Hanbury put his plan into action the following day. He arranged for a telegram to be sent to him from London, announcing a cure or a much-improved treatment for the Tsarevitch’s illness. Together, we took the telegram immediately to the Emperor. It was the first time I had seen him in his Cossack uniform, for he was about to inspect Cossacks. The overcoat was red in colour, with gold trim, and it reached to just above the ankles. The cut was entirely different from his regular uniform, distinctly Russian, not at all British. He was not simply a European general in that uniform. There was a dagger fixed to the belt, directly at the front, and in his hand he had a tall, black hat made of fur, perhaps the pelt of a black bear.

He wanted the cure brought to Petrograd, as we knew he would, but Hanbury told him it was fixed in place at St Bart’s Hospital, which is in London. It was supposedly a contraption the size of a room – a special chamber – and had been developed by scientists working on a secret weapon. The British Government would not allow it, nor its scientists, materials nor plans, to be moved from the country, for fear of them falling into German hands.

Hanbury had his script well prepared. ‘Due to the esteem in which you and your family are held by your British cousins and indeed the nation’ – that was what he said – ‘Britain wishes to offer the Tsarevitch this treatment the moment he can be brought there. His welfare is our welfare too.’

The Emperor was swayed by the prospects of a well son, of a boy no longer to endure the pain and suffering of his disease. It felt dreadful to be offering this false hope, but I told myself we were, in our own way, acting in the boy’s best interests. Of that there was no doubt, even if there was also no cure. Hanbury had read the Emperor right.

‘I can’t deprive him of this,’ the Emperor said, his lines of Cossack soldiers growing cold outside as snow began to fall. ‘And nor can Russia. An able heir, able in body as he is in mind, his life expectancy the same as any man’s . . . But this must be done secretly, Hanbury, or there is great risk. How do we manage it?’

Hanbury and I were ready for that too, of course. The Emperor was soon to go to the front and, in our plan, would take a double in place of the Tsarevitch. It would not be the first time such a tactic had been used. The Tsarevitch would travel with me as my great-nephew, the two of us making our return to the United States. That was what we would say. We would do so by railroad to Norway. The railroad would allow us to travel expeditiously, and provide increased protection, for the Imperial Family had a fleet of railcars built to withstand attack and which would allow us to take a small personal guard without scrutiny. Use of such a railcar – the gift of it from the Emperor – was not an unusual practice for someone of my status as a representative of a head of state. It was hardly the way the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of War, and indeed the President, had imagined I would travel, but I was already committed to plenty that might surprise them, and this seemed a minor detail.