The Diamond Secret / Suzanne Weyn / 209 pages / Fairy Tale Challenge

Ivan Ivanovitch Navgorny was a soldier serving with the Red Army at "The House of Special Purpose" on July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg, Russia.  He hears the gunshots that massacred the Czar Nicholas, the Czarina, and their five children.  The jewels sewed into the petticoats of the duchesses caused the bullets to ricochet, necessitating a second round of shots.  The entire imperial family had been killed, save the grandmother in exile in Paris.  Ivan is present at the burial of the family and notices that the corpse of Anastasia is moving.  When she stands, she is shot yet again. Ivan deserts the army.  Rumors abound that Anastasia survived the carnage and has gone into hiding.  Rewards are offered for her return by her grandmother, the Empress Maria, and Lenin.  Ivan and Count Sergei Mikhailovitch Kremnikov devise a scheme to pass a barmaid, a lady with no memory of her past save highly vivid dreams, off as Anastasia, to collect the reward and avoid starvation.  As they journey toward Paris, they are being stalked by a scar-faced man.  Is he the evil Rasputin's henchman or a member of Lenin's Secret Police?  Did Ivan and Sergei not realize that if the White Russians accepted Nadya as Anastasia a political whirlwind with tremendous consequences in Russia, and possibly even the whole world, would be unleashed?  They hadn't intended to start a counter revolution.