The Romanov Conspiracy (76 page)

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?”

“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.”

“From when de Gennin originally designed the city as a fortress?”

Petrovsky smiled. “You know your history.”

I encouraged him, pouring another drink. “Tell me more.”

“The entire demolition was carried out using a wrecking ball and
bulldozers and with mysterious haste on the night of July 27, 1977, on the orders of Uri Andropov, at the time still head of the KGB. I remember clearly when we breached a basement tunnel. Part of it had those white glazed tiles you often see in late-nineteenth-century buildings. That’s when the men from Moscow appeared.”

“Men from Moscow?”

Petrovsky swirled his whiskey. “The KGB. Suddenly their senior people were swarming all over the site like flies. Even Boris Yeltsin, the future Russian president, came to have a look.”

“Really?”

“I was ordered to give him a private tour of the underground passageways. The demolition was halted for a time that night. We donned our safety helmets, armed ourselves with electric flashlights, and I led Yeltsin and the KGB people down into the bowels.

“Actually, the tunnel ran directly from a breached wall in the bricked-up storeroom next to the infamous execution chamber—which was pretty small. Less than four yards by five. I found it incredible that up to twenty-two people were crowded into it for the shootings, half of them with guns blazing. I’m surprised many of the executioners weren’t killed by ricochets. Yet none of them were, if we’re to believe the official accounts.”