September 14, 1911. 22:15 PM
Kiev Opera Theater.
The red velvet curtain fell with a heavy thump, signaling the end of the second act. The orchestra stopped playing, and the sound of music was immediately replaced by the roar of two thousand simultaneous conversations and the movement of silks and sabers.
The heat was unbearable. Ladies frantically fanned themselves, and officers loosened their tunic collars.
In the orchestra's front row, Pyotr Stolypin stood up. He declined the offer to go out to the vestibule to smoke. He knew his white silhouette was a symbol. He turned toward the Imperial Box, back to the crowd swirling toward the exits, and rested his right hand on the orchestra pit's velvet railing.
From above, Alexei watched him. His heart beat with a painful rhythm against his ribs, syncopated with the pocket watch he clutched in his hand.
"There he goes," Alexei murmured.
Dmitri Bogrov had separated from the stream of people. He advanced against the current down the side aisle, to Stolypin's left. His face was pale, beaded with sweat, but his eyes had the glassy fixedness of a fanatic who has already accepted his own death.
He carried the rolled program. Inside, the Browning FN 1900 was cocked.
Five meters away.
Suddenly, a small figure dressed in pastel blue crossed his path. Anastasia.
"Oh, careful!" the Grand Duchess exclaimed, losing her balance with rehearsed clumsiness. She stumbled right in front of Bogrov, forcing the assassin to stop short to avoid stepping on her.
Bogrov hesitated for a second. He looked down, irritated by the interruption. That second broke his predator's trance.
Three meters.
Olga appeared on Bogrov's right flank.
"Allow me, gentleman," she said, grabbing the assassin's right arm under the pretense of helping her sister. Her fingers sought the nerve, digging in forcefully.
Bogrov felt sharp pain in his forearm. His survival instinct fired. He realized it wasn't an accident.
"Get away!" he hissed, pushing Olga violently.
The push alerted nearby people, but Bogrov could no longer wait to be at point-blank range. The perfect plan was falling apart.
He pulled his hand from his pocket. The program fell to the floor. The pistol's black steel gleamed under the gaslight.
"Stolypin!" Bogrov shouted, raising the weapon.
He was no longer at one meter, as in the original history. He was at three meters, unbalanced by Olga's push.
Tatiana, coming from the left, saw the weapon. She couldn't reach in time to block his arm. So she did the only thing she could do. She threw her closed fan with all her strength at the assassin's face.
The fan struck Bogrov on the cheekbone just as he squeezed the trigger.
'PAM!'
The first shot sounded like a whip crack. The bullet, deflected by the blow and distance, didn't go to the heart. It struck Stolypin's right hand, hanging at his body's side. The bullet pierced through the wrist, shattering the bone and spattering blood on the immaculate white uniform.
Stolypin screamed, turning from the impact.
Bogrov, blind in one eye from the blow and desperate, corrected his aim. Tatiana lunged toward him, but it was late.
'PAM!'
The second shot went to center mass. Direct to the Prime Minister's chest.
The sound was different this time.
It wasn't that sound of flesh being torn. It was a CLANG like a hammer striking an anvil wrapped in rags.
Stolypin was pushed backward by the bullet's impact force on his body. He crashed against the pit railing and fell sitting on an empty orchestra chair.
The silence that followed lasted an eternal second. Then, chaos itself.
"They've killed the Prime Minister!" a woman screamed.
Bogrov tried to shoot a third time, but a mass of silk and fury threw itself on him. Maria Nikolaevna, the strongest of the sisters, tackled him by the waist, knocking him down to the marble floor. The weapon flew out, sliding under the seats.
"Hold him!" Tatiana shouted, immobilizing the assassin's arm with a lock the guard captain had taught her.
The crowd reacted. Officers with unsheathed sabers and furious civilians rushed onto the fallen assassin and the princesses, trying to lynch Bogrov right there.
"Back! Everyone back!" Olga shouted, protecting the man who had just shot, knowing that if he died, the secret died with him.
In the box, Nicholas II had turned pale as a specter.
"Pyotr..." the Tsar murmured.
But Alexei wasn't looking at the assassin. He was looking at Stolypin.
The bearded giant sat in the chair, face contorted with pain. He pressed his shattered wrist, from which dark blood flowed. But he sat upright. He wasn't coughing pink foam. His eyes were open and focused.
Stolypin looked up, toward the box. With his left hand, the healthy one, he made the sign of the cross in the air, blessing the Tsar, repeating the historical gesture of his own death.
But then he did something new.
With trembling fingers, he unbuttoned the top buttons of his blood-stained white frock coat. Underneath, Neva's beige vest had a deep dent, fist-sized, right over the sternum. In the dent's center, embedded in the tungsten scales but without penetrating, gleamed the bullet's deformed lead.
He was alive. He had broken ribs, undoubtedly. A massive hematoma. But the heart kept beating.
Alexei felt air return to his lungs.
He climbed onto the box railing, defying protocol and security.
"SILENCE!" Alexei shouted with a voice that, amplified by the theater's perfect acoustics, thundered over the hysterical crowd.
Two thousand people turned toward the seven-year-old child standing over the abyss.
"Nobody touches the prisoner!" Alexei ordered, pointing to the group on the floor where his sisters struggled to keep Bogrov alive against the mob. "Special Section! Secure the target! I want him alive! If he dies, I'll have you all shot!"
A group of men with blue armbands, who had been waiting in the shadows, burst into the orchestra, pushing aside local officers with rifle butts and forming a steel circle around the Grand Duchesses and the assassin.
Alexei looked at Kulyabko, the police chief who stood paralyzed near the entrance, white as paper.
"And detain Colonel Kulyabko," Alexei added coldly. "For complicity in attempted regicide."
The theater fell into a silence so terrifying it seemed as if the crowd of people were at a state funeral. Alexei lowered his gaze toward Stolypin. The Prime Minister nodded slightly before the doctors took him away.
History had changed. The bullet had bounced. And now, it was Russia's turn to return fire against those who wanted to kill her.
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