Free The Romanov Conspiracy by Glenn Meade Page B

bones in his day.”
    “True.” Yakov tightly twisted the cloth and thrust it at Andrev’s mouth. “Here, bite on this and roll onto your good side.”
    Sweat beaded Andrev’s face as he clenched the cloth between his teeth and rolled onto his right side.
    “Bite hard, dear friend.” Yakov gingerly felt the injured arm, probing for the bone’s joint. When he found it he shifted all of his weight onto Andrev’s shoulder, grunted and pushed hard.
    The bone snapped into place with a sharp crack.
    A surge of pain detonated through Andrev’s body, and then his eyes rose to the ceiling and he passed out.

    Yakov crossed to a sink in the corner, grabbed a zinc bucket, and filled it with icy water. He took the cloth from Andrev’s limp mouth, drenched the towel in the chilled water, and slapped it onto his face. Andrev came awake, sputtering, his eyes filled with pain. “That hurt, darn you.”
    “With luck, you’ll still be able to play the accordion.” Yakov winked and tore the filthy sheet from the rope, all that offered them a curtain of privacy. It exposed them to the patients in the other beds, a half-dozen skeletal-looking prisoners, ill and unshaven. They stared over at the black Cheka uniform. Yakov barked, “What do you think you’re looking at?”
    The fearful patients looked away. Yakov ripped up the sheet to make a crude sling and draped it around Andrev’s neck and under his arm. “It’ll have to do for now.”
    “The train I saw is yours?”
    “It’s how I travel now, on Lenin’s orders. People say I’m his right-hand man. Would you believe it? Me, entrusted by Lenin himself.”
    “To do what?”
    “Hunt down and shoot enemy agents and spies, speculators, and counter-revolutionaries, and anyone who challenges Lenin’s authority.” Yakov picked up two worn gray blankets from an empty bed nearby and placed them around Andrev. “That should keep the heat in.”
    “What are you doing in a prison camp miles from anywhere? This can’t be just a coincidence, Leonid.”
    Near the door was a dented wheelchair with a square of rough-hewn wood for a seat and two wheels with rusted spokes. Yakov’s face was solemn as he crossed the room and pushed the wheelchair over to Andrev’s bed.
    “Do you feel up to talking? It’s cold outside on the veranda, I know, but at least it’s private.”
    “What’s bothering you, Leonid?”
    Yakov removed an envelope from his pocket, snapped open a page from inside. The document was authorized at the bottom with an official-looking red-inked stamp and a scrawl. He lowered his voice. “I’ve been given an order by Lenin that concerns you, Uri.”
    “What order?”
    Yakov handed him the page. “It’s for your immediate execution.”

8

    Yakov pushed the wheelchair onto the veranda. He sat on the edge of the wooden rail and took a dented metal cigarette case from his coat pocket. “Smoke?”
    Andrev silently accepted a cigarette.
    Yakov lit them both. He tossed the match in the snow with a faint hiss. They sat in the silence a long time, smoking, their breaths cloudy as they stared out at the camp’s ragged jumble of watchtowers, rusting barbed wire, and wooden huts. Wisps of wood smoke smoldered from chimneys; guards marched past with clusters of frail, exhausted prisoners, some in prison garb, others in tattered military uniforms of the tsar’s army.
    Andrev scratched his stubble and said finally, “Am I permitted to know why I’m being executed? Or do you Reds need reasons these days?”
    Yakov blew on the hot tip of his cigarette and stared out at the camp, all around them a wilderness of snow. “A White army battalion is only twenty-five miles away near Perm. They could liberate the prisoners to fight another day. Lenin sees army officers of your caliber as a threat if you’re liberated.”
    “No trial, no military tribunal, just a firing squad. Is that it?”
    “You Whites show no mercy to our men, either, Uri. This war is savage.”
    “Will