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The investigation compared the items with those in the Ipatiev house—the same buttons, hooks, and shoe buckles. It was obvious that they had burned the clothes here. Did that mean the bodies had been thrown in the mine?

They decided to pump the water out of this nameless mine and the mine next to it, Ganya’s Pit. They found nothing in Ganya’s Pit, but in the nameless mine they reached bottom, panned, and found an amputated manicured finger with a long nail, false teeth that were soon recognized as belonging to Dr. Botkin, his tie clasp, and a pearl earring from a pair the empress wore. In the mine they found the body of a tiny dog and the frame of the photograph of Alix that Nicholas always carried and the dented icons his daughters wore for the journey—as well as Olga’s icon of Nicholas the Miracleworker. The gilded silver military badge discovered in the silt—the insignia of the regiment of which the empress was colonel-in-chief—had been given to her by the regiment’s commander, her mystical friend Adjutant General Orlov.

It was strange to say the words “Her Highness’s Regiment” and “adjutant general” while standing on the edge of that dirty hole digging in the stinking silt. All that was left of her life was a large piece of a blood-spotted tarpaulin hauled up from the mine pit.

But they found no bodies.

Afterward they trampled over and dug up that entire remote area—but there were no bodies.

At that point a mining technician came forward and said that in mid-July he had come across the commandant of the Ipatiev house in this remote area. Yurovsky had asked him whether a very heavy truck could use the Koptyaki road.

Details about the truck became clear as well. On the evening of July 16, a truck was taken from the Soviet’s garage on orders from the Cheka. The truck’s driver was replaced, and the truck was driven out of the garage by a short, hook-nosed middle-aged man. One of the drivers in the garage recognized him as Sergei Lyukhanov, the driver for the Ipatiev house. The truck was not returned until the nineteenth, and it was utterly filthy. The back had been wiped but there were clearly visible traces of blood.

Now it was obvious to the investigation which truck this was and what it had taken to the mine.

The tracks of this truck were still evident on the storm-washed road to Koptyaki.

They also found witnesses to the truck’s journey down the Koptyaki road.

The guard in railway booth number 184, where the road crossed the mining factory railway line, said that at dawn on July 17 she was wakened by the sound of an approaching truck. She heard the truck skid in the marshy place not far from her booth. Then there was a knock at the door, and she opened it and saw the driver and the truck’s shadowy silhouette in the dawning sky.

The driver said that the motor had overheated and asked for some water. The guard started to grumble in her usual way when the driver suddenly turned nasty for some reason. “You here are sleeping like lords … and we’ve been breaking our backs all night long.”

The watchwoman was going to say that she saw the figures of Red Guards around the truck—but instantly fell silent. “We’ll forgive you the first time. But don’t do it again,” the driver threatened in parting. She saw them placing poles on the marshy ground—they had taken them from around her booth—and then the truck continued on.

Other statements were forthcoming. At dawn on July 17, men had set out for town from Koptyaki.

Coming out on the road, they had seen a strange procession. Someone by the name of Vaganov, dressed in a sailor’s striped shirt, had been galloping in the lead. He was a Kronstadt sailor who worked for the Cheka. Some of the residents recognized him immediately. Behind the mounted Chekist came some carts covered with a tarpaulin. Seeing the peasants, the sailor shouted furiously, “Get back there! Turn around. And don’t look back.” He cursed and cursed at them and drove the shocked and terrified peasants back toward the village,