Free The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander Page B

of argument followed, but Savinkov and Kalyayev decided to spare my life, at least for the moment, at least until they could figure out if I was telling the truth. And so they led me from the park and delivered both me and the bomb to several other conspirators, who were dressed as peasants and who in turn led me to a small apartment with only one window. There I was shoved onto a chair and my arms were tied behind my back. The bomb was placed on a table, and Dora Brilliant herself appeared before too long. It was her job to disarm the explosive, which she proceeded to do right before my eyes.
    “Did I do the right thing?” I pleaded, my brow beading with perspiration. “Or did I ruin it all? What have I done?”
    As she coolly went about her business, she shrugged, and muttered, “You did what you needed to do.”
    “Yes, but-”
    “Sh,” she said, carefully pulling some small piece from the bomb. “The others will discover for themselves that you are telling the truth-and I’m sure you are, for I can see it in your eyes-and then we will decide upon another time and place to put an end to the Grand Duke.”
    Of course I was telling the truth. But of course I didn’t care if they killed me. And yet I couldn’t stop trembling, which perplexed me a great deal and only caused me to tremble more. I had thought everything dead within me, every morsel of compassion, of feeling, long gone. Or was it not? I realized that that was what scared me more than anything else-that I carried a weakness, a softness, which could and would dampen my thirst for blood. I’d felt not a moment of hesitation or remorse when I slit the throat of that unimportant bureaucrat in Novgorod, and yet the sight of those two royal children had caused me to fall apart. What did this mean, the end of my revolutionary path? Was I not destined to avenge the deaths of my wife and child and fellow workers who had fallen on Bloody Sunday?
    No, I thought, just picture Shura lying there in that crimson snow, just remember her bright death in that blinding sunshine…
    Her delicate work completed, Dora Brilliant disappeared behind a curtain and into the next room. Alone and tied to the chair, I drifted in and out of self-pity for what seemed like hours, one moment lashing myself for my failure to hasten the end of the Grand Duke, the next silently sobbing at the loss of my wife and unborn. I wanted to die. I thought of breaking loose and finding poison, of hanging myself, of taking a gun and blowing my brains out, of leaping across the room and grabbing the disarmed bomb and somehow making it explode…
    Hours later the door opened. The two of them, Kalyayev and Savinkov, came stomping in. At the sound of them, Dora Brilliant and some other comrade reappeared. But one glance at Kalyayev and I knew my fate. From the satisfied smirk written all across his brow, I knew, unfortunately, that I was to live.
    Throwing his fur hat on the table next to the disarmed bomb, Kalyayev said, “I waited outside the Bolshoi in the cold. Handfuls of drivers were huddled around fires, and I moved from one to the next, gleaning what information I could, asking: ‘Did the Grand Duke come to the theater tonight? Which carriage did he come in? Was his wife in attendance also? Was there anyone else with them?’ ”
    “Meanwhile I went inside,” confessed Savinkov, who, owing to his aristocratic looks, I was sure, had had no trouble entering the Imperial Bolshoi. “And I asked and inquired, and everywhere I heard exactly what they were saying out on the street, that the Grand Duke had arrived with his wife as well as his two young wards.”
    “Not only that,” added Kalyayev, “but I waited outside until the end of the performance and I saw the four of them for myself. All bundled up, they hurried through the cold and climbed back in the Grand Duke’s carriage, returning directly to the Kremlin.”
    “So our little new revolutionary, our Pavel here, did quite the correct