Together in Paris

1.

Leningrad was full of snow to the bone. The few people without a running task ran through the streets, wrapped into their winter clothes, their gazes bent over the floor on which they laid their feet, their hands in their warm pockets, their faces hidden by hats. Bolshevik soldiers on patrol inspected every single lane, their glacial eyes peered at every single face hidden by coats, their ears ready to receive any word that could push them to capture someone.

Something that hadn't been too rare, lately.

All the spies went silently to the huge stone palace not so far from the city center, the Smol'nyj Institute, while the howling of the icy winter wind grew louder as it slammed against the rigid corners of the building. At the time, most of the Bolsheviks were in charge of the patrol, and many returned very late at night within the walls of the headquarters, sometimes even escorting some criminal or some traitor discovered plotting against the new regime. But there was a part of the revolutionaries who remained into an office, seated on a rickety chair stolen from the Winter Palace in front of a typewriter, hidden behind large glass windows that overlooked the square, where, at least once a week, the firing squad did justice.

Or at least this was what he had been taught.

He typed almost without thinking, like an insensitive machine facing the massacre his superiors required him to write. Bolshevik essays were more than necessary at the time, especially with all the gossip which flowed through the streets like the waters of the Neva river. The hope of the population had been in fact ignited by the rumor that said that Anastasiya, the youngest daughter of the ex Tsar Nikolaj II Romanov, had survived the 1918 massacre.
And he had had the task of verifying that voice.
He pressed his fingers on the needed keys at an extreme speed, blood throbbed into his veins, his eyes burned painfully; he tried to justify himself believing he was just tired, but he was actually well aware that that was not true.

It can therefore be concluded, by the clear evidence provided previously, that the Grand Duchess Anastasiya Nikolaevna Romanova did not survive the Revolt of July 17, 1918.
The Romanov case is definitively closed.

He read those words for so many times he lost count, something inside him broke with every single syllable his dark eyes crossed. He took the last sheet of the report out of the typewriter, took a pen from the inkwell attached to his desk - also stolen from the Winter Palace - and signed what he had just finished with long gestures.
A hoax.
A fake.
Gorlinsky had been very clever.
He had understood that it would have been impossible for him to complete the mission. And he had been right, but he had managed to bluff, to bring him photos that had convinced him of his efficiency, his superiority to human feelings, his loving Russia even more than himself.
He pushed back his chair, got up quickly, slipped on his coat and the only pair of gloves he had ever had, of that blue with shaded stripes to which he had grown affectionate through the years. He approached the hook, where his military hat dangled, raised a hand to take it, but hesitated. A violent jolt ran through him, an invisible cut wounded his chest again, every fold of the headgear seemed to look filled by pain, the same emotion he had seen in those blue eyes. He squeezed his eyelids tightly and bit his lower lip. Again, his eyes began to burn. He had to roll with it. The question was over, Anastasiya was a buried ghost.

She had never survived.
He had never met her.

He ripped off the hat from the hanger's arms, he pressed it on his head to the point of concealing his impetuous and raven tufts; he squeezed the sheets of the report among his free fingers and started walking with his head bent, focused on his steps more than on his current mission. He walked the entire headquarters without looking at anyone, not even those who greeted him with a military beckoning.
He always felt wrong since he had returned.
Reaching the reception desk, he slammed the folder on Vera Viktorovna Mikolovič's desk. She was Gorlinsky's secretary, but all St. Petersburg - no, Leningrad - knew about their affair, except for Gorlinsky's wife, of course. Yet no one had made an example out of them.