The clan of giants had lost one more of their kind and was fast dwindling to almost nothing. The beasts, unlike any animal in the world, had an instinct—not unlike that of man—about the inevitability of death. With little hope of finding the new world to the east any better than the barren land they left behind, the giant humanlike animals, the most intelligent creature next to evolutionary man, could soon vanish from the face of the earth. However, the elder was wrong about one thing: The clan of giants was now attached to his band of wanderers, and they would forever seek the companionship and warmth of men.
JULY 16, 1918
EKATERINBURG, RUSSIA
The royal family was allowed out of the confines of the house to enjoy the morning air. Crown Prince Alexei was bundled heavily against the chill, while constantly being attended to and pestered by the family doctor. His father watched from a distance. They were in the large courtyard, and he never liked being far away from the children. He watched two of the Bolshevik guards as they strolled lazily by his four daughters, giving them a quick appreciative glance, then knowing they were being watched by the royal family, the guards continued on their way with a sneer and chuckle as might be expected from the lowborn men they were. Last year at this time, these very same men would have been shot for their arrogance.
Tsar Nicholas II accepted his fate as the last tsar of the great Romanov dynasty—however, he did not have to accept that same disgraced destiny for his children.
He waited by the tall wall, and was tempted to shift his weight from one foot to the other in nervousness, but finally he forced himself into stillness. He looked without turning, catching the small dark eyes of Commissar Yurovsky watching the family from the ground-floor window of the large farmhouse. The small man was paying particular attention to the tsar, but that was no surprise; the beady ferret eyes of the commissar were forever watching, studying.
Nicholas saw the tall man walking toward him down the garden’s lone path. The tsar could tell that the big man also knew the eyes of the commissar were scrutinizing his comings and goings in the courtyard—therefore the large man paused to converse with the girls, nodding as they spoke to him, smiling in the coquettish way they always had. His daughters found the blond-haired Bolshevik irresistible. He was able to put everyone—highborn and lowborn—at ease. It was a talent Nicholas himself had never attained through his many years of rule in Russia.
Finally, the tsar saw Yurovsky turn away from the window and he relaxed—to a point—as he knew there were several other sets of eyes watching from places he could not guess. The large man, Colonel Iosovich Petrov, was respected even among the ruthless guards, largely because they feared what he was—a member of the dreaded Cheka, the secret police of the new Communist Party. What the Bolsheviks did not know, however, was the fact that at one time the handsome colonel had been on the payroll of Tsar Nicholas himself.
The large man with the easy gait, standing tall in his knee-high polished boots and splendid green uniform, nodded his greeting to the tsar, half bowing, a simple gesture that the guards saw as mocking the royal, but it was actually a sincere greeting as taught to him by his superiors while he was training in exile with Vladimir Lenin. This did not stop him from moving his blue eyes to the far window, looking for the pinched features of the commissar.
“Young man,” the tsar greeted in return. That simple gesture was something new to him—something that should have been incorporated long before his abdication. Small things like that little greeting, employed over his reign, may have been beneficial to his understanding of the classes that were far beneath his station. Creating a road to understanding his own people is exactly where he had failed so miserably.
“Sire,” the man said as he straightened his hat, “your family looks well this morning.”
Nicholas cleared his throat, raising his gloved hand to his mouth, and then nodded once. “Thank you . . . comrade—uh, that is the proper word these days? Comrade Colonel?”
Petrov smiled. “Yes, but just Colonel will do for the time being . . . as in the old days?”
The tsar turned and started walking, the uniformed colonel, without hesitation, walked along casually with him, towering over the smaller Nicholas. They both placed their hands behind their backs. The colonel, without turning to face the tsar, spoke in low tones, saying what he had to say.
“I was only able to get the one girl from Tetrovisk. Your cousin’s family, including his daughters, had already left the country from the port of Vladivostok in the east three weeks ago. The one daughter I have was left behind in the local hospital; she was too ill to travel with the rest of her family. She is just recovering from pneumonia. She has fully recovered and I have explained to her the task ahead. On your behalf, she has agreed to cooperate—it must be nice to still have loyalty, even among your lower relatives.”
The tsar was quiet, ignoring the thinly veiled reference to his royal nieces and nephews. Instead of commenting, he closed his eyes in an effort to fight back the despair he was suddenly feeling at Petrov’s news. He swallowed, then smiled as best he could and forced himself not to look the part of a dejected and desperate father. The news meant that only one of his precious daughters would survive their possible black fate. As ruthless as the plan was—the killing off of relatives to save his own children—was the only hope of having his direct bloodline survive the madness that had swept his country.
“The boy?” he finally asked, looking out of the corner of his eye at the two guards watching from the garden’s main gate. He desperately tried to keep from choking up as he waited for the fate of his son to be announced.
“There, I was able to secure you some good news. The British intelligence service was much helpful in getting us the son of your cousin’s mistress—the little man even has the same blood type as the crown prince.”
“Does he resemble my son?” Nicholas asked through clenched teeth, an almost desperate question.
The tall man smiled and looked over at the guards, and then he lowered his head so his lips could not be seen.
“It was as if I were looking at the bastard son of a mistress of yours . . . Your Highness.”
The tsar closed his eyes and fought a desperate battle with his rising anger, as again he had to endure the insults to his royal dignity.
“Apologies . . . very rude of me—yes, the boy looks like Alexei. They could even be twin brothers.”
“Only two children? There is no chance of finding any more to match my other daughters?”
The large man stopped and looked at the back of the once powerful tsar.
“Two of your children are guaranteed to survive tonight. That is how you must look at this. Any other way would be foolish, and may cause you to falter at the wrong time, and that could lead to all of them getting killed. Tonight, above all else, you must be braver than your reputation.”
Tsar Nicholas stopped suddenly, felt the eyes on him from around the courtyard, and again turned back to face the Bolshevik colonel.
“Tonight?” he asked as his lips and left cheek twitched under his closely trimmed beard.
“A Czech contingent of the White Army is drawing too close. Commissar Yurovsky has his orders. I delivered them myself just this morning. I am sorry—murder is a despicable business.”
“Tonight,” Nicholas repeated, head turning to look at his family as they admired the flowers lining the broken wall. He looked at his wife and she glanced at him. The tsarina saw the look on her husband’s face and turned away, looking at her daughters and only son. When asked a question by one of the girls, she cleared her thoughts and smiled brightly. Nicholas knew his brave Alexandria understood.
“Which of my daughters is to live?”
“The one girl that matched in features, age, and weight is Anastasia.”
Nicholas grew silent, only nodding his head as his eyes went to his smiling daughter, and he saw her through the tears that formed. Quick witted and vivacious, Anastasia. Yes, he thought, that is w
ho it was meant to be. She is the one who will carry on in her family’s absence.
“The commissar will wait until close to midnight when most of the miserable souls here and in the village are asleep. Then he will send for you, your family, your family doctor, and even your servants.”
“No one is to be spared?”
The large man grew silent. He wanted to ask the tsar how many families had been awakened in the middle of the night by his own secret police, to be taken away for questioning and never heard from again. However, what use would there be in that?
“The arrangements are all concluded?” Nicholas asked, his eyes never leaving his family.
“The two children and I will travel overland many days. We will have safe conduct papers signed by Comrade Lenin himself. We will travel to Nalychevo, where a ship is already waiting on the eastern coast.”
“The contents of my will are also secured there?”
“The portion of the royal treasury you were able to convert to American gold double eagles, have been successfully smuggled out of Moscow and will arrive three days before us. Your children will be very well cared for—on that, you have my word. Even after my comrades take their half of the bounty, they should be satisfied with dividing six million dollars in American currency.”
Nicholas turned and resumed walking, retracing his steps back in the direction of his family. Meanwhile, Petrov held his ground, facing in the opposite direction.
“Noble of you, Comrade Petrov,” Nicholas said and then stopped. “Your destination?”
“America is where your royal relatives will receive your children. I cannot tell you more than that.”
“Colonel Petrov, if it were still in my power, I would reward you—”
“It is not in your power, however. I will give my accomplices the portion of the treasury reserved for them, and that for your children’s upbringing, and that is all. I suspect that the Twins are intact, your people were able to secure them with the gold that will meet us?”
“The Twins are there, both Twins with the weight of forty diamonds. They reside in a gilded and ornate three-lock box.”
“Then, indeed, the legend of the Twins of Peter the Great is true? Imagine, twin diamonds the size of ostrich eggs. I fail to see how your family kept them a secret for so long.”
Nicholas was not interested in telling the colonel about the great Twins of the tsar’s. What matter did the diamonds hold for him now other than payment to the man who would save two of his children?
“When will you take my children from—?”
“That is not your affair. You will be awakened sometime before midnight by your executioners, and your son and daughter will be at your side with the others of your family. Mind that you, your wife, or your daughters show no difference in the treating of these two imposters. If they can accomplish that much, I will hopefully be many kilometers away with—”
“My two children,” Nicholas said, cutting him off as he turned to look at Petrov, who nodded his head, half bowed, and then abruptly walked away.
The tsarina greeted Nicholas before he came to his family and took the crook of his arm with both of her white gloved hands. Her wide-brimmed hat was tilted against the freshening breeze and the falsely joyous sun.
“Is there news, Nicky?” she asked.
“Tonight, my love,” Nicholas answered with bowed head, his cap hiding his distraught features.
Alexandria’s only reaction was a quick twitch of her lips, and then she tried to smile brightly.
“The children . . . our plan?” she asked through the falsity of that smile, swallowing desperately to keep the sob she felt trying to escape from deep inside of her.
“Two.”
“Oh, Nicky, no,” she moaned.
“My son . . . and Anastasia,” he replied with only a brief movement of his lips. “They were the only matches found.”
They walked arm in arm to join their children, each silent with his or her own thoughts of the coming horror.
“When?” she asked, opening her umbrella, not trusting herself to allow the scream to escape her lips at the murderous insult to their children.
“Midnight,” Nicholas answered, quickly swiping away a tear with his white gloved hand.
At exactly thirty minutes after midnight, Commissar Yurovsky stood over the eleven bodies inside the dank and bare basement. He knelt down and removed the tsar’s hand from around the head of the crown prince. He quickly moved his hand away when he saw the boy twitch and draw a quick, shallow breath.
“The heir is still alive,” he said angrily as he looked closer at the features of the boy. For a reason the old man could not grasp, Prince Alexei did not look the same. Even with a bullet in the side of his head, he could still make out his features clearly.
Suddenly a guard, one of Petrov’s men, whose job it was to make sure all went as planned after the colonel and his young charges left the house, stepped up and fired three quick shots into the upturned face of the crown prince.
Yurovsky was so taken back at the sudden action of the guard that he fell onto his bottom side. He quickly recovered, and then stood and faced the man who had fired his pistol.
“You fool!”
“You said the boy wasn’t dead; now he is,” the guard replied quickly and sternly to the local communist official, a man that was as despicable an official as any the guard had ever known.
“I wanted to examine him for official reasons!”
The guard looked down. “Dead, four gunshots to the head and face. In your report to Moscow, you can say it was natural causes. In this day of communist glory, what difference would there be . . . Comrade?”
Yurovsky turned and looked at the guard with murderous rage, then quickly stormed out of the basement, threatening to add the guard’s name to his report.
The guard smiled, holstering his pistol, and then he gestured for the others to start removing the two servants, the maid, and the doctor. Then he examined the bodies of the four girls and found them quite dead. It had been a close run thing, the girl posing as Anastasia had actually called the tsar “Uncle.” Yurovsky, thank the heavens, hadn’t heard the girl’s remark. He knelt down and then saw that Tsarina Alexandria had somehow managed to reach out and touch her husband’s extended hand. Such devotion, he thought, clinging to him even after death.
Crown Prince Alexei, or the child that posed as the prince, was quite unrecognizable. The girl, Anastasia, wasn’t that much of a concern, as the imposter had been shot in the face, a rather cruel way to go for such a pretty child. The guard stood and motioned for the men to take the royal family out.
“The crown prince, and that one,” he said pointing to Anastasia, “place them in the last truck; we have orders to burn and bury them separately.”
He watched as the last of the Romanov dynasty was removed from the cellar, far from the glamour and royal standing of the grand social gatherings in the cities they had been accustomed to. He shook his head and then pulled his pocket watch from his coat. He had to move quickly because he didn’t want his portion of the royal treasury to depart for America without him accompanying it.
EAST OF GLACIER BAY, ALASKA
SEVEN WEEKS LATER
20 September, 1918
As I make this journal entry, it has been two weeks since the cargo vessel, Leonid Comerovski, ran aground south of Glacier Bay. After our initial good luck with surviving the storm at sea, and in acquiring the ten needed wagons from an American prospecting camp, and then securing the needed stores from the wrecked ship, my men—all thirty-five of them—plus seventeen crewmen from the Comerovski, along with the two children, set out heading for the Alaskan capital of Juneau. The crewmen of the vessel were surly at best, and my men had to make an example out of three of the rougher, more aggressive seamen. It seems they were none too pleased in our disposing of their captain and his more loyal men, a necessity due to the fact we needed their food stores. Needless to say, the others fell into line immed
iately when they gained knowledge on how the new Russian security service operated. The sad fact is, I despise my own men more than the communist sea captain and his crew. I am foolish to believe I can rise above the filth I have covered myself in.
Providence, however, only doles out luck on a begrudging basis. We now find ourselves very much lost, with the American city of Juneau I now believe to be far to our south and west of us. The nights are turning cold and the men are starting to get anxious as to our fate, and now they are not understanding why we didn’t seek passage from Glacier Bay to the city of Seattle to the south immediately. I’ve had to explain to them on more than one occasion, that our transgression in Russia may have been discovered, and that the party’s spies could be in hiding in any seacoast settlement waiting on our arrival. Comrade Lenin will have a long memory when it comes to stealing a great deal of the royal treasury, not to mention the two children.
The problem now, besides the fact we are lost and running low of food, are the children. The men want to eliminate the need of caring for them. Not that I am a sentimental man, but if we are caught by the American or Canadian authorities, they would become a valuable bargaining tool as for the reason we are in their countries uninvited. This time, however, even my brothers of the secret police are not buying my goods. I am afraid of losing control of the situation.
The gold and its vast weight, coupled with the harsh terrain, are starting to cause considerable problems with the wagons. They were not constructed for such loads or travel over the rough ground. They are in constant need of repair and I fear we will have to abandon some of them, with the gold, once we exit the mountain pass we now find ourselves.
Postscript: The past few evenings as we settle into camp, we have detected the movement of something, or someone in the night. We do not know if Indians of the great northwestern territories are among us, because whoever they are, they are stealthy and silent for the most part. There is also a knocking of clubs, or sticks, against the trees at night, and unheard of animalistic screams. I must admit to myself, if not to others, it is truly unnerving. If indeed it is Indians, I have never heard of such behavior in any of the adventure novels I have read or other accounts of Indians in the Americas.
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 2
