The Branch man showed it around the table and began to read out salient details. ‘This appeared a week ago so it’s very fresh. There’s a good chance that she’s not seen it. It’s an eye-witness report. A woman recognized as the archduchess Tatiana has been sighted in the city of San Francisco. Several times. Climbing aboard a cable-car … dancing at Governor Stephens’s fund-raising event for Asiatic orphans … sipping champagne in a night club … You can imagine.’
‘Well, you know how it is,’ Joe said with a smile. ‘An odd thing, but anyone who disappears is reported to have been sighted in San Francisco.’
‘Your hero, Oscar, responsible for that little insight, I believe?’ Bacchus commented.
With an impatient sigh, Lily burst in: ‘San Francisco? But that’s halfway round the world! What would a Russian princess be doing in San Francisco? What would any Russians be doing there? It’s a nonsense!’ Her voice was amused and disbelieving.
Fanshawe, for once, concurred. ‘Another one. For dead girls, the Tsar’s daughters don’t half get about the globe. The last sighting was in Rome. Another one in Japan. And then there was that novice who turned up in a Greek nunnery last year … That was supposed to be the religious one – Olga. There’s an Anastasia or two doing the rounds in Germany … that one they fished out of a canal in Berlin last winter seems to be putting on a convincing act. They’re all over the show. Anywhere but in the Koptyaki forest buried under a ton of railway sleepers. They’re dead. The whole lot of them. And we don’t have to guess – the Bolshies have held up their bloodstained hands for this one.’
‘Many would think twice before accepting evidence or even a confession from those duplicitous thugs,’ Sandilands reprimanded. ‘This identification is not so easily dismissed, Fanshawe. And it’s one we really could wish had not surfaced. I have to tell you … it is supported by other evidence of survival.’ He pursed his lips and fidgeted with his tie.
Oblivious of the exchange of scathing glances and a snort of disbelief, Joe went to stare at the painting, absorbed by dark thoughts. ‘I agree – there are bodies buried under the taiga. That much I accept. Unfortunately, in spite of our best efforts, no one has been able to establish exactly whose bodies they are. Burned, rotted by acid, crushed by bulldozer and scattered, they could be remains filched from the refuse bins of the local hospital for all we know. Or corpses simply swept up from the streets – heaven knows there was no shortage at the time – starvation and disease were rife. Impossible ever to be sure. I’ll tell you now and the story is not to be mentioned outside this room.’
He caught a nervous glance from Bacchus and responded to it: ‘We can speak freely. No listening equipment, Bacchus. I haven’t authorized it in the ops room.’
Unusually serious, even hesitant, he caught and held everyone’s eye, each in turn.
‘There are indeed Romanovs buried in the forest near Ekaterinburg. But not all. The Tsar and his son, the heir, were shot and bayoneted to death along with their doctor who tried to intervene. Poor old Botkin. Loyal to the last. The Empress? It’s less clear at this point – we really don’t know – but it’s thought she succumbed and died of natural causes. She had been very ill for some months. Her body may lie there also. It’s possible.’ He was weighing his words, not wishing to say more than he could verify.
‘Uncouth and dangerous though they were, the guards appointed by the Ural Soviet could not bring themselves to shoot the girls, of whom they had got quite fond during their three-month incarceration. They’d appreciated the way they put on no airs and graces but rolled their sleeves up and cooked and cleaned for the household. And kept the peace. In a cramped space with a sick little brother, an increasingly deranged mother and an ineffectual father, the girls were up against it but they made the best of their imprisonment, remaining good natured and friendly with the young lads who were guarding them.
‘These were only too pleased to look the other way when a diesel truck turned up one night at the Ipatiev villa with papers granting permission to separate the women from the men and take them away. The family had travelled this way before, as a matter of convenience, and made nothing of it. But this time the Empress – with foresight perhaps? – refused to leave her husband and son. And that’s where we lose track of her. The four girls were bundled off. They were driven to the relative safety of the estate of an old marshal of the Tsar’s at Lysva which was by then in the hands of the advancing White Army. We have a touching confirmation of this from the villa itself. Our eagle-eyed man in Ekaterinburg during his inspection of the premises after the murders noticed a word scrawled backwards in haste across a mirror … the letters spelled out LYSVA.