If I could stop the rescue from ever leaving Bulgaria, that would be fine. The wicked tsar and his rotten enemy-sympathizing wife will be shot, I am sure, and none of my friends and comrades will be hurt. But I have no idea how to do that.
Interlude
Sverdlov: The indispensable man
I’m actually not and I know it; Lenin is the indispensable man to the Party and the Revolution. What I am, though, is indispensable to Lenin. He knows it; I know it; and pretty much everyone else knows it, too.
I am indispensable for two reasons. One is because I know everyone who matters, and have a completely objective, unemotional, accurate guide to their abilities and weaknesses, their value and their limitations. The other is because I see things clearly, with no emotional chains to bind me from doing what must be done. Closely related to that, I also understand terror in a way that even Lenin does not.
Terror? There are three kinds. One targets nobody in particular. It’s not very effective except as advertising, as an illustration of the weakness of the state, and insofar as it may cause the state to crack down in ways that make it even less popular. We Bolsheviks have engaged in this kind of terror, from bombings to bank robberies.
It’s far more effective, though, to target specific individuals and, by doing so, to target the behavior of a great many more of those in sympathy with the ones you target. A kulak, lifted high into the air by his neck, dancing on that air, and choking out his life, sends a message to every other kulak, even those far, far from the gallows. That message is “cooperate or die.”
And if killing one kulak isn’t enough? Well, then, hang his entire family, down to the smallest babe nursing at his mother’s breast. That message goes even further and faster, while it is received even more clearly.
The last and most effective kind of terror, however, is the kind that threatens to exterminate an entire people or class, to erase them from history, to bury their families, their friends, their values, their beliefs, their religion, their buildings and monuments, their entire culture. That is the terror men fear above all. Moreover, it has the distinct advantage that, once you are successful, there are no more enemies of the revolution.
And we intend to do it, too. The kulaks, the bourgeoisie, the aristocrats? Their foolish and wicked supporters? Their children and grandchildren? All will be swept away, killed in both body and spirit.
We Bolsheviks are not the weak and foolish tsars. What trivial numbers they did away with over the last century, to preserve their rotten system, we shall double and treble weekly, even daily if we must, to bring to life our better one.
Chapter Nineteen
Late Robbers’ Encampment, south of the Trans-Siberian Railway
“Strangest snowstorm I’ve ever seen,” said Shukhov, as a southerly breeze brought a flurry of currency into the encampment.
“Don’t just stand there with your teeth in your mouth,” the sergeant said, “start picking it up! Lieutenants? Girls! Come out!”
All of them, hale or not, stormed out and began collecting paper currency from the ground. The lieutenant, for the moment, didn’t. Instead, he tramped to the source, the now very open safe, and looked into it.
It was only a minority of the currency, he decided, that had been blown into the air. Most of it was still in the safe, tied in bundles of what he presumed were one hundred bills, each. Turgenev pulled out a couple of bundles, seeing they all bore the portrait of Catherine the Great. Doing some quick counting followed by some equally quick math, he tallied, three bundles deep, seven across, and thirty high… times ten thousand… over six million rubles in currency. Must have been somebody’s pay chest. If they’re all one hundred ruble notes. I doubt they are, though. Still, even if half… and then, too, there’s been a lot of inflation, so maybe…
Kneeling beside the safe and bending at the waist, the lieutenant brushed away some loose currency covering what turned out to be bags, some of them sundered by the blast.
“Oh, my,” he said aloud. He reached in and picked up a single coin. Examining it, he thought, I’d recognize that profile anywhere; a ten ruble gold piece. Brushing aside loose coins, the lieutenant hefted one bag. It was shockingly heavy for its size.
“Mmmmm… maybe a pood. No, at least a pood.” More kitchen math followed, resulting in, Hmmm… roughly thirty thousand rubles to the bag, and… oh, maybe twenty five or thirty bags, I suppose. We need to have a little counsel with the ladies.
“Who owns the money?” the lieutenant asked the assembly, fifteen women and girls, plus nine men, one of them wounded. The two living prisoners, tied and shivering outside, were not asked.
“Might be an army pay chest?” said Mokrenko.
“True,” said Koslov, the goat. “But whose army was it going to? Might have been the Reds, you know.”
“Good point,” the sergeant agreed, nodding deeply.
“Might belong to the tsar,” said Turgenev, “but somehow I don’t think he’s in a position to tell us what to do with it.”
“It might,” said Natalya, “belong to those who suffered rape, humiliation, and indignities galore right here.”
“We never could have gotten it out ourselves,” said Saskulaana, the lovely Yakut woman. “Split it?” she suggested.
“Frankly, sir,” said Mokrenko, addressing the lieutenant, “that might be the fairest and best we can do, both, without risking the money going for a bad cause.”
The lieutenant nodded, but only as if he’d heard, not as if he necessarily agreed. “Saskulaana?” he asked, “what do you women and girls want to do?”
“You’re the first decent men any of us have seen in a while,” said the Yakut. “Can we stay with you? We’d earn our keep.”
Repeating the lie Mokrenko had told Colonel Plestov, Turgenev said, “We are men with prices on our heads. You cannot come with us. We can, though, escort you as far as the edge of Tyumen, where you can all catch trains for either east or west. You’re probably”—here, the lieutenant permitted himself a smile—“very safe from train robbers at this point.”
“We could take my horses and be completely safe from train robbers,” said Saskulaana.
“About the horses…”
“I’m joking,” the woman said. “We need fourteen and maybe as many for food and such. That leaves plenty for you and your men. Take them; with my blessings. We owe everything to you.”
“If we take you as far as Tyumen, how many would then take a train either east or west?” Turgenev asked.
All the women seemed happy with that idea, each raising her hand.
“At that point, then, you wouldn’t need horses, would you?”
“I’d still need maybe five,” said the Yakut woman, “to get myself and my daughter back to our people. And a rifle, if one could be spared.”
“We’ve got two… no, three… extras now. You can have your pick of those.
“As for the money,” Turgenev continued, “You ladies can only carry so much weight. Those bags are remarkably heavy. Indeed, any three or maybe four of them would weigh more than any one of you. I’d suggest you should want the paper rubles, with just enough gold to see you through a hard time, maybe five thousand rubles’ worth, each.”