At sunset, the O squad reported that the subject had finished eating a delicious meal at the main train station’s first-class restaurant. He left the restaurant, bought a newspaper, and began walking toward his cabin. Being a careful man—or, perhaps, sensing danger—Netrebin would turn around from time to time, as if to see whether he was being followed. However, he would have been unlikely to notice two different men on horseback passing and re-passing him in the stream of Yekaterinburg traffic as he walked along Vodochnaya Ulitsa. At Zlatoustovskaya Ulitsa the O squad spotters left him alone. There would have been no point in alerting a target whose route, by then, was known to them anyway.
Yuryev, Feliks, Angelika, Mikhail and Natalia were waiting for a message in their safe house—not far from Sibirsky Prospekt, near the top of the Sennaya Ploshchad—to tell them that the target was approaching the bridge at Krestovozdvizhenskaya Ulitsa. The plan was to pick him up at Spasskaya and Aleksandrovsky, then follow him on foot as he walked towards his cabin.
The message came a little after 2200 hours. At this precise point Netrebin, walking along the quiet Krestovozdvizhenskaya Ploshchad, was not under direct observation.
As he circled the Old Believers’ church in along Krestovozdvizhenskaya, Andrei, who was on horseback, observed Netrebin already crossing the bridge. Andrei didn’t stop or slow down. He turned right onto Spasskaya and again onto Aleksandrovsky, breaking into a canter to alert Yuryev and his partners who were walking at a fast pace in the opposite direction.
Meanwhile, Lazar, who was driving a carriage, followed Netrebin at a slower speed, eventually passing him as he had nearly crossed the bridge. Lazar did not turn right. Instead he rounded Spasskaya Church, stopping at the far side on Uktusskaya Ulitsa. He waited parallel to the curb.
Mikhail and Natalia, with Yuryev, Feliks and Angelika following about fifty paces behind them, were crossing the bridge just as Netrebin was crossing Arkhiereiskaya Ulitsa perhaps 40 sazhens ahead of them. Since the Chekist was walking at a brisk pace, it was not easy to close that gap within the next block or two without betraying their intention to catch up with him. But any further on would have been too late. Four more blocks and Netrebin would be back at his cabin.
At that point there were hardly any pedestrians in the broad street. From the way Netrebin glanced over his shoulder on turning the corner, it looked as if he might be easy to spook. Should he decide to break into a run, Mikhail thought, they might not be able to catch up with him at all. Two more short blocks would take him to Zagorodnaya Ulitsa; then he would cross the street and turn the corner. From there he had only one more block and a bit to go. Once Netrebin had crossed Uktusskaya Ulitsa, they would probably have lost him.
Mikhail and Natalia tried to quicken their pace without giving the appearance that they were doing so, which was not easy. If Netrebin did not start running until they had halved the distance between them, it would be too late for him. At this point the teenager was clearly no longer oblivious of being followed. He, too, had quickened his pace and started glancing back at Mikhail and Natalia. Still, he wasn’t running. Mikhail found himself hoping that his target might be a courageous man of steady nerves.
To his misfortune, Netrebin was courageous. He didn’t break into a run as he turned into Zagorodnaya Ulitsa. He didn’t run as he passed the fruit stand, the grocer’s or the bar on the corner of the anonymous side street. He merely walked faster and faster, looking back over his shoulder one more time. Mikhail and Natalia, giving up all pretense of strolling casually, were by now less than 13 sazhens behind him. Yuryev, Feliks and Angelika were following them a little more slowly on the other side of the narrow street. Mikhail and Natalia could thus concentrate solely on their target, knowing that the others would keep everything secure behind them.
Though Netrebin didn’t run, Mikhail and Natalia might still not have caught up with him in time if he hadn’t decided to stop at the corner of Uktusskaya Ulitsa. This was strange behavior for a man who knew he was being pursued. There was absolutely no traffic in the street, yet Netrebin halted at the curb, hesitating in front of a school.
Mikhail and Natalia passed him on either side, stepping off the curb into the street. The reason they gave themselves for this was that they wanted to face Netrebin to make absolutely sure they had the right man. In addition they both had an aversion to gunning someone down from behind.
“Now,” Natalia whispered, and in the next second they had both turned, facing Netrebin, left hands rising in an arc, ready to pull back the slides of their silenced Browning 7.65mm pistols. Netrebin was staring at them, his eyes unbelievably wide, as he unfastened the flap on the holster on his hip. As Mikhail and Natalia had walked past him, Netrebin must also have stepped off the curb. Now, as he tried to back away as he raised his Nagant, his heels caught the edge of the pavement and he started falling backwards, his arms windmilling wildly. For some reason the thought that crossed Mikhail’s mind was that if they missed, their bullets would crash through the large plate-glass window of the school. He didn’t want to damage the window. Adjusting the angle of his gun slightly, he started following Netrebin’s falling body, squeezing off the first two rounds before the man hit the pavement. Twice more he pulled the trigger, then twice again. He was hardly conscious of Natalia’s gun pop-hissing in the same rhythm beside him, but from the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Yuryev, Feliks and Angelika waiting on the other side of the street.
Netrebin’s body was lying on the sidewalk as he fell, his feet still dangling over the curb. He made no sound, only his shoulders were squirming. Then, like a person trying to rise, he pulled up his knees and turned to his side, as he attempted to reach for his Nagant, which had dropped to the pavement with a clatter when he had fallen. Mikhail almost fired again, but at that moment Netrebin gave a series of short, sharp, rasping sounds as if he were clearing his throat, and in another second Mikhail could see his body relax. The youngest of the tsar’s assassins was dead.
When Mikhail looked up, the first thing he saw was a cigarette glowing in the dark. In a doorway, on the other side of the street. A man seemed to be standing there, or maybe two men, with a girl. Eyewitnesses.
Without a word, Mikhail crossed the street, turned right and started walking along Uktusskaya towards Arkhiereisky Pereulok. By now Yuryev, Feliks and Angelika had turned around, and Mikhail knew they would be walking to Khlebnaya Ploshchad the same way they had come, without passing the spot where Netrebin’s body lay. Natalia was following Mikhail. They could only hope that the eyewitnesses were not.
Lazar picked up all five of them on Khlebnaya Ploshchad in front of the Old Believers’ church. They drove back to the safe house, then directly to the train station.
Ural'skiy Rabochiy published a death announcement for Netrebin, declaring him a martyr, his murder a reactionary crime committed by White intelligence.