I don’t know how long I stared at her and only her, but my vision swam. I blinked away the tears and an icon I had never seen before appeared. Seven figures, a mother and father, with a son between them, and two daughters on either side. They were painted like the saints, in rich robes, the children’s hands folded together as if in prayer, the mother and father holding admonishing palms outward in front of them. I blinked again and again, hoping the image would go away, but it stayed with me, becoming clearer with every heartbeat.
Mama, Papa, and Alexei. We girls. All of us as we are now, not grown, not old. Martyrs.
I shook my head and looked down at the floor. I didn’t dare look back up as my skin shivered around me, crawling underneath my clothes. I thought then that I would crumple and fall and I think I would have had Father Vasiliev not raised his voice.
“A prosperous and peaceful life,” he was saying, “health and salvation and good haste in all things, Lord grant your servant, the Sovereign Emperor Nikolai Aleksandrovich, and save him for many and good summers!”
The choir sang in response. “Many, many, many summers! Many, many, many summers!”
Would we see another summer?
“God save him!” they continued.
Yes, God, save my father.
“Grant him, Lord! Many, many, many summers!”
With each word goosebumps rose on the back of my neck, my arms. I was shaking and didn’t know why.
The fall of heavy boots thundered by, cutting through the voices, carrying two of the soviet soldiers toward the deacon. He stepped back, into the icon-covered wall, his eyes wide.
“Take it back,” one of the soldiers said.
Papa pulled me off the kneeler and pushed me towards Mama and my sisters. He placed himself between his family and the other soldiers who had come bursting in. The choir had backed away as well, casting aside their books, taking refuge through the gates.
“No. I can’t,” Father Vasiliev said, shaking his head. “I won’t.” He cast his gaze towards Papa as if seeking direction and then deciding a moment later that it didn’t matter. He refused to revoke the prayer, even when they threatened to kill him.
After their treatment of Colonel Kobylinsky I thought they could commit no greater act of insolence. I was wrong. I understood the concept of mutiny. But this. This was something else. It wasn’t just that they were drunk on power over men. They were drunk on power over God.
That night, still shaking with the fresh memory of it, I prayed. I prayed for Russia. I prayed for us. I prayed for the deacon. And I prayed for the men who believed so fervently that the deacon’s words had so much power that they must be retracted and at the same time believed they could command God. I prayed for their souls and a return to their sanity. I refused to believe that it was anything but that.
So naïve was I.
Chapter Three
En Route to Fort IX, Ingolstadt, Bavaria
Max had tried, he really had, to get word to Ludendorff before the latter walked into an ambush at the Privy Council meeting that had shortly followed his own lunch with the kaiser. He’d failed, and now both Ludendorff and Hindenburg were threatening to resign if the kaiser didn’t knuckle under and back off of his doubts on the Polish Question. Worse, they were demanding that Wilhelm relieve Max as Chief of Staff at Ober Ost, which would be potentially devastating to German fortunes, in the east.
Great men can also be very small sometimes, Hoffmann thought, as he headed south to Ingolstadt. On the other hand, clever ones, like myself, can be very naïve.
I wonder why I haven’t been stopped from beginning with my little scheme. I suppose… no, I am almost certain… the kaiser is simply keeping quiet so as not to provoke another row in Berlin. That said, it’s at least possible he’s trying to maintain a small measure of self-respect over the true ruler of Germany having become the quartermaster general, whom the kaiser dare not overrule.
Oh, well, on the plus side he’s at least stood up for me; here I remain at Ober Ost. I am not an especially humble man, and I know I am not, but it’s not arrogance to know that here I am irreplaceable.
Max walked through the northern gate of the fort, over which proclaimed the year, “1870.”
Odd timing, Hoffmann thought; they built a huge and hugely expensive set of forts precisely when Germany unified to the point where invading it had become very difficult. Oh, well; Bavarians.
No guard searched him, of course.
The commandant of the fort, Hoffmann decided, was not so much incompetent as excitable and lacking in self-discipline. He was also rather fawning, which made him both distasteful and cooperative, extremely so in both cases.
“We don’t have as many Russians as we used to, Herr General,” the commandant explained. “We used to be mostly Russian, but they’ve been getting moved out for a while now.”
“Moved to where?” Shit.
“Different camps, sir,” the commandant answered. “No particular pattern, but most went to Zittau. Where they may have been sent from there, I have no clue of.”
“Well, what do you have here?” Hoffmann demanded.
“Two partial cells of Russians, mixed in with British and French, only,” the commandant replied, “six men, of whom one is on a charge, and in solitary confinement for two months, for attempted escape.”
“Indeed? How far did he get?”
“Farther than most,” the commandant admitted, then beamed, “but we still caught him within ten kilometers of the fort. He—Captain Kostyshakov—is the senior Russian prisoner at the moment.”
Kostyshakov attempted to rise to attention when Hoffmann and the commandant entered the cell where he was recovering from the bayonet wound to his posterior. It should have been healed, but infection had set in, an infection his body was only slowly coming to grips with, with the aid of the German medical staff. He couldn’t quite make it though he didn’t give up on the attempt.
Hoffmann noticed a particular postcard on a small table facing the bed. Interesting, he thought, the subjects of that photo. Under the postcard was a series of journals, most of which appeared to be German military. Also interesting, and commendably optimistic, that’s he’s keeping up with modern doctrine.
“You can leave now,” Hoffmann told the commandant. “My business with the Russian doesn’t concern you.”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. If you need anything…”
“I’m sure we shall be fine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and give me the Captain’s file before you leave.”
Once the door to the cell had shut, Hoffmann made a patting motion, urging Kostyshakov to lie back down on his bed and relax. This was something less than ideal, as his new wound insisted he lie on his stomach. Stubborn to a fault, as his file said he was, Kostyshakov lay on his back, infection, stitches, pus, and blood be damned.
Hoffmann took a seat that groaned under his weight. Satisfied it would hold him, at least for a while, he opened up the file. He began to read it through, quickly but carefully. Occasionally, the German would tsk or hmmm or chuckle. Once he muttered, “Clever.” At several points, he read aloud, for effect.