Free The Romanov Conspiracy by Glenn Meade

candle from the drawer, took a dinner plate from another cupboard, and returned to the front room.
    He struck a match, lit the candle, and dripped enough wax to stick it to the plate. He left the plate on the edge of the table. Sorg wedged open the kitchen door with a piece of folded newspaper. Finally, he buttoned up his coat and donned his Trilby hat. He opened the valve in the cooker, hearing the snake hiss of the gas flow.
    He picked up the Gladstone and stuffed Ravich’s revolver in his coat pocket. He exited by the front door and when he hit the cold air, Sorg was already drenched in sweat.
    Minutes later and a hundred yards along the street, he heard the massive boom of the gas explosion, sending a spear of bright orange flame shooting into the air, the shock wave striking his back with the force of a punch, almost knocking him over.
    Sorg held on to his hat and kept walking.

7

    The blond-haired man with hard blue eyes and a pockmarked face sat beside Uri Andrev’s bed. He wore an ankle-length leather trench coat with a scarf and black leather gloves, his polished boots shining, a Bolshevik party badge on his lapel.
    Andrev looked at him as he became conscious and the man’s features settled into focus. His face looked older than its twenty-eight years and his coarse skin told of a poor upbringing. Old scar tissue puckered his face, not unlike a boxer who had gone too many rounds in the ring.
    They stared at each other with the easy silence of two men who knew each other a long time, until the blond smiled. “Hello, Uri. It’s been far too long. Two years at least.” His accent was working-class St. Petersburg.
    “Leonid. It’s good to see you.”
    “And you.” Leonid Yakov studied Andrev, whose dark hair was cropped close to the skull, his face unshaven.
    Red welts from malnutrition covered Andrev’s face, his skin blotchy with bruises inflicted by the camp guards.
    The room was freezing despite a blazing woodstove in a corner, and the blond removed his leather gloves and blew on his hands. Near the door stood two guards in overcoats and fur-lined hoods, rifles slung over their shoulders. One tall, the other a squat, robust figure with bow legs, both their faces hidden by headgear.
    Andrev’s brow felt on fire, an agonizing throbbing in his left shoulder and side. He was in the camp’s sick bay. Sick bay was a joke. It was no more than a filthy wooden shack with a dozen rusting metal beds, vomit-stained floors, coarse blankets, and sackcloth pillows. Disinfectant and rotting bandages stank up the air. A patched sheet hung froma line of rope, all that separated Andrev from a handful of other ill prisoners, their coughing and sputtering a constant background.
    “I’ve got something that might help your pain.” Yakov produced a pewter hip flask from his coat pocket. “Here, have some vodka to warm your belly. Put some sunshine into you.”
    Andrev gratefully accepted the flask, touched it to his cracked lips, and sipped. “What are you doing in this godforsaken place?”
    Yakov stood. “All in good time. Some friends want to see you. Zoba, you first.”
    He beckoned the squat little man with the fur hood. When he came closer, Andrev recognized his dark, Georgian features, a hint of the Asiatic in his wrinkled eyes and powerful physique. His good-humored face was set in a permanent grin. “Hello, Captain.”
    They shook hands warmly. “Zoba. What are you doing here?”
    The Georgian’s grin broadened. “I keep asking myself the same question. Four years in the trenches and still able to laugh—the commissar here reckons I need my head examined.”
    “I’m glad to see you.”
    “We had some good and bad times serving together, us three.” He nodded to Yakov’s flask. “Seeing as this is a reunion, I won’t say no to some sunshine.”
    Yakov handed him the flask. “Any excuse.”
    Zoba grinned, swallowed a mouthful. “There are places in the world a man can die of thirst. In Russia,