Yurovsky's eye was still hard upon me. 'Are you Trotsky's man, then? You were Sverdlov's once.'
I said, 'Neither, Comrade. I am a pair of hands and a pair of feet. I do as I'm told.'
'But by whom?'
'The Party. If you make me choose a man, then I'm always Lenin's, like all of us.'
'Hmmm.' His hand ran across his chin as he looked at me, and I could hear the rasp of his beard. 'When did you leave Moscow and have you heard Trotsky's intentions about the Romanovs?'
'A week ago. There's talk of a trial in Moscow to be broadcast to all of Russia.'
'Whose idea is it - Trotsky's?'
I said, 'Characteristic of him. Good propaganda, perhaps.'
'Will it happen?'
'I doubt it,' I said. 'I don't think, apart from Trotsky, that anybody else cares.'
That sentence has echoed in my brain all down the years. I have examined it a thousand times for shades of meaning, for hidden subtleties. But I am not a subtle man, neither in speaking nor in examining words. I can see nothing there.
All that happened was that Yurovsky said, 'It's so hot in here. The heat gets into the stones by day and comes out again at night.' He produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow. Then, 'For refreshment your own vodka, Comrades? Or -' and he became chatty; I repeat, there was a most marked resemblance between Yurovsky and my maiden aunts - 'the capitalists know how to look after themselves, I can tell you, Comrades. Why, in this house there's a huge refrigerator, made by Westinghouse and brought all the way from America! So we have ice - think of that, in a private house!
- and tonight I made lemonade!'
I remember smiling at the thought of lemonade; that too was a link with my aunts.
'You'd like some?' Yurovksy asked almost eagerly.
'Very much.'
He slipped out then, past the two in the doorway, and closed the door behind him. I turned to Bronard and said, 'When he returns.'
He nodded urgently. 'The instant he returns!'
I loosened the pistol in my pocket, ensuring that I could produce it swiftly and without entanglement, then I rose and stood by the curtained window. From somewhere in the house I heard footsteps on a wooden floor. One of the Imperial Family, perhaps, so near to freedom now. Then there was silence, interrupted after a few seconds by a sudden sharp cracking sound. I glanced at Bronard and saw his head had cocked to one side and he was listening. And then it came: that single crack was followed by a rapid volley of gunfire. Unmistakably it was a barrage of shots, and close at hand! I sprang to the door and jerked it open. Silence now and the corridor outside was deserted. As I looked anxiously first one way and then the otherI heard first a cry of pain, then a thump, repeated, and then a further shot.
I raced along the corridor, pistol in hand, entered a hallway with a wide stair. I plunged through the open door opposite, across another room and into a square hall, the air of which was grey blue with reeking gunsmoke. Yurovsky stood facing me and I halted, gaping, at the sight of him. He wore a strange smile and in his hand was a revolver from whose barrel a thin trace of smoke ascended. And he said in a high, mad, cracked voice, 'Lemonade you wanted, eh? Not this -'
I knew by then, of course - had known from the instant of the first shot. I flung myself past him while the shots still echoed and saw to my left open double doors and a wall of men's backs. And still there were shots.
Then a ghastly quiet fell and there came a whimper and a thud and a last crack. I forced myself through the wall of backs and saw .., a charnel house. I will not describe that scene. In the room eleven people, fine people who had been alive a single minute earlier, now lay slaughtered. Dazed with horror, I recognized Tsar Nicholas, his Tsarina, his son, his daughters - and oh God! . . , t here Marie, my beautiful Marie, lay dead in a pool of her own blood!
Gaping round, through rage and a stream of hot tears, I recognized only Botkin, the royal doctor. The remaining four must have been servants.
And then I saw a movement . . , one of the Letts . . , kneeling beside her, beside Marie!. . , a nd searching . . , robbing her body!
I stepped close, shot him in the neck and then swung round, with Yurovsky next in my mind. Yurovsky must die! But he was not there, must be outside the room. I stepped forward, and now saw Bronard, saw his foot swinging quickly up, kicking my revolver from my fist. I was seized by the Letts, dragged from that room to Yurovsky's, flung inside. Goloshchokin stood there, ashen-faced, holding a pistol pointed at Yurovsky who still wore that sickening grin of triumph.
'Kill him!' I yelled, and Yurovsky leered at me and said, 'Too late, isn't it?'
I flung myself at him, but somehow Bronard had interposed himself, and he, too, was armed. I stood raging, helpless as they forced me back. Of the four of us, probably only Bronard was sane at that moment.
And he was more than sane: for he was actually thinking! The first words then spoken were his, and I shall never forget their cold calculation. He directed them at Goloshchokin, who stood trembling visibly with fear. He said, 'There will be a way all this can be turned to advantage . . .'
Advantage!With the whole Imperial Family lying butchered a few yards away he was looking for advantage. Yes, and quickly finding it! He walked to Goloshchokin and cracked his flat hand across the man's cheek, and snarled 'Think - and listen, damn you! Or we're dead!'
'Sverdlov!' Goloshchokin kept muttering. 'He'll shoot us all!'
'Not if he doesn't know! Bronard said.
'How can he not know?'
'I'll tell you how.' Words tumbled from Bronard, and he turned quickly to Yurovsky. 'That mine on the Koptyaki road. Did you -?'
Yurovsky nodded, still smiling. 'Petrol and oil of vitriol. All there.'
'How much?'
'Enough.'
Bronard stood blinking for a moment. Then he picked the telephone from Yurovsky's desk and thrust it at Goloshchokin. 'We need another truck. Arrange it -quickly!'
There was something totally compelling about the fellow. Goloschchokin, a man of greater authority and influence, deferred unhesitatingly and did as Bronard bade.
Bronard, meanwhile, was still talking, half to himself. 'Mystery,' I heard him say, 'is to everyone's advantage if we can create it.'
Goloshchokin replaced the telephone. 'A second truck is coming.'
'Then here's what we must do,' Bronard said. 'We must take them all away - the Romanovs, the servants, everybody!'
I found my voice now, and began to protest and he levelled his revolver at me and said, 'A word - one word - and I shoot you! Just listen, damn you.'
He said Yurovsky had already planned the last resting-place of the Romanov Dynasty - at this mine he referred to as the Four Brothers shaft. 'Now,' he hurried on, 'we also have the four servants and there is the dead Lett and the doctor. Six bodies. Take them to the mine, Yurovsky. The Whites will be in the city in a week but it will be an age before the mine is found. Scatter Romanov clothing, and a few possessions there.'
'But they'll know!' Goloshchokin protested. 'Everybody will know. There are forensic tests that will identify -'
'Shut up!' Bronard said. 'I told you to listen. The Whites will say we Bolsheviks killed the Romanovs oh yes, they'll say it. But how can they prove it when they are the wrong bodies?'
'Where will the other bodies be?'
'We'll take them,' Bronard said, pointing at me. 'He and I will take them, and bury them. Yakovlev's a man for a Christian burial I've no doubt!'
'What of the Letts?' cried Goloshchokin. 'They know.'