David Golemon: Primeval

"Only two children? There is no chance of finding any more to match my other daughters?"

The large man stopped and looked at the back of the once powerful tsar.

"Two of your children are guaranteed to survive tonight. That is how you must look at this. Any other way would be foolish, and may cause you to falter at the wrong time, and that could lead to all of them getting killed. Tonight, above all else, you must be braver than your reputation."

Tsar Nicholas stopped suddenly, felt the eyes on him from around the courtyard, and again turned back to face the Bolshevik colonel.

"Tonight?" he asked as his lips and left cheek twitched under his closely trimmed beard.

"A Czech contingent of the White Army is drawing too close. Commissar Yurovsky has his orders. I delivered them myself just this morning. I am sorry — murder is a despicable business."

"Tonight," Nicholas repeated, head turning to look at his family as they admired the flowers lining the broken wall. He looked at his wife and she glanced at him. The tsarina saw the look on her husband's face and turned away, looking at her daughters and only son. When asked a question by one of the girls, she cleared her thoughts and smiled brightly. Nicholas knew his brave Alexandria understood.

"Which of my daughters is to live?"

"The one girl that matched in features, age, and weight is Anastasia."

Nicholas grew silent, only nodding his head as his eyes went to his smiling daughter, and he saw her through the tears that formed. Quick witted and vivacious, Anastasia. Yes, he thought, that is who it was meant to be. She is the one who will carry on in her family's absence.

"The commissar will wait until close to midnight when most of the miserable souls here and in the village are asleep. Then he will send for you, your family, your family doctor, and even your servants."

"No one is to be spared?"

The large man grew silent. He wanted to ask the tsar how many families had been awakened in the middle of the night by his own secret police, to be taken away for questioning and never heard from again. However, what use would there be in that?

"The arrangements are all concluded?" Nicholas asked, his eyes never leaving his family.

"The two children and I will travel overland many days. We will have safe conduct papers signed by Comrade Lenin himself. We will travel to Nalychevo, where a ship is already waiting on the eastern coast."

"The contents of my will are also secured there?"

"The portion of the royal treasury you were able to convert to American gold double eagles, have been successfully smuggled out of Moscow and will arrive three days before us. Your children will be very well cared for — on that, you have my word. Even after my comrades take their half of the bounty, they should be satisfied with dividing six million dollars in American currency."

Nicholas turned and resumed walking, retracing his steps back in the direction of his family. Meanwhile, Petrov held his ground, facing in the opposite direction.

"Noble of you, Comrade Petrov," Nicholas said and then stopped. "Your destination?"

"America is where your royal relatives will receive your children. I cannot tell you more than that."

"Colonel Petrov, if it were still in my power, I would reward you—"

"It is not in your power, however. I will give my accomplices the portion of the treasury reserved for them, and that for your children's upbringing, and that is all. I suspect that the Twins are intact, your people were able to secure them with the gold that will meet us?"

"The Twins are there, both Twins with the weight of forty diamonds. They reside in a gilded and ornate three-lock box."

"Then, indeed, the legend of the Twins of Peter the Great is true? Imagine, twin diamonds the size of ostrich eggs. I fail to see how your family kept them a secret for so long."

Nicholas was not interested in telling the colonel about the great Twins of the tsar's. What matter did the diamonds hold for him now other than payment to the man who would save two of his children?

"When will you take my children from—?"

"That is not your affair. You will be awakened sometime before midnight by your executioners, and your son and daughter will be at your side with the others of your family. Mind that you, your wife, or your daughters show no difference in the treating of these two imposters. If they can accomplish that much, I will hopefully be many kilometers away with—"

"My two children," Nicholas said, cutting him off as he turned to look at Petrov, who nodded his head, half bowed, and then abruptly walked away.

The tsarina greeted Nicholas before he came to his family and took the crook of his arm with both of her white gloved hands. Her wide-brimmed hat was tilted against the freshening breeze and the falsely joyous sun.

"Is there news, Nicky?" she asked.

"Tonight, my love," Nicholas answered with bowed head, his cap hiding his distraught features.

Alexandria's only reaction was a quick twitch of her lips, and then she tried to smile brightly.

"The children… our plan?" she asked through the falsity of that smile, swallowing desperately to keep the sob she felt trying to escape from deep inside of her.

"Two."

"Oh, Nicky, no," she moaned.

"My son… and Anastasia," he replied with only a brief movement of his lips. "They were the only matches found."

They walked arm in arm to join their children, each silent with his or her own thoughts of the coming horror.

"When?" she asked, opening her umbrella, not trusting herself to allow the scream to escape her lips at the murderous insult to their children.

"Midnight," Nicholas answered, quickly swiping away a tear with his white gloved hand.

At exactly thirty minutes after midnight, Commissar Yurovsky stood over the eleven bodies inside the dank and bare basement. He knelt down and removed the tsar's hand from around the head of the crown prince. He quickly moved his hand away when he saw the boy twitch and draw a quick, shallow breath.

"The heir is still alive," he said angrily as he looked closer at the features of the boy. For a reason the old man could not grasp, Prince Alexei did not look the same. Even with a bullet in the side of his head, he could still make out his features clearly.

Suddenly a guard, one of Petrov's men, whose job it was to make sure all went as planned after the colonel and his young charges left the house, stepped up and fired three quick shots into the upturned face of the crown prince.

Yurovsky was so taken back at the sudden action of the guard that he fell onto his bottom side. He quickly recovered, and then stood and faced the man who had fired his pistol.

"You fool!"

"You said the boy wasn't dead; now he is," the guard replied quickly and sternly to the local communist official, a man that was as despicable an official as any the guard had ever known.

"I wanted to examine him for official reasons!"

The guard looked down. "Dead, four gunshots to the head and face. In your report to Moscow, you can say it was natural causes. In this day of communist glory, what difference would there be… Comrade?"

Yurovsky turned and looked at the guard with murderous rage, then quickly stormed out of the basement, threatening to add the guard's name to his report.

The guard smiled, holstering his pistol, and then he gestured for the others to start removing the two servants, the maid, and the doctor. Then he examined the bodies of the four girls and found them quite dead. It had been a close run thing, the girl posing as Anastasia had actually called the tsar "Uncle." Yurovsky, thank the heavens, hadn't heard the girl's remark. He knelt down and then saw that Tsarina Alexandria had somehow managed to reach out and touch her husband's extended hand. Such devotion, he thought, clinging to him even after death.