“I mentioned—well, suggested, at least—a proposition, I think,” Hoffmann said. “Put simply, it is this: I want you to select a few dozen trustworthy officers and noncoms, then that… committee to select several hundred others, of all ranks. And then the lot of you are going to go and save your royal family.”
Kostyshakov looked stunned. He barely managed to croak out, “We’re going to—”
“It has to be you, you see,” Max interrupted, “you Russians that do it. Any German attempt to save them, barring some support not arising to direct combat, would simply contaminate them and take away what little legitimacy remains to the Romanovs.”
“But how do we…?”
“I’m not sure. I have a rudimentary sketch of a plan, no more than that. The short version is that you will select your force. Meanwhile, a small team of yours, quartermaster types, will be given free reign over captured stocks from your own army and the western allies, and perhaps some of Germany’s arms, if they’re ubiquitous enough or unknown enough. Another small team—with carrier pigeons, I think, if we can find some champions with the necessary range—will set out early, perhaps on horseback, to determine exactly where the tsar’s family is being held. This is a one-time possibility; we cannot launch our effort without that knowledge.
“While the arms are being collected, and the patrol is out hunting, you will organize and train your force.”
“How… mmm… how big a force are we talking about?” Daniil asked.
Hoffmann didn’t need to consult any notes. “Call it ‘six hundred’ of which you can take perhaps five hundred with you, if my understanding of some things is accurate. Nice round numbers, no? They’re not absolutely fixed, either.”
“There’s no way for me to sneak ‘several hundred’ men through the lines, through a country that is rapidly disintegrating, into close proximity to the tsar, without being seen and thus triggering the murders you suggest are inevitable anyway. It just cannot be done.”
“Oh, certainly not,” Hoffmann agreed. There was a heavy admixture of good-natured laughter in his next words. “That’s why you’re not going to march across country, except for that forward patrol. Oh, no, my fine Russian Guards Captain; you and your men are going to go to your target in the highest style you can imagine.
“We’ll discuss that, however, later. First we have to get you out of here.”
Since Kostyshakov continued to sit, unmoving, Hoffmann asked, querulously, “What? You have another objection?”
“Yes, General; how in the name of God do you propose that one of my men is going to be allowed to ransack your dumps of captured arms, ammunition, and other supplies and equipment?”
“Don’t be a fool, Kostyshakov, or, at least, give me credit for not being one. I’m going to assign to you my own Major Brinkmann, a genuinely brilliant general staff officer, and he’ll have a small staff to assist, as well as a company of our own plus one of locals to guard your camp. The staff will include a paymaster to continue payment of camp currency. Best I can do, there. Well… and we can arrange better food, at least as good as our own frontline fighters get, and a commissary with a few luxuries.”
“There is still one objection, General Hoffmann, a final one, security. One word of this leaking out and…”
“Ah, that quintessential Russian paranoia. No, not just one word, Kostyshakov. It would take, it almost always takes, a pattern of facts that fit together to lead to a conclusion. We cannot hide your existence completely, so we’ll put out two mutually contradictory stories. One is that, since Russia is out of the war, we’re recruiting volunteers—mercenaries, in effect—for the western front. The other will be that we need a police force for the portion of Poland we will surely, and against my very strong advice, steal.
“We’re also going to vociferously deny any such scheme as Polish police and western front trench fodder, which should go a long way toward confirming in people’s minds that both are absolutely true. Add to that that you’re going someplace fairly desolate and rather miserable for your training, the kind of place no one is likely to stumble upon inadvertently. And, except for things like rifle ranges and rehearsal areas—and those can be explained away, if necessary, as being for the guards—there won’t be anything to raise suspicion.”
Hoffmann took off his Pince-Nez glasses, to clean. “There is one matter; I’ll need your parole, yours, and the paroles of those officers and men whom you recruit, that for as long as we’re engaged in this enterprise you will not try to escape and will prevent any one of the men from escaping.”
“Done,” Kostyshakov said, without a moment’s hesitation. There was no hesitation in the first place, because there had already been an agreement between Germany and Imperial Russia to allow officers to give their parole, their word, which agreement and word allowed them to leave the confines of their prison camps and stroll around a bit. There was no hesitation in the second place, because, “I will do anything, put up with anything, endure anything, to be the hand that frees my tsar and his family from the Reds.”
“Good,” Hoffmann nodded. “Now come on; I need to browbeat the commandant to get you out of here and put you together with Brinkmann to get this circus on the road.
“By the way, how’s your German?”
Now it was Kostyshakov’s turn to laugh. He answered in perfect Bavarian-accented German, “I learned it in high school. I have since had a year and a half to perfect it, here, and good reason to do so.”
“Excellent,” said Hoffmann. “And we’ll have to get you outfitted with a proper—Russian—uniform. Speaking of which, where are your medals?”
“I left them with one of the French officers, sir, a Captain de Gaulle. He was captured at Verdun. Were it possible—yes, I know it’s not—I’d put him in the battalion and take him along.”
“Well—can you walk? With difficulty? Good. Let’s go get your medals and anything else you’ve left behind.”
Hoffmann and Kostyshakov found the tall, lanky Frenchman sitting at a table, reading a hand-written manuscript and making notes from it. He looked up at the disturbance and, in one great motion stood, picked up Daniil, and twirled him about the cell like a child.
“Put me down, Charles, you bloody great frog!”
“Daniil, I’d heard—we’d all heard—that you had been wounded and captured. It’s good to see you, my old friend, back on your feet.”
“I can’t stay, Charles; I have to go with this gentleman.”
De Gaulle studied the German, briefly, then pronounced, “General Hoffmann; sir, I am honored.”
“Captain de Gaulle, is it?”
The French officer preened that so important a German knew his name. Kostyshakov thought, Now that was a generous and decent thing to do, making an obscure foreign captain feel important.
“Yes, sir.”
“What are you reading, de Gaulle?” asked Max, pointing at the neat pile of paper on the table.
“Not so much reading, sir, as re-reading. They’re the notes for one of the Russians who used to be here, one Mikhail Tukhachevsky. I promised to safeguard it and return it to him after the war.”
“Why didn’t he…” Hoffmann began to ask, before dawning realization hit. “He escaped, didn’t he?”
“Yes, sir,” De Gaulle replied. “I still don’t know how he managed it.”
“Ah, Tukhachevsky,” Daniil mused; “he’s an interesting mix of brilliance and madness, fair mindedness and fanaticism, all tied up in a neat little bundle wrapped with infinite personal ambition. A hell of an officer, in many ways. I’m going home, soon, Charles; I can see it to him if you wish and sooner than you are likely to.”