“She’s a beautiful woman, isn’t she? Or at least she was then.” Orlov relaxed slightly but kept his pistol pointed at Dalek. “Her family haunted my childhood. And we’ve crossed paths three times since the revolution. The first time, in the Ukraine, I didn’t really want to kill her. I was going to execute her father and send the women away. But one of my subordinates insisted we destroy the entire family, and I was afraid if I refused, I’d have a mutiny on my hands. She did me a favor, in a way. The same subordinate wanted to have his way with her before we sent her to join her parents. He was far humbler after her escape.”
Dalek had already heard most of the story. Orlov might not have been a bloodthirsty executioner, but a desire for power and a fear of failure had made him acquiesce to rape and murder.
Orlov leaned against the bricks of the nearest building. “I found her again about a year ago. I could have killed her then. I should have, but I kept remembering what a waste the Cheka had made of the tsar’s children. I sent her to a work camp, where she could be of help to the revolution. She escaped.”
“Good for her.” Somehow, she’d escaped, and somehow, she’d gotten a note to Filip. Now they just had to find her.
Orlov frowned. “It seems that between our second and third meetings, she became the dangerous counterrevolutionary she was accused of being back in the Ukraine. I arrested her again last night. Our fourth and final meeting will be tomorrow when she’ll be transferred to the Ushakovka Republic.”
Dalek hadn’t been warm in days, but his blood suddenly felt like sleet. In Omsk, the phrase transferred to the Republic of Irtysh meant someone had been killed and stuck through the ice of the Irtysh River. The Ushakovka was a tributary of the Angara River, and it cut through Irkutsk. “Tomorrow?” That didn’t give Dalek and the others much time to find her, but if they only had to check the jails, that cut down their search. He had to find Anton and Filip.
Orlov squeezed the trigger of his pistol and pain exploded in Dalek’s abdomen.
Dalek gasped and collapsed against the wall. He gripped his wound, trying in vain to stop the red streak spreading across his stomach. He shuddered in agony and slid to the ground. His legs wouldn’t work anymore, nor would his mouth. The pain paralyzed everything.
Orlov stood over him. “This time, the legion won’t be able to save her. This time, she really deserves execution.”
Orlov had delivered the type of wound that killed people. He and his associate turned and left Dalek to die in the shadows. Dalek squeezed his eyes shut. Death seemed certain, but maybe his friends would find him. He lifted one bloodied finger and pressed it into the dirt. He could write a message in blood. Nadia arrested. Execution tomorrow on Ushakovka. But he didn’t even finish the first letter before another wave of pain made him collapse completely.
***
Filip found Anton outside the old legion headquarters.
“They’ve cleared out,” Anton said.
“Same with the Red Cross. And I doubt Dalek had better luck with the YMCA.” They’d have to find the White Army and hope for cooperation. Taking his wife back would relieve them of a mouth to feed, and based on what he’d heard, that would be a blessing for them. But would they release a nurse when they had so many wounded and ill?
Dalek should have returned by now, unless the YMCA was still functioning. And if it was, Filip wanted to know what they had to say. “Should we find Dalek?”
Anton nodded. He had always been solemn, but since his wife’s death, he’d become even more withdrawn. Mail from Vladivostok brought no news of his son, which had to make things even worse. Filip understood a little about the horror of uncertainty. He’d felt it himself, was still feeling it, even with one letter telling him Nadia still lived.
The streets weren’t deserted, but the few people they passed seemed wary, fearful. Little wonder, with the White and Red Armies both likely to take control of the city in turns. Filip didn’t want to be around when that happened. But more than that, he didn’t want to leave without his wife.
“Is that . . . ?” Anton’s voice trailed off, and he sprinted across the street.
Filip followed, not recognizing what Anton ran toward until he was halfway across the road.
Slumped in the shadows was a body wearing boots that looked an awful lot like the ones Filip saw every night in the teplushka at the end of Dalek’s bunk. An icy sweat broke out down Filip’s neck and under his arms. “Dalek!”
Anton reached the figure and knelt to examine him. Filip arrived a few seconds later.
Dalek’s eyes fluttered open as Anton pushed aside coat, jacket, and gymnastyorka to get to the wound. Dalek locked eyes with Filip. “Orlov arrested your wife.” The words were raspy and quiet.
“Nadia’s here? And Orlov?”
Dalek looked at his wound.
“Orlov shot you?”
“He remembered . . . our last meeting. Going to execute her . . . tomorrow. The Ushakovka.”
“What time? What part of the river?”
“That’s . . . all I know.”
“Don’t make him talk.” Anton’s hands moved with desperation as he tried to bind up the wound.
Dalek was shot and bleeding. Nadia was a captive of the Cheka. And daylight was already fading. “Should we take him to the depot?” Legion trains still sat at the station. The local hospital was probably full of typhus cases, but the Fifth Regiment would have doctors. Between the two of them, they could carry Dalek back.
Anton tied a knot in the rag he’d used around Dalek’s abdomen and nodded.
Filip grabbed Dalek under the armpits, and Anton took his legs. Dalek was heavy and quickly grew unresponsive. Deadweight. Filip hoped he wasn’t really dead.
A pair of new worries ate at Filip. Dalek had come to Irkutsk to help him. He had forged that telegram for the same reason. If Dalek died, it would be Filip’s fault.
And Nadia was here, in Irkutsk, scheduled to die tomorrow, but Filip didn’t know where or when.
Chapter Forty-Five
Orlov and three guards roused Nadia and the others before daybreak. They weren’t given time to wash or eat. They were simply marched from the prison and taken onto the ice of the Ushakovka River. Most rivers froze with smooth surfaces, but not the Angara and its tributaries near Lake Baikal. Chunks of ice floated from the lake and connected into a rough frozen plane, adding one more difficulty to their walk that morning. Waiting at their destination were two additional guards, standing in the light of an automobile’s headlights, poking at a hole in the ice to keep it from freezing over.
Since the moment she’d been arrested, Nadia had known what would happen, but that didn’t make the cut of the wind any less sharp or the taste of defeat any less bitter.
Orlov clasped his hands behind his back. “Yesterday, a troika found you each guilty of counterrevolutionary activities. You’ve been sentenced to death.”
Nadia squeezed her eyes shut. The sentence wasn’t a surprise, but death came with regrets.
“Any last requests?”
She almost asked if they could mail a letter for her so she could tell Filip not to look for her anymore, tell him their marriage had been but a temporary affair after all, but she didn’t trust the Bolsheviks. If they knew Filip was married to a counterrevolutionary, it might cause trouble for him. He would have to remain ignorant of her fate, for his own good.
“Your glorious revolution doesn’t allow the accused to attend their own trial?” Nikolai stood tall, just as Papa had when facing the executioner.
Orlov frowned. “This is war. You were lucky to get a trial.”
No one spoke for a long moment.
Orlov motioned to two guards, who seized Sokolov and Fedorov. Both declined blindfolds. Sokolov met her eyes and gave her that sympathetic smile she had grown used to from him. Fedorov held his head erect and glared at his executioners.