The Last Romanov E-Book

David Moore

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In the shadow of revolution and the silence of exile, one man carries the memory of a fallen empire.
The Last Romanov is a sweeping historical novel that imagines a single Romanov survivor—a boy hidden in the ashes of history—who emerges decades later to challenge the world’s forgetting. From the bloodstained halls of Yekaterinburg to the quiet chapels of Switzerland, Mikhail Nikolaevich Romanov walks the perilous line between truth and myth, hunted by those who erased him and haunted by those he couldn’t save.
As Europe rebuilds itself and regimes trade one silence for another, Mikhail must decide whether to vanish forever—or raise his voice for the dead who never had one. A story of legacy, resilience, and memory reclaimed, The Last Romanov is a lyrical reckoning with the cost of survival and the power of a name remembered.

Leseprobe

Chapter 1: The Winter Palace Whispers

The scent of beeswax and burning birch logs drifted lazily through the high-ceilinged corridors of the Winter Palace. Snow pressed against the frosted glass like an unspoken warning from the world beyond. Within the gilded chambers, where once tsars plotted wars and sculpted empires, all that remained was a delicate hush—broken only by the distant tick of a French clock and the soft shuffle of polished boots on marble floors.

Grand Duke Mikhail Alexei Romanov paused at the threshold of his private study, gloved hand resting on the brass doorknob. Though the fire inside beckoned with warm promise, the air felt chillier than it should. As if the palace itself were holding its breath.

He turned his head slowly, scanning the hallway for movement. The guards had thinned in recent days, reassigned to barracks where angry mobs demanded food and justice. Even within these hallowed halls, revolution hung in the air like smoke. It crept through cracks in the plaster, curled into whispers along the tapestries, and clung to the silver in Mikhail’s teacup.

He entered the room and shut the door behind him.

“Misha,” a voice called softly from the far corner.

Mikhail didn’t flinch. He knew that voice. “You’re early, Dmitri.”

A boy no older than sixteen stepped forward from the window alcove. Dmitri Orlov, son of a minor count, had once been Mikhail’s fencing rival and now served as something stranger—confidant, courier, co-conspirator. His uniform hung awkwardly on his lanky frame, the insignia dulled by soot and time. His cheeks were pink from the cold, but his eyes held the calm of someone twice his age.

“They’re moving the Tsar to Tobolsk tomorrow,” Dmitri said without ceremony.

Mikhail let out a slow breath. “That soon?”

“The Bolsheviks want the family gone. They’re whispering of trials... or worse.”

Mikhail crossed the room to the hearth, where the fire crackled with unearned cheer. He removed his gloves with practiced grace and set them on the mantle. “They’ll never put Father on trial,” he murmured. “The people still see him as... something sacred.”

Dmitri gave a bitter laugh. “The people are starving. Sacred doesn’t fill bellies.”

Silence lingered between them. Outside the thick walls, Petrograd writhed under a blanket of snow and desperation. Bread lines had become battlegrounds. Soldiers defected to the streets, sometimes vanishing without a trace. The empire—so meticulously built on ceremony and blood—was collapsing like sugar glass.

Mikhail turned back to Dmitri. “What about us? The rest of the family?”

“You’re not part of the inner circle. Yet. But you’re still a Romanov.” Dmitri hesitated. “There’s talk of arrests. Maybe worse. Some think if they execute the Tsar, the rest will follow.”

Mikhail’s jaw tightened. “They won’t touch me.”

“Don’t be naïve. You may not wear a crown, but you share the name. You share the guilt.”

He looked down at his hands, pale and calloused from fencing practice. Hands that had never lifted a tool, never fired a rifle in war, never bartered at a market stall. Hands of someone born to rule—but now utterly powerless.

“I have no throne. No army. Not even a horse,” Mikhail said, his voice low. “What kind of Romanov am I?”

“The kind who can still run,” Dmitri said. “The kind who might survive this.”

Mikhail walked to the window and drew back the heavy curtain. Below, the Neva River stretched out like a frozen vein through the city’s heart. Smoke rose in the distance—factories or fires, he couldn’t tell. A group of figures shuffled through the snow-covered square, wrapped in rags and holding signs. From up here, they looked like ants. Angry, cold ants.

“They used to cheer us from that square,” Mikhail said. “Now they spit when our carriages pass.”

Dmitri joined him at the window. “Because your carriages didn’t stop.”

That stung more than Mikhail expected.

A knock sounded at the door.

Both boys turned, hearts racing. Dmitri instinctively reached for the pistol at his side.

“It’s just Sofia,” Mikhail said quickly, recognizing the rhythm. He opened the door.

His younger sister stood there in her velvet riding coat, cheeks pink from the courtyard wind. Sofia’s green eyes flicked from Mikhail to Dmitri, instantly reading the tension.

“You two always whisper when I’m not around,” she said. “What are you plotting this time?”

“Survival,” Dmitri said dryly.

She frowned. “You think they’ll come for us?”

“I know they will,” Mikhail said. “And we’ll be ready.”

Sofia entered and closed the door. “The palace won’t protect us. The Tsar can’t. Not anymore.”

Mikhail nodded. “That’s why we need to disappear before they decide we’re worth killing.”

“And go where?” she asked. “The borders are sealed. Every Romanov in Russia is either in hiding or in chains.”

Mikhail turned back to the hearth, where the flames danced like ghosts. “We have one advantage.”

“What’s that?”

“No one knows I’m still alive.”

Sofia blinked. “What are you talking about?”

Mikhail reached into the drawer of the writing desk and withdrew a crumpled newspaper clipping. He tossed it onto the table.

The headline read: “Grand Duke Mikhail Alexei Presumed Dead After Palace Fire.”

“They think I died in the servant’s wing blaze last month,” he said. “The body they pulled out was too burned to identify. They never knew it was the footman.”

Sofia stared at the paper, then at her brother. “You mean...?”

“I’ve been dead for three weeks. And if we’re lucky, I’ll stay that way.”

A beat of silence passed between them.

Dmitri finally spoke. “There’s a train out of Petrograd in two nights. I can get you both papers. Names, disguises, even forged letters of transit.”

“To where?” Sofia asked.

“Ekaterinburg,” Dmitri said. “From there... you vanish.”

Mikhail looked at his sister, his only remaining ally in a world that had turned upside down.

“You don’t have to come,” he said gently.

“I’m not letting them bury me alive in this palace,” she whispered. “If you run, I run too.”

He smiled, and for a moment, they were children again, playing in the palace corridors, unaware of politics or bloodlines.

“Then it’s settled,” Mikhail said. “We die as Romanovs. But we live as ghosts.”

And with that, the last embers of Imperial Russia flickered in the hearth—while outside, a revolution howled at the palace gates.

Chapter 2: The Mask of Alexei Volkov

Two nights later, Mikhail stood in the narrow shadows of Petrograd’s Varshavsky Station, wrapped in a secondhand wool coat two sizes too large, his hair roughly trimmed, and the Romanov signet ring hidden beneath a bandage on his left hand. The snow fell soft and steady, blanketing the train tracks like a funeral shroud.

The platform buzzed with whispered goodbyes, huddled figures, and watchful eyes. Soldiers with crimson armbands prowled the edges of the crowd like wolves hungry for dissent. Every suitcase, coat seam, and stare was a potential threat.

Sofia stood beside him, disguised as a peasant girl with soot rubbed on her cheeks and a shawl wrapped around her head. She had traded her pearl earrings for forged documents and a sealed envelope containing rations, stamped by a revolutionary commissar in ink that was still damp.

“You look like a chimney sweep,” Mikhail muttered.

She smirked. “And you look like a corpse they dug up and taught to walk.”

“Perfect,” he said. “No one notices the dead.”

They moved toward the train slowly, deliberately, neither too fast to draw suspicion nor too slow to raise questions. Dmitri had warned them that agents of the Cheka—the Soviet secret police—were embedded everywhere now. Men who smiled as they slit throats in cellars and disappeared entire families before dawn.

Mikhail gripped the handle of his satchel and stepped onto the train. The guard at the door—a grim-faced man with frost clinging to his beard—glanced at their papers and waved them through without a word.

Carriage Four smelled of coal dust, sweat, and fear. A woman in the corner rocked a baby wrapped in a frayed army coat. Two old men argued softly over a loaf of stale bread. No one made eye contact. Eye contact was dangerous now.

They found seats near the back. Mikhail settled beside the window, though he dared not look out. The last thing he wanted was to catch a glimpse of the Winter Palace one final time and feel the temptation to turn back.

Sofia tucked her legs beneath her and leaned close. “Do you really think they’ll let this train leave the city?”

“They’ll let it go,” he whispered. “But not everyone on it will reach the other side.”

Just then, a loud clang echoed through the station, followed by the shriek of metal grinding against frozen track. The train jolted, then began to inch forward, its wheels sighing under the weight of its passengers—and their secrets.

As they rolled out of Petrograd, Mikhail let himself exhale. For now, they were moving. For now, they were no longer Romanovs.

The journey eastward was slow, halting. The train stopped often for inspections, troop movements, or track repairs. Once, a man in a torn officer’s coat was dragged off screaming, accused of counterrevolutionary thoughts. Another time, two young girls were discovered with foreign coins sewn into their boots. They didn’t scream. They simply disappeared between cars.

By the third night, they crossed into the Urals.

Mikhail, under the name Alexei Volkov, began to memorize his story.

“Born in Kazan. Father a cobbler, mother dead. Joined a union printing press last spring. Fled after the building was seized by anarchists. Looking for factory work in Ekaterinburg.”

Each night, he repeated it under his breath like a prayer. If asked, he would not hesitate. Hesitation was treason.

In the cramped compartment, Sofia became “Anna Volkov,” his cousin. She practiced her peasant dialect with alarming skill, even convincing a conductor to give them an extra blanket.

“You should’ve been an actress,” Mikhail told her one night.

“I was,” she replied. “Just no one noticed.”

They laughed quietly, but the sound died quickly. Humor was a relic of a dying world, too fragile for the steel reality of the revolution.

By the time they reached Ekaterinburg, their food was gone, their breath visible in the morning air, and their nerves frayed like moth-eaten wool. The city loomed dark and gray under a slate-colored sky. Posters of Lenin fluttered from crumbling walls, and rifle-toting guards patrolled the streets with blank stares.

A man met them near the station gates. He wore a fur hat and had a broken tooth that whistled when he spoke. Dmitri’s contact.

“Volkov,” he said with a nod. “You’ll work at the foundry. She’ll wash laundry for the Red barracks. You keep your heads down, you live.”

He handed them each a stamped ration book and a sheet with an address scrawled in red pencil. Mikhail thanked him.

“Don’t thank me,” the man said. “I don’t want to remember your face.”

Their new lodging was a one-room apartment in a crumbling tenement on the outskirts of the city. The floor creaked. The walls smelled of cabbage and boiled soap. A single mattress lay on the ground, with straw poking through the thin ticking. There was no stove, only a potbellied iron drum for burning scraps.

It was, Mikhail admitted, the first honest room he had ever lived in.

He washed his face in a basin and caught sight of himself in a cracked mirror. The boy who stared back looked nothing like the grand duke who once rode horses through summer gardens and memorized Pushkin for tutors who never smiled.

The boy in the mirror had sunken cheeks, red eyes, and a scar along his neck from a broken carriage latch. But the eyes—they still burned. Not with entitlement, but with something fiercer. Survival.

The Romanovs were dead. Long live the ghost.

That night, as wind howled past the boarded windows and the city seemed to hold its breath once again, Mikhail opened his journal. The one he’d hidden in the lining of his coat all this time.

He dipped a match into wax, sealed the window shut, and scrawled three words onto the page:

“I am alive.”

Chapter 3: The Iron Furnace

The iron furnace at the Volkov Foundry roared like a wounded beast, belching smoke and cinders that coated everything in ash and silence. Mikhail—now Alexei Volkov—stood at the edge of the loading pit, shoulders hunched, face streaked with soot, hands blistered through thin gloves that offered little protection from the heat.

He had arrived at dawn under the eyes of a barrel-chested foreman named Yevgeny. One look at Mikhail’s too-clean hands and rigid posture had earned a snort of disgust.

“You’ll be sweeping slag until you learn not to look like a fcking prince,” Yevgeny had muttered.

Mikhail hadn’t flinched.

The men in the foundry didn’t talk much. They sweated, coughed, cursed in half-spoken grunts. They labored under iron beams, molten metal, and the unspoken fear that a single misstep could mean death—either by accident or by accusation. At least once a week, a worker vanished. Sabotage, the supervisors said. Or "counterrevolutionary thought." No one asked questions.

Mikhail kept his head down. He cleaned. He shoveled coal. He learned how to lift with his legs, not his back. At night, he came home with clothes stiff from sweat and smoke and collapsed beside Sofia, who scrubbed soldiers’ uniforms in freezing water until her knuckles bled.

They did not speak of palaces anymore.

On the fourth day, an older man named Arkady took pity on him.

“You’re not from Kazan,” Arkady said while they shared a strip of bread during their short break.

Mikhail hesitated, then shrugged. “Now I am.”

Arkady nodded slowly. “Good answer.”

The old man had been a blacksmith before the war, then a soldier, then a prisoner. His left ear was gone, a souvenir from the Whites, or so he claimed. He walked with a limp and drank kerosene when the vodka ran out.

But he liked Mikhail—or at least tolerated him. Taught him how to swing a sledgehammer properly, how to tell when the steel was hot enough to bend, how to avoid Yevgeny’s backhand when he was in a mood.

“Keep your spine soft and your eyes hard,” Arkady told him. “That’s how you live long enough to become invisible.”

Mikhail took the advice to heart.

At home, Sofia was becoming someone else entirely.

She spoke with the neighbors in clipped slang, haggled at markets, and made sour cabbage stew from nearly nothing. She had even traded one of her silk underdresses for a loaf of bread and a tin of salted fish.

“You’ve adapted fast,” Mikhail said one night, peeling a scab from his thumb.

Sofia shrugged. “I always watched. The servants. The guards. I paid attention.”

He gave a tired smile. “You’d have made a better Tsar than Nicholas.”

“Better than you, too.”

They both laughed.

It was the kind of laughter that came from exhaustion rather than joy.

But survival wasn’t enough. Not really.

Mikhail found himself staring too long at the Red posters nailed to brick walls. Lenin with his stern brow and outstretched finger. Phrases like “Freedom to the Workers” and “Death to Tyrants.” The irony twisted like rusted metal in Mikhail’s chest.

One morning, on his walk to the foundry, he spotted a boy—no older than ten—standing on a crate reading from a pamphlet. His voice cracked as he declared:

“The blood of the old world must water the soil of the new!”

The crowd clapped. Some jeered. Mikhail kept walking.

But he felt the weight of those words long after they faded.

Late one evening, after Sofia had gone to sleep, Mikhail unwrapped a bundle from beneath the floorboards. Inside was the Romanov ring, still stained faintly with soot, and a crumpled photograph of their family taken during a garden party at Tsarskoye Selo.

His father stood rigidly in his full naval regalia, his medals gleaming.

His mother, serene, fingers wrapped loosely around her rosary.

Sofia, grinning, barefoot in the grass.

And himself—seventeen, overconfident, unaware that this moment would become sacred by its loss.

He folded the photo and tucked it away. He did not cry. He had run out of tears in Petrograd.

One week into their new life, something changed.

A man arrived at the foundry wearing a brown trench coat and polished black boots. Not a worker. Not military. His hands were clean. His face unreadable.

The foreman stood straighter when he approached.

Cheka.

Mikhail’s blood went cold.

The man spoke softly to Yevgeny, who pointed vaguely in Mikhail’s direction. The inspector’s gaze lingered too long.

Mikhail returned to work, swinging the hammer, heart thundering in his ears.

He thought of the forged papers. The accent he still couldn’t get quite right. The memory of Ekaterinburg’s last Romanov executions.

That night, he did not sleep. Nor did Sofia.

They both knew what it meant when men in coats asked questions with no names.

The next morning, the inspector returned.

But this time, he didn’t speak to Yevgeny.

He approached Mikhail directly.

“You,” the man said. “Volkov.”

Mikhail wiped sweat from his brow and turned. “Yes?”

The man stared at him for a moment, then handed him a folded note.

“Report to the logistics station tomorrow. Your assignment is changing.”

Mikhail took the note, forced a nod, and tucked it into his coat.

He waited until the man was gone before turning to Arkady.

“What does this mean?” he asked.

Arkady’s face was grim. “It means someone somewhere thinks you’re too smart to be swinging a hammer.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s never good.”

That night, he showed the note to Sofia. She read it twice, lips pressed together.

“It could be a trap.”

“Or a promotion.”

“Or both.”

They sat in silence for a long time.

Finally, Sofia said, “If they’re watching us, we need to be ready.”

Mikhail looked at the photograph again, then at the Romanov ring.

“I was born a prince,” he said. “But I might have to die a ghost.”

She met his eyes. “Not yet.”

Chapter 4: Assignment 17-B

The Logistics Office sat on the edge of Ekaterinburg’s industrial quarter, a squat stone building flanked by rusting trams and half-shattered windows. It had once been a merchant’s storage hall, but like everything else under the Bolsheviks, it had been repurposed and rebaptized in red ink.

Mikhail arrived just before sunrise. A line of displaced workers, conscripted clerks, and half-starved students waited at the entrance. A Red Guard with hollow eyes stood watch, his rifle slung over one shoulder like an afterthought. The smell of wet coal clung to everything.

Mikhail stepped forward when his name was called.

“Volkov, Alexei,” the man at the desk muttered, flipping through a stained ledger. “Formerly at Foundry #4, now reassigned. Assignment 17-B. Congratulations.”

Mikhail blinked. “What is Assignment 17-B?”

The man gave a smirk. “You’re going to be literate for the people. Filing reports. Inventory. Ink and numbers. If you can count to ten and write your name, you’re already a commissar.”

He handed Mikhail a pass and waved him off. “Go through the side door. Follow the stairs.”

Mikhail nodded, heart pounding, and obeyed.

The offices were cold and dimly lit, with only oil lamps flickering on crooked desks. Crates lined the walls, labeled with words like “CENSORED,” “MUNITIONS,” and “PROPERTY OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE.”

At a desk in the back sat a woman in her thirties, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, eyes sharp as frostbite. Her hair was pinned into a no-nonsense bun, and a pistol sat openly beside her ink bottle.

“You’re the new one?” she asked without looking up.

“Yes,” Mikhail replied. “Alexei Volkov.”

She raised an eyebrow, scanning him from boots to brow. “You look too clean for a foundry man.”

“I was a union pressman in Kazan,” he lied smoothly. “The foundry was... temporary.”

“Hm.” She stamped a form and handed him a file. “Assignment 17-B is simple. You’ll sort manifests and requisitions for rail shipments—mostly grain, weapons, textile counts. Some are marked CLASSIFIED. You don’t ask questions. You don’t read more than you’re told. You just copy, stamp, file.”

She stood, nodding toward a desk across the room. “Sit there. Call me Comrade Yelena. And if anyone asks—no, we don’t carry gold shipments. Ever. Understood?”

“Understood.”

For the next several days, Mikhail drowned in ink.

He cataloged freight loads, stamped requisitions, and copied endless reports about missing shipments, sabotaged rails, and local uprisings. Every number felt like a quiet war.

But there were patterns—ones that he began to notice.

A shipment marked “FUEL—URALSK” reappeared a week later labeled “MEDICAL.” A train carrying coal to Perm vanished entirely from the manifest. Another was rerouted with a single handwritten note: “Interventionist threat—reroute to Tyumen. Immediate.”

Mikhail kept his observations to himself—but began copying key entries into a small notebook he hid inside the lining of his boot.

It was dangerous. Treasonous, even.

But it was also instinct. The Romanovs had ruled Russia by watching patterns in shadows. He was still a Romanov, no matter the dirt beneath his fingernails.

Meanwhile, Sofia remained alert.

One evening, as Mikhail returned from the office, he found her waiting at the apartment door, arms crossed.

“There’s a man watching the building,” she said without preamble. “He was there yesterday too. Pretending to smoke. Same coat, same hat.”

Mikhail stiffened. “Cheka?”

“Maybe. Or worse. A loyalist.”

Loyalists were sometimes more dangerous than Bolsheviks. Some believed any surviving Romanov was a symbol worth bleeding for—or killing to silence forever.

“I’ll change my route tomorrow,” Mikhail said. “And you need to be ready.”

“I always am,” she replied.

A week later, Comrade Yelena assigned Mikhail to accompany a shipment manifest in person to a rail depot on the outskirts of the city.

“You’ll deliver this directly to Commander Barinov,” she said. “Don’t read it. Don’t lose it. And whatever you do, don’t speak unless he asks.”

Mikhail nodded and took the sealed packet, tucking it into his coat. But curiosity burned.

That night, after ensuring the apartment was secure, he broke the wax seal with trembling fingers.

The document was brief—just two pages—but its implications were volcanic.

“Transfer Order: Manifest 17-B — CONFIDENTIAL. 3 crates: Bolivian rifles (1904 issue). 2 crates: Imperial jewelry, unregistered. 1 crate: Romanov archive (partial). Escort to Tyumen: Red Guard detachment.”

Jewels. Archives. Rifles.

They weren’t just redistributing wealth—they were moving imperial secrets, quietly, like rats hoarding gold in the walls.

Mikhail resealed the envelope with pine gum and a heated coin, then packed his bag.

He had to see where it led.

At dawn, he arrived at the rail yard, the sky bruised purple with cold. Commander Barinov was already there—broad, bald, and as emotionless as granite. He took the manifest without a word and gestured to the cargo.

Crates. Locked and stamped with red wax. No guards—just four workers silently loading them onto a steel car labeled “BREAD.”

Mikhail caught a glimpse through one slat.

Velvet.

Crimson velvet.

And something that looked a lot like a golden orb.

He turned away before Barinov noticed his stare.

“Manifest confirmed,” Barinov said. “You’re dismissed.”

Mikhail nodded and began to walk, but the image burned in his mind.

The Romanovs had been declared dead. Their treasures looted. Their archives burned.

But here, in a rail yard shrouded in fog, their legacy was being quietly buried—boxed away in a train bound for Siberia.

Someone wanted the world to forget them.

Mikhail wouldn’t let that happen.

Not without a fight.

Chapter 5: Velvet and Steel

The train groaned like a wounded beast as it vanished into the morning mist, carrying with it six crates and a secret worth more than gold. Mikhail stood by the rusted fence at the edge of the rail yard, hands buried deep in his coat pockets, breath rising like smoke as the locomotive disappeared beyond the treeline.

He didn’t move for a long time.

The image of the crimson velvet inside the crate clawed at his mind. The glint of a golden orb, so unmistakably imperial, so utterly damning. If even a portion of what he’d seen was true, it meant the Soviets weren’t destroying the Romanov legacy—they were hiding it.

And hiding it meant they feared it.

He turned and began walking back toward the center of Ekaterinburg, footsteps crunching over the hard-packed snow. The clouds above had thickened into a dull, endless gray. The city felt heavier somehow, like it was sagging under its own history.

Back at the apartment, Sofia was boiling a pot of nettle soup. The scent was earthy and bitter, but warm.

“You’re late,” she said, not turning around.

“Went to the rail yard.”

“Volkov errands?”

Mikhail nodded, stripping off his coat. “The shipment I mentioned—it wasn’t just rifles. They’re moving imperial artifacts. Family jewels. Archives.”

That caught her attention.

Sofia turned, wiping her hands on a towel. “Archives?”

“Personal records. Documents. Maybe letters. Maybe things they don’t want discovered.”

“Why would they keep them?” she asked. “Why not burn them like the rest?”

“Because someone wants to control the narrative,” Mikhail said, lowering his voice. “To decide what survives and what doesn’t. Even in revolution, power needs mythology.”

She crossed her arms. “You’re not thinking of going after it, are you?”

Mikhail hesitated.

Sofia groaned. “God in Heaven, Misha. We just got new identities. A place to breathe. You’re talking about chasing ghosts through snowstorms again.”

“They’re not ghosts,” he said quietly. “They’re pieces of our truth.”

Sofia’s face softened, if only slightly. “And what would you even do with them? Publish the Tsar’s diary in Pravda? Tell the people your great-grandfather slept in silk while they ate rats?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But someone has to know the truth. The real truth. Not just what the Bolsheviks carve into stone.”

She turned back to the soup, sighing. “I should’ve left you in that damn palace.”

That night, Mikhail couldn’t sleep.

He lay awake, staring at the cracked ceiling, listening to the hiss of the wind as it threaded through the window frame. Every sound outside made his fingers twitch toward the knife he kept hidden beneath the mattress.

By midnight, he rose and lit a stub of a candle.

From beneath the floorboards, he pulled out the journal again.

He flipped through his pages—notes about troop movements, shipment codes, rail schedules. It looked like nothing. But together, it formed a map. A pattern. The Bolsheviks were consolidating more than just resources. They were consolidating memory.

He turned to a fresh page and began sketching the train car's markings: BREAD / 74-K / TYUMEN RAIL

Tyumen.

It was far enough to be remote. But not far enough to be unreachable.

He added the date, the time of departure, and the manifest number: 17-B.

And then, at the bottom of the page, in faint pencil: They buried us, but they forgot we were seeds.

Over the following days, Mikhail returned to his duties in the logistics office, careful not to arouse suspicion. He maintained the rhythm of a dutiful worker: eyes low, back straight, hands busy.

But beneath the routine, he was preparing.

He memorized the station codes and rail assignments. He slipped copies of rerouting orders into his boot. He built excuses for short absences, citing illness or delayed shipments. And at night, he trained himself to move quickly, silently.

Sofia watched it all with a kind of resigned dread.

“You’re going to get us both killed,” she said one evening as she stitched a torn glove by the fire.