Without even inviting me to take a seat, Hanbury said, ‘The Emperor is not listening. He will not change fast enough, or cannot. He is doomed to fall.’

I looked immediately in Prince Mikhail’s direction, expecting shock, but saw none.

Hanbury kept talking: ‘We cannot save the Emperor, but we can save the boy.’

The two of them had been working on a plan – a contingency plan should events take a dangerous course, as they were now doing.

‘The Emperor is a target,’ Mikhail told me. ‘The Imperial Family are all at risk, and all the more as they are together so often.’

Hanbury told me he had Locker-Lampson ready to act when called upon, though he had estimated there would be more time, that it would be spring before the situation became critical. That time was now upon us.

Who was Locker-Lampson?

Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, of the British Navy. He commanded an armoured-car division that the British had sent to Russia. They served in the Caucasus and Romania.

He was, I believe, a member of the group behind the plan, with Hanbury and Mikhail, and perhaps others, though it was not in my interests to enquire. In the event of a revolution, it was believed that a counter-revolution could be rallied around the Imperial Family, if they could be taken to safety.

There was no Russian plan that could ensure this, as no Russian plan stayed secret, and no Russian plan could be made based on the fall of the Emperor, who would stand no contingencies and see such a thing as betrayal.

A British ship was to be held at Romanov-on-Murman. British ships came and went when the shipping lanes were open, and Hanbury would ensure at least one was always in port. In the event of revolution, Locker-Lampson and his armoured cars could have the Imperial Family there in two days from Petrograd. The Imperial Household would be sent in convoy to Crimea as a diversion. Locker-Lampson would conceal the family in his armoured cars and require free passage to Romanov-on-Murman from any army units that stopped him.

But the port was closed for winter and the northern roads were likely blocked by snow.

‘Spring is too long away,’ Hanbury said. ‘And we are best placed to act before any revolution, rather than to wait for it, though the Emperor himself won’t budge an inch until then.’

He told me Locker-Lampson was all for planning around the Emperor, but that he and Mikhail believed that, when the revolution came, there would be no way of moving the Emperor – no way of saving him – as he would be the focus of far too much revolutionary attention. But we could save the boy.