Berta turned her back on the crowd and started up the hill toward home. She was exhausted and longed for her bed on the stove and her children in her arms. Just before she reached her room she saw a man wearing a silk dressing gown under a heavy greatcoat, moving through the street like a phantom. He clutched an icon under his arm, his hair was matted with ice, and his cheeks were flushed from either the cold or a fever. He threw one wild glance in her direction and in that moment she recognized him.
“Aleksei Sergeevich,” she said in surprise. It was Alix’s husband. He didn’t seem to recognize her. “What are you doing out here?”
“It’s all gone,” he said, to no one in particular.
“What is?”
“All gone.”
The Bolsheviks had nationalized the banks, factories, and railroads and had even started expropriating the houses in the Berezina.
“Where is Alix?” Berta asked.
He kept on walking.
“Aleksei Sergeevich… where is Alix?”
He didn’t turn around.
“Lenya!” She called after him. She stood there a moment longer and watched him shamble into the night.
Part Four
THE BORDER STEALER
Chapter Seventeen
December 1919
IT WAS STILL early in the afternoon when Colonel Svegintsev, the commander of the Drozdovskii Battalion, ordered his private train to stop in the middle of a snowy field about ten versts northwest of Cherkast. The men in the infantry sledges couldn’t understand it. The Cossacks in their blue caps, gray-green belted tunics, and blue breeches with the red stripe up the side couldn’t understand either, nor could the ladies in the commander’s private cars who wore black hoods like the nurses but did little nursing. The battalion was supposed to be in retreat. In fact the whole Volunteer Army was in retreat, running from a newly formed Communist cavalry that was swift, skilled, and seemingly unstoppable.
The Drozdovskii Battalion was in the rear of this retreat. So why then were they ordered to take Cherkast? It didn’t make sense. Since nobody in the battalion was in a position to question the young commander, the train stopped, the horses were unboxed and saddled and the supply sledges loaded up. It didn’t take long for the battalion to assemble in front of the commander’s car. Soon the vast snowy field held a collection of armored trucks loaded with machine guns, a repair truck, a battery of eighteen-pounders supplied by the British, a battery of 4.5 howitzers, ammunition sledges, and five tachankas, sledges outfitted with Vickers or Lewis machine guns also supplied by the British. Flanking on the left and right were the two companies of Don Cossack cavalry, their razor-sharp swords at their side, their famous nagaiki, short-handled whips, hanging from their belts. These were special whips, laced with wire so they could flay the skin off a man’s back even through five layers of shirts.
Commander Svegintsev was the youngest officer to ever take command of the Drozdovskii Battalion and had only just been appointed because General Otlanov, the previous commander, had died of typhus. Svegintsev didn’t have much experience, so he didn’t really deserve the command or the private railroad cars that were put at his disposal. He should have been satisfied with a sledge and a tent.
Svegintsev was an ardent monarchist. He took the death of his czar and the czar’s family very badly. He simply could not believe that God would want the red devils to rule Mother Russia while he, his family, and all his friends were condemned to wander the world as penniless refugees. He was young, not yet twenty-five, and not willing to surrender, especially now that he had a battalion to command. His plan was to take Cherkast, then move on Kiev. He reasoned that once he sent word to General Wrangel, informing him of his victories, he would surely be forgiven for disobeying orders and granted all the honors due a hero. Fortunately for Commander Svegintsev, the men hadn’t seen as much as action as the other units. Their horses were still somewhat fresh and there was enough enthusiasm among his junior officers to give credence to his plan.
The young commander stood on the top step of his carriage and surveyed the battalion that stretched out before him in the undulating snow. The men stood in silence, scraping the snow into little piles with their boots or leaning on the butt of their rifles or shielding their eyes with a hand. He thought, This is Russia, her might, her pride. These are the heroes who will take her back and make her whole again. And he, Vladimir Arkadyevich Svegintsev, will be the greatest hero of all. He will be remembered as the man who saved Russia even after it appeared all was lost.
He spoke simply to the men that afternoon, his strong voice carrying to the far reaches of the field. He considered himself a good orator and fancied that he had a way of reaching down into the souls of his men. His mother and teachers had always told him that he could be a great leader someday and he was certain that day had come. He told his men that the army was in retreat and that they had been ordered to give up and go home. They were running away like beaten dogs, their eyes always on their backs, waiting for the next blow. “Is that what you want?” he shouted to his troops. “To run back to your wife and mother and hide under your bed? Is that your fate?” He looked into the faces of his men. “No! I say no! I say we stand up to the enemy! Beat him back! Show the Bolshevik dog what the Drozdovskii Battalion can do.” He shouted this above their heads, sending his words soaring up into the blue sky yet unmarred by clouds or smoke. “If we stand together and fight like Russian bears we will prevail! God won’t desert us. He doesn’t want us to give up. He wants us to save Mother Russia. Victory will be ours!” He shouted this last as a battle cry and waited for the crowd’s thunderous reply. Instead, he got only a halfhearted cry of Na Moskvu. To Moscow.
The advanced guard rode out against a sky layered with ribbons of orange and pink. It consisted of a company of infantry in their sledges and a squadron of Cossacks, who rode out in two patrols. Behind them came the tachankas, swooping over the snow like heavy waterfowl, their occupants holding on to the sides of the sledges to keep from falling out. Following in their tracks came two batteries of field artillery and then the main force, their ponies kicking up snow and dirt as they thundered off across the fields.
About three versts from Cherkast they ran into a small unit of Red cavalry who fired on them from a stand of willows with a sledge-mounted maxim machine gun and would have engaged them if they had bothered to stop. Instead they kept going, spurring their horses up the hills and letting them have their head going down, careening nearly out of control over the windswept snow. Then just outside the city, they ran into three machine gun emplacements situated above the trenches that ringed the perimeter. At the first sign of opposition they turned their horses around and rode back up the hill. There they waited just out of range while their howitzers and eighteen-pounders got into position.