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By Root 2204 0

son of Chekist Medvedev: “When they were removing the jewels from the dead Romanovs in the Ipatiev house, a watch disappeared instantly. They also managed to remove the watch from the dead Botkin. Yurovsky said: ‘We are going out now, and in three minutes we’ll be back. The watch had better be here.’ And he went out of the room with my father. Three minutes later he was back. And the watch was there. Yurovsky took great pains to see that nothing was stolen. When the tsar fell, his forage cap rolled into a corner. One of the guards carrying out the bodies took the tsar’s cap.… Yurovsky immediately pointed it out to my father with a nod of his head. The cap fit my father. It turned out to be a perfectly ordinary cap, no initials. My father took the cockade off but left the cap. We had the cockade in our house for a long time. As a child I used to play with it. Then something happened to it in all our moves. I was already in school when we had a play and I played a policeman with that cockade.”

Now the tsar’s family was lying in the truck covered with a tarpaulin. Someone found the tiny dead dog—one of the grand duchesses was hugging it … she had been lying on the floor with the dog. The dog’s body was tossed into the truck—it could guard the tsar’s family.

Yurovsky: “The com[mandant] had been instructed only to carry out the sentence. Getting rid of the bodies and moving them was the job of Comrade Ermakov (a worker from the Upper Isetsk plant, a former political prisoner). He was supposed to come with the truck and was let in at the password ‘chimney sweep.’ The truck’s lateness made the com[mandant] doubt Ermakov’s thoroughness, so the com[mandant] decided to watch over the entire operation himself. At about three o’clock they left for the site Ermakov was supposed to have prepared, past the Upper Isetsk factory. First they were supposed to go by truck and after a certain point on horses (since the truck could go no farther; the site chosen was an abandoned mine).”

Yurovsky and Ermakov would end up spending two full days together with the bodies.

Yurovsky recorded the burial of the tsar’s family in great detail, perhaps concealing an almost fantastic story. But let us break off here. We will return yet again to the terrible truck.

The gates of the house opened and in the advancing dawn the truck drove out onto Ascension Avenue.

Strekotin: “When the bodies had been carried out and the car had left, only then was our shift taken off duty.”

Chapter 16

MY GUEST

He called me himself and asked to meet with me. I heard his trembling old man’s voice and naturally said: “I can come see you myself.” But he immediately replied—as did many of those people of his age and generation who called me—“But why? I will come to you myself.” Then he laughed. “You mustn’t think that. No, I’m not afraid of anyone. It’s others who were afraid of me. It’s just I’m an old soldier, and I like to walk.”

Here he is sitting in my room.

He slaps his knee and laughs, pointing to his odd trousers: once green wide trousers with piping that have lost all their color and shape.

“These trousers belonged to Nicholas. I got them in 1945—in Czechoslovakia. At that time they belonged to a former legionary.… In 1918 he bought them in Ekaterinburg. He had a lot of things that were supposedly from the tsar’s family.” He chuckles. “No, naturally, I don’t believe altogether that these are the trousers of the last emperor, but it’s still something from the era. I like the trousers and allow myself this masquerade sometimes.… Right now about the matter that interests you.… I worked in a certain ‘serious institution’ [as the organs of state security have long been called in Russia] for many years.… I was living in Sverdlovsk then.… For quite a while … no, not through my work … just for myself … I was obsessed with your theme.… Or rather, I was interested in one question, which came up a long time ago, before you were ever born—and I’ve been searching for the answer to it all my life. It began with an acquaintanceship—I was rather well acquainted with