The Blood Royal (46 page)

‘Ah, yes! The whole point of the exercise! Now – what would constitute an impulse strong enough to counter the urge to kill? I’ll tell you: friendship, a reunion, the promise of a fresh start and a wonderful climate, they tell me, in California. And a thriving Russian colony to welcome her. Got your cutting, Bacchus?’

The Branch man showed it around the table and began to read out salient details. ‘This appeared a week ago so it’s very fresh. There’s a good chance that she’s not seen it. It’s an eye-witness report. A woman recognized as the archduchess Tatiana has been sighted in the city of San Francisco. Several times. Climbing aboard a cable-car … dancing at Governor Stephens’s fund-raising event for Asiatic orphans … sipping champagne in a night club … You can imagine.’

‘Well, you know how it is,’ Joe said with a smile. ‘An odd thing, but anyone who disappears is reported to have been sighted in San Francisco.’

‘Your hero, Oscar, responsible for that little insight, I believe?’ Bacchus commented.

With an impatient sigh, Lily burst in: ‘San Francisco? But that’s halfway round the world! What would a Russian princess be doing in San Francisco? What would
any
Russians be doing there? It’s a nonsense!’ Her voice was amused and disbelieving.

Fanshawe, for once, concurred. ‘Another one. For dead girls, the Tsar’s daughters don’t half get about the globe. The last sighting was in Rome. Another one in Japan. And then there was that novice who turned up in a Greek nunnery last year … That was supposed to be the religious one – Olga. There’s an Anastasia or two doing the rounds in Germany … that one they fished out of a canal in Berlin last winter seems to be putting on a convincing act. They’re all over the show. Anywhere but in the Koptyaki forest buried under a ton of railway sleepers. They’re dead. The whole lot of them. And we don’t have to guess – the Bolshies have held up their bloodstained hands for this one.’

‘Many would think twice before accepting evidence or even a confession from those duplicitous thugs,’ Sandilands reprimanded. ‘This identification is not so easily dismissed, Fanshawe. And it’s one we really could wish had not surfaced. I have to tell you … it is supported by other evidence of survival.’ He pursed his lips and fidgeted with his tie.

Oblivious of the exchange of scathing glances and a snort of disbelief, Joe went to stare at the painting, absorbed by dark thoughts. ‘I agree – there
are
bodies buried under the taiga. That much I accept. Unfortunately, in spite of our best efforts, no one has been able to establish exactly whose bodies they are. Burned, rotted by acid, crushed by bulldozer and scattered, they could be remains filched from the refuse bins of the local hospital for all we know. Or corpses simply swept up from the streets – heaven knows there was no shortage at the time – starvation and disease were rife. Impossible ever to be sure. I’ll tell you now and the story is not to be mentioned outside this room.’

He caught a nervous glance from Bacchus and responded to it: ‘We can speak freely. No listening equipment, Bacchus. I haven’t authorized it in the ops room.’

Unusually serious, even hesitant, he caught and held everyone’s eye, each in turn.

‘There are indeed Romanovs buried in the forest near Ekaterinburg. But not all. The Tsar and his son, the heir, were shot and bayoneted to death along with their doctor who tried to intervene. Poor old Botkin. Loyal to the last. The Empress? It’s less clear at this point – we really don’t know – but it’s thought she succumbed and died of natural causes. She had been very ill for some months. Her body may lie there also. It’s possible.’ He was weighing his words, not wishing to say more than he could verify.

‘Uncouth and dangerous though they were, the guards appointed by the Ural Soviet could not bring themselves to shoot the girls, of whom they had got quite fond during their three-month incarceration. They’d appreciated the way they put on no airs and graces but rolled their sleeves up and cooked and cleaned for the household. And kept the peace. In a cramped space with a sick little brother, an increasingly deranged mother and an ineffectual father, the girls were up against it but they made the best of their imprisonment, remaining good natured and friendly with the young lads who were guarding them.

‘These were only too pleased to look the other way when a diesel truck turned up one night at the Ipatiev villa with papers granting permission to separate the women from the men and take them away. The family had travelled this way before, as a matter of convenience, and made nothing of it. But this time the Empress – with foresight perhaps? – refused to leave her husband and son. And that’s where we lose track of her. The four girls were bundled off. They were driven to the relative safety of the estate of an old marshal of the Tsar’s at Lysva which was by then in the hands of the advancing White Army. We have a touching confirmation of this from the villa itself. Our eagle-eyed man in Ekaterinburg during his inspection of the premises after the murders noticed a word scrawled backwards in haste across a mirror … the letters spelled out
LYSVA
.

‘It cannot have been until much later that the girls heard of the deaths of the Tsar and Tsarevich. By then, they had been split up. A quartet of pretty girls with aristocratic ways travelling about Russia would not have got far. They were moved about singly with escorts, dressed in nun’s clothes or as nurses. Now, from our geographical perspective we see Russia as Moscow and St Petersburg – a sort of exotic but civilized offshoot of Europe. We forget that thousands more miles of it run east, right over to Japan. And Ekaterinburg is in the middle of this land mass. With access to the Trans-Siberian railway … The Romanovs didn’t go west to the capital – they went
east
, further into the wilderness.

‘There was a British frigate – yes, we did
not
abandon the family’ – he flicked a quick glance at Lily – ‘patrolling on the China station – you will know the one, Bacchus – and it made a pick-up later that year at Vladivostok on the east coast. Thirty-nine packing cases of Romanov goods and a few passengers. It sailed away. To Hong Kong? Possibly. I’ve not been able to track it. Its log is mysteriously under wraps even to men with more clout than I have. But you can probably see that if you plot a straightish course across the Pacific ocean, you fetch up in California. San Francisco. The shipping port for the armaments that were being sent by the Americans to Russia in support of the Czech contingent and the White Army. Having unloaded their guns, the ships often returned to the home port with a human cargo – refugees. The Vladisvostok–California route has been a very busy one.’

‘Good Lord!’ Bacchus breathed. ‘So that accounts for … But how the devil …?’ Frowning, he turned a mutinous face on Sandilands, incredulity, resentment and deference doing battle for his tongue. Joe well understood his officer’s dilemma. Bacchus was aware that Sandilands, with his Military Intelligence background, had access to sources he would never reveal. The information he came by was as likely to be acquired over dinner at the Vineyard or lunch at Buck’s as garnered from official files.

Resentment won. ‘You can’t possibly know this!’ Bacchus spluttered. ‘That’s the log of HMS
Kent
you’re on about … How did
you
get access to it? Sir, you exceed your … Who’ve you been talking to?’

The challenge amounted to indiscipline and he fell silent, seething with indignation and awaiting the commander’s set-down.

Joe grinned and playfully poked a finger at his lieutenant. ‘Gotcha! You walked right into it, Bacchus. Well, what do the rest of you make of my story? Easy enough to get a pair of old romantics like Bacchus and Fanshawe worked up, but will the Russian ladies be deceived? What I’ve just handed you is a load of cobbled-together nonsense. A thumping great lie! Full of holes, I confess. But I find the best way of getting someone to swallow a lie is to season it well and stick it between two thick slices of truth. Worth a try?’

There followed a ruminative silence. Joe followed his audience’s reactions through from sharp anger at being deceived to disgruntlement, puzzlement and finally a cynical acceptance. He pressed on. ‘There you are then – I’ve given you the imaginary skeleton so to speak, now help me put some real flesh on it.’

‘Oh, no. Another corpse that’s going to get up and dance,’ Lily muttered.

‘Exactly that. We’re going to resurrect a princess of the blood royal. Tatiana lives! We’ve got to make them believe that. Get your box out, Bacchus, and let’s see what we can use. Unless I’ve been misinformed, there’s a very particular relic of the second daughter in there.’

Mumbling and mistrustful, Bacchus pulled the box into the centre of the table and opened it up.

Inside was a perfectly ordinary Gladstone bag, its leather stamped with the emblem of the United Kingdom. Bacchus took it out and opened it up. ‘Our man – one of our men – in Ekaterinburg owned this bag. He had it with him when he made a consular call on the villa in the aftermath of the shootings. In the chaos that reigned – there was a squad still mopping up the pools of blood, retrieving shell cases and looting – he quietly helped himself to some Romanov goods. Not the obvious valuables of which there were plenty lying about the place. He went for the more interesting stuff – letters and diaries. He found things hidden behind water cisterns and under the bath – places the guards hadn’t thought to ransack. The outside world had managed to keep in touch with the Romanovs for many a month. Better that such incriminating documents did not fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks, of course.’

He began to take objects from the bag, laying them out with care on the mahogany surface of the table. Lily noticed that he was beginning to sort them as he picked them out. Medals, rings, icons and lockets were put in one corner, small leather-bound diaries and notebooks in another, photographs and letters in the centre. Lily could not hold back a gasp of emotion as she saw a white lace-edged handkerchief embroidered by a child’s hand in red silk at the corner. The wobbly letter A – Anastasia? Lily reached for it and held it, breathing in the trace of a spicy cologne lurking in its folds. No, this A was for Alexandra – a gift from a child to its mother.

‘It’s Tatiana we’re hunting for, remember,’ Joe reminded them, seeing his small group distracted and sinking fast into fascinated absorption. ‘Anything of her in here? We have to reconstitute her from these bits and pieces. We have to breathe life into her … conjure up an image so real that her best friend will be convinced she’s alive and well and calling her to her side.’

Fanshawe found a sheet of paper. ‘Got something, sir! Here’s her writing. That’s a start. Letter to a friend. In English. Thank God they all seem to have used English, or German. It was never sent, apparently.’

‘There was a clamp-down on their correspondence once they were at the Ipatiev house,’ said Bacchus. ‘It must have been suppressed and kept. Here’s a notecase full of letters received.’ He handed it to Lily. ‘See what you can find.’

Lily was instantly absorbed by the task. After a few moments, her voice trembling slightly, she said: ‘I’ve found a letter from our girl – Anna Petrovna. And it’s addressed to Tatiana. 1917. Before all the nastiness burst over them. Oh, she’s put … there’s a hank of hair in here.’

‘Hair? Yuck!’ said Fanshawe. ‘Well, I suppose they were very young things in 1917.’

‘It’s dark hair,’ said Lily, holding it to the light. ‘Blueblack, you’d say. Your Morana, sir? I think we’ve found her.’ She skimmed the letter quickly. ‘Not much of note. Grumbles and complaints and – oh, talk of patients. A handsome officer she’s fallen for … they were all at it … leg amputations … disease … She was nursing, of course, following the imperial example of devotion to patriotic duty. The hair is mentioned at the end … “By my hair shall you know me!” Strange thing to say?’

‘From the Bible. Matthew’s gospel. “By their fruits shall ye know them …” something like that. Religious lot, the Romanovs. And their correspondence was probably even at that time being monitored by the Red factions,’ said Bacchus. ‘They found ways of getting round the surveillance. Cocking a childish snook at the enemy. They didn’t know then how serious it was all going to get.’

‘Prepare to yuck again, Fanshawe,’ Joe said with satisfaction. He’d been passing a hand around the bottom of the bag following its turn-out. ‘Here it is. Yes! This is what I’d heard mentioned.’

He brought out, wrapped in brown paper, a wild flower album. When he opened it, no collection of dusty stalks and petals fell crumbling from the stiff pages. On each was glued a specimen, but not a botanical specimen. One after another, thick hanks of hair appeared, five in all, ranging in colour from fair to dark brown. Sandilands looked at the date in the front of the book. ‘Gathered up and stuck in the day all the children had their hair cut off. They caught some disease or other – measles, I believe – which necessitated a shaven head. But – this is it. This is something we can use. Wentworth – pick out Tatiana’s hair, will you?’

Lily took the book from him and leafed through it. ‘Here’s a fine, brownish-blond that must have been the Tsarevich’s hair … and … Ah! Here it is, sir. It’s a wonderful rich red. Dark red. Titian, would you say?’

‘That’s the one.’ Joe reached for it and began to smooth a forefinger along the still-gleaming tress. ‘Celtic ancestry. This lady could trace her line back to Ivan the Terrible, let’s not forget. And a selected lock of this is about to make its way from California in a letter, written in Tatiana’s hand, and it will say at the end, what was it? – “By my hair shall you know me!” Can we arrange for an envelope from the States, Bacchus? Stamps and suchlike? Evidence of diplomatic clearance?’