They had argued for some time over who should have the honour. In the end they decided that to avoid the suspicions of the neighbours Lev Hartmann and Sophia Perovskaya would connect the wires. Anna was to observe the explosion from a clump of bushes a little way from the track. In the first hours after her return to Moscow the question of who would detonate the mine seemed academic. Surely when word of Goldenberg’s arrest and the dynamite haul reached St Petersburg the Third Section would put two and two together and stop the imperial train? The atmosphere was tense and gloomy as Anna had known it would be when she tramped across the snowy wasteland to the cottage with her news. The burden of Grigory Goldenberg’s arrest had weighed heavier on her shoulders than a sack of dynamite.
‘Will he speak?’ Sophia Perovskaya had asked her. ‘You know him better than me, Annushka.’
Anna did not know what to say. Until tested, who could be sure they had the inner resources to withstand isolation, interrogation, torture? They had talked for many hours about what they should do and resolved to press on regardless, working day and night to complete the tunnel. The gallery kept flooding and they were forced to bail, a tight human chain along its length from the face to the cellar. At the end of each shift the work teams collapsed, exhausted and muddy, on to the pallets that were scattered about the house. Anna and Sophia forced them to eat and brought them warm water to bathe. Nerves were frayed, and it took the quiet determination of both women to drive the tunnel the last few yards to the track. Alexander Mikhailov had sent a cryptic few lines from the city, urging them to finish the work by the evening of November the 17th and promising to visit the cottage as soon as he was able. But his silence worried them all. Sophia Perovskaya learnt in casual conversation with one of their neighbours that the gendarmes had stepped up patrols along the railway and were carrying out house to house searches. On the evening of the 16th there was a loud banging on the door. Perovskaya snatched her pistol from the table and stepped closer to the bottle of nitroglycerine.
Shivering on the doorstep was a drunken neighbour who had taken such a skinful he was unable to find his way home. Hartmann took him by the arm and led him through a heavy snowfall to his cottage, where he received a hot reception from his wife.
They finished the tunnel on the afternoon of the 17th and sat around the samovar with their own exhausted thoughts. Alexander Mikhailov joined them at dusk, brushing the snow from his beard and black fur-lined coat, his cheeks boyish pink with the cold.
‘Well?’ he asked, slapping his gloves on the table.
‘It’s done,’ Sophia Perovskaya replied.
‘And the mine?’
‘In place.’
‘Good,’ and he beamed at them all like an avuncular older brother. His gaze rested on Anna: ‘And you? I’m sorry about Grigory. They won’t break him. He’s strong.’
‘Yes.’
‘First a toast.’ Mikhailov reached down to the bag at his feet and lifted out a bottle of vodka. ‘Glasses, please.’
And there was more: fresh bread, smoked fish and caviar, cold meats and cheeses and three bottles of Georgian wine.
‘To our work,’ said Mikhailov, lifting his glass to the men and women patiently waiting on his word. ‘The tsar has left the Crimea.’
Silence at the table. Mikhailov raised his glass again, making eye contact and saluting all of them in turn. After weeks of toil and anxiety the moment was almost upon them.
‘How can you be sure?’ Hartmann asked at last.
‘I’ve received word from “the Director”. The imperial train will pass through Alexandrovsk tomorrow.’
‘And the others are ready there?’
‘Yes.’
Hartmann raised his glass of vodka to return the toast: ‘To the Director, whoever he is,’ and he drained it and poured himself another.
‘The security police are arresting progressives in every town between the Crimea and St Petersburg as a precaution,’ Mikhailov continued. ‘But the route is the same.’
‘And Grigory? Do you know what they’ve done with him?’ Anna asked.
‘He is still in Odessa. The head of the Third Section has been told of his arrest and of the dynamite. Security is tight but they haven’t cancelled the train.’
That night the cottage was still for the first time in weeks, the tunnel sealed, the candles extinguished, but sleep was harder than ever to come by. Anna lay at Sophia’s side, conscious of her warmth and the scent of her hair. A kaleidoscope of images played through her tired mind: the plough at the front of the imperial train forging on through a suffocating wilderness of white, its plume of steam against the night sky, and the tsar at his polished table with gleaming silver, the rich red velvet of his liveried servants. Then a blinding yellow flash and the empire turned upside down.
‘It’s for the greater good, you know,’ whispered Sophia beside her. ‘Only if he dies can we hope for freedom. I wasn’t sure at first
…’ She turned on her side and felt with her tiny hand for Anna’s cheek and stroked it tenderly, so delicate, so childlike and yet so strong.
‘But I am sure now. He must die. We are doing a noble thing, Annushka, a noble thing.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, I am sure we are.’
The following day Alexander Mikhailov — a plump raven in his black coat — was on the doorstep again and it was clear from his face as he kicked the snow from his boots that he was the bringer of bad tidings. There was fresh word from the Director; the imperial train had arrived safely in Kharkov.
‘It passed through Alexandrovsk. Something must have gone wrong,’ he said, warming his hands round a glass of tea. ‘There’s been no report of an explosion. Zhelyabov and the others may have been arrested. That leaves us, the Moscow cell. The Director says the train will reach us on the evening of the 19th — tomorrow.’
There was nothing they could do but wait and listen to the steady ticking of the simple kitchen clock. Mikhailov decided to wait with them. The security police were crawling over the Moscow stations like beetles on a dung heap: ‘And they’ve issued a book of photographs — of wanted revolutionaries — I think I’m on page two,’ he said, with a chuckle. ‘Sophia, you are in there too. I’m afraid none of the rest of you make it. But don’t worry, I’m sure you will after tomorrow.’
That night they held a little party, with Mikhailov the master of ceremonies: ‘To celebrate our liberty and the first giant step in the revolution.’ Hartmann played the accordion and they sang Russian folk songs and danced in the flickering candlelight.
‘Dance with me, Anna.’ Mikhailov grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘The mazurka, Lev!’
He whirled her about the rough floor with aristocratic panache and she was too intoxicated by the dance and the excitement of what tomorrow would bring to care that he was squeezing her waist tightly and pressing her a little too close.
‘Huzzah, huzzah!’ they all cheered.
‘What a couple we make,’ he whispered.
And later, when she slipped out to clear her head, he followed her and offered her his fine fur-lined coat. She shook her head, but he insisted on placing it about her shoulders. As she stood in the sober night air listening to his talk of revolution and the people, one sad thought held her: nothing would be the same after tomorrow.
‘And have you thought of what I said?’ he asked her. ‘We would be comrades, loving comrades, serving the party.’ He reached out to put his arm about her shoulders.
‘No! No.’ She took a sharp step away. ‘Nothing will be the same. Nothing. How can you ask?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Tomorrow. After tomorrow.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. As long as we’re free…’
He seemed to want to say more but she had turned to the door and was on the point of stepping inside.
‘Please. We’re comrades,’ she said, glancing back at him. ‘That’s all. That’s all we’ll ever be.’
Mikhailov left before sunrise without a word to her. The others followed, slipping from the cottage one by one until only the detonation party was left sitting at the table. For the most part, they sat in silence. Anna tried to occupy herself by darning a hole in the elbow of her coat but she made a poor job of it. Every hour on the hour, Lev Hartmann climbed down to the cellar to check the water level in the tunnel and the detonation wire. He was to fire the mine from the window overlooking the railway embankment the moment he saw Sophia’s signal. At intervals, the floor of the cottage would tremble as a train rattled along the track and they would jump to their feet even though they knew not to expect the imperial train before nightfall.
They sat and ate a little bread and cold meat together at dusk. They had no appetite, but it would be many hours before they would have another opportunity. When it was over, they were to rendezvous at the corner of the monastery wall, where one of their comrades would be waiting with a horse and cart to take them to Moscow.
At eight o’clock Anna reached for her coat: time at last to take her place. Thank God, she thought, it will be over soon. Her head ached and her chest was tight with anxiety, and she could see the others were feeling the strain too. Sophia’s face was as stiff as a painted doll’s and Lev Hartmann had been biting his nails most of the day. As she hugged him goodbye, she noticed a pulse jumping in his neck.
The clump of bushes she had chosen for an observation post was little more than a stone’s throw from the track. Cocooning herself in her coat and blankets, she settled down to wait, glad to be free of the cottage walls at last. Second train, fourth carriage. The first would be carrying court officials and the emperor’s retinue; the target would follow soon after. It was a bright night with the snow reflecting the light from a sprinkling of winter stars and a white sickle moon. She would see the plume of smoke from the south first, and she knew Sophia would be watching carefully for the same. It was below freezing. Two pairs of woollen socks and she had stuffed her fur-lined boots with newspaper, but it was not enough to preserve the feeling in her feet. If the train was delayed she might be at her post most of the night, but she felt calmer on her own and in the open. From time to time, she jumped up and walked around in a tight circle, stamping her feet, slapping her hands against her sides, confident that she was hidden from view. She took comfort from the candle burning for her in the cottage window and once the door opened and she saw Sophia’s diminutive silhouette against the light.
After two hours she had sunk into something close to a stupor, her mind and body numb with cold. But at a little before ten o’clock she caught a glimpse of a small grey cloud on the dark horizon. It disappeared for a few seconds then reappeared a little closer, and her heart leapt into her mouth. There was no mistaking it now: a pillar of smoke and steam rising from an engine. It was the first train at last and it was gusting towards her, four, five, six seconds and she could see a snake of ten carriages. It disappeared into another cutting, but only for a moment. Closer and closer, just as she had imagined it, the snow plough at the front with the plume of smoke trailing back along the train. And as the ground began to tremble beneath her feet she wondered if it was really possible to dislodge such a force. On to the railway embankment it rumbled, past the little cottage and over the tunnel they had excavated over so many difficult weeks. The driver’s face was lit by the demonic orange glow of the firebox. Blazoned on the side, the symbol of oppression — the black eagle of the Romanovs. The curtains were drawn in the carriages but she could see soldiers on the plates between and more in the guards’ van at the rear. Then with a whoosh of steam it was gone, powdery snow swirling in its wake, and Anna was shaking with excitement for surely the tsar was only minutes away. Minutes.
She could imagine those two pieces of wire trembling in Hartmann’s rough hands. A small electrical impulse that would change Russia for ever. The tension was unbearable. She felt nauseous and struggled to check a desperate urge to jump up and pace up and down. She must be calm. The moment for action was almost upon them. The only way to free the people. Free Russia. She wanted to shout and jump and run to release the agony of waiting, and, pulling off her gloves, she dug the nails of her right hand into the back of her left, pinching herself, distracted for a moment by the pain. She could not say how long she waited, with every minute an hour, staring into a darkness broken only by pinpricks of light. Once, she was sure she saw something grey on the short horizon and sank back further into the thicket only to realise she had been tricked by her fevered imagination. And slowly the fear began to creep into her mind that the imperial train had been stopped and the sacrifices and hopes had all been in vain. So when at last she saw what might be a spiral of steam — lost for a few seconds then found — she would not accept it was the train until its shadow was quite unmistakable. And with certainty came a cold stillness. As if in a trance, she watched it draw closer and listened to the rails singing close by. Through a junction, across the river and, as it approached the long embankment, its klaxon split the night with a bellow like a wounded buffalo that chilled her to the marrow. Sh-sh-sh. On it came, the two-headed eagle just visible now on the carriages. Courtiers and guards, the kitchen, the dining car and the fourth carriage was the tsar’s saloon. Around the last corner. Seconds from the cottage. The yellow lamp at the front of the engine like a giant’s eye searching the track. The sh-sh-sh filling her mind. Thirty yards, twenty yards. Unblinking and breathless. And the engine rumbling over the gallery packed with dynamite. Now. Now. Do it now. And she bent her head, pressing her hands to her ears. One second, two seconds, three…
The white blast sucked the air from her chest and left her confused and completely deaf. For a few seconds she stared senselessly at the dense cloud of acrid smoke hanging over the track. Slowly she became aware of a distant whooshing like an Arctic wind. The engine had ground to a halt close by and the driver was releasing steam from the boiler. Where was the cottage? It was as if she were viewing everything through the bottom of a bottle. Dazed soldiers jumped from the train and half ran, half fell down the embankment into the snowy field below. As the smoke began to drift she could see the train twisting off the track with the ragged silhouette of a carriage on its side. A splinter of rail rose at a right angle to the embankment, and beneath it the raw earth rim of the smoking crater. It was as if a hand had scooped the train from the track like a toy then dropped it carelessly back. And she felt a warm rush of pride. They had done it! The tsar was dead. No one in the fourth carriage could possibly have survived the explosion. Debris spotted the snow beyond the embankment as far as she could see. Railwaymen and soldiers were still stumbling from the train and a small group was gathering at the lip of the crater. Rising to her feet, she eased her way back through the thicket and away from the hissing engine. Before long they would find the remains of the gallery and follow the trench back to the cottage. Her comrades would be waiting anxiously to hear what she had seen: what news she could bring them! What joyful news. The tyrant was dead.