the dig. An inspector came out every other day from Ekaterinburg to check on our progress. But that was barely on my mind as I stared at the locket, my mind on fire. “
No
, don’t do anything, or inform anyone officially. Not just yet.”

Tom frowned, and Roy said, “Why not?”

I stared again at the remains of the two bodies and I felt stunned, filled with excitement. I looked up toward the gaping mouth of the shaft. The blue light that shone down at me that moment felt like an epiphany. I clutched the locket. My heart raced.

Roy must have seen the excitement in my face and said, “What’s wrong?”

I crossed back to the harness and strapped myself in. “Someone get me photos of the body. I want them from every angle. And get a hair sample; we need to carry out a DNA test. I want to know if this woman could be a Romanov, or a blood relative.” I pressed the motor control switch and the seat began to ascend.

“Hey, where are you going, baby?” Roy asked, confused.

“To book a flight. And don’t ask me to where. You’d never believe me.”

Some events in our lives are so huge in their impact upon us that they are almost impossible to take in. The birth of your first child. Or a hand slipping away from yours as you sit by a loved one’s deathbed. The mystery of the bodies in the permafrost was on the same seismic scale. For the next eighteen hours my mind was a blur and I hardly slept. What I do remember is that after flying from Ekaterinburg to Moscow it was the afternoon of the following day when I landed at London’s Heathrow airport.

The first thing I did was check the phone number written in my diary and I called it again from my cell phone. The number rang out. I tried again six more times, but with the same result. A generic voice asked me to leave a message. It was my sixth since that morning.

I felt exhausted but I hoped that the answer to the enigma of the Ekaterinburg bodies was another short flight away.

Dublin is barely a sixty-minute skip out over the Irish Sea and as
my Aer Lingus plane began its descent, I saw the bright green Irish coast, spattered with huge dark patches of rain cloud.

By the time I’d hired a car and consulted a map, another hour passed. I drove north through relentless heavy rain showers, eager to reach my destination.

Sullen bands of charcoal clouds did their best to keep the sun at bay, but soon after I passed a huge modern bridge near a town called Drogheda, the sunlight burst from behind the cloud. Farther on I saw the Irish coastline and the rugged Mountains of Mourne, a striking patchwork of intense green shades, the colors so vivid my eyes ached.

All I had to do now was find the village I was looking for and the man I hoped would help solve the mystery.