doors and into the main hall that was all covered with dark wood. Only one of the clerks, a pale man with a small, neat beard, looked up at me with any interest. It was just before ten, which meant the bank was still pretty empty, just workers and only one customer, a short old man with a cane. Not thirty seconds later, my other four comrades came in, two of the men posting themselves at the big front door, one at a side door, and another, Sasha, coming up by my side, all according to plan.
I whipped out a revolver, held it high, and fired two shots right into the ceiling. There were screams and some chunks of plaster came down on my head.
As loudly as I could, I shouted, “All of you on the floor! In the name of the Proletariat and the Revolution, we are seizing this bank! Get down on the floor! All the money in your vaults now belongs to the people! Death to the exploiters! Glory to the Revolution!”
I had thought the bankers and all the clerks in their white shirts would do nothing and give up like schoolgirls. But they were rather tough. A man with glasses, who turned out to be the director general, came out of an office, a small pistol in hand. Without hesitating, he aimed at Sasha, my comrade, who was standing right next to me, and shot him in the left shoulder. Sasha, a big guy, groaned in pain but just as quickly let out one shot and then another, killing Mr. Director General, who toppled over, landing with a juicy thud. That was all it took, actually. I turned this way and that, saw all the clerks now practically throwing themselves on the floor and covering their heads with their hands.
And then it was quiet, but only for a second. That poor Sasha. I heard another groan, turned, and saw blood bubble and flow from his lips. He looked down, as did I, and it was then that I saw a long, razor-thin sword poking out of his stomach. Gospodi, he’d been stabbed from behind! Sasha glanced up at me, tried to say something, choked on his own blood, swayed, and fell over. Behind him stood that old man-a sword had been hidden in his cane! And he had stabbed Sasha in the back, running the sword right through my comrade!
Purple with anger, the old man said to me, “You fucking Reds can go to the devil!”
Knowing full well what would happen next, the old shit quickly crossed himself, and I waited, I let him finish. Once he’d made his sign to a god I was sure didn’t exist, I did the deed. I fired a bullet right between his eyes. When he hit the floor a black velvet bag fell from his hands. I ripped it open, and in it were twenty brillianti, all about the size of my thumbnail, and some fifteen or so big red and green stones, too. I quickly understood that the old man had probably just removed these things from a storage box there in the bank. He was probably taking his jewels and getting ready to run away, to leave the country. Good, I thought. All I had done was stop an enemy from taking his riches out of Russia.
We only had to kill one other person, a woman clerk who tried to sneak out the back door. One of my comrades shot her in the neck and stole her gold rings.
It was about then that we heard and felt a distant explosion that was bigger, well, than anything I’d ever experienced. Ha! I thought with a smile. Ha! Our Red brigand had succeeded, they had blown up the Kremlin gates! They were storming the Arsenal!
Yes, it was a very good day for the Revolution. Me and my comrades seized almost five million Kerensky rubles from the bank, the Red Guard had got piles of weapons and ammunition from the Arsenal, and by nightfall our red flags were flying from the Kremlin towers.
A very good day for the people, indeed: Glory to the October Revolution!
Chapter 39 ELLA
In the months after the Bolshevik putsch there were many who came to see me, first those hoping to protect me, second those seeking to spirit me altogether out of Russia.
As to the first, I begged them to give up all efforts of protection, for it was simply too dangerous to stand up for me. A devil had been born in the blood of the revolution, and its name was the Cheka, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Official Corruption. The stories that reached my ears were simply too unbelievable-thousands upon thousands put to death, pushed into furnaces, scalped, some even skinned alive. I wept morning, noon, and night, particularly when came news of the clergy who were crowned with barbed wire and crucified, later taken down and thrown half-dead in pigpens for the beasts to eat. One heard tell of informants everywhere, so much so that no one trusted anyone.
In truth, I was sorely tempted by the second, those who sought to take me away from this chaos. I longed for my family abroad, Irene and Victoria, and sweet Ernie, who were so sadly caught up on the German side of the war. How I wished to see them all and linger in their laughter, as I had done in my youth.
As to my dear ones here in Russia, I was totally cut off. I had virtually no news of Alicky and Nicky and the children, but I continued to write three or four times a week, though I doubted any of my letters made it through. I believed nothing I read of them in the newspapers, and soon enough the newspapers ceased altogether. Lenin and his Reds had seized control of all the press, and when the revolutionary papers started appearing their words were nothing but cheap promises and exaggerated lies.
Once even the Swedish Minister came to see me, greeting me in my own reception room with the blunt words, “I am here to inform you that I have both the means and the permission for your safe transport to my country. I urge Your Highness to leave Russia immediately, if not today, then tomorrow.”
It was quite apparent whose permission this emissary had-both that of Cousin Willy, the Kaiser, and of none other than Lenin himself. But how could I be saved by these men? Willy himself had done so much toward the destruction of Russia, not simply by declaring the war in the first place, but recently by sending that hideous Lenin back into Russia so that the Father-land would be defeated from within. Just unbelievable! Years earlier some of Nicky’s officers had come up with a plan to foment revolution in Germany, but while war was one thing, Nicky would have nothing to do with devious attempts to topple a seated emperor.
As for Lenin, I knew his thoughts were anything but of my safety. Simply, I understood that he wanted to be rid of me. It was said that he was afraid to arrest me because of my good work and the warmth most Muscovites felt toward me and my sisters. It was said, too, that I was the last of all the Romanovs living of free accord. Apparently the rest of us-nearly seventy members of the former House of Romanov-had been taken by the Reds. Could that possibly be? Dear Lord in Heaven, one only had to recall the fate of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, not to mention the barbarism of the French Revolution, to fear what thorny path lay ahead. I had had secret word, however, that for the time being the Widow Empress, Ksenia and her brood, Olga and her new husband and baby, and others were still living in relative safety in the Crimea. I prayed this was true, I prayed for them morning, noon, and night.
But, no, I would have nothing to do with this offer of fleeing abroad, for the idea of dealing with such hatefuls as Willy and Lenin was simply impossible. In any case, how could I possibly abandon my aching Russia at the hour when she needed me most?
“Thank you for your kind thoughts, Mr. Minister,” I said, rising and thereby signifying the conclusion of my audience. “But my place is here within the walls of my community and in my beloved country. I have many sisters and countless patients to watch over, you know.”
“I feared such a reply,” he said with a respectful bow.
“But tell me, have you heard any word of… of…” No, I could not bring myself to refer to them as the ex-Tsar and ex-Tsaritsa. “… of my sister and her husband?”
“Only that they have been transferred to Siberia, nothing more.”
“So I have been told. I have written to them numerous times, but I doubt that my letters have reached them.”
Ominously, he said, “I fear for your country, Madame.”
“Please, I beg you, pray for us.”
The gentleman then quietly left, and as the door closed behind him I felt at peace, for my ultimate wish was now forever established: my fate was Russia ’s fate. True, much later Willy again tried to get me to quit Russia - he sent his Count Mirbach twice to see me, but each time I refused him an audience, so despicable was the thought that I might be rescued by our German enemies.
For a while longer things continued as before, patients were brought to us, we were allotted enough ration cards, even the good people of Moscow brought us foodstuffs whenever they could. Soon, however, things began
