He fingered his face. Not enough of a beard to pass as a peasant. Omsk had factories, so he would pretend to be a worker. “I can’t go in my uniform.”
“No.”
“I don’t have any civilian clothes. Not in Russia, anyhow.” Maybe not anywhere. Almost four years had passed since he’d folded his clothes and put them away in a trunk, then stored it in his grandmother’s attic so it wouldn’t be in the way. The whole lot of it was probably nothing more than moth-eaten scraps by now.
“I’ll find you some.”
“Thanks. And, Dalek?”
Dalek paused.
“If I don’t make it back, look out for Nadia for me, will you?”
“I’ll see she makes it to Vladivostok. But you really ought to come back and look out for her yourself. Perhaps the next time you return, she’ll accept a kiss as greeting.” Dalek’s eyebrows did a suggestive tango.
Kiss Nadia? He’d imagined it, but that daydream would never be anything more than fantasy.
Dalek returned with appropriate clothes as Filip finished preparing the horse and his gear. He wouldn’t take a rifle—that would be too conspicuous. Just food, a small pistol, sharp eyes, and a keen ear that understood most Russian, even if it didn’t always pronounce it correctly.
“Nazdar, Filip.”
“Nazdar, Dalek.”
Chapter Seventeen
Filip nodded as the peasant spoke on and on. “They requisitioned all our spare grain. If they do that again after harvest, we’ll have to choose between starving or eating our seed crop. We were all in favor of revolution but not this communism.”
“What of the White Army?”
The peasant shook his head. “We haven’t seen much of them.”
“And the Czechoslovak Legion?”
“I have no problems with them.”
Good. The local population was unlikely to turn on them. Sometimes small favors like a willingness to sell hidden grain or feigned ignorance when the other side was collecting intelligence was just as useful as armed men.
Filip said his goodbye and mounted his horse. He’d spoken to a dozen peasants the day before, and most of them had said the same thing. Revolution had promised them land, but land did them little good when they couldn’t keep their crops. War had already created a manpower shortage for agriculture, and food requisitions were making things worse.
As Filip approached Omsk, light reflected off the Irtysh River. The land was flat, giving him a view both of the older, more established part of the city and the newer, southern portion built up around the rail depot. Both lay beyond the river. The railway was the more important target, so he rode there first and found a peasant selling an assortment of used furniture. Filip asked him to watch his horse. He’d find out more on foot.
The station looked almost like a palace, and it was guarded. Heavily. A dozen armed men sat smoking out front. Inside, more guards patrolled. Their watchful eyes scanned everyone, but no one stopped Filip. He joined a line of passengers and pretended to study the posted schedule. When he was within three passengers of the ticket booth, he left the line and went out onto the platform, striding with purpose so no one would stop him. He didn’t like working out in the open like this. He was used to gathering information across battlefields as a soldier, not across train depots while disguised as a civilian.
The repair facilities for the trains were old, neglected during the war, because resources and manpower were needed elsewhere. But the rails were sound enough to keep traffic moving.
Of more importance than the state of the track was the state of enemy defenses. Thus far in its encounters with the Bolsheviks, the legion had been better organized and more experienced. Judging by the state of the train station, that advantage would be less significant in the coming battle. Trenches lined the earth on the edge of the station, and sandbagged positions guarded nearby buildings. Omsk was prepared for war.
Filip retrieved his horse and rode through the main town. He wasn’t in Omsk for sightseeing, but the neoclassical buildings were a dramatic change from the log huts and Tatar yurtas of the countryside. Red guardsmen walked the muddy streets. They seemed more relaxed here than they’d been at the station, but they were just as heavily armed—all of them.
Over the course of the afternoon, Filip gathered an estimate of how many guardsmen there were. Roughly two and a half thousand, five times the number of legionnaires waiting at Marianovka Station. And most of the legion wasn’t armed, but the enemy seemed to have rifles to spare. Filip had also seen four field guns and heard rumors of over one hundred fifty machine guns. The legion had thirty.
He turned west, and a few armed men pointed at him, making him even more eager to get away. He pushed his horse into a trot. He had the information he needed as well as details about the roads and buildings they’d be attacking, so it was time to return to his echelon.
As he approached the bridge over the Irtysh, he slowed and dismounted. The bridge was an impressive piece of architecture. It was also mined. Several guards patrolled the area, and a few railroad workers went about their duties. The bridge was important. Without it, no trains could move east. Would the Bolsheviks destroy it to stop the legion’s progress?
A civilian worker with upright posture met Filip’s eyes for a long moment, gave a slight jerk with his head, then slowly turned away and trudged back toward town. If Filip stayed where he was, he’d draw attention to himself, so he led his horse after the man, hoping he wasn’t walking into a trap. The man waited midway along the first street they came to, then continued when Filip saw him. Filip hadn’t been imagining it; the man wanted him to follow. But to what purpose? It was hard to know who was aligned with the Reds, who might be sympathetic to the legion, and who would sell out anyone suspicious for the promise of reward.
The man entered an unmarked wooden building. Filip tied his horse to a birch tree and slipped a hand into his pocket, over his pistol. He glanced around the street, looking for sentries or anything else that ought to cause alarm. In the end, he trusted his gut and followed the man inside.
He waited, standing near another man who was large, bearded, and armed with a vicious-looking knife. The armed man watched Filip closely but stayed seated on a chair.
“You seem interested in the bridge,” the first man said.
Filip waited, wanting to hear more before he replied.
“The Bolsheviks have the bridge, so you can’t be with them.”
The way the man spoke made it sound like he wasn’t with the Bolsheviks either. Filip had been under the impression that most workers sided with the Reds, but maybe these men were exceptions. “Perhaps I’m just curious. It’s not every day one sees a mined bridge.”
“It’s wired at eighteen points.”
Eighteen? Filip let out a low whistle. “Who mined it?”
“The Bolsheviks. To stop counterrevolutionaries. But I know where the detonators are.”
“Ah. And you’d be willing to sell this information?”
The man huffed. “I’m not a mercenary. I’m an officer who was almost murdered when the Bolsheviks convinced my soldiers that the war was hopeless and discipline was something that could disappear with the tsar. And you aren’t a native Russian. I can tell by your words. A Czech, by chance? That’s who the Bolsheviks seem most keen on stopping.”
Filip glanced at the man with the knife, then back at the former Russian officer. “It seems we have a common adversary.”
“If you were to tell me the legion’s plans, we could coordinate our efforts.”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss them.” Refusal could backfire but not as badly as sharing plans with a false ally could.
The man didn’t show anger. He continued calmly. “The tracks to Yekaterinburg. We can cut them. You’re already occupying the tracks to Chelyabinsk. And the ones to the east. We have an opportunity to cut the Bolsheviks off and destroy them.”