Duncan Kyle - The King's Commisar

'I'm helpless,' I said.

Ruzsky made that odious gesture: finger laid along his nose. 'Nobody is ever helpless,' he said. 'Time creates opportunities.'

We parted then, I to return to the train for I had nowhere else to go and it ought to be standing at Ekaterinburg station, still. The arrangement for the future was that we should meet nightly, at the same time, in the same shadowed place behind the Palais Royal Hotel. But when I reached the train there was a guard on it and I was given instructions to report at once to the office of the station-master. When I got there it was quickly apparent that this was no professional station-master, but a nonentity in unfamiliar shoes too large for him. He had orders for me, though: orders I did not like, that came from the Urals Soviet under Beloborodov's name. I was to take the train forthwith out of Ekaterinburg and return it to Tyumen where the engine and rolling stock rightly belonged. In no circumstances was I to remain in the city. If I did, I would be subject to arrest and trial on suspicion of pro-Tsarist activities.

I found my engine-driver and roused him. He grumbled a little, but it seemed he was not sorry to be going, for in Ekaterinburg he had found himself in an odd position, caught between those who wanted low gossip from the driver of the Imperial Family's train, and those who regarded him as a criminal for even driving it. He had been offered both drinks and threats.

The train had been shunted into a siding after the removal of the royal passengers and my own arrest, and it was there still, guarded in two ways. The Urals Soviet had a couple of men by the engine and two more at the rear: factory workers with rifles, from the look of them. Aboard, there remained several of the cavalrymen who had been with me since my first arrival in Tyumen, including the sergeant, Koznov, who made it abundantly clear he was pleased to see me.

'Where to, sir?' he asked brightly.

'Tyumen. You have no other orders?'

'No.' He looked at me expectantly, in that way every officer in a fighting force knows: he would obey any order.

But orders were needed. A good man but without initiative.

It was a characteristic of those chaotic days that nobody believed anybody else, and the next events at Ekaterinburg station proved it. Though I was under direct instruction from the highest local authority Beloborodov and his Soviet - and their instructions had been transmitted to me via the man in charge of the station, the lone guards did not believe any of it. There was a long debate about which of them should be sent to the station-master to make a check on the matter, and when a man had been chosen and despatched and had at last returned, he was not believed either. So, in the finish, all four of them made separate forays to the office.

At last they were all convinced and we could set about getting steam up. I«could also ask Koznov the question it had been impossible to ask in their presence.

'The contents of the two locked carriages,' I said anxiously, 'have they been disturbed?'

'No,' Koznov told me. 'One of the guards wanted to look inside and was greatly insistent. For a minute I thought I might have to restrain him by force, bat it was his companions who prevented it. The Tsar's property was community property now, they said, and must remain so.'

I thanked God for that, and busied myself as fireman, thrusting wood into the engine's furnace and keeping my eye on the steam pressure gauge. Those two locked carriages, to which I had the keys, must hold things of great value, and I was deeply concerned at having responsibility for them. It must have been two or three o'clock in the morning when, with a full head of steam and the signal clear, the train hissed and clanked out of the station, and began its journey east from Ekaterinburg, back towards Tyumen.

As the city fell behind and the train came out on to the wide lonely spaces, I found myself standing in the corridor of the

noroyal coach, in the very place where I had stood once before - for that single magical hour with the Grand Duchess Marie. Then the night had been black dark, so that I could barely see her; now there was a trace of moonlight. Oh, had she only been with me now . . .

I was overcome for a little while by melancholy and then by a fearful sense of helplessness. For what could I do? By staying in Ekaterinburg I would be putting myself at risk -and pointlessly, too, for it was already obvious the Tsar was to be sealed away from any outside contact. If I went to Moscow it would be to report complete failure - and where was the sense in that? I must somehow contrive a purpose for remaining in the region: a purpose which would stand up to all examination. I brought my thoughts back to reality and considered my situation. The paper was in Tobolsk. I had the train. Simple: I must go and get the paper! If the paper was itself a weapon, perhaps I could use it, too. What were the realities? I had been ordered out of Ekaterinburg. Very well, I had obeyed orders. But those orders gave me justification for remaining in the wider region, for they required me to return the train to Tyumen and keep its contents intact. The reason was obvious enough: if I were with the train in Tyumen, I would not be stirring trouble in Ekaterinburg. And further, since the contents of the train were valuable, having Yakovlev stand guard over them in a place as remote as Tyumen was one way to keep them safe. So both ways I was secure. I was armed with Urals Soviet written orders concerning the train and Sverdlov's laissez-passer concerning my own person. Anyone who would not accept the one ought to accept the other.

And what, anyway, was I guarding? I had seen it loaded as we prepared to leave Tobolsk, but then it was just boxes and bags, chests and parcels and cases. What lay inside? I decided to find out. And it was dazzling. Nicholas Romanov had been monarch of one-sixth of the earth, and Alexandra his queen. Their possessions were bound to be of the grandest. I found the carriages contained not only silks and velvets, china and crystal, not only a number of the most exquisite paintings and icons, but also a great many jewels. A great many? Boxes of them! Just how many I do not know, for I opened only a few of dozens of containers of various kinds. One was a chest of wood perhaps eighteen inches long by a foot wide and five to six inches deep: and it was full of gold coins in huge variety: Austrian thalers, English sovereigns, American 50-dollar pieces, Mexican, Spanish. It was too heavy for me even to lift from the floor.

In one suitcase lay a small leather-covered octagonal box which, when I opened it, proved to contain only jewellery of a religious nature: crucifixes, small enamelled icons and the like. But it was all of immense richness, with large precious stones used liberally for decoration. To find oneself responsible for such a treasure is, I can assure you, an extraordinary and unnerving experience. Soon I realized that something must be done: the treasure had to be hidden or buried or taken to a place of safety if such could be found.

I made haste to close everything up and lock the carriage doors. The first light of dawn was showing as I began to make my way forward towards the locomotive.

And it was at dawn that the ambush must have happened, for only a few minutes afterwards, as I stood beside the driver on the platform of the locomotive, looking ahead along its sleek, steel side as we rounded a bend, a battle came sweeping into view.

A train stood halted on the track ahead, perhaps half a mile away, and was clearly engaged in a furious fight with attacking troops. We had heard nothing of the firing, naturally, for the sound of our own locomotive was more than enough to drown out anything else. The driver's hand flew to the brake and I swung off along the handrails at the side of the tender to warn Koznov and his men. Before I had even reached the first carriage, a bullet clanged upon steel close by and went humming past me; turning my head, I saw horsemen riding hard towards us.