Stephan Kaminsky, though he did not take part in the shooting itself, verified the body count as each corpse was loaded into one of the vehicles. There was blood everywhere. In the basement room where the shooting had taken place, there was so much blood it had leaked through the floorboards to the ground below. Before leaving he set some men to the gruesome task of cleanup, but it would take days to do a thorough job. No doubt only a thick coat of paint would even begin to hide what had occurred there that night.
He sent the trucks away as dawn began to tinge the sky, satisfied that the job had been properly completed. Earlier the previous day Stephan and Yurovsky had scouted out a “burial” site for the bodies, an abandoned mine shaft at what had once been called the Four Brothers’ Mine. It was about twelve miles north of Ekaterinburg.
Stephan was going to return to the jail and finish the business there, but he needed a drink first—even his strong stomach had found the task that night difficult. In one of the taverns the guards frequented, he ordered a vodka. The glass was barely set before him when he began to hear disturbing talk.
“I tell you it’s done. The bloodsucker is dead,” said a man Stephan recognized as one of the outside guards at the Ipatiev House.
“You saw this?”
“I heard the shots with my own ears. The bodies are being carried even now to the Four Brothers’ Mine.”
Stephan jumped up, strode to the guard, grabbed him by the front of his coat, and fairly shoved him from the tavern. Outside, he threw him up against the wall.
“Has no one taught you how to keep your mouth shut?” he railed at the guard.
“I . . . I . . . didn’t Comrade Kaminsky.”
“You fool! Go back in there and say you are drunk and don’t know what you are saying. And if I hear you have talked more about this, I will have you shot.”
Unable to trust the security of their plans, Stephan had to get to the mine and have the bodies moved. He spoke with some of the leaders of the local Soviet and learned of another mine that would serve his purposes.
He quickly comandeered a truck and raced as fast as the poor roads would allow to the Four Brothers’ Mine. He might as well not have been in such haste, for he got stuck several times and it was late in the evening before he arrived.
There, he learned that Yurovsky was having troubles of his own. His group had also had problems getting stuck on the rutted roads, and they had gotten lost once as well. Finally, they broke an axle and had to haul their cargo the rest of the way to the mine in carts. Then there had been the difficulty of keeping curious locals away. Needless to say, they were not happy about having to fish the bodies from the mine and relocate them. But the need was obvious even to Yurovsky, for this place was no longer much of a secret.
Yurovsky was also having problems among the guards with stealing. Once the bodies were stripped, the fortune in jewels was discovered—thirty pounds or so, by his estimation! This and other trinkets found among the dead proved a huge temptation to the men.
More than a whole day had passed since the murders by the time they were ready to move to the new location. They also learned from some passing Bolsheviks that the White Army was getting closer. Stephan urged the driver to go faster and faster. Twice they had to spend time pushing the truck out of ruts. Finally, when the driver took a curve too quickly, the truck veered off the road into a deep, muddy hole from which there was no way to free it.
They decided to dispose of the bodies right there.
“I have some sulfuric acid,” offered Yurovsky. “At least we can blot out the identities.”
“It would take too long to burn them,” said Stephan. “Start digging. We’ll bury nine of them. Set aside the boy and the old woman, and we’ll burn them so that if the grave is discovered it can’t be connected with the prisoners.”
A few minutes later, Yurovsky took Stephan aside. “We have a problem. There are only ten corpses.”
“What?”
“I counted them myself. One of the females is missing. I think one of the girls, but it is hard to tell which one because they have already doused them with acid.”
“You must have left one behind at the mine.”
“Obviously, not certain enough!” Stephan made his own count and came up with only ten. “Curse you, Yurovsky! How are we going to explain this?”
“Continue with the original plan. Burn the boy—but the official report will read that two bodies were burned.”
Stephan could think of no better plan and gave the orders, but it irked him that things had gone so poorly. That’s what came of dealing with provincials. No doubt he would be taken to task by Moscow for usurping as large a role in the executions as he had. But there had been no choice in the matter. He would just make sure no official reports mentioned his name. He had been careful to make it appear as if Yurovsky had been in complete command.
Later, after they had managed to free the truck and were on their way back to town, it did continue to bother Stephan about the missing body. He debated returning to the Four Brothers’ Mine to search, but he was anxious to be done with this job and return to Moscow. And he still had to deal with his other prisoner, the young Andrei Christinin.