Duncan Kyle - The King's Commisar

He interrupted me. He was shaking a little. 'We have to respect all our comrades. You bring us orders. We are used to orders. But from the Urals Soviet we have a request. It is not from great men in Moscow, but from our brother workers. Please, they ask us, do not accept the passage of this train. That is their request. Please - do you notice the word? Yet your paper threatens death. Such was always Moscow's way. Comrade Commissar, we live in a new world now, where worker heeds the words of worker.'

I surveyed him coldly. 'So you halt the train-what now? We stand here in the snow?'

'No, Comrade. You return along the track to Tyumen and then to Ekaterinburg.'

'If I do that,' I protested, 'I shall be going directly against the orders of the Central Executive Committee. I shall be shot.'

He said he cared, but he didn't. There was no moving him or his men. But they were without authority-merely a group of railway workers. Ahead in the city must be the members of the local Soviet: more moderate men than those of Ekaterinburg if the ones at Tobolsk had been typical.

'You will have no objection if I go on alone into the city?'

'None at all.'

I uncoupled the locomotive and the Omsk men obligingly cleared their barrier to allow it through. On its footplate I reached the dreariness of Omsk, found three members of the local Soviet, including the secretary, and for two hours I argued and cajoled and waved my paper at them. They were adamant. There was no hostility, or not, at any rate, to me; but at the end I knew all about their feelings regarding the Imperial Family. The Omsk men did not care: whatever happened, Bloody Nicholas had brought upon himself. Their attitude was simply that, if Ekaterinburg's Soviet cared enough to make a formal request, the Omsk Soviet must comply with it; to do otherwise would be to strike at the very basis of solidarity.

'But they're extremists,' I said. 'They'll kill them.'

'They are workers like us,' I was told, 'and we are all free now to make decisions.'

They were immovable. Sympathetic to my dilemma, yes; pleasant and even polite to me, yes. But implacable. The train must go west to Ekaterinburg.

'I must telegraph Moscow.'

'By all means inform Comrade Sverdlov. Give him our greetings. Inform him that the Omsk Soviet grows daily in stability and authority.' This was the secretary speaking. I did all that, adding these words: 'Therefore returning Ekaterinburg. Your urgent intervention required there. Yakovlev.'

After that there was nothing I could do save leave. I rode back at no great speed, endeavouring with some desperation to work out in my mind some means to avoid the unwelcome requirements of the two Soviets - some way to keep my charges out of the hands of the Ekaterinburg men. Several crossed my thoughts. A return to Tobolsk, for example, and some attempt to travel north from thence up the Ob river to the Arctic.

But it was hopelessly impracticable. There was no boat at Tobolsk, I knew that from Kobylinsky, who must clearly have had the same thoughts. The boats would come with the spring thaw. Soon, but not yet. What else? Go on foot? Take the Imperial Family and head south? Try walking to meet the White Russian army? It could be tried, but the snow was thick yet, and the distances great. To try was to ask for death in another form.

At last, as the barrier by the track came into my sight, a decision had to be made. I made it. The Moscow leaders, the great names, Lenin, Trotsky and Sverdlov - they wanted arms. Nicholas was part of the price of the arms. They must save Nicholas! After all, could it really be true that Lenin and Trotsky could not persuade a rabble of uneducated peasants and workers? No, they would do it. For the sake of their Revolution, they must do it!

The railway workers' leader strode towards me as the locomotive came to a stop. 'Well, Comrade Commissar?'

Sourly I said, 'Well, what?'

'Where do you go now, eh?'

'Ekaterinburg.'

He nodded with satisfaction. 'I thought you would. Now the Tsar does as we say, eh Comrade?' Then as I turned away from him he said, and it must surely have been out of habit, Go with God." I told him sharply that I had very little doubt some of us would go to God as a result of his actions. So far in this telling, I have referred always to 'Nicholas' or 'the ex-Tsar'. I can do so no longer, for truly he was a king, that one. Faults he certainly had, many of them, and deep. I know what history says: that he was weak, dominated by his wife; that he never grew up; that he was too blind to see where the autocratic road must lead. All true, no doubt. But I am a sailor and we judge a man also by his courage. There I cannot fault the Tsar.

He must have waited for me in the corridor of the train; I could see him standing there as I swung myself up to the carriage; there was a cigarette in his hand and a grave, sad look on his face. As I approached, he threw down the cigarette and ground it beneath his boot.

'They've turned us back?'

I had no need to answer, for he had read it in my face. He gave a little resigned smile, it's Ekaterinburg, isn't it?'

'Yes,' I said, and went on: I have informed Moscow and the Central Executive.'

'Thank you.' He gave that little inclination of the head, if you will excuse me, I must tell my family.'

'Of course. Sir.'

As the door closed behind him, I went angrily in search of Ruzsky to tell him what had happened. To my surprise the man was unconcerned. 'Don't worry about Ekaterinburg,' he said. And then he laid his finger against his nose in the manner of cunning men.

So we set off. There is a town on the track between Omsk and Tuymen, its name Kulomzino: a place of no great size or importance and it figures in this story only as a marker, for we passed its lights at night and the train was perhaps ten miles beyond it when suddenly the air was filled with the sound of gunfire!

The driver slammed on the brakes, and the train ground abruptly to the sort of halt that flung people from their seats.

Coming to my feet, I hurled open a window to look out. Soldiers milled around us in great numbers, many of them with sabres drawn. We must have fallen across one of the dangerous small armies that were ravaging the country behind the Urals!

As I stood looking out at them, a mounted officer suddenly lunged at me with his sabre, pinning my coat to the woodwork.

'And who the devil are you?' I yelled at him.

He gave a bold grin, and well he could afford to. 'Not so noisy, my friend. We're White Cossacks don't we look like it?'

'Who is in command?'

The grin widened. 'Fond of questions, aren't you?'

'Who commands?'

He laughed at me. 'What's it matter to a dead man, eh?'

'You must take me to him!'

Something in my voice or my face must have told him there was urgency, for his expression changed.

"Open the door and jump down!'

I did so, and felt his sabre at my back as I was propelled along the track.

'Halt and be still!'

I stood. Ten yards away, mounted upon a milk-white horse, a shako on his head, sat a lean figure with a flowing moustache. My captor called, 'Sir!' and the man's head turned towards me.

'Well?'

I said, 'May I speak to you in private?'

He flung back his head and laughed. 'With a thousand men around us?'

I put my hands in my pockets for paper and pencil, and wrote a message quickly. My captor handed it on. In a second the leader slid off the horse's back and strode over to me. 'Nicholas Alexandrevitch here

- on board?' he asked incredulously.

I nodded. 'Also the Tsarina and the Grand Duchess Marie.'

'Great God!' He swore and slapped at his thigh. Truly, he was a weird and melodramatic figure there in the night with his hat and his horse and his recklessly extravagant gestures. 'I swore an oath of loyalty to Nicholas once. Never expected to be held to it now, though! Where? Take me to him!'