The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II Read Online Free PDF Page B

Okhrana .
     
    What the Okhrana also did not know, and would not find out until some time later, when it was too late, was that on the way to Cannes, Michael‘s chauffeur-driven Opel tourer had gone only 30 miles, before the chauffeur put the car on a train to Cannes, while Michael and Natasha caught an overnight express to Munich, Salzburg and their intended destination, Vienna. They were going to get married there, but it would not be in a Russian church, but in a backstreet Serbian church.
     
    What the Okhrana forgot, but Michael remembered, was that Serbian Orthodox marriages were as valid as Russian ones; while he and Natasha had been in the sanatorium for three weeks, the banns had been duly called in the Serbian church — the first on September 30, the last on October 14 — without anyone tipping off the Okhrana that they were his. 17 The man who arranged all this while the Okhrana was asleep in Bad Kissingen was undoubtedly the redoubtable Matveev, Natasha’s lawyer brother-in-law, though he left no calling-cards. Given the level of secrecy required, he was the only man competent enough and trusted enough to arrange a marriage the Okhrana would not think a possibility.
     
    The Church of St. Savva, on the ground floor of a modest three-storey building at Veithgasse 3, was hardly known outside the world of the émigré Serbs living in Vienna. The bearded priest-in-charge, Father Misitsch, was a worldly man greatly impressed by the enormous fee he was being offered for an hour or so on a quiet Tuesday afternoon — 1,000 Austrian crowns ($5,000 in today’s money), according to informed gossip afterwards. 18 To make it even better business, the two witnesses were members of his own family, including his wife Vrikosova. 19
     
    None were vulnerable to any threat from the Okhrana ; as for the banns, the names mumbled each Sunday morning were stripped of any rank, and meant nothing to the half-attentive Serbs in his congregation. Nobody of importance married at St. Savva; whoever Michael Romanov might be — or Rom’nov in the mumbled mouth of Father Misitsch — he was no one of any interest.
     
    Matveev also arranged the necessary residential qualification for Michael and Natasha, even though they were not there. Officially, for the purposes of the marriage register, they would be said to be living at Johannesgasse 23, which thus disguised the fact that it was actually a modest hotel, the Tegetthof — a hotel was not sufficient for residential qualification — managed by one of Father Misitsch’s Serbian flock, and a man more than agreeable to the good business Matveev had on offer for ‘borrowing’ his private flat in the hotel. 20 After all, Michael and Natasha were not going to live there, and would not be in the hotel for more than an hour or so, while they freshened up after their journey.
     
    Since Michael was fully briefed on the arrangements, and knew precisely where he was to be and at what time, Matveev was clearly in telegraphic contact with someone other than Michael, given that any cable to him ran an unacceptable risk of being intercepted by a paid Okhrana informant.
     
    Michael’s valet and chauffeur were both absolutely trustworthy, and his chauffeur certainly knew what was afoot when he took over the car at Wurzburg, and put it on a train. It can be assumed, therefore, that one or both were party to the plan, and key to its success, though there is no trace of their complicity —or of anyone else’s.
     
    Suffice that at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, October 16, 1912, when Michael and Natasha arrived at the church to be greeted by Father Misitsch and his two witnesses but no one else, it was exactly as they expected it to be. 21 Shortly afterwards they were married and signing the register in their full and proper names. With that done, they left Vienna immediately and caught the train to Venice. The Okhrana had been outwitted and made to look like fools.
     
    It was the briefest of honeymoons: next