Dizziness kept her on the cold, hard ice, but she fought against it, raising her head in time to see the boxcar slide through a hole in the ice and into the Angara River.
***
Nadia remembered little of her arrest. She’d been in too much pain. Her body had been slammed around the car, then smashed into the ice. But she heard one of the guards refer to her as a dangerous counterrevolutionary, and she felt a strange sense of pride as she was locked into a cell with Nikolai, Sokolov, and Fedorov.
Sokolov had been shot in the thigh while trying to escape during the scuffle in the train yard. Nikolai had been shot in the arm. She tore her skirt to make bandages and did what she could for them, but they were given no medical supplies. Then they slept.
She woke to the sound of a distant gunshot. Then another. Then another. In a nearby cell, a woman sobbed.
Nikolai stared out the window.
“What was it?”
“Admiral Kolchak, his prime minister, and their chief interrogator. They were taken onto the ice and executed.”
The supreme ruler of Siberia, executed on the ice. She shouldn’t have been surprised. If the former tsar hadn’t been safe, who was?
“And our fate?”
Nikolai frowned. “I imagine it will be the same.” He sat next to her on the cold stone floor. “Their revolution promised so much, but it hasn’t brought justice or hope. It’s just created monsters.”
Nadia checked her brother’s bandages as she thought of his words. The Bolsheviks had torn apart the old regime. And along with the darkness of the autocracy, they’d taken apart the beauty of the culture. They’d replaced it with a new form of oppression, something that made all miserable and hungry and fearful, without the faith or elegance of the old Russian spirit. They’d promised change, and they’d brought it. But they hadn’t created progress.
Nikolai smiled his thanks when she finished with his wound. “I wonder if this is what it felt like when Constantinople fell or when Napoleon marched into Moscow.”
It felt like a final defeat for her, for her country. Maybe it was. She and her family lived in dark times. Her parents and Alexander had died in a merciless set of wars, and it seemed that she and Nikolai would soon follow them. But they weren’t the first people to experience hardship and despair. They wouldn’t be the last. Since finding Nikolai again, Nadia had learned to trust in God. He was there. He was real. And somehow, He would make everything right in the end. In a world torn by war, He offered peace, and in a conflict fought with cruelty, He offered mercy. “Maybe all the darkness makes it easier to recognize the light.”
“Maybe. Do you remember what Mama used to say?”
Nadia nodded. “God is always there, even when it’s too dark to see Him.”
“She was right, you know. I could feel Him. When I was wounded and scared, lying on a battlefield. When I was hungry and heartsick in a German war prison. And on that day when I wanted to give up, and instead, I found you.”
Nikolai took her hand. “You’ve surprised me a lot lately. Whatever happens, I want you to know that it is an honor to be your brother. You would have made Mama and Papa proud.”
Nadia’s body still ached. She still missed her husband and her parents. She still feared the bullets that would execute her and her cellmates. She couldn’t see God or hear Him, but sitting on the floor of that cold, hopeless prison, she felt Him. He saw her and heard her, and He was with her, even in the dark.
Chapter Forty-Four
Dalek rattled the locked door of what had been the YMCA’s Irkutsk office, then peeked through a window. The office looked deserted.
Well, he wasn’t going to risk breaking into an abandoned office. Even if Nadia had made it this far east, there was no guarantee she would have visited the YMCA. The office was just one place on a list of possibilities. Filip and Anton were checking other locations: the Red Cross office, the train depot, the legion’s headquarters.
Dalek hoped Nadia was in Irkutsk, because he didn’t want to go any farther west. Irkutsk wasn’t safe, but at least the legion rearguard was nearby. Beyond Irkutsk, it was pure chaos. Dalek was determined to help Filip find his wife, but he was acutely aware of the risks they took in searching for her.
The legion was negotiating with the Bolsheviks for safe passage out of Russia. It should have been an easy thing—the legion just wanted to go home, and the Bolsheviks would rather let the Czechoslovaks pass than waste blood and ammunition on them. But neither side trusted the other, and a similar truce had been broken in Chelyabinsk twenty-one months ago.
Chelyabinsk. That was one reason he’d joined Filip and encouraged Anton to come too. Filip had saved Dalek’s life in Chelyabinsk. Beyond that, Dalek had wronged Filip and Nadia when he’d made an assumption about Nadia and Petrov. If he hadn’t come to the wrong conclusion, would things have turned out differently? It could have been worse—Filip might have gone looking for her a year ago, and he might have gotten himself killed. There was no way to know what a slight change in events might have led to.
For now, they just needed to find Nadia, and then they could go home. He wasn’t sure what Prague would be like after so many years, but it was free now. In that respect, it would be glorious. Once they got home, Dalek would find his wife. Klára wasn’t much of a letter writer, but he’d heard from her every few months since the armistice had been signed. She still felt like a stranger, but she was a stranger he wanted to know better. He planned to find them a home with a large fireplace and an enormous stove—maybe several of each. He was sick of being cold. He had money—a lot of it—after investing in trade along the railroad for the past year and insisting on payment in yen or francs instead of rubles. Inflation made Russian money almost worthless.
Dalek shivered as the wind drew away the last vestiges of warmth. It was joined by an internal chill when a hostile voice spoke from behind him.
“You’re that Czech telegraph clerk who sent me to Moscow when I was a commissar assigned to the legion, aren’t you?”
Dalek slowly turned to see Orlov and a second Cheka agent. Dalek wanted to lie, but the man clearly recognized him. The telegram was almost two years in the past, but Orlov still seemed angry. His eyes were tapered slits, and his feet were planted firmly on the frozen dirt walkway. His pistol was out, aimed at Dalek.
Dalek’s rifle was slung over his shoulder. Orlov would shoot before Dalek could aim.
“Come.” Orlov motioned with his pistol to a narrow space between two buildings.
Dalek didn’t move. He preferred the open street, where he was visible to anyone brave enough to venture outside in the awful temperature. The alley looked like a good place for Orlov to finish Dalek off out of sight.
“Don’t think I won’t shoot here. I’ve friends in Revkom. They won’t punish me.”
Dalek stepped off the street, as directed. The result might be the same, but he’d play the game a bit longer, hoping for time and mercy. Orlov’s associate took his rifle.
“I want to know why,” Orlov demanded. “Why did you send me to Moscow? Were you planning rebellion, even then?”
Dalek shook his head. “We didn’t rebel until Trotsky threatened to conscript us all for his army and his work battalions.”
“Then why did you want me gone?”
The end of Orlov’s pistol was persuasive, and Dalek didn’t think the truth would do any harm, not now. “Because we were hiding a former aristocrat. You killed her family, and we didn’t want you to kill her.”
Dalek’s heart hammered in his chest as Orlov considered his words.
“Nadia Ilyinichna Linskaya?”
Dalek nodded, surprised Orlov remembered her after all this time. Nadia wasn’t dangerous, so why was Orlov obsessed with her?