Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

Hadfield’s exclamation so alarmed the driver he brought his cab to a halt.

‘Is something wrong, Your Honour?’

Of course, he had treated cases since; Dobrshinsky clearly exhibited some of the symptoms. If he was a betting man he would have placed money on his diagnosis — the tsar’s special investigator was addicted to opium.

‘It’s ready.’

‘It’s ready?’

‘Didn’t I say so,’ Khalturin snapped at her.

‘Then what do we do now?’ Anna asked, turning to the figure at her side.

‘We wait.’ Andrei Zhelyabov’s voice shook a little with excitement. He took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘You may have to go back with Stepan to the tavern. His friends are expecting his fiancée.’

After weeks of living on his nerves Stepan Khalturin was unable to keep still for a second, treading the snow about them into a hard crust. Anna could not see his face. Both men had pulled their hats low over their eyes and Khalturin was muffled in a black woollen scarf. They had met close to the workman’s entrance to the Winter Palace and she had watched as they hurried across the square towards her, their heads bent low against the driving snow. It had barely stopped in three days, shaping a new monochrome cityscape with peaks of snow and ice rising from the rivers and canals, the streets unfamiliar, the smallest journey a trial.

‘How long?’ Anna asked.

‘Five minutes at most,’ said Khalturin, his voice strained and unhappy.

‘Did anyone see you in there?’ Zhelyabov asked, resting a large gloved hand on the carpenter’s shoulder.

‘There was one man looking for some tools. The rest are in the tavern waiting for me.’

‘Calm yourself, my friend, calm yourself,’ and Zhelyabov placed his arm about his shoulders. ‘We have only a few minutes to wait and then we’ll be away.’

They stood in restless silence in the shadows beneath the arch in the General Staff Building, fidgeting with hats and gloves, glancing every few seconds at Zhelyabov’s pocket watch. Ministry officials and soldiers scurried past in search of shelter or a cab to take them home. Anna watched the fuzzy glow from the lighted palace windows and tried to imagine the scene in the dining room; the footmen gliding about the table with wine and silver serving dishes, the flutter of excitement at the door as the butler whispered sharp instructions to the servants — perhaps there was someone to taste the emperor’s food for poison. She blinked, then looked away as another image flitted through her mind — the eruption from below, splintering mirrors and the crystal chandelier, tiny stabbing pieces of glass whirling in a dusty vortex. Would there be children at the tsar’s table? She shuddered at the thought. Taking it for nervousness or the cold, Zhelyabov gave her forearm a reassuring squeeze.

‘Any minute now, Anna, then we will—’

But before he could finish his sentence there was a sharp orange flash and the palace plunged into darkness. A throaty rumble like thunder split the heavy white silence, rolling across the square towards them.

‘Oh God,’ Khalturin muttered. ‘Oh God.’

Seconds only, then silence again. They could see nothing but the silhouette of the building through the snow falling steadily, a soft blanket over all.

‘We must leave now,’ said Zhelyabov, turning quickly from the palace.

But Anna could not move. She watched, transfixed, as soldiers poured into the square from the barracks buildings close by and began to form a cordon about the commandant’s entrance.

‘Come on!’ Zhelyabov tugged at her arm: ‘Come on.’

They walked towards the Nevsky, not daring to glance back again. Police and soldiers hurried past. In the distance they could hear the clanging of fire bells.

‘You’ve done it, my friend, you’ve done it!’ Zhelyabov whispered to the carpenter. ‘I congratulate you.’

But Khalturin’s face was rigid, his eyes fixed on a point directly ahead. Anna could see he was close to collapse.

‘Think what people will say!’ Zhelyabov continued. ‘We have struck at the evil heart of this empire — believe me, my friends, we have shaken the world today.’

What reply could she give her comrade but a polite nod and a smile? If it was a blow for liberty and justice, why did she feel so very sad?

The tsarevich was still at the door of the main guard room when Anton Dobrshinsky arrived twenty minutes after the explosion. The heir to the throne looked like a wraith in the candlelight, his uniform, his face and beard grey with dust.

‘Appalling,’ he muttered, and taking Dobrshinsky for a medical man, urged him with trembling voice to do what he could for the wounded.

The air was thick with choking smoke and dust and the sulphurous smell of dynamite.

‘More light — at once!’ Dobrshinsky shouted to no one in particular.

It was evident from the coughing and heart-wrenching groans — someone was screaming uncontrollably — that the guard room was full of injured and dying men. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that the force of the explosion had blown a huge hole in the floor, tossing granite paving slabs to the sides of the room. Chunks of plaster and rubble had collapsed into the cellar below.

Behind him he heard General Gourko, the governor of the city, coaxing the tsarevich to leave for ‘the good of the empire’. ‘Your Highness, there is nothing you can do here.’

A troop of firemen arrived with a doctor and began to pick their way through the ruins of the room. By the light of their torches, Dobrshinsky could see figures trapped in the debris — to judge from their dusty uniforms soldiers of the Finland Regiment. Among the smoking mounds of stone and plaster, arms and legs, the ragged white remains of those blown apart in the explosion. And on the walls, black stains where they had left their bloody shadows.

‘More light, for God’s sake!’ barked the governor. ‘Is that you, Dobrshinsky?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency,’ he said.

‘A damn mess. A little more dynamite and they would have wiped out the imperial family. This granite floor…’ the general prodded a broken slab with the toe of his boot, ‘saved them — this and a little discourtesy. You know the Yellow Dining Room is directly above us?’

‘No, Your Excellency.’

The hero of the battle of Plovdiv looked uncommonly fierce in the flickering torchlight: ‘What on earth are you chaps at the Third Section doing? This is a disgrace.’

‘Regrettably, I’m not responsible for security within these walls, Your Excellency,’ the special investigator replied coolly.

‘If you’d caught these madmen they wouldn’t have been able to carry out an attack,’ replied the general, pulling distractedly at his large moustache. He turned back to the chaos of the room, bellowing orders to the rescue party, anger and frustration ringing in his voice. Judging there was nothing to be discovered in the rubble while the wounded were the first concern, Dobrshinsky made his way up the dark marble staircase to the first floor and into the dining room. One of the gas chandeliers was still burning and he could see by its light that the blast had blown open the windows, the draught drawing in flurries of snow and stirring the smoke that hung in a sulphurous yellow layer about the room. The carpets and furniture were covered in dust, and fissures had opened up in the plaster ceiling and walls. China and crystal had been shaken from the table and lay in sad splinters about the floor, but he noticed that none of the chairs had been pulled away, which suggested no one had taken their place for dinner. General Gourko was right: the terrorists had hoped to wipe out the tsar and his immediate family. The bomb must have been planted in the cellar with a timing mechanism, something like a Thomas device. Perhaps a soldier — or more likely a workman — but how had he managed to smuggle so much explosive into the palace undetected? It was fiendishly clever. If anyone was still foolish enough to underestimate the audacity and skill of these people after the train bomb, this would serve as a rude awakening.