The thought of seeing her again should have lightened his mood. He had not seen her since Kazan in early September and had been all over the Urals since. Yet even the prospect of seeing Sofya again was not quite sufficient to dispel the feeling that he had wasted the intervening months. He had made himself as useful as he could, but was still unable to escape the belief that he had been of no use whatsoever. Even accepting the fact that his mission had been accomplished did not quell the sense of his own inadequacy. The Legion had formed an eastern front (crumbling though it may be) and Mikhail and his monarchist allies had been acquainted with Admiral Kolchak (albeit before Paul had even got to Russia); and the Russian gold — as desired — had passed from the Legion’s control to that of a legitimate Russian government, which he supposed the Directory to be. If there was a blot on this otherwise perfect record, it had been his inability to liaise between Poole in Archangel (or wherever the man was) and the Legion and Kolchak. And even this, he allowed, was due in main to the Allies’ lethargic preference for digging themselves into winter quarters in their frozen port instead of pressing south as had been envisaged. After all, what could he have done about that? If Poole couldn’t move south to the proposed rendezvous with all the resources at his disposal, how was Paul to be expected to move the mountain that was anti-Bolshevik Russia towards them? Yet despite this record of success — only partially qualified — he still felt the outcome, like the appearance of Omsk, to be infinitely depressing.
Paul thought he should be feeling more optimistic. After all, in Chelyabinsk they had received momentous news. The town was the headquarters of the Legion and Kolchak had stopped there to confer with Generals Diterikhs and Syrový. There had been the usual formal inspection of troops and, afterwards, the inevitable lunch; (an army according to Bonaparte marched on its stomach, although Paul couldn’t remember the ambitious corporal ever mentioning the fact that it was usually the general staff who could be found feeding their faces). They were still eating when a French colonel suddenly burst into the room waving a paper above his head. An Armistice, he declared, had been signed between the Allies and the Central Powers.
The colonel, who seemed to have been previously acquainted with Ward, had then produced a bottle of champagne and they had celebrated the event. The mood became instantly euphoric — as if the news had gone to their heads rather than the wine — which was just as well since, by the time the bottle reached Paul’s end of the table, it was empty.
At the time he had found the fact oddly analogous to the situation. He could picture men climbing out of the trenches all along the western front amid cheering, congratulating themselves and each other upon the victorious outcome. Yet he couldn’t help thinking it something of a pyrrhic victory. He was pleased, naturally, but too much blood had been spilt, too much had changed and been swept away, for him to feel any other emotion than simple relief that it had, at last, come to an end. But the sense of relief lasted no longer than the champagne. Nothing for the men sitting around the table had changed. The war in Europe might be over but not the war in which they found themselves. Nothing had changed for them — or him — at all.
After the lunch he had walked back to the train with Ward and his staff through the snow-covered streets of Chelyabinsk. Odd, he had reflected, how he found himself in Chelyabinsk when news of the war ending had reached him. It had been an ‘incident’ in Chelyabinsk — as related by Cumming — that had drawn him back to Russia. Without that, he supposed he would have eventually rejoined the Surreys and returned to the western front. He might very well have been killed — armistice now wouldn’t have prevented slaughter then — and so perhaps coming to Russia had saved his life.
That, of course, was to assume he could stay alive.
Ward had been readying the train for the journey to Ufa and more troop inspections when, late in the afternoon, Kolchak with Gajda in tow, back from a conference with his generals, announced, contrary to expectation, his intention of returning to Omsk immediately. He had seen enough, apparently, of the condition of the army under the government of the Directory and in his capacity as minister for war, had decided to oversee personally the proper supply of clothing, arms and ammunition to the front.
Paul hadn’t been sorry. He was as tired as Kolchak of seeing soldiers without guns and proper clothing, feet wrapped in rags and suffering from frostbite. Omsk was the centre of government and where the army general staff was based; well away from the fronts, of course, and he couldn’t help noting that the officers on Kolchak’s staff — with the possible exception of Gajda — perked up considerably at the news. It had taken some while to arrange the change of plan — the bureaucracy of the Russian railroads taking little account of minor inconveniences like civil war — and it was late the following morning before they had covered the 490 versts to Petropávlovsk. Here they found General Boldyrev, commander-in-chief of the Directory’s armies and the man who had appointed Kolchak minister of war, waiting in his train. Boldyrev was on his way to the Ufa front himself and had interrupted his journey in order to confer with the admiral.
After a short word with Ward, Kolchak boarded Boldyrev’s train. Paul wandered up as Ward was instructing his servant, Moorman, to take a photograph of the two trains.
‘There’s trouble in Omsk, lad,’ said Ward. ‘We’ll need to keep our wits about us. I think it’s going to take more than trumpets and drums to keep the peace, if I know anything about it.’
About what exactly, Ward didn’t say. There was something in the wind, he had predicted a day or two earlier, but hadn’t said exactly what that had been either. Paul had heard rumours concerning the rival factions in Omsk before. The Directory, it was said, would not last long. But there had been claims of this sort since the Directory of Five had been cobbled together out of the talks between Komuch and the west Siberian groupings and nothing had happened yet.
What Paul knew of the political situation this side of the Urals he had learned courtesy of Karel Romanek. After the February Revolution many regional governments had been set up across Siberia, some professing allegiance to the Provisional government, others to a rainbow of SRs, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Others still had announced themselves autonomous and had been ruled by local ethnic populations like the Bashkirs and the Kirghiz. In Omsk a Siberian government had been formed by Kadet and Right SR politicians who soon became dominated by reactionaries and monarchist officers.
When Samara fell, Komuch disintegrated and its members fled to Ufa. Here, in September, a State Conference agreed on the merging of what was left of Komuch with the Siberian government in Omsk and a strategy decided upon to fight the Bolsheviks. The Directory of Five was formed — a government of two SRs, two Liberals, and General Boldyrev as commander of the Peoples’ Army. To run the government, a Council of Ministers had been appointed.