Ana wondered where Sergei was, and if he knew what was going on. There was only one window, crossed with iron bars, opening onto ground level, but it was placed high in the wall and she couldn’t see anything outside. How many officers, she wondered, were riding to their rescue even now?
Time seemed to stand still in the airless cellar as they held their positions and waited for the photographer to come in with his tripod and his camera and his black cloth. Jemmy squirmed in her arms, but she didn’t want to put him down for fear he’d get into some trouble. The commandant had made plain, on previous occasions, that he had no use for dogs.
When the doors did open again, Yurovsky came in, with his long coat unbuttoned and nearly a dozen guards jostling to join him inside. Reading aloud from a sheet of paper he held high in his hand, Yurovsky announced that “in view of the fact that your relatives and supporters have continued their attacks on Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals has decided to execute you.”
Ana thought she could not have heard him correctly, and her father, after looking quickly at his family assembled around him, turned back to Yurovsky in disbelief and said, “What? What?”
The commandant quickly repeated the sentence, word for word, then drew from his belt a revolver and shot the former Tsar directly through the forehead. Ana saw her father pitch backwards in the chair, dropping Alexei to the floor. She saw her mother fling up a hand to cross herself, and her sisters shrink back against the wall. She heard Demidova cry out and Botkin protest, then everything became an awful blur.
The Red Guards pulled out their own guns and all Ana remembered was a deafening roar as the shots rang out and the room filled with choking smoke and screams for mercy and the hot splash of blood, blood flying everywhere. Jemmy turned into a limp soaking rag in her arms, and as the bullets clanged and ricocheted off the gems in her corset, Ana toppled over and fell beneath the crush of dead and dying bodies … and still the firing continued. The lightbulb in the ceiling exploded, and the last thing she saw, as she clutched at the emerald cross beneath her blouse, was the looming phantom of Rasputin himself rising before her, as if his black beard and cassock were fashioned from the swirling smoke and gunpowder. In her ear, she heard the deep rumble of his voice whispering, as he once had done at the Christmas ball, “I shall always be watching over you, little one.” Malenkaya.
Chapter 37
Lantos, accustomed to working under optimal conditions at M.I.T., was having to make some adjustments. She wasn’t used to her feet sticking to damp rubber mats on the floor, for instance, or to Arctic blasts battering the walls of her lab. Nor was she accustomed to the constant roar of the wind, like a ceaseless pounding surf, or the lamps swaying overhead.
The Tyvek suit and rubber apron she was wearing weren’t exactly comfortable, either. With her fingers encased in latex, her mouth and nose covered by a face mask, and her eyes protected by oversized goggles designed to accommodate her glasses, she had to move more slowly, and with greater deliberation, than her nature dictated. But she knew that this mission had to yield some answers, and quickly. What were they dealing with—the dead remnants of an extinct plague, or the dormant, but still viable, vestiges of the greatest killer the world had ever known?
For hours she had done nothing but study the specimens taken from the various organ sites of the young deacon, whose body still lay, like a disassembled engine, in the autopsy chamber at the rear of the lab tent. She didn’t like leaving it like that, not only because it presented a hazard but because she always tried to be respectful in her work. As soon as Slater got back from the graveyard, where he and Kozak had gone to figure out which grave to open next, she would enlist his help in putting the body back together.
In order to feel confident in their results, she and Slater had decided that they would need to exhume no less than three more corpses, all from separate and distinct spots in the cemetery. To avoid any risk of cross-contamination or confusion among the specimens taken, they had also determined to work on only one cadaver at a time, reap the harvest they required, then put the dissected remains back in their frozen grave. The simplest lab protocols were always the safest and most elegant, Lantos believed, especially when dealing with what were called “select agents”—the most notorious pathogens like ricin, anthrax, and ebola—and under such tricky conditions as these.
After stretching her muscles and pressing her hands to the small of her back, she debated going over to the mess tent for a quick pick-me-up—some hot oatmeal and a mug of coffee—or to get just one more test under way. The idea of a break was very tempting, but it was such a hassle to suit up, then undress again, that she decided to go forward with just one more bit of business first.