“Where are we?” she asked the priest’s wife, Elena, one spring morning. They moved slowly but often. She wanted to pinpoint their position on the map in her mind.
“Just behind the front lines. If the Whites chose to, they could shell us.”
“Is the Czechoslovak Legion with the White Army?”
Elena shrugged. “Last I heard.”
Nadia paused for a moment and stared at the pile of dirt on her shovel, hating what her efforts were accomplishing. The Bolsheviks had prevented her return to her husband, and now they were forcing her to work against his cause.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Halt!” Filip leveled his rifle at the man trying to shove a bomb under the train switch.
The man bolted. Filip didn’t give chase because the man was running right at Anton and Petr. He was too busy looking back at Filip to notice them as they stepped from behind a discarded boxcar. They wrestled him to the ground and bound his hands.
Filip pulled the bomb out and held it at arm’s length, then handed it to Anton. “Is it set to explode?”
Anton examined it. Petr took a step back, as did Filip. “It’s not armed.”
Filip hadn’t really thought it was. Why arm a bomb before it was in place? “Right. I’ll let you dispose of that. I’ll take our saboteur in and see what Kral wants us to do with him.” Filip pushed the man on ahead of him.
“Do you want to tell me why you were planning to blow up the train switch?” Filip asked.
The captive just grunted. Filip didn’t press it. Interrogations weren’t his responsibility, and he didn’t want that burden. He could guess the man’s motives. Destroy the track either to help the Bolsheviks or to hurt the White Russians.
Filip and the rest of the regiment—what remained of it—were now stationed in Omsk. They’d been met with friendly crowds the summer before, but the locals were no longer so welcoming a year later. The Bolsheviks hated them. The White Army called them cowards for refusing to shed blood in a civil war that wasn’t theirs. And the peasants and workers were hostile because they were suffering.
Now that the legion had pulled back from the front, they were scapegoats for everything going wrong with the White Russian cause. And though the White Russians had made some progress, they’d had far more setbacks. Among their more significant failures was the collapse of their brief democracy and the establishment of an unlikable regime in its place. It shouldn’t have been difficult to do a better job of governing Siberia than the tsar or the Bolsheviks had, but the Whites were suggesting otherwise.
Maybe he was being too hard on them. They were trying to keep the peace while waging a devastating war. Enemies were everywhere, and despite promises of foreign help, little made it beyond Lake Baikal.
Filip turned the prisoner over to another legionnaire and reported to Kral.
“So, this bomb. It would have killed people, not just destroyed the tracks?” Kral asked when Filip finished.
“Probably.”
Kral nodded. He was a major now. In the past months, the hair of his temples had become sprinkled with gray, and his face had more of a leanness to it. “I suppose that makes his fate fairly straightforward. You’ll come with me?”
Filip didn’t want to join Kral for a chat with the White Russian authorities on whether the saboteur should be shot or merely imprisoned, but if Kral asked, he would go. Kral was worn out, stretched thin, burdened by a war that wouldn’t end. Filip knew exactly how he felt, because he felt the same thing, with the extra burden of a broken heart. Soon, maybe, they’d leave Russia for good. If only he could forget Russia for good as well.
“Gajda’s visiting.”
Kral’s remark took Filip by surprise. Admiral Kolchak, the Supreme Ruler of Siberia, had given General Gajda command of a White Russian army. Filip had long admired Gajda—without him, it was unlikely the legion would have survived the summer of 1918. But by joining the White cause, he’d left the legion, throwing in his lot with a dictator. The legion had always wanted democracy for Siberia, so Gajda’s decision had felt a bit like a betrayal. Still, the man could fight. And Filip didn’t want the Bolsheviks to win. He could cheer Gajda on as long as the rest of the legion wasn’t required to join him in risking their blood for Russia.
“The visit. Is it going well?” Per Kolchak’s orders, Gajda had marched toward Moscow. He hadn’t made it. None of the White Armies had reached their objectives that spring. Most had suffered horrendous casualties. Gajda’s men had fared a bit better, but only because he’d disobeyed orders and pulled them back before they’d been overwhelmed by the ever-growing Red Army.
Kral pursed his lips. “Gajda’s troops evacuated refugees with them. Perhaps the right thing to do but not the most expedient. I don’t think Kolchak was impressed.” Military expediency was everything during a civil war. But if they forgot mercy, what did that make them?
Kral explained the purpose of their visit to the guards outside Kolchak’s office. Then they waited. Filip stretched his shoulder, testing it. He still felt his wound on cold nights and during sudden movements, but the injury didn’t hamper him anymore. He was even getting better at putting Nadia from his mind. He, like most of the legion, was ready to go home. Go home and try to forget everything about his time in Russia, including his wife. If she was still his wife. She might have obtained an annulment by now and simply not informed him.
Nadia. Did she have any idea how much he’d loved her? And how much it still hurt that she’d abandoned him? He hadn’t prayed since that day he’d returned to their empty boxcar to find her and the annulment paper gone. His faith was tied too closely to his marriage, and with her gone, he’d fallen out of all the habits they’d built together.
Gajda’s voice sounded from the other side of the wall. The conversation between him and Kolchak carried clearly into the hallway because both shouted. Something hit the wall with a thunk and shattered.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have expected much. You’ve never even attended military high school,” Kolchak’s voice said.
“And you?” Gajda yelled back. “You’ve commanded a few ships. Does that qualify you to govern an empire?”
“You withdrew without permission.”
“I saved those men’s lives!”
“And now the Red Army is taking all that territory!”
“If I hadn’t been forced to beg you for supplies, maybe we could have held it. But your staff was growing rich on the black market, and my men were freezing to death!”
The guards shooed them farther along the corridor.
Filip glanced at Kral. “Why are we still here? Everybody hates us now. The Americans won’t come west of Lake Baikal, the Japanese are mistreating the peasants, and Kolchak is making alliances with warlords who pillage and murder at will. You know what a peasant said to me the other day? He said the Bolsheviks were bad, because they stole everything. But that the White Army is worse, because they steal and they kill.”
Kral glanced at the door. The arguing continued, though the words were no longer distinguishable. “Do you think we’re on the wrong side now?”
“No.” Filip couldn’t support the Bolsheviks. “But I’m not sure we’re on the right side either. We’re in the middle of a mess.” All around, people were dying. They were starving, falling ill with disease, and being swept before armies and bandits. “Our country needs us at home.” Hungary had attacked Slovakia, and according to accounts printed in legion newspapers, the fighting had been intense. They wanted to go home. Their country wanted them back. And most of Russia wanted them gone. So why were they still in Siberia?
They made their report, eventually. Kolchak ordered the saboteur shot without trial. It was all Filip could do to keep his mouth shut—and he wouldn’t have stayed silent had the man not been caught in the act.