Although the uniform boosted Paul’s own morale he soon discovered the Legion to be dispirited. They had been led to believe by the French liaison officer to the Legion, Major Guinet, that the arrival of the Allies in Archangel would open a route home for them to the west. They had taken Simbirsk and Kazan on this understanding. That Poole had made little or no progress towards them to form a unified front left them feeling betrayed.
With Čeček’s permission Paul had toured Kazan’s defences and talked to the men. News of his arrival had preceded him and the first question he had to answer was always ‘When are the allies arriving?’ Paul had never been much good at prevaricating in English and his attempts at evasion in Russian were as transparent as glass. His Czech, of course, was non-existent. He wondered if the other Paul Ross, the Czech speaker, might have handled himself better, although suspected the man was as likely as not to have taken advantage of the situation, sat the depressed Legion officers down to a game of cards and relieved them of their pay.
What was clear whatever language was used was that the men were sick of fighting other people’s battles. Their enemy was the Austro-Hungarian empire. Russians were regarded as fellow Slavs — peasants and proletarians like themselves. Fighting alongside them on the eastern front, the Czechs and Slovaks had been as open to Bolshevik propaganda as their Russian comrades. They believed revolution was an idea worth fighting for; hadn’t they all had enough of emperors and autocracies? Now they were beginning to wonder if the agitators had not been right. How had it happened that they were required to fight for European allies whose only assistance came in the form of dubious promises? And fight alongside many Russian officers who had served the former tsar and wanted nothing more than to replace him with whatever Romanov grand duke might be found who had survived the Bolshevik purge… The ordinary Russian soldier conscripted by Komuch to fight beside them had deserted at the first opportunity. They had disappeared either to get back to the land (it was harvest time, after all) or to go over to the Reds.
Paul had had no answers for them. Corporal Jacobs, his companion in the shell-hole, might have had some although Paul suspected even he might have had second thoughts had he seen what Paul had in Petersburg. So all Paul could do was make the best of it. Like Čeček, and do his duty. If there was no longer a need to contact Sofya’s brother, and he was in no position to liaise with the tardy Poole, then Paul thought the least he could do was stay with the Czechs until the equally tardy Kolchak arrived. As for the gold reserves, Komuch had already decided that they would be safer back in Samara once again — the city from whence they had been removed to prevent them from falling into Czech hands. Now the gold wagons were moving east once more, Paul was quite happy to let Mikhail and Valentine worry about them. That seemed to free him of all his obligations.
Except for the one he had placed upon himself.
He had Sofya to consider. And, to his surprise, he found he was considering Sofya most of the time.
Their rooms were shabby. Empty, yet full of an aura of having been left in a hurry. Some food remained in cupboards and unwashed plates and a few cooking utensils in the sink. Abandoned clothes lay scattered about the flat. Sofya sorted through them with her new-found pragmatism for salvaging anything that might be of use. She saved a winter coat thoughtlessly discarded in a summer panic, and some worn but still serviceable underwear for Paul. Valentine, she said, could forage for himself.
Which was just what he had been doing. Discovering that Mikhail was now with the gold reserves had altered Valentine’s attitude to Sofya. It seemed to Paul that Valentine now thought he needed to cultivate Sofya as a means of being introduced to Mikhail. He had already introduced himself to what remained of the Komuch administration in Kazan — which wasn’t much as most of government officials who had travelled from Samara following Kazan’s capture had promptly decamped again with the White officers and their army. Borrowing Masaryk’s letter, Valentine had managed to acquire some sort of accreditation as an ad hoc emissary of the Allies.
‘We need to get to Samara,’ Valentine had said in much the same way as he had declared the need to get out of Petersburg. They were sharing a meal made from the few provisions Sofya had been able to buy in the increasingly chaotic city. ‘There are no trains. Azin has taken the villages to the north-east and cut the line. The river is the only way out. We ought to find Malinovsky.’
‘He’s gone,’ Sofya said. ‘He collected his wife and son as soon as we arrived and left.’
‘It’s too late for any boat that’s still up the Kazanka anyway,’ Paul added. ‘They won’t get past the mouth of the river now. If the artillery on Uslan Hill doesn’t sink them, Raskolnikov’s flotilla will machinegun them before they get to the pier. All that’s left are the barges moored lower down the Volga, for the Czech retreat.’
‘How long can they hold out?’ Sofya asked.
‘A day or two, no more.’
‘No chance of relief, I suppose?’ Valentine asked gloomily.
‘None. They had their chance when Kappel came up from Simbirsk to take Sviyázhsk. It was the Lettish Rifles that stopped him.’
He looked pointedly at Valentine. It had been the Lettish Rifles Reilly had tried to subvert in Moscow, after they had supposedly become disaffected following the arrest of the SR leaders. Vacietis, the Volga front commander, had warned Trotsky to withdraw them from the Kazan front and had been arrested for his pains. Trotsky had begun decimating his own men until the Lettish Rifles had stiffened enough to turn Kappel back from Sviyázhsk.
‘Now we’re outnumbered at least four to one,’ Paul went on. ‘The whole front has collapsed. Without more men and equipment the Komuch army hasn’t got a hope.’
‘And the Legion?’ Valentine asked.
‘Čeček’s already been cut off from the units on the railway east of Kazan. His only hope is to reach Samara.’
‘Then we need to go with him.’
‘I’ve already arranged it,’ Paul said. ‘We’re to be at the barges in the morning.’
Sofya smiled at him and reached a hand across the table.
Valentine raised an eyebrow. ‘Well done, old man.’
‘But we’ll have to be ready early,’ Paul said.
There had been no danger of oversleeping. The bombardment began again before dawn. Paul hadn’t slept much anyway. Since discovering that Mikhail had recently been in the city, Sofya’s spirits had risen and they had talked until midnight, sitting on a battered sofa and sharing what was left of Paul’s cigarettes.
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ he said as she reached for the one he had just lit and placed it between her lips.
‘It was very fashionable with society ladies,’ she said drawing in the smoke, then coughing. She looked critically at the cheap Russian brand. ‘But not things like this! We used to smoke good Russian cigarettes, or even English. You could buy many English goods before the war.’
‘I can’t imagine they encouraged it at the Smolny Convent,’ Paul said.
She inhaled tentatively again. ‘No, but all the girls used to do it. It was thought sophisticated.’
‘In the trenches,’ he said, ‘it was thought indispensable. The men’s one luxury. If you don’t count hot meals.’