30

The Winter Palace rose silent and dark against the gray horizon of approaching dawn. Fall was in the air, crisp and damp. The sun would take away the chill before noon, but in another two months the unrelenting cold would pierce to the very marrow.

A furtive figure, thin, slightly bearded, and wrapped in a long oversized coat, darted from behind a building two blocks away. His gait was awkward; he held his right elbow tightly against his side, while his left arm stretched across the front of his chest, clutching at the loose-fitting coat. To all indications he might have been a peasant with a withered arm, using his one good hand to prevent his shriveled one from flying about uncontrollably.

In truth, the fellow was no peasant. And in spite of the frosty morning, the coat had not been donned an hour earlier for the purpose of warmth. Rather, it concealed the stock of the young man’s trade, which his arms and hands tried to keep from excessive jostling about. It did, however, make his running a bit clumsy.

He ran along the side of the wide boulevard approaching the palace, and then into a deserted alley. He quickly stooped down in the shadows to catch his breath and to get himself again out of sight. It was early, and the streets were still deserted. But he must take no chances. The Cossack guards stationed around the palace did not sleep.

The alley gave him a last respite before the final leg of his odyssey. If he were going to have second thoughts, this was his only remaining opportunity. If he executed the final element of his reckless plan, when he stepped out of this alley into the sunlight of the morning, he would be stepping into whatever final fate destiny had chosen for him.

Whether that destiny would be immortality in the cause of freedom for Russian people everywhere, or the ignominy of his own senseless demise, only the next two hours would tell.

For his part, he was willing to pay the price of the latter in order to achieve the former. He was still enough of a dreamer to believe in his ability to strike quickly, and then get away in the pandemonium of the aftermath.

Carefully he opened the coat and laid his burden on the ground. He would have the final assembly ready within minutes. His eyes glowed with the fire of a passion known only to a select few; his fingers, trembling in anticipation and feeling not a bit of the cold, began fiddling with the various components of death.

Alexander II, Tsar of all the Russias, had slept very little that night; he was up before the roosters, dressed, and already pacing about. The overnight train from Moscow was scheduled to arrive at nine, but he was ready for his drive to the station by six.

His advisors counseled him against going himself. The Princess Dolgoruky could be summoned back to the Winter Palace with equal speed by his coachmen and private guards. But he had not seen Catherine in a week and a half, and he was determined to meet her coach in person.

“It is too dangerous, Your Majesty,” they had insisted.

“Nonsense. The hour is too early for trouble.”

“The streets are filled with radicals at every hour, Excellency.”

“Then double the guard. Bring some of my Cossacks from inside the palace.”

“Security has been lax, sir. Somehow these people seem to know of your every move outside these walls. It is with the most urgent recommendation—”

But the tsar’s interruption ended the debate with summary finality. “I do not intend to be dissuaded from going to the station!”

The tsar’s royal coach and best team of four was summoned to be made ready for His Majesty by half past seven.

Lieutenant Misha Grigorov likewise found a summons waiting for him early that morning, in the form of a rude knock on his door hours before he was scheduled to appear at his usual post.

“The tsar is going out this morning,” he was told by the aide to the Captain of the Royal Guard. “You must be on duty at the street adjacent to the coach house in half an hour.”

Groggily Misha pulled himself out of bed. He walked to the sideboard, splashed a few handfuls of water out of the basin onto his face, toweled it off, then began to dress in the bright colors of his uniform. Breakfast, it seemed, would have to wait.

Twenty minutes later Misha stepped into the cool morning air. No wonder the water in his basin had been especially cold, he thought. The Arctic had blown in overnight! He shivered and looked about, then greeted several of his companions who had similarly been roused early so that the tsar might fetch his mistress home in safety. “Well, if nothing else,” he said to one, “the cold will keep our eyes open and alert.”

Misha took up a position down the boulevard, some fifty meters from the iron gate through which the tsar, horses, carriage, driver, and accompanying guards would pass. A few persons were out, here and there a carriage clattering along the cobbled street. As usual, a growing handful of spectators clustered about in hopes of seeing their tsar. All in all, the street was far from crowded.

He could not tell whether it was the long coat or the peculiarly placed hands that first drew his attention to the man across the street.

The fellow was just standing there, seemingly innocent enough, leaning against the stones of the building at the mouth of the opposite alley. It was enough that Misha noted his presence, though his eyes continued to scan the rest of those present on the street at that early hour. But when his eyes returned to the same spot a minute or two later, the man had begun to inch along the building in what Misha could only think was a very odd series of movements. Something about the hands and the coat drew his eye again.

The man was moving very slowly, yet not randomly. Misha could not see his eyes, but he sensed purposefulness in the whole posture, an intent not seen in casual street-walkers or those hanging about in hopes of laying eyes upon their leader. Too much purpose, thought Misha, for one so obviously trying to remain inconspicuous.

Without further debate, Misha stepped forward into the street and began to walk across. If the man was a mere vagrant and up to nothing, he should not mind a morning’s greeting from one of the tsar’s guards.

Even as he reached the middle of the wide Palace Square, Misha heard the commotion of horses and the iron wheels of the tsar’s coach making their exit onto the street. Still his eyes remained on the figure before him. The fellow had left the side of the building and was walking more rapidly now. Misha knew the man had detected him out of the corner of his eye, yet the fellow’s gaze bore straight ahead toward the horses and carriage.

Misha quickened his pace. Something was wrong about the whole thing! He didn’t like the way—

The man glanced around. He turned his eyes momentarily on the approaching Cossack guard. Still twenty meters from him, Misha saw the fire glowing out of his eyes. It was not the fire of love for his leader!

Misha broke into a run. “Halt,” he said in a voice still low enough not to attract undue attention back toward the gate.

Ignoring him, the man started to run in a labored gait, without using his arms. “Halt, I say!” cried Misha, louder this time. “Halt!”

The shout of his voice and the echoing footsteps drew the attention of Misha’s fellow guards. Some of them sprang into action and headed into the street.

“Turn the carriage around!” cried Misha in the direction of the gate.

He was running at full speed now and gaining rapidly on the figure in the flapping coat. “Stop!” he yelled again. “Stop now, and no harm will come to you!”

“Harm has already come!” screamed the man. His voice instantly betrayed his purpose. “Harm and destruction have been wreaked upon the land by the Romanov oppressor!”

Still he ran toward the tsar’s carriage, shrieking as he went. His hands fumbled inside his coat. “Death must come, that life and freedom be born!”

Misha flew toward him.

“Death is the only justice for—”

Misha leaped into the air, crashing against the subversive. Both men tumbled to the rocky pavement with bruising thuds and scrapes. Even as Misha grabbed for the man’s wrists to disable him, with a final desperate lunge the man tossed a small, crudely made bomb away and toward the carriage.

It rolled a short distance from them. The crowd that had been approaching suddenly scattered with screams and shouts. The driver, who had been attempting to turn the four horses, now lost control as they reared and whinnied, panicking at the sudden movement and loud noises.

Perceiving the mortal peril, Misha jumped to his feet and ran the few paces to where the lethal device had come to rest. Picking it up, he turned back toward the center of the street, then with one mighty motion heaved it from him, away from all the people and down the deserted opposite end of the cobbled square.

Misha did not wait to see the result. He lunged back toward the would-be assassin, who had already risen to his knees to make good his getaway.

Even as the explosion sounded behind him from the middle of the cobbled boulevard, the force of Misha’s body slammed on top of the near-murderer for the second time in less than a minute. This time when the Cossack rose, he had the arms of the prisoner pinned behind his back in a viselike grip.