Ekaterinburg, July 17, 1918
YUROVSKY LED THEM OUT INTO THE COURTYARD. Maria looked around and was puzzled to see there were no cars waiting. The sound of gunfire was louder now they were outside, and she shivered. Yurovsky opened another set of doors further along the wall and led them down a short flight of steps, then through a series of guardrooms and hallways until Maria was quite disoriented. They arrived in an empty storeroom with a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
“You will wait here until the transport arrives,” he said.
The room was about twenty-five by twenty feet, Maria estimated, with a barred window on one wall and double doors behind them.
“How long must we wait here?” Alexandra demanded. “Alexei and I cannot stand for any length of time. Could you bring chairs?”
“Of course. Chairs.” Yurovsky turned and gave an order to a guard standing behind him, an ugly man Maria had never seen before.
Two chairs were brought. Her mother and Alexei were seated, then Yurovsky surveyed the group with a frown. Nicholas was standing in front of Alexei, with Alexandra beside him.
“Could you all stand behind the chairs?” he asked, waving the girls and the four servants into a group, almost as if posing them for a photograph. They shuffled into place, and he nodded. “That will do.”
He turned and left, closing the door behind him, and they looked at each other, bemused. Maria clung to her bag and her camera, reluctant to put them down. Everyone was uneasy. It hung in the air like fog.
“Why did he bring us downstairs if the transport was not ready?” Olga asked.
“It’s most irritating,” her mother replied. “They do their utmost to punish us, God knows what for.”
“It’s in case of shelling by the Czechs,” Dr. Botkin said. “We’ll be safer in the basement if the house takes a direct hit.”
The cleaning girl began to cry quietly and Dr. Botkin put an arm around her, murmuring words of comfort.
“Do you think we are going to Moscow, Papa?” Maria asked. “That’s what one of the guards told me.”
“Could be,” he said, absentmindedly.
“Who will look after the dogs?” Anastasia worried out loud.
There was a long pause before Olga replied. “I expect they will be sent on with our luggage. There’s probably no room in the cars.”
Most of the time they stayed silent, apart from the cleaning girl’s sniffling. Maria was listening for engine noise outside that would signal the arrival of their transport. Why was it taking so long? Where was Tatiana?
There was no mistaking the sound of the truck when it arrived. The engine roared, making the windowpane rattle behind its stout bars.
The door opened and they saw a group of men standing behind Yurovsky. Maria spotted Anatoly Bolotov and her heart sank. Was he traveling with them?
Yurovsky stepped forward, holding a sheet of paper, from which he began to read. “In view of the fact that your relatives in Europe continue their assault on Soviet Russia, the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet has sentenced you to be shot . . .”
Maria’s mind went blank and she heard a rushing sound in her ears. The men had fanned out around him. Bolotov was staring at her, and she got the impression he was gloating.
“What?” her father asked. “What?”
Dr. Botkin sounded incredulous. “So you’re not taking us anywhere?”
“I don’t understand. Read it again,” Maria’s father said.
Yurovsky read from the paper in his hand, his tone level as if he were reciting a shopping list. “Tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty of countless bloody crimes against the people, should be shot.”
They were going to shoot her father. Maria crossed herself, and out of the corner of her eye saw her mother and sisters doing the same. And then it all happened fast. Yurovsky pulled out a gun, the other men did the same, and there were flashes of light and a deafening sound that ricocheted around the room. Nicholas staggered and fell heavily to the floor, but still guns were firing, and that was when Maria realized they were shooting them all. They couldn’t be. It made no sense. But they were.
She dived toward the double doors at the back of the room, heart thumping, chest so tight she couldn’t breathe. She grabbed the handles and rattled them with all her strength, but they were locked and wouldn’t budge. She heard screaming and smelled the acrid tang of gunpowder, recognizing it from her father’s hunting trips. She couldn’t think straight. The only way out would be to run past the men, get around behind them, but she would never make it. Where was her mother? Where were Olga and Anastasia?
She turned to look for them and felt something hit her leg, as if a sharp stone had been hurled at it. She collapsed, and now she was lying on the concrete floor and the air was thick with caustic smoke, making her eyes stream. She crawled toward a corner where she could hear screaming, feeling wet stickiness beneath her. “Olga!” she screamed. “Mama!”
She felt the edge of a skirt and groped until she could find the body. A tiny waist. Soft hair. “Anastasia?” she whispered, and two arms were flung around her neck. Anastasia was panting with fear and Maria clung to her.
The firing stopped as suddenly as it had started and she heard the men talking in low voices, then they stepped outside the room. Perhaps they had decided to let the women live. Surely they must.
“Are you hurt?” Maria whispered, but Anastasia couldn’t speak. As the smoke began to clear a little, Maria realized her sister’s eyes were wide with shock. She followed the direction of her gaze and saw their mother on the floor in front of them with part of her skull missing. She retched. There were brains everywhere, white and glistening. Her mother’s brains.
She could hear moaning. Women’s voices. The others were alive. They had to get out of there. She should crawl toward Olga, ask her what to do, but she couldn’t leave Anastasia.
The respite didn’t last long. Yurovsky came back into the room alongside a big man with wild dark hair. A long knife glinted in his hand. Maria tried to twist out of the way as he raised it and brought it down toward her, but she felt it slash her middle and she screamed with all her might. Then Yurovsky raised his gun and pointed it at her head, and she looked up into his cold killer’s eyes just before she lost consciousness.