No trial. Even the tsar had given suspects trials and had frequently given them exile instead of execution. Filip wasn’t so blind as to think the tsar had been an exemplary ruler, but the forces fighting to replace him hardly seemed an improvement.
Kral put a hand on Filip’s elbow. “They’re working to bring us home. We’ve got to protect the rails just a while longer.”
That was Filip’s permission to leave, and he took it. Kral was his friend, so Filip nodded and mumbled a thank-you. But what he really wanted to say was that the legion had been told Just a while longer so many times that Filip had lost count.
Omsk. Siberia. Russia. Filip wanted out. Once again, the legion was surrounded by hostile forces—both open enemies and slippery allies. That seemed to be how it always ended up. They couldn’t trust their allies—not the ones who had helped them defeat Germany and Austria-Hungary, not the ones working with them to stop the spread of Bolshevik power. The Allies had broken their promises. So had the Whites. His wife had betrayed him. God had abandoned him. But his brothers in the legion had always been there for him, and if they stuck together, eventually they would make it out. Or at least that was what Filip kept telling himself.
When they’d arrived in Omsk that spring, the White Army had offered the legion barracks, but they’d stayed in their boxcars, where they’d have an easier time defending themselves. The locals called it Czech Town. Filip strode to the boxcars, guided in part by the barks and howls of a pack of wild dogs that had found sympathetic Czech and Slovak cooks and had adopted the legion as a result. Now refugees fought the dogs for the kitchen scraps. Filip felt sorry for the refugees. But since not all of them were trustworthy, the dozens of guard dogs filled a need.
He washed the sweat from his face before going to his quarters. The day had been hot, but the evening breeze made the temperature more bearable. The men in his teplushka were quiet when he came inside. Solemn. Severe.
“Have the Hungarians advanced in Slovakia?” Filip asked.
Dalek shook his head. “They were pushed back.”
“Then what’s wrong?” It felt like a funeral. Filip wasn’t happy about the saboteur’s death sentence, but summary justice was the normal course of events lately. They were used to it.
Dalek glanced at Anton, who sat on a bunk, hunched over, his face hidden in his hands. Then he handed Filip a letter. “It’s from Larisa.”
The legion ran a postal service, but letters were still rare enough that they were normally passed along so everyone could read them. The men craved news almost as much as they craved trousers without holes or teplushkas with better insulation. But if the letter was from Petr’s wife, why had Dalek looked at Anton?
Dear Petr,
I’m afraid I have bad news that you’ll have to pass on. Veronika came down with fever about ten days ago. She didn’t think it was anything serious. Nor did I. She never regained her strength after Marek’s birth, so days of poor health were normal. But this one lasted, and then she started getting headaches and could barely open her eyes. She was in incredible pain. Don’t tell Anton that. I finally convinced her to see one of the YMCA nurses. It was typhus, and they couldn’t do much for her. She died three days ago. I wish I could report her last words, but she was too delirious to say goodbye. And she was in so much pain.
Marek had a fever. The nurses insisted on taking him and putting him in quarantine. They tell me his case isn’t as severe as his mother’s, but it’s too early to say if he’ll live or die. And if he survives, sometimes typhus addles the brain. You probably shouldn’t tell Anton that either. The poor baby. Fevers and chills and all alone in a big, crowded hospital. The nurse who took him told me she’d take good care of him. But I visited Veronika in that same hospital. Each nurse had a hundred patients.
Filip stopped reading. He met Dalek’s eyes, then looked at Anton. “Did he read it?”
Dalek nodded. Despite Larisa’s efforts to spare Anton, he knew the worst of it.
Filip couldn’t think of what to say. For him, the pain of losing a wife had been like having his heart thrown into a boiler. Nothing anyone said could make it better. And worry over a baby would only add to the pain. “Anton . . . I’m sorry.”
Anton stood and rushed from the boxcar.
Dalek grabbed Filip’s arm when he turned to follow Anton out. “Let him go.”
“What if he’s going to throw himself in front of a train?” Filip didn’t think Anton would, but he’d thought about it himself a few times since Nadia had left him. He wouldn’t have actually ended his life, but he’d grown reckless on patrols. Death had less of a sting when life sank into endless hurt.
Dalek released Filip with a nod.
Anton wasn’t within sight when Filip left the boxcar, but the mutt that followed Anton around was sitting and watching. Filip followed the dog’s gaze. A muffled sob rent the air, and Filip stood back, giving his friend privacy. Time passed slowly. A few more sobs. The dog crawled closer, but it, too, held back.
Which was worse? Knowing death had taken your wife and she was gone forever, even though she’d loved you? Or knowing you’d made a mistake and your wife had left voluntarily? She was still alive, might be happy even. She’d just discarded you.
The night was quiet, so Filip stepped forward. Anton sat with his back against a crate. His gaze flickered over Filip but didn’t meet his eyes. Filip sat beside him but didn’t say anything.
Anton inhaled and swallowed. “We never even had our own apartment. Just a curtained-off section of a zemlanky. I wanted to give her more than that, more than a life on the move as part of an army.”
“You gave her a son.”
“A son who’s probably dead. You’ve seen how typhus spreads.”
“You gave her a new country.”
“What good is a new country if she didn’t live to see it? And what good is it to me if everyone I love is buried in Russia?” The pain in Anton’s voice almost choked him.
Filip didn’t reply. Nothing he said could take the pain away, and Anton deserved time to grieve. Someday, he could take comfort in the fact that he’d loved Veronika and she had loved him and they’d worked together for a dream, started a family, done what they could with what time they’d been given. But that someday wasn’t today.
The notes of Dalek’s fiddle drifted on the warm night air. Where is my home? The notes seemed more melancholy now, as if the violin were grieving with Anton.
“Where is my home?” Anton whispered. “It was always supposed to be wherever Veronika was.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Nadia took a rushed bite of bread, then slowed to a more ladylike pace. Forced labor was transforming her body, making it thinner, stooping her shoulders, bending her back. But she didn’t want it to change who she was inside. Dignity and pride were all she had left. That, the clothes on her back, and the Samoyed coats she slept on.
Elena coughed. It sounded worse today. Her husband, a priest, had died the week before, and Elena moved slower and slower each day.
“How are you, Elena?”
Elena forced a half-hearted smile. “I survived another day. That’s something.”
“The road’s almost finished. Maybe our next project will be easier.”
“It might be harder.”
Nadia knew that as well as anyone, but she was desperately trying to give Elena a reason to hope.
Elena patted Nadia’s hand. Both of them had rough, blistered skin, with dirt caked into the fine lines of their palms and knuckles. “You seem sad.”
Nadia tried to shrug off the despair that huddled about each of the prisoners, ready to grab them if given an opening. It would leach away their hope—and their lives. “I miss my husband. And I lost a baby this past winter. If things had been different, I’d be showing by now.”