June 20, 1912
The Okhrana Headquarters was filled with commotion. The first day of Operation Judgement had come, so it was time for Chief Agent Sasha to hold a conference. After enjoying coffee and a light lunch in the dining hall, he made his way to the upper floor. He arrived at the conference room where ten other agents sat, discussing various parts of the plan to raid the Ipatiev House. Sasha took his seat at the north side of the table. After placing down his briefcase, he opened it. He looked with expectation at the agents he had selected for the mission, and he hoped that the plan would succeed. To eliminate the self-proclaimed leader of the Bolshevik movement would be a great achievement for the Empress.
"Silence, my fellow imperial agents. The time has come! Thanks to the successful interrogations of Viktor, Empress Olga requested for us to eliminate the Bolshevik threat. Now, I will pass out the plans for Operation Yekaterina: the elimination of the prominent revolutionary Mikhal Vaganov," Agent Sasha said.
Sasha passed a stack of papers to his side, and the agents passed them around. The interior of the room was silent. With their figures dimly lit by the electric lights, the agents muttered and whispered to each other about the plans. An hour passed. Sasha then spoke again.
"Do not doubt the plans, they have been concocted by me and the other leaders and strategists in the Okhrana. We have gone over them over a dozen times, so the chance of failure would be virtually zero."
"So... we will surround the Ipatiev House with support from the local military near Yekaterinburg?" one agent asked.
"Exactly... that is what we will do in roughly two days. In our commoner disguises, we will board Railway Seventeen to Yekaterinburg. Once there, we will inform the local garrison at night to aid us in the mission."
"Acknowledged."
"God Save Our Tsarina!" the eleven agents uttered, crossing themselves.
Mauve Room, Alexander Palace
As Empress of Russia, Olga soon realized that she could not afford to spend as much time with her three sisters. The realization gave the young adolescent Tsarina sorrow, and the extensive tasks that she dealt with everyday only added to her moodiness. No longer sheltered by her parents from the harsh realities of ruling an empire and the wrongs of the world, the young ruler knew one thing. She was ignorant from her sheltered life, an unsettling resemblance to her father. Her father, the late Tsar, had been partly ignorant about the troubles emerging in an ever changing Russia. He had met crisis with little action, and he had paid dearly.
"As much as I love my departed Papa.. as much as I miss him... I do not wish to end up like him. I can only hope that Operation Yekaterina will succeed in ridding the Bolshevik threat of one of its leaders..."
Olga, deep in thought, paced throughout the Mauve Room. She picked up a familiar photograph taken less than a year before. Frozen in time, four girls in swimsuits smiled at the camera. She remembered the day before the raid on the Livadia Palace. It was the last glimpse of her carefree and innocent past. Despite only the passing of about a month, it was still difficult for Olga to believe that she had once been this compassionate young lady. She had ordered the brutal interrogation of a man and his sister, after all. It had been only a week since the interrogation, yet Olga remained uncomfortable with her deed.
The new empress had looked into the profiles of Natasha and Viktor. Viktor was a traitor, but he would receive a lenient exile compared to an execution. His sister, however, committed no wrong against the Russian monarchy. She had in fact been a supporter of the Romanov regime. Olga could only ask herself one question. How far would she go to preserve the autocracy and keep order within Russia?
Olga held up her hands and examined them. They were without any physical blemish, with their skin smooth and fair. At the same time, they were the same hands that wrote the order to interrogate an innocent woman. Olga could only wonder what her late parents would have thought. Perhaps her father would be appalled at her ordered interrogation of a loyal supporter. Her mother would have felt the same. Despite the unjust nature of the interrogation, the young Empress planned to talk with the agents responsible. Instead of following her decree, they had maimed Natasha with shots to the leg. Their determination to execute their task may have been admirable, but they had still disobeyed her specific orders. Thankfully, the news of the interrogations had been hidden, so public backlash was not a problem.
"Agent Sasha is a loyal, intelligent, and practical man, ideal for getting things done... he will be a valuable henchman in later years if he could strictly follow orders," she thought.
A strawberry-blonde haired girl stepped into the Mauve Room, and she wore a worried expression. Olga noticed that her youngest sister had entered the room, perhaps to ask her why she was moodier than usual. She faked a smile although she did not know what to say to Anastasia.
"Olya, I did not ask you something earlier. May I ask it now?"
"Yes?"
"Why are you so gloomy? We never did anything bad to you, except for my prank with the fake dog droppings under your bed."
"Wait, you did that? I thought it was Mashka, since she seemed pretty bored," Olga said, widening her eyes in surprise.
"Uh... maybe?" Anastasia said, stepping back in fear.
"Do not be afraid, Nastya. I promised that I would not hurt you because of a prank."
Anastasia sighed in relief. "At least I can sleep well tonight."
"But, I need to tell you something as well," Olga said.
Anastasia kept silent, listening to her older sister talk. "I have many things to do as Tsarina. I have to make sure that everyone in Russia behaves. In a way, I am like the adoptive mother of Russia. Please do not dislike me for my recent temper, I just have a heavy burden to bear, and it gives me so much stress."
"I now know how hard it must be to hold the throne. If you want me to stop doing those pranks-"
Olga shook her head. "No! I enjoy them, even if they do cause a mess."
"You do?"
"Certainly, Nastya. You bring light to my family, even in these dark times."
Tatiana and Maria entered the Mauve Room. They stopped their pace as soon as they spotted their youngest sister, who sat on a white-painted chair. Beside Anastasia, Olga sat on a pink cushioned chair adjacent to the bookshelf. Both the middle sisters took their seats in the nearby chairs, and they noticed that a chess board rested on a nearby table.
"Olya, are you free of any duties at the moment?" Tatiana asked, getting up from her chair to take the chessboard.
Olga shrugged. "Maybe..."
"That is good enough. How about a game of chess? It has been some time since we have done something fun together!"
Olga opened her mouth to say no, yet the desperate looks given by her sisters left her with no option to refuse. "Fine."
"Yay, perhaps I can finally beat Olya at chess!"
"I doubt so. I have beaten you five times," Olga said, grinning.
"How about this time?" Anastasia said, challenging her oldest sister with a smug expression.
"Very well, I accept your challenge."
To the surprise of the eldest Romanov daughter, she lost. Perhaps she had a distracted mind that time. As Anastasia got off her chair and did a victory dance, Tatiana and Maria looked in awe at the chess board.
Maria gasped. "Nastya, you beat Olya, the best of us at chess!"
"But she took a little more pieces than I did from hers. She played good until the last part of the game," Anastasia replied.
"I was... distracted," Olga said.
"By what?" Tatiana asked, feeling concerned for her closest sister.
"It is a private matter... justice is at hand."
June 22, 1912
It was evening time. The Yekaterinburg Train Station, a grand marvel of the Russian Revival architecture, was filled with activity. Passengers boarded and unboarded their trains. One of them, a black-painted one, chugged slower and slower as it entered the train station. Within moments, the steam engine ground to a halt, and its pistons exhaled a large puff of steam. Another few moments passed as the train staff opened the passenger car doors and supervised the unboarding passengers. Among the moving flock of people, eleven men in civilian attire stepped out of the train together.
"Mister Sasha, we are an hour behind schedule," a man beside a tall blonde man whispered.
Agent Sasha, dressed in a plain gray coat and brown pants, shook his head. "Nyet, Mister Svetsky. The hotel will still allow us in, the actual deadline to claim our rooms is tomorrow at noon."
The dark-haired man, tall and flat-jawed, sighed in relief. Agent Sasha and the rest of his men approached the exit guarded by officers and security guards. One of them smoked a cigar, his face etched with weariness and boredom. With drooping eyelids oer brown eyes, he looked at the eleven approaching undercover agents.
"Identification?"
Agent Sasha felt annoyed with the seemingly incompetent guard in front of him, and he took out his Okhrana identification card. The sleepy guard yawned, but he stopped mid-yawn and widened his eyes in surprise.
"C-Carry on... Mister Sasha" the guard stammered.
"I expect better performance, Mister Yuri," Agent Sasha whispered, and the guard nodded and straightened his posture.
The rest of the men displayed their identifications, and the guards kept their expressions calm to respect the cover of the Okhrana agents. The eleven men stepped out of the station. They were met with a cold inland breeze, and they could see their breath fog. It was a usual Siberian night: dry, cold, and gloomy. Around them, countless travelers walked to their rides or waited on the plaza floor aside their luggage. The agents continued to the curb, where three cars idled in waiting.
"Hello, is this taxi fifty-three?" Sasha asked one driver.
The brunette woman in the driver seat turned her head. She looked around with her brown eyes and nodded.
"Get in," she said.
The two other drivers within the other two cars behind her accepted the ten other agents, and Sasha sat beside the woman. He glanced back at the station receding into the distance as the taxi drove away.
"You may call me Tasha, if we ever meet again."
"And you may call me Sasha," the agent said, smiling.
"Common name. It seems that most men I meet in my job have that name, or they know another Sasha," the woman said.
Sasha chuckled. After two days of continuous travel, he wanted to socialize. Outside of his job, he did not have much of a personal life. Except for visiting his local gentlemen club and listening to Beethoven, he did not do anything else for leisure. Now, he yearned for something. He realized that he felt so isolated no matter how many of his fellow agents he spoke with. He was thirty-two, and still alone. Something about Tasha captured his attention. She was quite comfortable with talking to strangers, and Sasha knew that she was an easygoing, trusting, and friendly person. The old adage seemed to make sense now: opposites attract.
Both Sasha and Tasha spoke throughout the ride, and they tried to hide their disappointment once the taxi reached its destination. The Svetlana Hotel, another tall building build in the Russian Revival style, towered eleven stories overhead. Sasha, attempting to hide his feelings of sadness, offered a generous two-hundred percent tip. Tasha gasped, and she thanked her customer. As a taxi driver, she was not paid very much.
"Spasibo, Mister Sasha!" she said, rubbing her eyes.
"Not a problem. Have a good night, Miss Tasha."
The other two taxis unloaded their passengers. Waving goodbye at Tasha, Agent Sasha watched the first taxi drive away. He had a feeling that he would see her again.
"We should find our rooms now. It is best to not waste time. Tomorrow will be a... busy day," Sasha said.
The undercover agents entered the hotel, hoping that their task would be finished. Soon, they would help their Tsarina avenge her late parents. The Livadia Raid would be avenged.
A.N: Despite the workload, I have managed to provide an update! The confrontation between Agent Sasha and Mikhail Vaganov will take place next chapter, so stay tuned!
