The Secret Wife(53)
‘Be wary, my friend. The more people who know, the more likely the secret is to be revealed, and if we cannot carry out the plan I will not be able to give you the money.’ He closed the top of the bag and stood. ‘I will return the day after tomorrow, when I am sure you will have further questions for me.’
As he rode back to his cottage, Dmitri was stricken with guilt. He knew what he planned was wrong; he knew he would be damned forever if it didn’t work out, but he could not risk Tatiana being inside the house when Malevich’s men stormed it. He would spring her free before the raid. With any luck, all would be released unharmed: the Romanovs would be spirited safely out of Russia, the farm girl Yelena would return home unsuspected, and Tolmachev could take his cash and relocate to Crimea. But he was taking the precaution of getting Tatiana out of the way in case the guards opened fire during the rescue. May God forgive him.
When Dmitri returned to the farm two days later, Tolmachev’s wife and daughter joined them at the kitchen table.
‘I will tell you what I know about the house,’ Yelena agreed, ‘but I do not see how I could pass for Grand Duchess Tatiana. I am nothing like her.’
It was true she was a rather plain, pudgy-faced girl, but her height and hair colour were right. ‘You would be surprised to learn how little we look at another’s face once we know them,’ Dmitri told her. ‘We form an impression and after that we glance into a room, see the right number of figures and think no more of it. So long as you do not engage directly in conversation with the guards, they will believe you are Tatiana because it will not occur to them to think otherwise.’
‘But the other cleaners will notice. They all know me.’
‘Can you trust them?’ Dmitri asked. ‘Or could Tatiana walk out separately at the end of the morning?’
‘Perhaps my friend Svetlana will help,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘We’ve both become fond of the Romanov girls.’
‘You will be the death of my daughter,’ the wife hissed. She was a stocky woman and Dmitri could tell Yelena would look exactly like her in another twenty years. ‘I want you to know I am against this.’
‘Hush,’ the farmer told her. ‘This man is vouched for by the British consulate. I trust him.’
Dmitri felt shamed by his trust, and moved on quickly. ‘Perhaps we could talk about the house?’
Yelena explained that the family all lived on the first floor, and she drew a plan of the rooms. She showed him where the guards took their meals, where the chapel was, and she drew a map of each of the entrances. ‘There’s a door leading down to the basement just here,’ she pointed. ‘Some of the guards sleep there.’
Dmitri looked at her sketch and asked questions until he felt he could picture every corridor and doorway. ‘How far in advance do you know the days you will clean?’ he asked.
‘Only a couple of days,’ she said. ‘It is roughly once a week, although the actual dates vary. The next days will be Monday the eighth and Tuesday the ninth of July.’
Dmitri nodded. ‘So after that it could be the fifteenth and sixteenth?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘We’ll speak again. Thank you with all my heart for this information.’
Malevich and his ‘spruce trees’ arrived on the 10th of July and they met at Dmitri’s cottage. After they greeted each other and Dmitri handed round shots of illegal vodka he’d purchased from his landlord, they sat down to study the layout of the Ipatiev House and hear from him about the number of men in the guard posts and the hours at which the guard was changed. There were fewer guards on duty from one till five in the morning so they agreed the raid must be between those hours. The plan was to kill the external guards instantly before they could signal to waken their comrades indoors. It was made trickier because a curfew had been imposed on the town and all citizens were supposed to stay indoors after eight in the evening, but as yet it was not being strictly enforced.
‘We shoot for the heads,’ Malevich suggested. ‘You say the sentry posts are around twenty feet tall and we will be on the opposite side of the main road? That’s close enough range.’
Everyone knew it was risky. There were many ways the plan could fail but they talked it over endlessly, exploring every possibility, until it seemed as foolproof as such things ever can be. Dmitri trusted Malevich with his life, and the men he’d brought were former imperial guards, trained to a far more exacting level than any common soldier. He felt a thrill at the impending action. At last he would be doing something after seventeen fruitless months of watching from the sidelines. At last Tatiana would be free.
No one except Tolmachev, his wife and daughter knew about the plan to free Tatiana from the house. Dmitri was too ashamed to share it with Malevich or Sir Thomas. It had no strategic advantage; it was purely his own selfish scheme to keep her out of harm’s way.
Dmitri visited the British consulate every few days and Sir Thomas confirmed that Henry Armistead was still planning to arrive on the 13th, and that he had agreed to help. As the day grew closer, Yelena confirmed that she would be working on the 15th and 16th and Dmitri asked Sir Thomas to tell Armistead the cargo would be ready for dispatch in the early hours of the 16th.
He then wrote a note for Tatiana to warn her of what would happen. ‘We need your help to plan a rescue. On Monday, a cleaner will switch clothes with you while they are working in the house and you should leave with the other cleaners and let her take your place. Don’t be scared. I will be waiting outside.’ It was only as he wrote this that it dawned on him what a huge risk he was asking her to take. What would happen if she were discovered trying to walk out? What if a guard intercepted this note? But still, he convinced himself, it was safer than being inside the Ipatiev House during the rescue operation.