The column pushed on, unheard, unseen. Oh, occasionally a voice might be heard by those very close: “Pick it up, Blagov; you’re falling a little behind” or “Next break, Isayev, check your bindings. Looks like they’re getting loose to me.”
Breaks were simple and infrequent. Indeed, there were only three. One was after going about half an hour, precisely to let the men check and adjust their bindings and their packs. The other was not quite midway in the trek. The third came at about midnight. And then, finally…
“Liberty or Death,” said a small, female voice.
“Natalya?” asked Turgenev, up front with Kostyshakov.
“Yes, it’s me, Maxim,” the girl replied. “Lavin kept nodding off, so I told him I’d take the watch. Get up, Lavin; they’re here.
“But things have changed a bit,” the girl said, more to Kostyshakov than to Turgenev. “In the first place, your third load for the zeppelin is delayed. I supposed you must know that they didn’t show up. But at least they’re not crashed and dead.”
“That is welcome news,” said Kostyshakov. “Go on.”
“Yes, sir.” The girl continued, “The layout of the enemy and our… mmm… friends is different too. All the prisoners and their staffs are now stuffed into the Governor’s House. The guarding has been taken over by the newcomers from Yekaterinburg, and they are mostly alert, mean, and tough. They’ve also taken over the Kornilov House for their own barracks. The old guard company is still stuffed into the basement of the Governor’s House and the wooden building just north of it but now they’re overstuffed. They’re not allowed into the upper story, nor even the ground floor. Colonel Kobylinsky made his objections and only shut up when the leader of the Yekaterinburg men said he would be shot if he uttered another word.
“On the plus side, the Tyumen men left in a huff. And Sergeant Mokrenko has the two guards locked up in the basement.”
Kostyshakov digested that, then sent word back, “Orders group, up to the point.”
Interlude
Lenin, Sverdlov, and Trotsky: The Troika
“Ilyich, look at the facts,” Sverdlov recapitulated. “We know Tobolsk is full of counterrevolutionaries and their sympathizers. Our friends are reporting a training camp in Hungary where the Germans have been training Russian traitors, and two days ago someone massacred a large and well-armed group of bandits in Siberia. Shortly before that a sailing ship blew up in the Black Sea, taking one of our loyal destroyers with it. We didn’t do either of these and our scouts cannot find any White element in position to do so either.”
Lenin leaned back in his chair. Trotsky sat silently.
“Move the royals as soon as possible,” Lenin said. “And reiterate to Yurovsky that at the first sign of trouble, he is to execute the Romanovs.”
“That may be too late,” Sverdlov insisted. “We should liquidate them now.”
“Yakov, Britain, France, America, all the Imperialist powers only leave us be because they are busy elsewhere and because they cannot sell the idea of all out war against us to their people,” Lenin said. “Would you so easily hand them a propaganda coup? I can see it in their newspapers now, ‘Communists Murder Innocent Romanov Children.’”
“Comrade Lenin has a point,” Trotsky said. “I lived in America for some time. They are not without their virtues, but as a people they are highly prone to emotional decision making. They can be quite easily stirred to outrage, and their capitalist masters would love any excuse to direct that outrage at us.”
Sverdlov frowned at the shorter man. He would have a word with the defense commissar about the ill-considered act of contradicting him in front of Lenin.
“I still think leaving the Romanovs alive is dangerous,” Sverdlov said. “But I will not bring it up to the full committee now.”
I hope you’re both right. But I am still going to tell Yurovsky, in your name, that he is also to frame the lot for counterrevolutionary activities, so we can get rid of them at an opportune time.
Chapter Twenty-five
South of Tobolsk
Briefly, Daniil laid out the changed enemy situation to the orders group.
“Turgenev,” asked Kostyshakov, “are either of the warehouses big enough to hold us all?”
“Both of them, really, sir, though it might be a little cramped.”
“We can live with cramped.” Kostyshakov pulled up a mental map of the town. “The west one, then, by the river docks. We’re all going there. Now, Ivan Mikhailovich?”
“Sir?” asked Dratvin.
“Can you hold the Omsk people in place—might be for several hours—with two platoons?”
“I’ll need both heavy machine guns,” Dratvin replied. “Plus one of the antitank rifles.”
“Why?”
“I can plug them on the north and south, but that’s not enough to hold them north, south, east, and west. The two heavies, firing up the avenues to east and west, maybe supplemented by a Lewis Gun, each, can hold them, and, while there might be a few leakers, they won’t be many and they won’t be organized. The antitank rifle is to panic them into trying prematurely, by showing there’s no cover in the building.”
“All right,” Kostyshakov agreed, “both heavies to you, plus one 13.2mm. Now figure out a time you have to leave to get from the western warehouse to the target. I’ll take your third platoon.”
“Yes, sir.” Dratvin then coralled the section leader for the heavies and took him off to one side.
“Cherimisov?”
“Sir?”
“You’ve still got two targets, the Governor’s House and the Kornilov House. I don’t think I want to send thirty or so of your men into a building occupied by five times that in Bolsheviks. So what I want to do is surround the place with one of your platoons and, I think, the two infantry guns. Get flamethrowers up and start fires in the basement and maybe the upper floors, too. Shoot them as they try to escape. Use the infantry cannon and snipers to break up organized concentrations in the fenced yard behind, plus any firefighters that may arise, insofar as they can be seen… also to panic the horses they’ve probably got there.”
“Can we add some explosives to the mix?” Cherimisov asked.
“Engineer?”
“Yes, sir?”
“How much of your platoon is here.”
“Just two squads, sir.”
“Fine. One of them is to be attached to Fourth Company, to reinforce the engineers already there. You are attached, with the other squad, to Lieutenant Turgenev and Strat Recon, to take down the power plant and shut off the town’s lights. Turgenev, can you do this?”
“Yes, sir, though I’m glad to have engineers along to keep me from fucking up the plant. Can the engineers come to the safe house? Less chance of being noticed that way.”
“Yes, they can. And good. Now back to you, Cherimisov.”
“Sir.”
“So one of your platoons, a squad of the engineers, and the infantry cannon section are to surround the Kornilov House, set it afire, and destroy the Bolsheviks inside it. Let none of them escape.”
“Prisoners, sir?”
“None. Accept no surrenders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The other platoon is to assault the Governor’s House to free the prisoners there. Lastly, the platoon I stripped from Dratvin is to be used to neutralize the original guards in the log building north of the Governor’s House, some of whom have likely had to move from the Kornilov.