She turned and walked back along the main road. She wanted to run, but that might draw too much attention. And she hadn’t tested her recent recovery. If she pushed her body too hard, the pain might start again, and once it started, it might become debilitating.
A man came around a corner. Their eyes met for an instant.
Nadia immediately turned to cross the street. She couldn’t breathe, the fear was so intense. A year had passed, and the courtyard had been dark. She was disheveled now and looked like a peasant instead of an aristocrat. Maybe Orlov hadn’t recognized her.
“Nadia Ilyinichna Linskaya.” His crisp, cool voice held a touch of surprise but no doubt.
Pain or no pain, it was time to run. She didn’t look back; she sprinted forward.
The pain found her quickly. Thumping boots and shouts found her soon after. Someone grabbed her arm and yanked her to a stop. He spun her around, and she was face-to-face with the man who’d executed her parents.
Orlov stared at her, his face impassive. Two others stood nearby, also in long black jackets, but the one who’d thrown her to the stable floor wasn’t there. That was some consolation. She’d rather die than suffer that type of treatment again.
He released her arm. “You are Nadia Ilyinichna Linskaya, are you not? I still have a warrant for your death.”
She considered lying but didn’t think it would help. He’d recognized her. She’d run. This was only a test to see if she would confess. “That was once my name.”
“I’ve been looking for you for a year.” He rested a hand on his hip. “That’s not all I’ve been doing, of course. You’re not that important.”
“If I’m not important, will you let me go? I’ll leave Russia. I won’t work against your revolution.” Her husband might, and all his friends, but she wouldn’t. She just wanted to find Filip and go to Czechoslovakia with him. She’d given up on Russia. The Bolsheviks could have it if they’d just let her and her husband go in peace.
He shoved her toward one of his men. “See that she doesn’t get away.” He and the other man marched off toward the station, leaving her with the one remaining guard.
She looked at him more closely and recognized Jakub Zeman.
“Looks like you married the wrong Czech.” He looked her over. “I offered to help once. For the right bribe, I might offer again.”
She held out her bag of food. “I have dried meat. And enough rubles for a train ticket.” If he took her money, she wasn’t sure how she’d get to Filip, but she’d worry about that later. Maybe she could trade her clothes. She still had one extra coat. She wore it now, but she could get by with a single coat, especially if the weather cooperated.
He scoffed. “I don’t want peasant food. And Kerensky rubles are easy to forge. It’s probably worthless.”
“My coat?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t have anything else.”
“A woman like you?” His eyes looked her over again, lingering on the skin of her neck. “You always have something to offer.”
Her stomach roiled as she grasped his meaning. Her beauty was her only asset. Illness and dirt had diminished her allure, but Jakub Zeman still found her desirable. Or maybe it was more a wish to have what he’d once been denied. The bandits had already made her their plaything. Would it be so wrong to trade a bit of time with a man she didn’t love in exchange for her freedom? What was more important: virtue or survival?
He leered at her, a smile of anticipation pulling at his mouth. “You’d better decide soon, or Orlov will be back, and it will be too late. He’s incorruptible. Wouldn’t dare release a prisoner who might come back to hurt the revolution. But I can see right through you. You’re no threat. Say you’ll cooperate, and I’ll help you escape.”
What would Filip tell her to do? She was never going to see him again, she knew that now. She could bribe Zeman, but even if he kept his word and helped her slip past the Bolsheviks, there were bandits to avoid. She’d found kind peasants once, but she was just as likely to run into cruel ones. Or she’d freeze to death. The only men she could trust were the legionnaires, and she had no idea where they were.
Orlov returned. She waited for him to pull out his revolver and point it at her. A quick shot while she stood, like what had killed her parents and aunt. Or perhaps he would tell her to remove all usable clothing so it wouldn’t become blood-splattered, and then he’d kill her.
Instead, he pushed her toward the train station. She followed his directions, relieved and horrified at the same time. She’d come close to accepting Zeman’s offer.
Orlov stopped at the edge of the depot and faced her. “I’ve seen enough death, so I’m commuting your sentence. Fifteen years hard labor. That will atone for your life as an aristocrat. There’s a group leaving now. You’ll join them.”
Fifteen years. Fifteen winters in Siberia. It was better than death—or was it? Hard labor might have the same result. It would just take longer. And if she survived, how could she hope to find Filip again after so long? She had to let him know what had happened. “May I write a letter?”
“That will depend entirely upon the leader of your labor battalion.” Orlov nodded at one of his men—not Zeman—and he led her to the group of downtrodden prisoners.
She’d escaped the bandits only to be captured by the Bolsheviks.
***
Nadia assumed she would be transferred to a concentration camp, where enemies of the revolution were gathered so they couldn’t infect the rest of the population with their heretical views.
Instead, she and the other prisoners were crowded into the basement of an old house. They were so tightly packed that there wasn’t room for them to lie down. Normally, lying on the cold floor would be unappealing anyway, but she was still weak from her ordeal. In her current circumstances, there was little she wouldn’t have lain on.
Some of the prisoners looked like criminals. Others like nobility. Had she once been so easy to spot? Filip and Dalek had discussed it back in Penza. Something in the way an aristocrat stood and walked and moved, regardless of the clothing they wore. A few priests were among the captives. They seemed safer to stand beside than the criminals, so she worked her way over to them.
The guards gave them no food. Nadia still had hers, as did some of the other prisoners. She shared a bit with a priest and his wife and with a woman who looked to be in her twenties.
“Thank you.” The woman chewed the dried meat slowly, savoring it. “You weren’t on the train with the rest of us.”
“No. I escaped once. About a year ago. The Cheka found me again.”
“They’re good at that.” The woman muttered a curse. “I’m Tanya.”
“I’m Nadia.”
“Thank you for sharing your food. The only reason I’m sitting on this freezing floor is because I’m too dizzy to stand. They haven’t fed us much since they stuck us on the train.”
“How long was your journey?”
“We come from Moscow. But our train didn’t have priority. We were on it for ten days.” Tanya shivered. “Someone tried to assassinate Lenin back in August. The Cheka were bad before that, but they’re worse now. They’ve unleashed a Red Terror. We’re but a few of the victims.”
Before the sun rose, guards herded them from the basement and rushed them to the town’s outskirts to dig trenches. The Bolsheviks supplied the shovels. Even with gloves, Nadia had blisters within an hour. Long before the day ended, her back ached and her throat was parched. But she was luckier than some of the others because she at least had warm clothes. As a reward for their labor, the workers were given a few slices of black bread. That night, they slept in a barn.
The next day, they cleared trees for a road. The day after, they shoveled gravel. Then they dug more trenches. Hard days turned into cruel weeks, and brutal weeks turned into hellish months.