Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [183]
So, the Sovnarkom and Central Executive Committee (that is, Lenin and Sverdlov) sent that telegram to Ekaterinburg “with confirmation of this decision” about the execution of the tsar’s family.
In Ekaterinburg at that moment it was already getting on toward midnight. They were still waiting for a reply.
When he received the reply after midnight, Goloshchekin sent the truck. That was why the truck and Ermakov arrived only at 1:30 in the morning, two hours late. Yurovsky would write about this delay with annoyance in his Note.
While they were awaiting the telegram in Ekaterinburg, the family was getting ready for bed. That night Alexei slept in his parents’ room. Before bed she wrote at length in her diary—the whole day—the last day (see Appendix).
“July 3 (16). Tuesday.… Grey morning, later lovely sunshine. Baby has a slight cold. All went out ½ hour in the morning, Olga & I arranged our medicines. T[atiana] read the spiritual reading. They went out, T. stayed with me & we read: the book of the prophet Obadiah and Amos.”
From the book of the prophet Amos:
“And their king shall go into captivity, and he and his princes together, saith the Lord: (1:15).
“The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks” (4:2).
“Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time” (5:13).
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:
“And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to see the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (8:11–12).
From the prophet Obadiah:
“Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy next among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord” (1:4).
Hearing these ominous sacred words, Tatiana suddenly fell silent and got to thinking.
“Every morning the commissar comes to our rooms, at last after a week brought eggs again for Baby.
“8. Supper. Suddenly Leshka Sednev was fetched to go see his uncle & flew off—wonder whether it’s true & we shall see the boy back again.”
Alix still did not believe him: she remembered how everyone who had been taken away had vanished without a trace: Sednev, Nagorny….
“Played bezique with N[icholas].
“10½. to bed.”
At that moment two rather drunk guards, the sharpshooters Proskuryakov and Stolov, walked up to the Popov house across the way, where the guards lived.
The day before had been payday (we shall also remember this). They had been drinking at a policeman friend’s house, and they reached the Popov house in a jolly mood. They were met by the head of the guard, Pavel Medvedev, who was for some reason very nasty. Cursing, he drove them both into the bathhouse in the Popov house yard. The night was warm. They lay down and fell asleep immediately.
Meanwhile the guard Yakimov was posting the watch.
Sharpshooter Deryabin to post 7.
Sharpshooter Kleshchev to post 8 in the garden by the window to the entry.
Yakimov posted the watch and went to bed.
Alix finished writing in her diary.
It was cool. She recorded the temperature in her diary. These became her last words: “15 degrees.”
She said her prayers before going to bed. The girls were already asleep.
At eleven o’clock the light in their room went out.
Chapter 15
THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS
THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE MURDER (A CHRONICLE)
July 17, 1918: early morning. Opposite the Ipatiev house, in the Popov house, where the guard was quartered on the second floor, ordinary inhabitants of the town lived on the first. Late on the night of July 16–17, two of them woke up. Muffled shots … many shots—there, outside, from somewhere beyond the fence of that terrible house. The Ipatiev house.
They whispered