Paul offered the man a cigarette and explained he was accompanying Admiral Kolchak, the new minister for war.
‘Bad news for us Czechs, I think,’ the officer said, expelling a stream of smoke into the frozen air.
His name was Bečvář and he was in that sector with a unit of Czechs. He told Paul how he had deserted from the Austro-Hungarian army to join the Czech Družina but had wound up in a POW camp in Lublin instead. When he finally managed to join the Legion, he said he had found himself fighting Bolsheviks instead of Austro-Hungarians.
They finished their cigarettes and shook hands, Paul returning to the conference in time to hear Ward ask General Galitzin what the chances were of retaking Perm and linking up with General Poole — who apparently had now settled into winter quarters in Archangel.
Galitzin seemed a shade less optimistic about a breakthrough now than he had before lunch and declared it doubtful. Paul trooped back to the train, wondering if it had been the shelling or the news that Poole had quartered for the winter that had taken the edge off the count’s bellicosity.
They returned to Ekaterinburg, immediately heading after the briefest of stops to the sector of front under General Pepelayev. Here they found a host of dejected vagabonds who had just retreated sixty versts. Most were lacking boots and had swathed their freezing feet in filthy rags to keep out frostbite. Their uniforms hung in tatters. Those that had rifles had had to prise them from the frozen grip of their comrades. They had little ammunition, their general complained. Anatoli Pepelayev looked to be at his wit’s end. Young but haggard, he was as dirty and worn as his men.
Kolchak, with his staff and Paul in tow, walked among Pepelayev’s men then closeted himself with the young general in his private carriage. Paul waited on the platform looking up casually at the windows and glimpsing, to his great surprise, Radola Gajda.
Paul stared and offered a salute as the fleshy-faced young Slovak glanced down at him. Gajda regarded Paul impassively for a second, nodded, then turned back to Kolchak and Pepelayev.
Late in the evening, after dining in the train’s mess wagon and killing time before having to squeeze himself back into his cot beside the bandsmen, Paul took a stroll through the train. Straying into Ward’s carriage, he saw the colonel sitting by himself.
Paul apologised for the intrusion and began backing out. Ward called him back.
‘Come in lad. Coffee?’ He stood up and poured a cup from a silver pot standing on a sideboard. ‘Sit yourself down. You’ll not find me a stickler for rank.’
Paul took the cup and sank into a sofa, thinking it would make a more comfortable bed than his cot.
‘We were supposed to visit General Verbitzky on the right flank,’ Ward said, topping up his own cup and taking the seat opposite. ‘Having seen the condition of Pepelayev’s men, though, the admiral has decided he has to go to Chelyabinsk and consult with Generals Diterikhs and Syrový.’
‘They were certainly in a sorry state,’ Paul agreed. ‘I don’t understand why they don’t have proper clothing and arms. London told me that plenty of supplies had been landed at Vladivostok. Murmansk, too, although I can see there’s no way of getting—’
‘And most of it still there,’ Ward interrupted. ‘A lot has been shipped to Omsk from Vladivostok, to be sure, but that seems to be as far as it’s got.’
‘Why hasn’t the government there sent it on to the front?’
Ward ran his fingers across the stubble of his moustache.
‘Dissension, lad. Too many factions at each others’ throats instead of at the Bolshies’ throats.’ He leaned towards him. ‘Did you know Gajda was on the train?’
‘I thought I saw him in the carriage when the admiral brought General Pepelayev back with him.’
‘General Pepelayev’s older brother, Viktor, is a member of the Omsk government.’
‘Oh?’
‘Then there’s Count Galitzin.’
‘Sir?’
‘And now instead of seeing Verbitzky, we’re to make for Chelyabinsk and Diterikhs and Syrový.’ Ward drank his coffee down. ‘Something’s in the wind, lad, mark my words.’
‘How do you mean, sir?’
Ward stood abruptly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘time for bed. We’ll be in Chelyabinsk in the morning.’
Paul, oddly disconcerted, left Ward staring out the window at a passing Russia he could not possibly see. All that was visible in the blackened glass was a reflection of Ward himself, the carriage lamps and, perhaps, his own thoughts.
PART SIX
The Wind from Omsk (I)
— November 18th 1918 —
43
Dust in summer; mud in spring and autumn; in winter, a frozen wilderness.
It was what he had been told to expect of Omsk.
Standing at the station, it wasn’t difficult to see why. Perched at the edge of the steppe on the right bank of the River Irtúish, just above its confluence with the Om, Omsk lay in the middle of nowhere.
The government had chosen the city as its capital for its strategic position. Here all the various rail lines criss-crossing the Urals met, narrowing down to the single up and down tracks that were the Trans-Siberian. But the government didn’t control the railway line; the Legion did.
A branch line ran the two miles north from the main railway station into the centre of Omsk, past a settlement of railway workshops that had grown up around it. The terminus in the town had been extended for the use of rolling stock as accommodation. With the influx of refugees the shortage of rooms was so acute that even the members of the Directory had had to be housed in boxcars.
Ward was already arranging for his own train to be moved into the town as part of his cantonment and, because they were shunting locomotives to make room, at the moment no trains were running along the branch line.
A north wind was harrying a fine spindrift of snow across the plain in ghostly waves. Paul waited at the station for a droshky but, finding none to be had and impatient to get into town, decided to walk.
Past the railway sheds, picking his way along the road beside the line — in reality no more than a series of frozen corrugations in the mud — Paul could see a collection of Tartar yurts on the plain, half buried under drifts of snow. Shadowing the line were the same sort of wooden huts he had seen throughout the Urals; squat, toad-like homes in varying states of repair, with outhouses and lean-tos attached like attenuated limbs, all squashed flat under the snow covering their roofs. Closer to town the wooden huts became grander log houses, interspersed now by buildings of brick and stone. Paul had been told that Omsk boasted many fine buildings — churches and mosques and a barracks; in the centre, by all accounts, there was a summer casino and a cadet school, a museum and theatre… Yet the civic fathers hadn’t found it necessary to pave its streets.
Ward’s train had arrived the previous evening from Petropávlovsk. He had seen nothing of the place, a centre for the trade in cattle and hides apparently, but Paul had been forced to kick his heels at the railway station for several hours while Kolchak held one of his interminable meetings. They had finally reached Omsk too late to look for alternative accommodation and he had been obliged to spend another night in the company of the Middlesex bandsmen. He slept badly and got up early, leaving Ward and his staff to arrange for their cantonment. He had been tempted to stay and assist and find himself a more comfortable berth once the Middlesex headquarters had been established — particularly since he had been reliably informed that rooms in Omsk would be difficult to find — but he had somewhere to go. A wave of displaced persons had washed along the railway line in the preceding weeks and had broken like a dishevelled tide on Omsk. Walking along the line he passed its outer ripples, ragged people with nowhere to go, trudging through the snow with what they could carry on their backs. He had an address, though, acquired from an officer on Kolchak’s staff. The Rossiya Hotel on Lyúbinski Prospékt. It was where Mikhail was staying. Paul would not find a room there, the officer had assured him, but he was hopeful of finding Sofya.