The Romanov Conspiracy (60 page)

PART SEVEN

91

“You’re mad, I tell you. You’ll get us both shot.” Markov snapped the reins. The horses trotted in the direction of Vonskaya Street. “Are you listening to anything I’m saying?”

Boyle sat beside him in the hearse, wearing a dark suit, collar, and tie. “Every word. Not mad, desperate. The next turn, you said?”

Markov sighed unhappily and swung the carriage left and they came down by the lake. As they trotted under a bridge, three Red guards patrolled beside a solid-looking iron door.

Markov was sober-faced after they passed the guards. “You see, it’s just as I told you. Every tunnel entrance is guarded.”

Minutes later, they saw more troops pacing outside an immaculately kept, stucco-fronted house with a fluttering Union Jack mounted on an upper-story flagpole. Markov said, “The British consulate’s office. There’s a tunnel entrance in the garden.”

Boyle said, tight-lipped, “I’ve seen enough. Head to the hotel.”

Five minutes later they clip-clopped past the Amerika. Boyle observed soldiers outside, four with bayoneted rifles, while another manned a Vickers machine gun protected by a mound of sandbags. On the street corners at each end of the hotel was a patrolling soldier. Several cars and trucks were pulled in front of the hotel.

An open-topped Opel car suddenly overtook them and slammed on its brakes near the front entrance. A couple of thugs in leather jackets dragged a terrified-looking young man from the back of the car and hauled him up the entrance steps. Markov said, “The poor devil is destined for the cells, no doubt.”

He turned to Boyle. “You must be insane to enter that lions’ den. I wouldn’t have the nerve.”

“Drive round the corner. I want to take a look at the rear.”

Markov obeyed, nudging the horses with his whip. Boyle saw that the hotel’s entire lower-floor basement had thick bars on the windows.

“The cells?” Boyle asked.

“Yes,” Markov answered.

“Head toward the river.”

Markov steered the horses and minutes later halted by the water. “Well?”

Boyle took out a notepad and pencil. He jotted down some notes and a few rough drawings. When he finished he massaged his forehead with his thumb and forefinger.

“Impossible?” Markov asked.

“Every suit of armor has a chink. However, there’s one serious problem I can foresee if I try to enter the hotel.”

“Which is?”

Boyle offered a crooked smile. “I can understand some Russian, but I can’t speak it very well.”

Markov tossed down the reins in dismay. “Wonderful. What now?”

92

The train thundered through the night.

Lydia yanked open one of the metal windows to let in some air, vast forests lurking in the moonlit darkness. When she turned back she said, “I know it’s killing you, but you mustn’t feel guilty.”

Andrev sat behind Yakov’s desk, his head in his hands, and then he looked up, tormented. “That’s not the point. It’s still my fault. Coming back here, all of this, it was a mistake, I see that now. If I’d left well enough alone at least Nina and Sergey wouldn’t be harmed. I should have protected them.”

She came over and put both hands on his shoulders. “You can’t blame yourself, Uri. Yakov said he wouldn’t deliberately harm them.”

“I’m not sure what he’s capable of anymore. But it stands to reason he’ll try to use Nina and Sergey as pawns in all this.”

She saw his anguish and he seemed to slump, racked by worry and exhaustion. “We haven’t slept in over two days. You need to rest, Uri.”

He got to his feet and grabbed the route map. “I can’t, not now. Fetch Pavel.”

“Then will you promise to try to rest?”

“In a while. Let me deal with Pavel first.”

She went into the bedchamber and came back with the young rail worker. Andrev said bluntly, “Are you and your father Bolsheviks?”

The young man said nervously, “No, sir. We were employed by the railroad. Commissar Yakov had us seconded to his train.”

Andrev crooked a finger. “Come with me.” He said to Lydia. “Wait here, I’ll be back.”

She gripped his arm. “What are you going to do?”

He picked up Mersk’s
nagaika
whip. “Yakov ordered the line to be
kept open all the way to Ekaterinburg. I’m making sure he doesn’t try to cancel the order and stop us.”

Andrev moved over the wagon, following Pavel. They reached the engine, where the young man’s father was busy shoveling coal. He looked relieved to see his son.

“Listen here,” Andrev told him. “You both have my word that you won’t be harmed so long as you do as I say. I want you to keep this train going until we’re near Ekaterinburg. Can you do that?”

The driver nodded. “We’ve got enough fuel, that’s not a problem. It just depends on the line staying open.”

“If it does, how much longer would our journey take?”

“Eight hours, or thereabouts.”

Andrev pointed to the route map. “I’ll let you both off at a town fifty miles from Ekaterinburg, right here. You can say I threw you off, and no one will be the wiser.” He stared out at the telegraph poles flashing past in the dusk. “Now, be a good fellow and halt the train for a few minutes.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got work to do.”

The driver slipped on a thick leather gauntlet and adjusted a couple of valves and knobs on the engine panel, then carefully applied the air brakes. Steam hissed and the train slowed, eventually shrieking to a halt in a cloud of hot vapor.

Andrev immediately climbed up high on the coal tender, until he was near the telegraph pole that ran alongside the rail line. He uncoiled the
nagaika
and flicked the whip at the pole. He pulled hard, then tied the whip’s butt around a metal grip bar on the coal tender and told the driver, “Release the brakes and start moving, nice and slowly.”

The driver obeyed and the engine inched forward.

The
nagaika
began to stretch tight, pulling on the telegraph cable, and then came a
zinging
sound as the cable finally snapped. It snaked wildly until one end of it came to rest on the coal wagon. Andrev grabbed the cable and anchored it to an engine handrail.

“Get moving, faster,” he ordered the driver.

The train began to pick up speed.

Andrev watched as the telegraph cable was ripped from pole after pole …

Lydia poured some water from a jug into the washbasin in the bedchamber.

Andrev stood bare-chested, soaping clean his blackened hands and face. “Yakov won’t repair the damage in a hurry.”

“Where’s Pavel?”

“With his father. I told them not to disturb us unless it’s an emergency. We can take turns to rest, but keep the gun near you.”

She handed him a towel as the train picked up speed. “Do you trust them to keep the engine going?”

He dried himself. “We’re in the middle of nowhere—where can they go? Unless they want to take their chances in the forests with bandits and wolves, they’ll be safer with us, at least until we’re near Ekaterinburg.”

She looked into his face, his eyes dark and sunken, his face drawn. She said, “Promise me you’ll try to sleep. Two hours each. You rest first, I’ll keep watch.”

“If you think you can hold out.”

“I’ll be fine. You’re on the verge of exhaustion, Uri.”

Andrev collapsed onto the cot and removed his boots and breeches. He laid his head on the pillow and tried to force himself to relax. “Wake me if you need me.”

“No more talking.” Lydia sat on the chair by the bed and pressed a finger to his lips. “Just rest, Uri.”

He turned away toward the wall, one hand under his head. She laid a hand on his back, kneading his shoulders, feeling his stress, the muscles knotted as hard as wood. “Sometimes when I was a little girl and frightened of the dark, my mother used to come to my room and rub my back. She always said that we need to feel a human touch to relax. What are you thinking?”

“That right this minute I wish I could close my eyes and everything would just go away and I could sleep for a week.”

“I know the feeling,” she said. “You want to shut out the world and wait for the darkness to pass. But then when you open your eyes again you find nothing’s changed. It never does.”

She noticed him clasping and unclasping his hand, as if still consumed by worry. “What else are you thinking?”

“Nina and Sergey. And the last time I saw them. Nina was hanging some washing, and Sergey was tugging at her skirt. It broke my heart that there was nothing I could do to comfort my son. It made me feel so helpless.”

She stopped kneading his shoulders. He turned to face her. The look in his eyes said it all—his grief and anguish were still there, she saw that—but something else, too, a kind of longing that she understood all too well.

Not sexual, but something far more urgent: a heartbreaking need to simply connect with another human being.

There seemed no need to speak, no need to say a word, for she knew that he was as vulnerable as she.

She pulled him toward her, embracing him, her arms going around his neck as she kissed him, gently at first, then more fiercely as he clung desperately to her.