Risked (The Missing ) (24 page)

When I started writing the Missing series in early 2007, it seemed like a no-brainer to include Alexei Romanov and Anastasia Romanova as two of the famous missing children from history. As the only son and youngest daughter of the last tsar of Russia, they’d led fascinating and tragic lives. I knew it was likely that they’d died with the rest of their family on July 17, 1918, but as of early 2007—even after nearly ninety years—there was still enough evidence missing that it seemed possible at least one Romanov might have survived that gruesome night.

But our knowledge of history can change dramatically even without time travel. And even ninety years is not long enough to be sure that all the evidence is in. New discoveries in the summer of 2007 and new revelations in 2009 eliminated virtually all doubt about what really happened to the youngest Romanovs.

Since I’d already mentioned the Romanov kids in
Found,
I decided to keep them in the series regardless. I reasoned that if people from the future had mastered time travel, they could also master faking human remains well enough to trick twenty-first-century DNA tests.

In reality, the Romanov mystery has been solved. But it’s still a fascinating story.

Alexei and Anastasia were part of a family that began ruling Russia in 1613. Their father, Nicholas II, became tsar when his own father, Alexander III, died suddenly in 1894. Nicholas II was largely unprepared to lead such a vast country, and his shy, mild-mannered personality was hardly suited to the role of an autocratic monarch. His wife, Alexandra, was more forceful—and she was fully convinced that Nicholas had the divine right to rule. But the Russians generally disliked her because she was viewed as an outsider, a German princess meddling in Russian affairs.

The birth of Nicholas and Alexandra’s children complicated matters even more.

In the Russian system, only a male could inherit the throne. So when Nicholas and Alexandra began by having four daughters—Olga in 1895, Tatiana in 1897, Maria in 1899, and Anastasia in 1901—it just set everyone up to be that much more thrilled when Alexei was born in 1904. His birth was welcomed with a 301-gun salute in St. Petersburg and the pealing of church bells across the country.

But the family’s excitement soon turned to worry, sorrow, and fear.

When Alexei was only six weeks old, he started bleeding from the navel, the first sign of his hemophilia.
Hemophilia is a hereditary condition, and it had entered the royal families of not just Russia but also Germany and Spain through the female descendants of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. Alexandra, Alexei’s mother, had unknowingly been a carrier.

The treatment of hemophilia has changed immensely over the past century, as scientists have figured out ways to compensate for the blood’s inability to clot. The same week I started writing this author’s note, scientists announced very promising results of gene-therapy tests that enhanced clotting ability for people with hemophilia for more than a year.

But in the early 1900s, little could be done for Alexei, aside from trying to keep him from getting any cut, scrape, or bruise. This, of course, was impossible to prevent completely, and Alexei spent much of his childhood in pain. Even the most minor bump could lead to burst veins and arteries that bled into his joints, causing great agony and sometimes weeks of not being able to walk. And with each bleed there was the possibility that this would be the one that didn’t stop—the one that would kill him.

Nicholas and Alexandra learned the truth about Alexei’s condition early on, but they were determined to keep it secret from their subjects. They didn’t want any hint that Alexei might not be able to rule, or that he might
not live long enough to take the throne. As Alexei grew up, many Russians must have known that something was wrong, especially when Alexei was seen being carried, even at ceremonial occasions. But such public appearances were limited. Alexandra already wanted to protect her children from what she perceived as decadent Russian society; Alexei’s illness made her withdraw her children from public view and from social interaction all the more.

Alexei’s condition also made Nicholas and Alexandra dependent on the one man who seemed to be able to help Alexei: Grigori Rasputin, who was, depending on your viewpoint, either a mystic healer and a holy man, or a religious fake. Some speculate that Rasputin had such a hypnotic effect on Alexei that, even in the midst of a serious bleed, Alexei would calm down enough that the bleeding would stop. But the Russian nobility blamed Rasputin for many of the country’s problems, and a group of them ended up assassinating him in 1916. (Contributing to the notion that Rasputin did have special powers, he supposedly survived being knifed, poisoned, shot, and beaten before his assassins finally succeeded in drowning him.)

If you look at the pictures of the Romanov children growing up—and there are lots and lots of those pictures, because the whole family loved cameras—it’s easy to forget that they lived in turbulent times, and that more and more
people outside the palace walls were coming to believe that the rule of the tsars had to end. For the five Romanov kids, their lives were an odd mix of being very privileged, very sheltered, and in some ways very restricted. Their family owned seven palaces, and the girls each received a diamond and a pearl every year on their birthdays, with the idea that they would have enough for a full necklace of each by the time they were sixteen. But both of their parents preferred a simpler lifestyle than many people would have chosen given their incredible wealth and power. Even when their father was still in power, the children grew up taking cold baths and sleeping on simple camp-style cots with no pillows.

Strangely, the way the Romanov kids were raised turned out to be fairly good preparation for their last months of imprisonment. Theirs was a close-knit family, and as children they had mostly played only with one another. So being trapped with just their parents and siblings and a few servants probably didn’t seem as devastating to them as it might have for kids who were used to being around a lot of friends.

Still, for most of their lives, the Romanov children were protected from the unrest outside their palace walls. A great deal changed with the start of World War I in 1914. In early 1915, the tsar left Tsarskoe Selo, the family’s
eight-hundred-acre palace compound near St. Petersburg, to take command of the military forces at headquarters near the front hundreds of miles away. To Alexei’s great delight, he was allowed to go live with his father at headquarters later that same year. The eleven-year-old boy, who had always been so protected and babied, was delighted to get the chance to live more roughly and be around soldiers and learn everything he could about the military. However, this glorious freedom ended for him about a year later, after a massive nosebleed and other hemophilia-related problems forced him to return home.

Meanwhile, the tsarina and her four daughters considered it their patriotic duty to help wounded soldiers. Alexandra, Olga, and Tatiana all went through nursing programs. Maria and Anastasia were not old enough to be trained as nurses, but they visited the military hospitals as well. All of the Romanov females were exposed to grisly sights, and the tsarina made it clear that she and her daughters would pitch in and help no matter how much filth and blood and gore they encountered.

Russia entered World War I with plenty of fervor and nationalistic pride, but it quickly became clear that the country’s military was woefully unprepared. After a series of humiliating losses and a mounting death count, the mood of the country began to turn. The grief and
resentment of families who’d lost sons and husbands fed into the calls for revolution. A February 1917 demonstration calling for “bread and peace” turned into violent riots in St. Petersburg, with thousands of soldiers turning against the government as well. The capital was in chaos. Even the tsar himself came to believe that the only way to end the unrest was for him to step down.

Ultimately, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated his throne on March 15, 1917. Not wanting to endanger his sickly son, the tsar indicated that his brother Michael—not Alexei—should take the throne in his place. But just trading one tsar for another was not enough for the revolutionaries. Michael never actually took over, and he ended up being murdered a month before his brother.

At first the royal rule was replaced by a provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky, who had been a parliamentary leader during Nicholas II’s reign. But the more extreme Bolsheviks overthrew this government and took over in October 1917.

At the time of the tsar’s abdication, all five of his children had the measles—so badly that they had to have their heads shaved. Anastasia and Tatiana also had burst eardrums because of the measles and so were temporarily deaf. Their mother couldn’t even tell them what had happened—she had to write it down for them.

If the five Romanov offspring had been well enough to travel, and if their parents had chosen to act immediately, they probably could have left the country right away and moved to England, where a cousin, George V, was on the throne. The British government made a formal offer of asylum on March 22. But then the British backed away from that offer. Among other issues, the British leaders worried about Alexandra’s German connections, since Britain was still in the midst of fighting Germany in World War I.

The British also may not have fully understood that the Romanovs’ lives were in danger.

At first the family was simply kept under house arrest at Tsarskoe Selo. Then in August 1917 they were sent to western Siberia, to a place called Tobolsk. After the Bolsheviks took over, they were moved again. When they were taken from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg, in the heart of revolutionary territory, they had to have known it was a bad sign.

Alexei was once again very ill, and so Nicholas, Alexandra, and Maria went to Ekaterinburg first, and were joined by the others about a month later.

In Ekaterinburg, the Romanovs moved into a house that had been taken away from a retired engineer named Nikolai Ipatiev. The Bolsheviks referred to it rather chillingly as the House of Special Purpose—the “special
purpose” never actually being spelled out. Ipatiev’s house was large and well-furnished, but the seven Romanovs, their four servants, and the doctor were crowded into five rooms. And the double fences, armed guards, and blocked windows were constant reminders that the Romanovs were imprisoned there. At one point Anastasia tried to peek out a window, and a guard immediately began firing toward her. (Most versions of this story I encountered said this happened to either Anastasia or “one of the sisters”; one version claimed it was the tsar himself who was fired upon. Anastasia seems the likeliest person to show such curiosity and risk-taking; regardless, the guards made it clear that that wasn’t allowed.)

Surprisingly, the Romanovs were allowed to keep some of their valuables, such as imperial bed linens and tableware. And the original commander and guards at Ekaterinburg didn’t treat the family too badly. When Yakov Yurovsky took over as commander in early July and brought in new guards, they took a more hardcore approach.

The Romanovs’ captors were afraid that some of the family’s loyal friends would try to free them. A few notes were smuggled in with food deliveries—hidden in loaves of bread or, in one case, wrapped around the cork stopper of a bottle of cream—asking about the family’s condition and the possibilities for escape and/or rescue. The family
responded to the notes with caution, apparently because they couldn’t be sure if the notes were real and not fakes set up to catch them plotting against the government.

Either way, nothing came of the notes in the end. According to writings the Romanovs left behind and the descriptions of their captors, the family mostly seemed to accept their imprisonment with unusual calm, taking refuge in their religious beliefs and a regular routine of family meals, morning and afternoon walks, and evening card-playing and reading.

Meanwhile, with fighting in the mountains near Ekaterinburg, the Romanovs’ captors knew the city was about to be retaken from the revolutionaries, and they feared the Romanovs might be freed that way. It’s unclear how much of the decision to kill the Romanovs was made by local officials and how much was dictated by the national leadership. The local officials did send a telegram to Moscow on July 16 saying they couldn’t wait, but they didn’t send it until late in the day. And because of disruptions in the telegraph lines, the message didn’t arrive until hours after that. There’s no official record of a reply, but Yurovsky later claimed that he had received an order from Moscow.

Regardless, Yurovsky’s plans went just as they’re described in this book (at least just as they’re described
apart from the time travelers’ changes). Yurovsky did send away the kitchen boy, Leonid Sednev, on July 16, since he didn’t want to kill the boy with everyone else. However, his excuse about the boy visiting his uncle was a lie, since the uncle had already been murdered by the Bolsheviks. In reality, Leonid spent the night across the street in a house where the external guards slept—and where he undoubtedly could hear the shots fired at the Romanovs. He became the only Ipatiev House servant to survive that night.

It was about one thirty a.m. when Yurovsky woke Dr. Botkin to tell him that the fighting was getting too close and the family had to be moved. The family did take about forty-five minutes to get ready, probably because they were debating about what they should take with them and what they would need to leave behind. The seven Romanovs, Dr. Botkin, and the three remaining servants did rather cluelessly follow the guards down to the cellar.

Yurovsky kept the whole group waiting in the cellar for another half an hour, while he made sure that the truck arrived and everything was prepared. Alexandra really did demand chairs for her and Alexei, and the guards provided them.

According to Yurovsky, the family seemed stunned when he read off the charges against the former tsar.
Accounts vary about exactly what Yurovsky said: Did he talk about the nearby fighting and efforts to rescue the Romanovs? Or the fact that their relatives in Europe fought against Russia? Or did he focus more on what one account called the former tsar’s “countless bloody crimes” against the Russian people? (I included all three issues in the charges I depicted Yurovsky reading in
Risked
.) Yurovsky claims he himself took the first shot at the tsar, and then a team of assassins all began shooting at once. Reportedly, none of the guards actually wanted to kill the girls, but theirs became particularly horrific deaths, probably because of the jewels sewn into their clothing and the assassins’ disorganization and poor planning. When the four girls—and the maid, the doctor, and even Alexei—were still alive even after the extreme barrage of bullets, the assassins resorted to shooting them point-blank in the head and/or using bayonets to stab them to death.