Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [230]
I set the letter aside. “Instead of Demidova?” Or maybe not instead? Maybe my guest’s version about the two being saved is true, and her father and aunts created all this obfuscation about the photographs of “the wrong Demidova” to confuse the girl and hide from her a very dangerous secret: Demidova was saved?
Soon after this letter I received a long-distance telephone call.
First I heard a cough, and then a familiar voice began to speak. My God, I’ve already finished the book, I’ve already written that line, so like a citation from a novel: “I never saw my guest again,” and here again—again this mysterious man!
The voice spoke without any introduction:
“Yesterday the remains of nine people were brought to the morgue of one of the hospitals in Sverdlovsk, now renamed Ekaterinburg again, as you well know. I hope you understand who I’m talking about?”
“No,” I said, although I did.
“Yes, these are the remains that were in the grave Yurovsky described. They opened up the grave yesterday.” And he hung up.
Just a few days after that call, reports appeared in the papers: on July 12, outside the village of Koptyaki, the grave was dug up where the remains of the tsar’s family supposedly had been buried.
Now my guest is sitting in my house once again.
He has failed significantly in these months; he is obviously ill. The conversation is constantly interrupted by his coughing, but his permanent sarcastic grin is unchanged.
“There, you see. So much has happened in the short time since we last met: Leningrad is Saint Petersburg again, Sverdlovsk is Ekaterinburg, and the Communist Party has been banned. Look at the coincidence: you finished your book about the last tsar simultaneously with the demise of communism in Russia.
“So, the grave Yurovsky described was dug up. [I realized the introduction was over and the story had begun.] By the way, the first attempt to uncover it was back in 1979.”
“I know about that.”
He continues, though, as if he had not heard me.
“Three Sverdlovsk geologists and one Moscow writer located the grave Yurovsky described. Subsequently, as we know, they talked about all the difficulties of their searches, but that was more to make the story interesting. In fact, one of them had access to the secret archives, and they knew the location of the grave Yurovsky had recorded. In 1979 they decided to dig it up. Then they removed three skulls from the grave, made casts, and put them back. One of the skulls had a gold dental bridge. They conjectured it had belonged to Nicholas. They did not talk about all this, naturally. Only ten years later did they tell the whole story in the press for the first time.
“So now, that is, twelve years later, these Sverdlovsk geologists have opened the grave a second time. The fact of the matter is that a rumor got started in Ekaterinburg that Moscow had decided to open the grave and take away the remains. And just as Ekaterinburg had not given up the Romanovs to Moscow while they were alive, now they decided not to give them up after their deaths. Generally speaking, it was all identical: secret murders and secret digging. Soldiers put a barrier up around the work site and wouldn’t let anyone in. Just as in July 1918, it had been terribly hot … but on the day of the grave’s unearthing there was a downpour.”
“You were there?”
“I didn’t have to be. I did have to know, however. They opened it up like barbarians, without a priest. It was around midnight