Pouring done, the engineer left things to cool while he went a distance away to prepare the blasting caps. These he held lightly in the fingers of one hand, then tapped, wrist against wrist, to ensure that there were no contaminants or debris inside. Then he laid them aside.
From his meager store of fuse, he selected a length of about two arshin. This he torched off with a match, counting slowly until the fuse burnt to the end. From that, he judged, I need two—well, no, I’m slower than I would normally be, so double that—four minutes to make it to the cabin. Lots of protection is that stout log roof. So… I need about an arshin and a half per cap.
Cutting these lengths off, and taking care to make them exactly the same length, even though they were not all that precise, one after the other the engineer fed the fuse into the caps as far as they would go. He then crimped the cap to the fuse with his fuse crimper.
Returning to the safe, Shukhov worked the twigs out, replacing them with fused blasting caps.
Picking up a burning stick from the fire, he took the fuses in hand at their very ends, then lit them.
“Time for us to go, Sergeant.” After that, they began to run as quickly as the snow and his wound allowed for the shelter of the main cabin. He could feel it beginning to ooze blood again.
Interlude
Alexei: I am a Pinocchio
Oh, no, not in the sense that my nose grows when I lie. I don’t think I’ve told a lie, though I’ve kept my mouth shut, from time to time, since I was much littler than I am now. No, no; I am a Pinocchio in the sense that I cannot be a real boy, and I have no Fairy with Turquoise Hair to turn me into one. If I had one and she tapped me on the head with a magic wand, there’s a decent chance I’d bleed to death.
I don’t know how I’ll ever become a real man, since I can’t be a real boy. And if I can’t be a real man, however could I have been a real tsar? So perhaps not much was lost from the revolution and my father’s abdication on both our behalfs.
Certainly I’d have been more than happy—no, that’s not strong enough, I’d have been so happy no one would believe it—to trade the throne for the chance to be a real boy and a real man. Unfortunately, no one ever did make, nor ever could have made, me that offer.
Though they suffer terrible anguish for it, Mama and Papa let me do more than they really want to. Indeed, I usually have to make myself refrain from doing everything I’m allowed to, since I know how much it worries them. Still, I can do a little work, handle a sharp saw, play with my friends and my pets.
But the soldiers—the Red soldiers—shot my pets, back in our old place, and my friends have to keep from playing rough with me, in case I might get a cut or bruise. It’s like people throwing chess games with my father, because he’s the tsar… or, rather, was. Not much fun, not much of being a real boy, in that, is there?
I pray for a miracle, though I never prayed for, nor asked for help from, Rasputin. I never trusted him. And I wasn’t sorry, except for Mama, when he was killed. He was no starets, no holy man. He was a fraud and a swindler and, though the rumors about him and Mama, or him and my sisters, were all false, it wasn’t as if he didn’t want them to be true. You could see it in his eyes and manners; he definitely wanted them to become true.
Though I believe in God, of course, I’ve never understood why he allowed me to be born like this. When I die, and it probably isn’t all that far off, I intend to have some very cross words on the subject.
People wonder—I know some of Mama’s friends did—how it happened that this old fraud was able, still, to create miracles where I was concerned. I have a theory; it wasn’t his faith that did it; it was Mama’s and Papa’s faith.
Chapter Eighteen
Parade Field, Camp Budapest
The chaplain, as it turned out, had been easy. When the Germans asked, Father Basil Seizmonov, from Burgas, had been directed by his bishop to see to their Russian co-religionists, even if they were, for the nonce, temporal enemies. Since Basil had attended seminary in Moscow and spoke excellent Russian, he’d been an obvious choice.
Now with the mass of the battalion on the parade field—less only a few Polish and Ukrainian Catholics and a couple of Finnish Lutherans, and even some of them had shown up—Father Basil began his homily.
“Today,” he said, “is the Sunday of Zacchaeus, the tax collector. The questions presented by remembering this day are many. Why was Zacchaeus so determined to see our lord, Jesus Christ? Why did Christ, the pure one, not just associate with this vile person, this tax collector, but even invited Himself to the tax collector’s house? What does this mean for us, we who are, all of us, sinners…”
Claptrap, thought Vasenkov, even as he joined the others in crossing himself, bowing, touching the Earth, and making prostrations. One more dose of opium for the deluded masses. Fools, the lot of you.
On the other hand, as even Vasenkov had to admit, the training regimen, so far, had been so time consuming and exhausting, both, that he hadn’t had a lot of time to really think out what he was going to do.
Escape and try to warn the revolutionary government of what these Germans and their counterrevolutionary traitors are planning? How? It’s a long way to Russia, and longer now—getting longer by the day—since the Germans have commenced a new offensive. I might manage to get away with one of those machine pistols, but the cadre and the Germans, both, are very damned touchy about ammunition. If I got caught with one or two rounds, maybe I could get away with it. A magazine’s worth and they’d put me against a wall or chain me inside one of those room clearing chambers and use me for a live target. That bastard Cherimisov would and his lackey, Mayevsky, would be happy to put the chains around my neck.
No, I don’t think I can get to the revolutionary authorities from here.
So, what do I do then? I cannot in good conscience allow them to start the counterrevolution. A bloody civil war is the last thing the Rodina needs.
All I can do, I suppose, is continue to play on and watch for an opportunity to sabotage them.
And as long as we’re on the subject, could there be any better proof that this Christ was a charlatan than that he forgave a tax collector? I don’t bloody think so…
As it turned out, Vasenkov wasn’t the only one at services with concerns other than the divine.
Snow shoes or skis? thought Kostyshakov. Snow shoes or skis? I’ve asked the senior Finns in the unit and they tell me snowshoes are a massive problem. They use different muscles and use them differently, so that someone just starting out might be laid up for a week or more with torn muscles. On the other hand, they are just as certain that they can have every man in the battalion skiing cross country, and a lot faster than they could march, in a day, two at the outside, given a little snow. And we’ve already got plenty of snow on the ground up in those hills to the north.
The only thing I’m absolutely certain of is it has to be one or the other. Booted feet would be the worst way for us to travel, once we’re dropped off by the zeppelin.