“Prague, Czechoslovakia.” Nadia tried the name out on her tongue and was satisfied. “Will your family like me?”
“They’ll love you. And we don’t have to stay with them permanently, but until we find our own place, they’ll be happy to make room for the two of us.”
Nadia pulled one of his hands to her abdomen. “I think it will be the three of us within a few months of arrival.”
“But we’ve barely had a moment to ourselves . . .” Filip shifted positions and turned her so they were facing each other. He glanced at her abdomen, then at her face, and his mouth broke into a grin. “That bathhouse in Chita.”
“That’s my assumption.” She had worried that their time apart had damaged all the emotional and physical connections they’d built before her abduction. But in Chita, there had been no flashbacks, no terrors. Just Filip and her and a love that was strong enough to overcome the hurt of the past and promise them a joyful future.
Filip took her hand in his. “I would go anywhere and do anything for you. Do you know that?”
“Yes.” She did know that. Despite the differences of their pasts, Filip loved her. And she loved him. She looked back toward Russia. Vladivostok was a mere blur on the horizon. “For now, let’s go find that new country you worked so hard to create.”
Author’s Notes
In a war where gains were often measured in yards, it isn’t surprising that the story of the Czechoslovak Legion captured contemporary news coverage. But a century later, their story is largely forgotten. I first heard of the Czechoslovak Legion while watching a series of lectures on the Great War in preparation for writing The Spider and the Sparrow. They were mentioned only briefly, but I instantly knew that theirs was a story I wanted to write.
As I dove into research, I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to tell the entire story. The various units were too far-flung and involved in too many things to weave everything into one coherent plot. But I also realized that I didn’t have to tell everything. Each of the seventy to eighty legion trains heading east in 1918 had enough history to bring a novel to life. Telling a good story involving part of the legion would be enough, for now, to introduce their history to a new generation of readers.
Though I have done my best to thoroughly research these events, I was limited to English-language sources. Often, different sources told a slightly (or vastly) different version of the same events. In such cases, I’ve done my best to be true to at least one of the accounts. At other times, I found details sparse, and despite my digging, I couldn’t find more than an overview of a particular event or battle. In those cases, I used creative license and filled in the gaps using my best judgment. Most of the events mentioned in this book really happened, but how they happened isn’t always documented. This novel should be taken as historical fiction, not as history.
Most of the characters in this novel are fictional, but their experiences are based on things that happened to real people. Historic individuals include Lenin, Trotsky, Professor Masaryk, General Voitsekhovsky (also spelled Voytsekhovsky, Vojcechovsky, Voitzekhovski, and Wojciechowski), General Gajda, Commissar Sadlucky, František Richter, Admiral Kolchak, the Romanov family, and General Kappel.
The Cheka was small in the beginning of 1918 but grew quickly. Could someone like Baron Linsky have been executed for his aristocratic connections in March 1918? According to some sources, until July 1918, the Cheka was only allowed to execute people for criminal activities. Other sources noted the Cheka having jurisdiction to execute class enemies as early as February of that year.
The Sixth Regiment of the legion really did spend time in Piryatin, Ukraine, before the German advance that prompted the evacuation and fighting around Bakhmach. They even prevented peasants from burning down a nearby manor while stationed there. The evacuation from Ukraine and most of what followed in Penza and Samara is factual—down to weather details at Bakhmach and the multiple telegrams giving multiple instructions to the Penza Soviets.
The main details of the Chelyabinsk incident are from my research, though several different versions exist. Ducháček and Malik (the Czech and Hungarian soldiers who died) are real, as is the overarching story of what happened. Most accounts agree that the legion cut telephone lines, seized important intersections, disarmed guards, and took the armory. Tactical details of how the legion took over the town are fiction, based on common practices at the time.
I found vastly different accounts of the events leading up to the Bolshevik attack at Marianovka. I ended up writing that scene two ways and leaving the one that seemed to work best with the rest of the novel. Also, I found different numbers for legion fatalities. Carl Ackerman gave the number as ten; Edwin Hoyt said six.
This novel follows closely accounts of the 1918 battle for Omsk and the taking of Krasnoyarsk. One source said the Bolsheviks from Tatarsk telegraphed back to Omsk to ask for reinforcements. Another source said they telephoned. In either case, Dalek and Nadia weren’t really involved, but the Bolsheviks were expecting friendly reinforcements and instead ended up with a battalion of hostile Czechoslovaks to contend with.
Different accounts of the series of battles to take the train tunnels around Lake Baikal include different details, but the main events are well documented. The search for sappers was a plot device to get Filip and Anton temporarily with the Seventh Regiment but one that felt plausible. Some accounts say the legion purposely destroyed the train full of explosives at Baikal Station; other accounts say it was an accidental stray bullet.
As portrayed in this novel, most legionnaires were unenthusiastic when asked to stay in Russia to open the Eastern Front again. Their battles in the Urals, their near mutiny, and their growing animosity toward the Kolchak regime follow the sources. Several lines of the argument between Gajda and Kolchak are from the historical record, as is the overall situation described in the novel. The supplies stored in warehouses in Omsk, meant for the White Army but hoarded by corrupt Kolchak officials, eventually made their way to the Red Army.
Siberia during the Russian Civil War was a dangerous place. Bandits, released war prisoners, and Bolshevik partisans would have all been a threat to members of the legion—or their families—who wandered too far from strongholds. Though the term concentration camp is most closely associated with World War II, the term first came into use during the Boer War and was used by the Bolsheviks during the time of this novel. The system of camps and forced labor would grow into the infamous Soviet Gulag.
Kolchak’s telegram to Semenov and the legion’s interception of that telegram are real. Kolchak did eventually end up under the protection of the Sixth Regiment, who turned him over to the Irkutsk authorities when faced with the choice of turning him over or fighting their way east. The kidnapping and killing of the hostages that so angered the population comes from history, as does the story of Kolchak’s execution on the ice.
I found three different numbers in my various research books for the value of the gold in the imperial treasury the legion captured in Kazan, so I used the highest one (650 million rather than 560 million or 400 million), because it showed up in two sources. The fate of the gold is still a subject for speculation. Most of it, and maybe all of it, ended up in Bolshevik hands. But persistent rumors suggest part of it was on a train that plunged into Lake Baikal, or that part of it was buried in the woods.