I had a busy day ahead, but first I needed to make my flat habitable again. The specialists that I had requested arrived early, carrying protective overalls and boxes of tools, and we headed out onto the street, picking up my bodyguard of Stanislav and another agent, Vasily this time, as we went.
At the apartment, I helped the engineers put on their coveralls and gas-masks, then retreated with my guards to the far end of the corridor, while the men opened the door and entered through the errant wisps of smoke that escaped into the hallway like homeless spirits.
"The man you arrested, what have you learned?" I asked Stanislav as we waited.
He looked uncomfortable. "He refused to speak, would not tell us his name or why he was here. We have handed him over to the Special Investigations Office to see if they can get anything. They have ... methods." He shrugged his shoulders, then looked down at his feet.
"Torture?" I said, shocked. "You mean they will torture him, don't you?"
He nodded.
"I don't want that! What can I do to get him back? I won't have a man tortured in my name."
"We cannot release him," he said, defiantly, raising his eyes to my face. "He fired at government agents, it is an official matter now."
I found that I was trembling as my imagination conjured up awful images of what could be happening to the poor man. I tried to convince myself that it was no more or less than he deserved ~ he had set out to kill me, after all. I failed, as he had failed.
Ten minutes later the engineers emerged with their masks dangling on their chests. I thanked them as they peeled off their coveralls, then I entered my flat and looked around. There seemed to be little damage, apart from a hole burned in the rug where the smoke canister had erupted; I would have to replace that. The windows were open, but the oily smell of smoke was still quite strong, and would probably take a long time to dissipate.
I thanked the engineers again as they departed, then Stanislav, Vasily and I started to check my room to see if anything had been stolen. With so few possessions, that didn't take long ~ there was nothing missing, and the intruder had not left any clues.
We closed the windows, and were soon walking back to the Kremlin; I had a favour to ask my boss.
Chapter 16
~ Wednesday 14th August 1918 ~
Nervously, I opened the door that joined my office to Aleksandra's. "Can you spare a minute?" I asked as she raised her head from the pile of letters she was reading.
She waved me in, leaning back in her chair and stretching. "What's up?"
"I need to go to Nizhny Novgorod," I said, taking a seat opposite her.
"Sure, we can arrange that, but why?"
"I have to find out what has happened to Max," I explained, "starting from the day he joined the circus. At the moment, my head is in turmoil, wondering why and how he has disappeared and where he could be. I don't even know if he is still alive."
"Do you want some time off work?"
"Yes, please. Just a few days."
She was thoughtful for a moment, then leaned over her desk and rifled through some papers, drawing out one and passing it over to me. It was the schedule for her upcoming 'agitational' trip that we had been organizing, to meet and encourage the workers in the textile mills.
"You can accompany me as far as Orekhovo, then break off on your own to Nizhny. I would like you to help me by stopping off at Kovrov to check the engineering works and the mill ~ I am sure the managers there are working a deal to cream off the profits ~ and you could address a meeting for me in Nizhny, but once that is done your time will be your own for the rest of the week, and we will both arrive back here at about the same time. How does that sound?"
I grinned. "Perfect. I knew you would come up with something."
"Right. We will print some posters and leaflets, to make it official; you will be my representative. And you will need a military escort."
"Military?" I exclaimed.
She nodded. "Yes, a visible deterrent and a sign of your authority."
I sighed. "I suppose so."
"Four men should be enough, in addition to the agents from Department Thirteen."
I thought for a moment. "There is a women's regiment, is there not?"
Again she nodded. "The First Petrograd Women's Battalion. Trotsky wants them disbanded, but I have managed to keep them active."
"Then I would like my escort to be women soldiers. It will be a sign to everyone that we have a real role in the new system."
"I like that," she grinned. "Send a telegram to their commander, asking for volunteers."
* * *
Aleksandra started teaching me all I would need to know for the trip. It was a huge task to undertake in such a short time. So much new information was bombarding me that I quickly realised I could not hope to remember it all, and began to carry a notebook in which I constantly scribbled as much as I could. Every evening, in my apartment, I sat beyond midnight, reading through my notes and re-writing them into an exercise book, to reinforce them in my mind.
Aleksandra's mission was to talk to the women in the textile mills and factories, to encourage them, stir them up, keep their support alive for the fledgling communist government. These were the women who had built the fire of the revolution in 1905, and had marched the streets in large numbers in 1917, playing a significant role in toppling the royal family from power. Aleksandra regarded them as sisters.
At each stage of our preparations for the trip, she briefed me on the background to it, the history and politics of the revolution, and of the textile industry. I began to understand why the mill-workers had become a major factor in spearheading the revolution ~ when the exploitation of men, women and children by wealthy mill owners, the dreadful working conditions, and the lack of regulations to protect the workers, finally pushed them into rebellion.
"The Tsar conspired with the industrialists," she told me. "They supported him while their wealth grew, and the poor were the source of that wealth, a resource to be exploited and suppressed. He made sure that the Dumas did not pass any new laws to stifle profits, and he was encouraged in it by the Empress and spurred on by Rasputin."
"Rasputin?" I said, incredulously. "I knew he had them under his spell, but I had no idea he was involved in matters of state."
She crossed the room to a cabinet, and rummaged for a minute, returning with a wad of papers. "Here," she said grimly, "read these."
I quickly scanned the first few. They were copies of messages sent between Nicholas and Alexandra when they were apart, dated over a period from early 1916 to the end of 1917, many of them written by Nicholas from his military headquarters near the battlefront of the war against Germany. As I read the first, I saw that the royals often referred in their exchanges to 'our friend', who was advising them on everything from personal relationships to the conduct of the war against Germany. After skimming a few more pages, I lifted my head to stare in amazement at Aleksandra. "This 'friend' was Rasputin?" I asked.
She nodded, her lips pressed tightly together, her eyebrows raised.
I returned my attention to the papers, quickly flipping through them, reading random passages. "I didn't know," I said eventually. "I was there, in the palace, and I saw the casual power he held over them, but I never dreamed it extended so far."
"They were obsessed with the notion that they were chosen by their god to rule over Russia," she said. "When Rasputin arrived, they thought he had been sent by that god to guide them. He had them completely under his control, perhaps by some kind of hypnosis."
It was so obvious, now that she had told me, that I wondered aloud why I had never seen it.
"Even their closest friends did not know the real extent of his involvement," she explained with a shrug. "From what I have learned since you have been here, they told you all only as little about things as possible. Did you know that it was strongly rumoured that he regularly had sexual intercourse with, not only the Empress, but also all the daughters?"
"No!" I exclaimed. "That's not possible!" But I stopped, suddenly remembering incidents, little things that had seemed odd but insignificant at the time. Put them together, though, in the light of this latest revelation, and I could see how the stories could be true.
Aleksandra saw my expression change, and smiled grimly. "Nicholas's surviving brother, and some other members of the family, knew what was happening. That's why they conspired to kill Rasputin."
"But Maria, Tatiana, even Anastasia? She was only twelve years old!"
She nodded. "He convinced them he was doing it for their god, to fill them with heavenly seed."
I was shaking my head in shock, unable to speak.
"Take those papers home, if you like," Aleksandra said. "You can bring them back in the morning."
I did, and they gave me nightmares.
Chapter 17
~ Friday 16th August 1918 ~
Two days passed, and we received the posters from the printers for my part of the tour. It felt strange to see my face on them, headlined with the stirring message: "Women Workers for Russia!" We checked them, then split them into two bundles and sent them off to the committees in Kovrov and Nizhny.
Also, following my telegram to the Women's Battalion, I had received a list of six volunteers to join my growing security army, and I arranged to interview them all on Friday afternoon.
When the day arrived, I sat at my desk, pensively studying again the names of the girls who had applied. A familiar name had struck me when the telegram from their commandant first arrived ~ Radochka Petrov.
I grew up with the Petrov twins, Radochka and Polina, at Alexander Palace in my days as a housemaid. They were my closest friends, and we had remained together when we accompanied the royals into exile in Tobolsk. But when a chance was offered for some of us to return home I had to stay behind to care for the injured duchess Tatiana, though I insisted that Rada and Polya took the opportunity to get away to safety. We had hoped to meet up again, one day, but in my circumstances it had begun to seem very unlikely. I remembered standing tearfully at the upstairs window of the governor's mansion in Tobolsk, watching the cart carrying them to the railway station on the first leg of the long journey to their home town of Azov, and felt my eyes sting again as I recalled that day.
Now, here was her name, as a soldier of the Red Army.
Perhaps it wasn't her ~ Petrov was a common enough name ~ but it was not unlikely that she could have joined up. About two months had elapsed since we parted, and Rada certainly had many of the qualities to be a fighter (as she had proved when we dealt with the man who raped her sister Polina). Even so, when the door opened for her interview, I was half-resigned to be disappointed.
However, despite the uniform, and the incongruous cap, there was no mistaking the slim, athletic figure that entered my office, closing the door carefully behind her and turning to sweep her hand up to her cap in a perfect salute, spoilt only by a cheeky grin. I leapt from my chair and ran to embrace her, knocking her cap flying, tears suddenly pouring from my eyes. She, too, was crying as she held me close.
After a little while, we parted, and I led her to sit beside me on the chairs near the window. "You, a soldier," was all I could manage to say, staring at her familiar face, with her dark hair, cut even shorter than before.
She grinned again, spreading her arms and pushing out her chest, as though the uniform was just a fancy dress costume. "What do you think?
"It suits you, it really does. But what made you decide to join the Red Army?"
"Well, it's not easy for a woman to get a job these days ~ at least, a job that doesn't treat her as a second-class citizen ~ and I couldn't see myself becoming an obedient little wife to some man."
I laughed, shaking my head. "Certainly not! And Polya, has she joined too?"
"Oh no, she's working for the library in Azov, and has found a nice boyfriend. She's settling down."
"I'm glad, " I said sincerely, "it's what she needs."
Rada nodded. "She's living with an aunt, my mother's sister, and once I was sure she was happy, I decided to look for something exciting to do."
"I hope this assignment won't be too exciting," I grinned. "But you're on the team, if you still want it."
"You bet!" she laughed. "Someone has to keep you out of trouble."
* * *
Rada and the other three girls I chose to travel with me were billeted in the barracks that formed part of the garrison, in a room of their own. They moved in on Saturday morning, and Rada managed to obtain a pass so she could come to stay with me for the rest of the weekend. We had much to catch up on, and it was lovely to spend time together ~ just like the old days.
We had first met when she and her twin sister Polya had arrived at Alexander Palace as housemaids in 1913. They too were orphans, eleven years old to my twelve at the time, and we shared a room from then until I was elevated to the position of Lady In Waiting to the Duchess Tatiana at the beginning of 1917. The three of us had been inseparable.
There was so much news to be exchanged; we talked the whole of Saturday away. I wanted to know about her journey home from Tobolsk, but she demanded that first I tell her how I came to be working for the Communists.
The three of us had still been together, serving the ex-royals in exile, until that night when the Whites attacked the compound of the governor's mansion, trying to rescue the family. The raiding party succeeded in taking Nicholas and Alexandra, and at first it seemed they had escaped, but they were recaptured at Yekaterinburg, and all their rescuers were killed. Yurovsky, as head of the cheka responsible for us all, decided to reduce the size of the household by sending most of the servants home, but I had to stay to look after Tatiana, who had been injured during the raid.
I told Rada about the subsequent move to Yekaterinburg to join the rest of the family, about the assassination and how Max had saved me. It seemed far-fetched, as I recounted how he had plucked me from the hands of the killers, and how we had jumped onto the train as it left Yekaterinburg station; it sounded like a chapter from 'War And Peace', yet it had happened to me.
"Yurovsky is here, in the Kremlin," I informed her. "And he has told everyone who I am."
Her eyes became like saucers. "Not about your royal blood!" she blurted.
"No, thankfully," I said, pulling a face. "He doesn't know about that. But there was a terrible hoo-hah when he recognised me and went running with his tale to Stalin. Sverdlov and Aleksandra bravely stood up for me, and managed to smooth things out, but it has ruined my relationship with Yakov."
"Relationship?" she spluttered. "What have you been up to? Is one man not enough for you?"
"It's not my fault that men are falling at my feet," I laughed, then shook my head. "Nothing has happened, I am still being true to Max. Yakov likes me, and he is a good friend. I know he wanted more than just friendship, but that wasn't going to happen, even before he found out that I had lied about who I am."
Chapter 18
~ Monday 19th August 1918 ~
Rada and I spent our two nights together in my little bed, talking and giggling the hours away before falling asleep, clinging together as we had done so often while servants at Alexander Palace.
Then on Monday morning she rejoined the other girls to escort me when Aleksandra and I attended a gathering at one of the heavy-engineering factories on the outskirts of Moscow, where Aleksandra was to deliver a speech. The meeting was also to be addressed by Lenin, the party leader. It was a chance for me to see and hear Aleksandra in action, and to learn from the great man himself. It was also an opportunity for my new security team to bond and learn to work together.
Following the incident at my flat, I had accepted that two men were best as my close protection ~ their weight and menacing expressions would, I hoped, deter anyone contemplating harming me ~ but I liked having my army girls around me, too.
Rada, of course, was one of the four uniformed guards ~ two walking ahead, two following behind, their rifles slung ove
r their backs, pistols at their belts in polished leather holsters. She was probably the least experienced of them all, but she knew me better than anyone else, and I felt relaxed knowing that she was with me.
I had picked a sergeant to lead the troop ~ Nina Katya, a woman who had joined the regiment a year earlier, and who previously had been one of the militants who took part in the strikes and marches of February 1917 that brought about the revolution. She told me when we met, and without any dramatisation or self-praise, that she had walked up to the soldiers guarding the barracks in Petrograd on the night of February 28th, and persuaded them to mutiny ~ to bring their weapons and join the workers. It proved to be a turning point in bringing down the monarchy.
Nina was a stocky woman, muscular, taller than the others, with deep, dark eyes that were constantly alert. She directed her team with quick instructions, like throwing a handful of words to one, then to another, placing them around me as I moved slowly through the throng with Aleksandra, and the crowd around us seethed. I knew I had made a good choice in placing her in charge.
Rada seemed to respect Nina, as did Marya, her second-in-command, and they always responded quickly to every instruction. I noticed that Sonja, however ~ the fourth of the team ~ was less amenable, and sometimes slow to obey, as though she felt that she knew better. I decided to watch her and see how things developed.
The meeting was not the orderly affair I expected. An improvised stage had been erected in a corner of the warehouse, and various speakers took turns to address the crowd. But people constantly shouted from the floor, heckling the speakers and booing off anyone who didn't say what they wanted to hear. The men seemed to dislike being addressed by Aleksandra, and chanted rudely when she began to speak, but the women nearby berated them, and soon she was able to deliver her message. She spoke well, and was cheered at the end.