“Yesterday I told some of Kolchak’s entourage that they should take a walk and not return.” Petr climbed from their teplushka to stand beside Filip. “I hope they took my advice. They all look like they want to kill Kolchak and take the gold.” Petr scanned the foreign troops.
Another legionnaire approached them, someone from a different regiment. He asked after a few friends, then looked back at the armed men around the station. “Semenov’s men attacked the station a few days after Christmas. They were driven back but took hostages with them. Thirty men, one woman. They beat them over the heads and dumped them into Lake Baikal. The locals aren’t too happy about it. No trial, and most were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Arrested by Kolchak’s regime. The people blame him.”
While the senior officers consulted, Filip went to the train depot. He searched the notes plastered on the walls for news of his wife but had no success. Please, Lord, he prayed silently for the hundredth time that day. Please help me find her.
Negotiations dragged on, with officers rushing in and out of Kolchak’s train, in and out of the telegraph office. After looking through all the scraps of paper twice, Filip went to find Dalek. No one in Glaskov Station knew where Nadia was, but maybe Dalek would at least know what was happening with the supreme ruler and the gold.
Dalek nodded at Filip when he entered the telegraph office, then handed something to Kral before waving Filip closer.
“What’s happening?” Filip asked.
Dalek frowned. “The Social Revolutionaries control the coal from here east. We can’t get through without their cooperation, and they insist that Kolchak can’t move beyond Irkutsk. They want the gold too.”
“Of course they do.” Who wouldn’t want 650 million rubles in gold? “What are we going to do about the admiral?” Kolchak was under their protection. Handing him over seemed dishonorable, but the alterative—fighting their way east while the Red Army closed in from the west and their trains stalled for lack of fuel—sounded like suicide.
“That’s what they keep going back and forth about.” Dalek crossed his arms. “I don’t like Kolchak, but I hate to turn him over to SRs. I expect they’ll arrest him.” The Social Revolutionaries hadn’t forgiven Kolchak for seizing power from them in Omsk after a coup fourteen months ago.
“Better the SRs than the Bolsheviks.” Filip looked through the window at the swirl of troops outside. “We could force our way through. Take the coal. We just have to get past Lake Baikal, and then the Americans and the Japanese control the stations.”
Dalek snorted. “Yes, and the Japanese have been so friendly with us here. As has their close associate, Ataman Semenov.”
Filip frowned. Dalek was right. Working with the Japanese might not be any easier than working with the Social Revolutionaries. The SRs were reasonable, for the most part. They were opposed to an autocratic tsar and also opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat. Their vision of government wasn’t so different from the Czechoslovakian Republic Filip was so eager to get to. And he’d get there faster if they handed Kolchak over, leaving him to face the consequences of his rule. Why should the legion put themselves at risk to defend a corrupt dictator who’d neglected his fighting men and ignored the atrocities of his underlings?
“What do you suppose our casualties would be if we tried to take the coal mines?” Dalek stamped his feet, trying to stay warm.
“I value the life of the lowest-ranked legionnaire more than I value Kolchak, even if he is the supreme ruler. I wouldn’t ask a single one of them to die for a man like that.” It wasn’t Filip’s choice anyway, but he’d made up his mind. He didn’t want to fight for Admiral Kolchak. Yes, the legion had said they’d protect the man, but he’d tried to stab them in the back by conspiring with Semenov to halt their evacuation—even suggesting the destruction of the Baikal tunnels.
If Kolchak wanted safe passage east, he should have left Omsk before the Red Army had crossed the Irtysh River into Omsk’s outskirts. And he shouldn’t have insisted on seven trains for him and his entourage. He’d complained that the legion’s trains were holding him up, but his own greed had slowed him just as much. The honorable choice might have been to protect the man they’d been ordered to guard, but their higher duty was to each other and their country, not to Kolchak.
Across the room, Kral finished his telephone conversation. He hung up and said something to another officer, who quickly left the office.
Filip went closer, wondering if anything had been decided.
Kral met his eyes. “Word came from General Janin. We’re to turn both Kolchak and the gold over at dawn. And pray they let the rest of us through.”
The night stretched on as final details were arranged and last-minute pleas were made. A few of Kolchak’s entourage managed to escape, but the fate of the supreme ruler was now fixed. SR soldiers from Irkutsk and the guards who had insisted on guarding Kolchak since they’d passed through Polovina two days ago argued about who would have the privilege of escorting the admiral to prison. Japanese soldiers still garrisoned the station, but they made no move to rescue Kolchak. At first light, the supreme ruler, his mistress, and his prime minister left the train and crossed the frozen river to Irkutsk.
Chapter Forty-One
Nadia checked a toddler’s toes. “These two are frostbitten but not severely. Heat a rock in one of the fires, wrap it in a cloth, and keep his toes on it. It will probably hurt as the feeling comes back, so you might have to hold him still. And it may form blisters.”
The child’s mother nodded and went to fetch a rock.
As Nadia tucked the toddler into a sleigh beside his wounded father, she felt a hand on her arm. Nikolai, with a slice of bread for her. “Thank you.” She ripped the bread in two and gave half to the boy.
Nikolai frowned. “If you’re not careful, generosity will kill you almost as quickly as typhus.”
“But you shared with me.”
“I’m your brother.”
She didn’t argue. Nikolai had a point—she needed every bit of food she got. She couldn’t save everyone, but she didn’t want the little boy to end up with the piles of corpses that lined the railway, so she didn’t begrudge him the bread. She moved to the next sleigh, and Nikolai came with her.
“Are the lead sleighs starting?” The sun was up. It would be a shame to waste daylight hours.
“Slowly. Have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“The Czechs turned Kolchak over to the Social Revolutionaries in Irkutsk. The SRs hate Kolchak.” Nikolai folded his arms across his chest. “I can’t believe they did that. Cowards.”
She knew the legion. They weren’t cowards, but they’d been in Russia a long time. “This isn’t their fight.”
Nikolai huffed. “Maybe not. But we could use their help. They gave us food and medicine and offered to take Kappel and hide him among their wounded until he gets over his frostbite. But they won’t turn and fight the Bolsheviks. That’s what we need—men to hold the line with us, not bandages and tinned bully beef.”
Nadia hurried to tie off the bandages she’d wrapped around a soldier’s frostbitten fingers. “You’ve made contact with the legion?”
Nikolai sighed. “You want to go with them, I suppose?”
“Yes!” Maybe it was the Sixth Regiment, and she could be with Filip again in a matter of hours. “Please, Nikolai, I have to find him.”
The corner of Nikolai’s lips pulled into a smile. “Fine. If you want your watchmaker husband, I’ll help you find him. Anything to get you out of this.” He looked at the desperate bunch of soldiers and refugees, and she followed his gaze. Guilt tugged at her. She was useful here, helping with the wounded. But something far stronger pulled her to her husband.