Dalek’s face was hard, mirroring the contempt Anton felt. “You offered to steal her away, didn’t you? Take her to Shanghai. Is she there now?”
Oleg’s eyebrows crinkled up. “I offered to take her away. She wouldn’t come.”
“She refused you once, yes. But then she changed her mind the next day, and you ran off together. Isn’t that what happened?”
“No. She wanted to stay with her husband. I haven’t seen her since.”
Dalek’s face turned pale. Anton felt sick to his stomach. If Nadia hadn’t run off with her former fiancé, where had she gone? They handed the stretcher up into a truck and assisted a few more patients from the boxcar.
“Do you think he told us the truth?” Anton asked.
Dalek ran a finger over his mustache. “Why would he lie? If he had her somewhere safe, there wouldn’t be any point. And I heard his plan—if she joined him, he planned to desert.” Dalek shook his head. “I’ve got to tell Filip.”
***
Filip rummaged through a pile of thick wool coats. Kral pried open a crate to reveal new boots. A pair of Czech patrolmen had reported a black-market cache in a local warehouse, and Filip and Kral had gone to check on it. The more they searched, the more they found.
“I thought Semenov was holding up supplies,” Filip said. The warlord, nominally in charge of the rail to the east of Lake Baikal, was notoriously crooked. The constant shortages were maddening. Filip’s own coat and boots were full of holes, but at least he had somewhere warm to sleep. These supplies had been meant for men at the front. “Why are these here?”
Kral frowned. “Because someone thought they could make money from them.”
“Maybe if Kolchak weren’t so corrupt, the Red Army wouldn’t be advancing on Omsk.”
“I don’t think Kolchak is crooked, but all his friends are, and the cocaine he uses dulls his brain.” Kral let the lid to the crate drop. “These aren’t ours, so we can’t take them. The White Army will be here soon enough. Maybe if we mention what we found to a few of them, this equipment will end up in the right hands.”
Filip nodded. He hoped Kral was right, because the army retreating before the Reds fought in rags.
He followed Kral back to the legion’s Omsk headquarters. A long line of supplicants waited outside the two-story brick building. The legion was pulling out, and the refugees didn’t want to be left behind.
Kral sighed as he examined the long queue. “They all want the legion to evacuate them. I wish we could help, but we barely have enough room for our own men. Better make sure the regiment is prepared.”
“Yes, Brother Major.” Filip took his leave, grateful that he wasn’t the one who had to turn down the mass of desperate people seeking an escape. The city’s population had swollen fivefold. Refugees crowded into homes or lived in earthen dugouts with thatched roofs, but few of them wanted to stay, not with the Red Army driving the White Army east at an alarming speed.
He remembered another refugee, desperate to escape the Bolsheviks. He hoped Nadia was somewhere safe. She should have been waiting for him in Vladivostok. But at least she wasn’t lying beside the train track in a pile with a dozen other corpses. She’d betrayed him, and that had left him confused and miserable and cold inside. But he couldn’t wish hardship on her, not when he still loved her.
Maybe it was his fault anyway. He’d hidden the truth, and he’d made the arrogant mistake of thinking a former aristocrat could be happy with him. He’d been wrong, and now he was suffering the consequences.
Dalek and Anton found him midway between headquarters and their boxcars. Something was wrong. Their faces were pale, and though he had the impression they’d come looking for him, neither spoke.
“What is it?” Maybe the engine that was supposed to take them east had broken down. Or maybe the Reds had bypassed Omsk and taken the rail line behind them, cutting off their escape. He hadn’t thought the Reds were close enough for a flanking maneuver, but Gajda had managed feats like that. The right commander could make it happen.
Dalek swallowed. “Filip . . . when I told you that your wife ran off with Petrov, I thought I was right. Based on what I’d heard and the fact that she was gone . . .”
Filip held his breath. His friends normally tiptoed around the subject of his wife’s desertion. “And?”
Anton spoke. “And we just found Petrov among the White Army’s wounded. He said she turned him down. She didn’t run off with him.”
“She didn’t?” He paused. “I don’t understand. She was gone.”
Dalek nodded. “Yes. But she didn’t leave you for Petrov.”
“Then where did she go?” She wouldn’t have run off by herself, and the village was isolated other than the rail line. “There were partisans out that day, but we chased them away. There weren’t reports of anyone else, were there?”
Dalek shook his head. “No. But that doesn’t mean no one else was about. Criminals, freed war prisoners, bandits. Filip, I think maybe she didn’t leave voluntarily.”
Nadia hadn’t left him. His mind seized that thought and held it fast. She hadn’t abandoned him, hadn’t turned her back on all their plans. But where was she? “I have to find her.” The village where they’d lived was six hundred miles west, and the Reds were in the way, but maybe he could get through by sleigh.
As Filip turned toward the train station, Dalek grabbed his arm. “Yekaterinburg fell to the Reds in August. You can’t go back. But she knows where to go. If she’s alive, she’ll head for Vladivostok.”
“What if she can’t? Dalek, I didn’t even look for her. She might have been abducted, and I did nothing to help.” He’d promised to protect her, but he hadn’t even asked the villagers if they’d seen something suspicious.
“You wouldn’t find anything now. It’s been ten months. There won’t be any clues. No trail to follow.”
Dalek was right, but how could Filip not go looking for her? She might need him. And she might still love him. He couldn’t go to Yekaterinburg, but he still went to the station, with Dalek and Anton on his heels. He stepped over the crowds of refugees huddling on the floor and went to the walls plastered with little notes.
If Vanya wishes to find Olga, meet at the station in Irkutsk.
Ivan, I’ve taken the children to Tomsk.
Nikita can be found at Uncle Leonid’s home.
Maria, I’ve gone to Chita. Kostya.
They covered the walls, layer upon layer of paper scraps scribbled in hope and desperation. It would take hours to read through them, and something told him Nadia hadn’t been in Omsk lately. If she had, she would have contacted the legion. But he couldn’t leave without looking, searching, hoping to find some bit of paper with her name or his.
Dalek disappeared and came back with the entire squadron. But they didn’t find Nadia’s name at all, and the only message for a Filip was from a Daria.
Desperation drove Filip to the hospital next, in the hope that Petrov would have more information, some clue about where she might have gone or who might have taken her. But Petrov couldn’t tell him anything useful, could only add to Filip’s growing guilt and worry.
“A woman like that fell in love with you, and you lost her?”
Knowledge that Nadia was missing and Filip hadn’t searched for her was like a blade to his heart. Petrov’s question was like a twist on the hilt. Dalek looked ready to punch the man despite his wound, but Filip warned him off with a shake of his head.
“I’ll find her.” And Filip meant it.
“How?” Petrov’s condition didn’t prevent him from glowering with indignation. “She deserved better than you.”
Filip knew that. He’d known it since he’d stood over her limp body with shaving lather on his face after she’d been thrown from her horse in the Ukraine. But she’d chosen him, she’d loved him, and he intended to be worthy of that love, no matter where he had to go or what he had to do. He just needed a place to start.