Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [140]
As soon as Yakovlev left, however, the Uralites passed a resolution—to keep a sharp eye on the plenipotentiary from Moscow!
Goloshchekin had prepared well for Yakovlev’s arrival.
Once he realized that the Uralites in the Tobolsk Soviet were his enemies, Yakovlev had to exercise supreme caution with the guard and Kobylinsky. If that did not work out, the mission would fail.
In the morning he called in Kobylinsky.
The Moscow commissar’s unusually gracious manner won the colonel over. Yakovlev explained that he had come to take the tsar and his family away. Unfortunately he could not announce the secret route, but the colonel could be assured he would learn everything, and very soon.
Kobylinsky repaid a confidence with a confidence. He informed Yakovlev of all the difficulties in store for his mission. Alexei was very sick, and there was no possibility of moving him.
Lately the boy had been amazingly healthy and had played endless games in the house, including a desperate game: riding a wooden boat down the stairs from the second floor. His boat whooshed down with a crash that made the inhabitants of the house cover their ears. It was as if he were trying to prove something to himself. There was another game, too—swinging on a log swing. “I do not know during which of these games he bruised himself and, as always, was taken to his bed,” recalled Dr. Botkin’s daughter.
What a bruise meant for Alexei given the conditions of their confinement was described by Dr. Botkin himself:
“Alexei Nikolaevich is subject to a disease of the vessels under the influence of insults utterly unavoidable for boys of his age, attended by … the severest pain. In such instances, the boy can suffer so inexpressibly day and night that none of his closest relatives, to say nothing of his mother, who has a chronic heart ailment, not sparing themselves for him, can bear caring for him for very long. My waning powers are also insufficient. N. G. Nagorny, who has remained with the patient through several sleepless and torture-filled nights, is wearing thin and would be in no condition at all to hold out if not for being spelled and assisted by Alexei Nikolaevich’s teachers, Mr. Gibbes and especially his tutor Gilliard.… Taking turns reading and exchanging impressions, they distract the patient during the day from his sufferings” (from the statement of E. S. Botkin before the Tobolsk Executive Committee).
On April 23, Yakovlev, accompanied by the new commandant, Avdeyev, and Colonel Kobylinsky, went to Freedom House. The night before, however, the family had prepared for this meeting.
Nicholas’s diary:
“9 [22] April. We learned about the arrival of the special plenipotentiary, Yakovlev, from Moscow. He is staying in the Kornilov house. The children imagine he will come today to make a search and burn all the papers, and Marie and Anastasia even burned their diaries….
“10 [23] April. At 10.30 in the morning Kobylinsky and Yakovlev appeared with his suite.
“Received him with my daughters. We had expected him at 11, which is why Alix was not ready. He entered, clean-shaven, smiling and embarrassed, asked whether I was content with the guard and the quarters. Then almost ran into Alexei’s room, not stopping to inspect the other rooms, and excusing himself for the disturbance, went downstairs. He stopped in at the others on the other floors just as cursorily.
“Half an hour later he appeared again to be introduced to Alix. Again he hurried in to see Alexei and went downstairs. That so far has been the extent of the search of the house.”
How sympathetically all this was written in the tsar’s diary: “excusing himself for the disturbance,” “smiling.” The former master of half the world had already forgotten about smiles and excuses.
Chekist Yakovlev knew how to get along with people.
Twice that day the commissar from Moscow viewed the sick boy. He kept trying to imagine whether it