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Soon after, Lukoyanov was able to report to the capital of the Red Urals: “The guard’s mood has changed. It’s time!”

COMRADE LYUKHANOV AND COMRADE AVDEYEV

At the Urals’ Zlokazov Factory (named after the owners, the Zlokazov brothers) there was a machinist, a short man, middle-aged, with an unprepossessing, pimply face: Sergei Lyukhanov. He was a remarkable worker, a jack-of-all-trades. He was married to an “educated woman”—a teacher with the exotic name Avgusta. Before the revolution Avgusta’s brother—a certain Alexander Avdeyev—had come to the factory. Lyukhanov made him his assistant and did all his work for him. Avdeyev had not come to the factory to work. He was a professional revolutionary and occupied himself with Bolshevik agitation—at which he was very good. Tall, blond, mustached Avdeyev soon became a favorite with the Zlokazov workers. Immediately after October 1917, the workers seized the factory under his leadership: Sergei Lyukhanov’s former assistant became the factory commissar. It was he who took the former boss away on a cart, saying, “I’m taking him to jail.” But no one ever saw the boss again. A serious man was Avdeyev. “Smacking” and “liquidating” were favorite words in 1918. At the factory he formed his own armed detachment.

Now at the end of February 1918 Avdeyev was called to meet with the Cheka at the “American hotel,” where he was awaited by Pavel Khokhryakov, head of the Red Guard and now a leader of the Cheka: light brown curls, a rosy flush suffusing his face. The Baltic sailor was a handsome man and in possession of the most terrible strength. Strength and revolutionary ardor.

Here at the Cheka they discussed Goloshchekin’s plan: Khokhryakov and Avdeyev, along with his Zlokazov workers, must secretly enter Tobolsk, throw over the old rule there, and establish a new Bolshevik rule, after which they would enter into contact with Freedom House and, taking advantage of the guard’s mood, move the family to the capital of the Red Urals.

THE BATTLE FOR FREEDOM HOUSE

They entered the town at night in small groups. As Avdeyev himself would later describe, “the first to filter in were the secret agents, Pavel Khokhryakov and the Bolshevik Tanya Naumova.” They pretended to be lovers and one can only guess how much happiness the handsome sailor and the young girl accrued from this game, which later ended in marriage (although they would not be happy in that marriage for long—the frenzied Khokhryakov would perish the same year in the Civil War).

Then Avdeyev’s group entered Tobolsk—sixteen men. Cleverly, though, they spread a rumor about a thousand Bolsheviks surrounding the town. Tobolsk’s frightened inhabitants seized on the rumor and the thousand turned into thousands. But Avdeyev’s men were too late.

Yet another pretender to the title of jailer to the tsar’s family had entered the game: Omsk, the revolutionary capital of western Siberia. Its men too had come to Tobolsk—for the tsar’s family and their jewels.

Nicholas’s diary:

“14 (27) March.… The arrival of this Red Guard [from Omsk], as any armed unit is now called, has provoked all sorts of conjectures and fears here.… The commandant and our detachment have also been disturbed—the guard has been strengthened and the cannon brought in as of yesterday. It is good that people have come to trust one another at the present time.”

The Omsk men attempted to force the guard to let the detachment into the house. The house was surrounded. But Kobylinsky and the detachment had brought out the cannon. Freedom House remained under guard.

Goloshchekin sent through Tyumen for one more detachment from Ekaterinburg. But the Omsk men were stronger.

Nicholas’s diary:

“22 March [Nicholas went back to the old style. From now until the end of his diary he would remain true to the old style, the style of his world]. In the morning we heard from outside the Bolshevik brigands from Tyumen leaving Tobolsk.… In 15 troikas, jingling, whistling, and whooping away. The Omsk detachment