Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [138]
Goloshchekin gave him his written order.
All this was a game. Of course, Goloshchekin, Sverdlov’s old friend, had had information about the true purpose of Yakovlev’s secret mission for a long time, and he had prepared for it.
What was Lukoyanov doing while Yakovlev and his detachment were leaving for Tobolsk?
After the middle of March, after Khokhryakov and Avdeyev and their detachment entered the town, he evidently left for Perm. In any event, on March 15, 1918, Feodor Lukoyanov was named head of the Perm Cheka. At the end of April, however, he left Perm again—“to put down kulak disturbances.” In fact, he evidently returned to Freedom House: Goloshchekin had declared that the decisive moment was near.
Meanwhile, in Freedom House, life went on as usual.
Nicholas’s diary:
“7 [20] April. Saturday.… Vespers at 9. An excellent bass sang.”
As always, vespers on Saturday. An electric light burned dimly in the large hall, and the icon of the Savior shone in the half-dark.
Alix entered the empty hall and covered the lectern with her own embroidery. And left. At eight the priest, accompanied by four monks from the monastery, entered the hall with a chasuble. Candles were lit. Dolgorukov, Tatishchev, and Botkin formed a line to the left of the lectern, and then came the ladies-in-waiting of the former court and the various “people.”
Finally a tiny door in the wall opened, and in walked the family.
The chorus and the “excellent bass” began to sing: “Glory to God from on high.” The family knelt, whereupon everyone else dropped down as well.
Thus they greeted their favorite day, April 8, the twenty-fourth anniversary of their engagement. That night, as always, they reminisced … brother Ernie, Wilhelm, Georgie, Ella. Where were they now? Grandmother Queen Victoria was long since in her grave. Nevertheless, all that had happened. There had been a kiss in Coburg Castle. And there had been a young man and a young woman—insanely happy. Or rather, happy and insane, for, “Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars….”
But on this special anniversary Nicholas learned he was no longer allowed to wear his epaulets. Nor was “Little One” either. His epaulets were a kind of connecting thread: he wore epaulets with his father’s initials, and his son wore his, Nicholas’s.
I can imagine how impatiently Matveyev and the “spy” waited for him to go on his walk—to read what he had written in his diary.
Evidently, the usual ritual took place: Matveyev roamed the halls, keeping watch, and Lukoyanov entered the room.
On the desk, as usual, all was compulsively in place: pencils, a few watches—part of his collection—and, finally, the diary.
Lukoyanov read:
“8 [21] April. Sunday. The 24th anniversary of our engagement!… Mass at 11.30, after which Kobylinsky showed me a telegram from Moscow that confirmed the detachment committee’s decision to take our epaulets away from me and Alexei. My decision: not to wear them for walks but wear them only at home. Shall not forget this beastliness!”
Lukoyanov finally understood: the tsar was stubbornly writing everything in the diary. Even assuming (he had to assume!) the possibility of the diary’s being read by his enemies. Herein lay Nicholas’s contempt for them.
That was when the “spy” got an idea!
He could not carry out his idea in Tobolsk, though, for the next day everything changed.
THE PLENIPOTENTIARY ARRIVES
On an April morning in 1918, Avdeyev, a member of the Tobolsk Soviet of Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks, was on his way from Tobolsk to his native Ekaterinburg. Avdeyev was pleased because he was carrying the long-awaited documents: information (the tsaritsa’s correspondence and so on) about the monarchist plot of Rasputin’s son-in-law Soloviev, obtained by the “spy,” and a resolution of the Tobolsk Soviet: in view