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Yakovlev was dumbfounded: so it had all been in vain. He began a long telegraph conversation with Moscow. He reported information that gave Sverdlov sufficient grounds for refusing Ekaterinburg: “Without question I shall obey all orders from the Center. I will take the Baggage wherever you say. But I consider it my duty to warn the Sovnarkom once more that the danger is quite justified.… There is one more consideration: if you send the baggage to Simsky District [in Ufa Province, Yakovlev’s home], then you are always free to take him to Moscow or wherever you like. If the Baggage is taken according to the first route [Ekaterinburg], then I doubt you will ever be able to drag it out of there.… Just as I doubt the Baggage will always be completely safe. So, we warn you for the last time and unburden ourselves of any moral responsibility for future consequences.”

To Yakovlev’s astonishment Sverdlov was deaf: Moscow’s decision stood. Yakovlev must take the family to Ekaterinburg.

——

Yakovlev returned to the train on the same engine. The train started back.

Nicholas’s diary:

“16 [29] April. This morning we noticed we were going back. It turned out they wouldn’t let us enter Omsk, so we were a little freer, we even took two walks: first alongside the train, and then rather far into a field, with Yakovlev himself. Everyone was in a cheerful mood.”

Nicholas was in a cheerful mood because he still did not know the true reason for the train’s turning around.

From Matveyev’s Notes:

“We said the turning around was due to damage to one of the bridges.”

Nicholas continued to believe they were going to Moscow. Their wild journey continued, but this meant he would have his beloved walk. “With Yakovlev himself,” he recorded in his diary, not without a grin.

They walked alongside the train. And they talked. About what? Power? The mob? Revolution? Or Nicholas’s favorite theme—people quarrel, they irritate one another, when all around is the marvelous, wise life of the trees, green spaces, the sky and its timeless clouds?

Thus ended the last tsar’s last walk in freedom.

When Nicholas awoke in the morning he understood everything. He could tell by the names of the stations that they were approaching Ekaterinburg.

Yakovlev ordered the curtains lowered: he had no doubt how they would be met by the capital of the Red Urals. Nor did the tsar. An amazing scene took place in the train on their approach to the town. Matveyev saw Nicholas go into Matveyev’s compartment and walk out soon after, chewing on some black bread. When he saw Matveyev, Nicholas was flustered.

From Matveyev’s Notes:

“ ‘Pardon me, Peter Matveyevich, I broke off a piece of your black bread without your permission.’ I offered Romanov a white roll the men had bought at one of the stations since I knew that the crust of bread lying on the table was incredibly dry, I had been planning to throw it to the dogs at the station.”

The Emperor of All the Russias was gnawing on a crust of black bread intended for the dogs?

No, there is another altogether unsentimental interpretation to that scene.

From Matveyev’s Notes:

“I looked at Romanov and saw he was very agitated and chewing the dry crust more out of agitation than anything else.”

Yes, the closer they got to Ekaterinburg, the more agitated he became. He did not want to frighten Alix and was probably reassuring her. But he told Matveyev the truth.

From Matveyev’s Notes:

“Nicholas said, ‘I would go anywhere at all but the Urals.… Judging from the papers, the Urals are harshly against me.’”

He was still hoping that the “good riflemen” from the old guard would undertake something.

At 8:40 in the morning, the train stopped among the countless tracks of the Ekaterinburg’s main station. The train was standing a few tracks from the nearest platform. From behind the lowered curtains the tsar saw that, despite the early hour, the platform was filled with a restless crowd.

Early on the morning of April 30, a driver from the Ural Soviet’s garage was ordered to take a car to the house belonging to the engineer Ipatiev,