The Romanov Rescue

Chapter Ten

Jambol, Bulgaria

It was a huge building, one of the biggest Kostyshakov had ever seen. It was certainly the biggest he’d ever seen standing alone, with no other substantial buildings around it. Brinkmann waved with his cane for a German private to open the door, then ushered the Russian officer in.

“Well, he did say we’d be travelling in the highest style I could imagine, but this is way beyond my imaginings,” said Daniil, craning his neck to take in the immense structure and the massive dirigible within.

Wilhelm, who’d just climbed out of the crew compartment after overseeing one of the maintenance electricians repairing the L59’s wireless set, heard the harsh consonants of the Russian words echo through the cavernous space of the hangar. He didn’t understand the words, but the wonder in the man’s voice was clear as he stood with his neck craned back, staring up at the majesty of the Afrika-Schiff. Several other men in Russian uniform joined him and then—ah! Wilhelm felt his mounting anxiety lessen as a German major stepped through the doors behind them, followed by a Feldwebel. The Russians had dropped out of the war, of course, but until recently they had been enemies… and strangers were not permitted in the L59 hangar.

When none of the ground maintenance crew seemed inclined to approach the group, Wilhelm straightened his spine and stepped forward.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Wilhelm said as he clicked his heels together in perfect attention. “I am Signalman Mueller. May I help you?” He was careful to keep his bearing polite and professional—indeed, his pride demanded it!—but he did allow a clipped suspicion into his tone.

“Mueller, I am Feldwebel Weber,” the tall, slender man said. He stood with his shoulders very slightly hunched and had a moustache so grand that Wilhelm couldn’t help but stare. “I am escorting Imperial Guards Lieutenant Colonel Kostyshakov and his staff, along with Major Brinkmann, to a meeting with Kapitaenleutnant Bockholt. On the orders of Major General Hoffman,” he added after a slight, but significant, pause.

“I will be happy to show you the way, Feldwebel,” Wilhelm said smoothly, inclining his head. He turned and gestured to the long, low row of buildings that lined the outer wall of the hangar, inviting them to walk with him.

“Our gratitude, Mueller,” the Russian lieutenant colonel, Kostyshakov, said as they started moving. His uniform was different from the standard Russian army officer’s uniform, Wilhelm noticed. Perhaps because of the guards designation? Regardless, Wilhelm schooled his face to impassivity, but he was impressed. The man’s German was flawless.

“I see by your insignia that you’re part of the L59’s crew. Please elaborate on your duties for us.”

“As a communications operator, sir, besides sending and receiving, I also encrypt and decrypt coded messages, as well as maintain the equipment.” Wilhelm said, hoping that his formal reply would shut down any further questions. Perhaps the Russians were no longer enemy combatants, but they certainly could still be spies.

“A very important position.”

“Yes, sir. Here we are,” Wilhelm announced as they approached the captain’s office door. He knocked twice, then waited for the command to enter before turning the knob and stepping in.

“Signalman Mueller reports that a Major Brinkmann, a Feldwebel Weber and a group of Russian officers are here to see you, sir,” Wilhelm said, after coming to attention and rendering a razor-sharp salute. Captain Bockholt looked up from his desk with raised eyebrows—he didn’t normally require such strict formality—but he returned Wilhelm’s salute and got to his feet.

“Very well, Mueller,” the captain said. “Thank you for bringing them to me. That will be all.”

“Yes, sir,” Wilhelm said, dropping the salute. He turned on his heel and walked out, as Weber and the Russians filed in. He let them all pass, and then closed the captain’s office door behind him. Then he waited.

He wasn’t eavesdropping. He was just… there if the captain needed him. Just in case.

“Captain Bockholt, I am Major Brinkmann, and I bring you Major General Hoffmann’s compliments,” Brinkmann said as the young German airman left the room. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded packet of papers which he held out to Ludwig.

“Thank you,” Ludwig said, taking the papers with a nod. “May I offer you some refreshment?” He waved a hand at the sideboard, which held a small but respectable collection of the local fruit brandy known as Rakia.

“We can help ourselves, Captain,” the Russian lieutenant colonel said in unaccented German. “This will be easiest if you take the time to read the missive that the major’s just given you first.”

“I see,” Ludwig said, keeping the curiosity out of his voice. “In that case, please be my guests. The blue bottle is particularly good. Glasses are in the cabinet. I shall be with you in one moment.”

The Russian officer nodded and took one of the two chairs that faced Ludwig’s desk while Weber went to the sideboard and began to pour. Ludwig returned to his seat and opened the packet, his pulse accelerating as his eyes slid over the orders contained within. It didn’t take long, as General Hoffmann was a succinct man. Ludwig read over the entire message twice before he looked up at his guest, now smiling at him over a glass of Rakia.

“Lieutenant Colonel Kostyshakov, I presume,” he said.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Bockholt. Your reputation precedes you.”

“I wish I could say the same, sir.”

Kostyshakov smiled, and Ludwig noted that it didn’t, quite, reach his eyes.

“General Hoffmann will have told you the purpose of my visit here, and the object of my—now our—mission.”

“Yes, sir,” Ludwig said. “It is an audacious concept…” he paused, and studied the face of the Russian officer.

“And?” Kostyshakov urged him to go on.

“… And one of which, if it is not too bold of me to say, I heartily approve. Bolshevism is a cancer.” Ludwig kept his voice quiet, but even so, he felt his emotions stir at the prospect.

“I am glad you agree, Captain. As to the audacity of the plan… well. The Afrika-Schiff rather specializes in audacity, do you not?”

Ludwig felt himself smile.

“It seems we do.”

“Well, then.” Kostyshakov returned his smile and lifted his glass of Rakia. At some point whilst he’d been reading, someone had set another full glass down on Ludwig’s desk. He lifted this in reply and the two men drank, as if in a silent toast to the success of their audacious and improbable mission.

“Now,” Ludwig said. “If you’ll forgive me, General Hoffmann’s orders were a little sparse on the details. Perhaps I can give you a tour of my ship, and you can tell me exactly what men and equipment we will be carrying for this endeavor.”

“Yes, of course. But first, Captain, you must forgive me. Do you think that your men all share your disdain for Bolshevism? I ask only because, as I’m sure you can see, our mission is such that a threat from within our ranks could undo us entirely.”

Ludwig fought the urge to bristle and pursed his lips while he thought about it. He turned the glass of Rakia in his hand, watching the light from his office window play through the pale gold liquor.

“I cannot say for certain,” he said slowly. “But I would be very surprised if they did not. My men are elite, sir. They are the crème de la crème of the Imperial Navy. In my experience, men of that much talent, ability and drive do not gravitate towards the philosophies of Bolshevism.”

“I see,” Kostyshakov said.

“But,” Ludwig went on. “We are no strangers to sensitive mission orders. Certainly they will expect to be told nothing until we are airborne… and even then, only what they need to know in order to perform their duties.”

“That would probably be best,” Kostyshakov said. “Well enough.” He tossed back the rest of the Rakia and put the glass down on Ludwig’s desk. “Is now convenient?”

“I am at your service, sir,” Ludwig said. He stood, took his own last drink, and gestured for the Russians to precede him out into the yawning hangar bay.

Wilhelm snapped to attention as the captain’s office door opened. One by one, the visitors filed out, with Captain Bockholt bringing up the rear. He met his crewman’s eyes and a tiny smile played about his lips.

“Ah, Mueller. Just the man I was hoping to see. Find the Obermaschinistenmaat, please, and ask him to join us here. I will be giving Lieutenant Colonel Kostyshakov and Major Brinkmann a tour of the ship, and we will need his expertise… and yours.”

“Aye, sir,” Wilhelm said with a salute. “Obermaschinistenmaat Engelke is still in the cargo bay, sir, overseeing the new rack installation. Shall I lead you to him?”

“Yes, perfect,” the captain said, and turned with a smile to the two other officers. “Wilhelm is one of our best enlisted airmen.”

Wilhelm felt his face flush with pride and his chest puff slightly at the compliment from his commanding officer. He said nothing, however, merely turned and began walking toward the cargo bay entrance where he’d last seen his immediate supervisor.

“Hundreds, you say.” Daniil thought on that a bit then asked, “How many men can you lift?”

“Depends on the weight per man. Total lift, fuel, equipment, men other than the crew, and water ballast, is a little over twenty-four tons. It’s not all useable, plan on about twenty-one tons. We can trim the water ballast some, yes, but not all of it. And how much we can trim depends a lot on where we’re going; the thing leaks lifting gas, hydrogen, like a sieve, but it leaks more when the gas expands in warm weather. Still, we need a good deal just to keep an even keel.”

“I knew she was big,” he heard the Russian lieutenant colonel say softly in German behind him as they walked. “But it is different seeing her up close. What is her range?”

“For a long distance flight? She traversed almost seven thousand kilometers nonstop during the Africa mission.”

Kostyshakov was impressed. “Our mission will be shorter, but we will likely need multiple lifts.”

“So I surmised. General Hoffmann’s orders said four companies of men?”

“Five, as it turns out, but smaller companies. Plus equipment, ammo and supplies for maybe two weeks… and the animals. Can you take animals on board?”

“Horses?”

“And mules.”

“I am certain the captain will find a way,” Major Brinkmann said smoothly.

“We can,” Bockholt said, drawing his words out, as if he were considering them as he spoke. “But securing them during flight will require some thought. As well as on- and off-load procedures.”

The group fell silent then, as they’d reached the loading ramp for the ship’s cargo bay. The ramp was down, and the shadowed cavern of the bay yawned ahead of them. Had they been anywhere other than inside one of the largest aircraft hangars in the world, the bay would have seemed truly gargantuan. But as it was, tucked under the belly of the L59’s magnificent bulk, it appeared only moderately large.

Still, Wilhelm thought. Surely she has plenty of room for a few men and horses!

“Gentlemen,” he said as he started up the ramp. “Please follow me and stay to the foot traffic walkway. Some of the other areas are designed to hold cargo, but are not necessarily safe for walking.”

The captain gave him a slight nod of approval, and Wilhelm allowed himself a small smile when he turned back and began leading them into the relative dimness of the bay.

“You call this a weld? Herr welder? Your time would clearly be better spent elsewhere. Go to the cafeteria und fressen!”

This furious tirade echoed through the metal struts and after a brief moment, a red-faced Bulgarian stomped past them, clearly upset at the dressing-down he’d just received. Wilhelm drew a deep breath and took a calculated risk.

“Obermaschinistenmaat Engelke!” he called out, “The captain and a delegation of officers are here to see you!”

Wilhelm thought he heard another muttered epithet, but his supervisor and the L59’s senior NCO walked toward them with his spine straight and his working uniform looking sharp. No trace of the irritation he must have felt for the bumbling welder remained on his face.

“Captain,” the senior noncom said, coming to attention and rendering a salute once he was within speaking distance of the group.

“Obermaschinistenmaat,” Captain Bockholt replied, returning the salute with a tiny smile on his face. The captain then stepped forward, and dropped his voice to a whisper that Wilhelm could barely hear, “These Bulgarians are butter-fingered oafs, aren’t they? Well done, but you must continue to keep a close watch on them.”

“Aye, sir,” the senior mate said, a tiny growl entering his tone. “The Bulgarian ‘expert’ was a ham-handed fool. Some are better. I will have one of our machinists break his weld and start over. It will not delay our progress.”

“That is good to hear. This is Lieutenant Colonel Kostyshakov, of the Russian Guards, plus Major Brinkmann, of Ober Ost, and Feldwebel Weber. We have been given orders from General Hoffmann.”

The senior machinist’s spine got even straighter, which Wilhelm didn’t think was possible.

The captain went on. “Perhaps you and Feldwebel Weber can go over the cargo requirements and begin to work on some loading solutions. This is to be a major movement, not quite like anything we have done before.”

“Yes, sir,” Engelke said. Feldwebel Weber stepped away from the group, and the two NCOs greeted each other and shook hands. Wilhelm took a step to follow them as they began walking back farther into the cargo bay.

“Wilhelm, wait a moment. Lieutenant Colonel Kostyshakov, Major Brinkmann, I think there is something else we must discuss,” Bockholt said, beckoning to the two officers to come closer. Wilhelm, too, found himself being drawn into a circle of confidence, and he felt intensely uncomfortable at being in such company. What could the captain want me for?

“There is another matter we must consider,” Bockholt said. “The matter of getting past the Russian lines. Armistice or no armistice, I do not think the Bolshevik army is likely to simply let a warship of a recent enemy fly overhead with impunity. And they do have aircraft.”

“What do you suggest?” Kostyshakov asked.

“In his orders, General Hoffmann said that we will have whatever we need. Major Brinkmann, what we need is a fighter escort. Two planes. Four would be better, but two will work, just to see us past the most dangerous part of the crossing, the front.”

The two visiting officers looked at each other for a brief moment, and then Brinkmann nodded.

“I will send a message,” he said. “The general gives this mission his top priority, so it is likely that he will respond quickly.”

“Thank you,” Bockholt said. “Now, Wilhelm here will be able to answer any questions you have about the ship and her capabilities. I must speak with my officers and begin the planning cycle. I will have a basic plan for you in twenty-four hours, pending any changes due to the general’s answer about the escort.”

“Yes, of course,” Kostyshakov said. “Thank you very much, Captain. I am pleased to be working with you.”

“And I, you, sir. We shall make history together, no?”

Again, thought Wilhelm, with more than a little bit of pride. We shall make history together again.

Ludwig looked down the length of the cargo bay and squinted his eyes, imagining it filled with men, equipment and—heaven help them all—even horses.

“It will be tight, sir, but we can make it work,” Heinrich, his recently promoted XO said. After the Africa mission, Ludwig’s previous XO had been given command of his own ship. The navy hadn’t been able to provide a backfill, however, and so his young lieutenant navigator had been forced to step into the role. Overall, Ludwig was pleased with his performance and growth, but this coming mission would certainly put him to the test.

It would put them all to the test.

“Tell me how, Lieutenant,” Ludwig said as he started walking aft. He beckoned to Heinrich to follow and then clasped his hands behind his back. “Tell me what you and the chief-machinist’s mate figured out. I need to see it in my mind’s eye.”

“Very good, sir,” Heinrich said as he stretched his long legs to catch up. “In the first place, the new aluminum cargo racks here in the forward area are significantly lighter than the previous versions. We will use those for standard sized cargo, food barrels, ammunition, et cetera.”

“And how much weight?”

“Four and a half tons for food and water, and about eleven tons for the men and equipment for the first lift.”

“The grenadier company?” Ludwig asked, knowing that they had been Kostyshakov’s choice for the first lift.

“And about twenty-four men from headquarters company. Plus their heavy weapons.”

“And where have you planned to put these men for the duration of the trip? We obviously can’t have them moving around the cargo bay.”

“No, sir. The plan is to cordon off this area where they will stay for the duration of the trip. As long as they don’t leave that portion of the cargo bay, the loading balance should be stable. We’ll have them hang hammocks from support struts to the ends of the racks starting at that stanchion there,” Heinrich said, pointing. “To there. It’s not a large area, but it will be enough that they can stretch their legs from time to time—and a few at a time—and keep their blood moving.”

Ludwig nodded. It wasn’t ideal—but then, what was? It would work, though he didn’t envy those men the cold, miserable transport that awaited them.

“What else?” he asked, continuing down the length of the cargo bay. “How will we secure the heavy weapons?”

“The weight and balance calculations we ran suggest that they’re best located dead center of the cargo bay, sir,” Heinrich said, walking to that point. “The plan is to use horses to haul them in their rigs up onto the deck, and then immobilize the wheels in place and tie the entire apparatus down to our support struts, using our standard cargo eyelets. We’ll use hempen rope, stiffened with tar for the tiedowns.”

“With a lot of redundancy, one would hope,” Ludwig said dryly.

“Of course, sir. I give you my word that the guns will remain immobile for the entirety of the trip.”

“I hope so, otherwise we’re going to deliver fewer men than we promised. Not to mention the godforsaken horses.” He let out a sigh.

“Aye, sir, the horses are the trickiest part. The best plan we can figure is to construct half a dozen stalls in the aft-most portion of the bay.”

“Stalls?” Ludwig felt his eyebrows go up. “You’re going to turn my cargo hold into a stable?”

“Temporarily, yes, sir. We’ll use the same support struts as anchors for lightweight wooden walls suspended from ceiling and deck using the same tarred ropes. Then we’ll have a cradle of hay for each animal, to keep it docile and occupied during transit. We’ll lay duckboards across the floor struts in between the stall walls to create a solid surface for the horses and mules to stand or lie upon.”

Heinrich gestured enthusiastically as he pointed out where each of these things would go, and despite himself, Ludwig was amused. The idea of carrying horses and mules aboard his ship was a ghastly one, but then, this entire enterprise was equal parts ridiculous and incredibly ambitious. Perhaps diving in with enthusiasm and imagination was the only way to actually accomplish it.

“Fine,” Ludwig said. “Though I will make it clear to Kostyshakov and Brinkmann that it will be their men, not mine, who are responsible for cleaning the horseshit out of my cargo hold. Now, let us discuss unloading.”

After his walkthrough with Heinrich, Ludwig was mostly satisfied with the load plan. As he’d suspected, however, the logistics of unloading were still murky at best. Chief among issues was that no one had briefed him on the specific destination—General Hoffmann’s orders had just mentioned “somewhere east of the Volga, and probably east of the Urals”—and so neither Ludwig nor his crew knew exactly what type of situation they’d be flying into.

That was something he needed to rectify posthaste. So he headed to his office to pen a note to ask Brinkmann to come and see him.

“Ah! Captain Bockholt! I was hoping to find you. Do you have a moment?”

Lieutenant Colonel—or whatever the Russian imperial guards equivalent was—Kostyshakov stood outside his office door, a small smile on his face. Ludwig couldn’t decide if he liked the man or not, but he couldn’t deny that he was ambitious and aggressive… and he seemed fanatically dedicated to the success of his mission.

“What can I do for you?” Ludwig asked.

“How is your planning coming?” Kostyshakov asked, which surprised Ludwig and put him on his guard. Was the man doubting him and his crew?

“Rather well, actually,” Ludwig said, trying to keep all hint of stiffness out of his tone. “Although I was headed to pen a note to Major Brinkmann. I’m afraid we can go no further with our plans until I have more concrete details about our exact destination.”

“Ah, I don’t have much more information on that, but I will tell you what I know,” Kostyshakov said, his smile changing to a rueful grimace. “You have maps in your office?”

“I do,” Ludwig said, and reached out to turn the handle of the door leading from the hangar. “But there are more and better in the planning room. First right past my office. After you, please.”

Ludwig followed Kostyshakov into the large room that he and his officers used to plan their flights. Maps and charts hung on three of the four walls, with the fourth dedicated to large windows to let in sunlight. In the center of the room, a long table with an angled top held a large, detailed map of eastern Europe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, and including most of Western Siberia. Kostyshakov made a beeline for this map.

“This is good quality,” he said, admiration in his voice. “You Germans always did pay attention to the details.”

“It is how we are taught, sir,” Ludwig said. “The destination? Major General Hoffmann said east of the Volga?”

“Hmm, yes. So we don’t actually know the exact location. Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, or Tobolsk, those are our best guesses right now. The latter is the last we’ve heard of, but they may have been moved to one of the others. The strategic recon team will find a place to land but it will depend on where the royal family is.”

Ludwig leaned in to peer at the map where Kostyshakov pointed at the three cities in succession.

“Does your Strat Recon team know what to look for?” Ludwig asked. “What makes a good landing zone for a zeppelin?”

“I gave them some guidance. Describe the ideal to me.”

Ludwig pointed at a spot on the map where the topographical contour lines curved away from each other with wide separation.

What he recited sounded much like what Kostyshakov had told Turgenev. “If we are to land, it must be a large area, flat with little to no vegetation. Some kind of water feature—a lake or wide river would be best—so that we can refill our ballast tanks. And most importantly, it must be secure. I am sure I don’t need to remind you that our hydrogen lifting gasses are quite flammable. One enemy tracer round into our envelope and we are done. As a well-roasted beef haunch is done.”

Kostyshakov snorted a soft laugh at Ludwig’s dark humor. “There will be only a small force on the ground to receive the first shipment. However, we will do our best to ensure you have a secure landing area. Once the first lift is complete, of course, it will be simpler, for we will have the grenadier company on the ground. However, what other options do you have, if we cannot find this perfect meadow of yours?”

“We can land to a tower, like a steeple perhaps, though it will make unloading more difficult, at least for the horses. Supplies can be thrown out or lowered via rope slings, as can men. Or men could use a ladder. But the horses and mules will present a problem, as will the heavy weapons.”

“How long will you need on the ground?”

“We will do a rehearsal in a day or so to practice onloading and offloading the cargo, so my men should be able to get it down to about thirty minutes. No longer than it will take to top up the ballast tanks. But I must tell you that approaching to land to the ground takes much more time than landing to a tower, and we will be quite vulnerable the whole time.”

“Well, as I said,” Kostyshakov shrugged, “we will do what we can. Let us hope your crew can keep from being spotted from the air while in transit.”

“I do not like to risk my crew and my ship on the basis of hope, sir,” Ludwig said tartly. Kostyshakov looked up at him with one raised eyebrow.

“Captain, is that not what we are all doing here?”

Ludwig said nothing, merely met the other man’s eyes for a long moment, and then turned back to the map.

“On another topic, I do have a small request for you,” Kostyshakov said, straightening and stepping back from the map table. “I appreciate that there are nuances to this business of mobility by air with which I am unfamiliar. I would like to have you appoint a liaison to my staff, if you wouldn’t mind. Someone who can inform me and my staff of things we do not know.”

“I am desperately short of officers, sir,” Ludwig said with real regret. A liaison was a fantastic idea, and it spoke well of Kostyshakov that he would ask for one. “I am sorry that I have none to spare.”

“I know, Brinkmann told me that you have only the one lieutenant as your XO. I thought perhaps an NCO might do the trick. What about that one young man… Wilhelm…?”

“Signalman Mueller?” Ludwig pursed his lips and considered. “He is a good man and indispensable as our wireless operator… but as you know, this mission is so covert that we have literally no one with whom we can communicate. Your ground forces will be on the move too much to make a wireless practical… yes. That might do nicely, sir. I will speak with my senior noncom and have him release Wilhelm to your staff effective immediately.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Kostyshakov said with a slight inclination of his head. “I promise that we will take good care of the young man.”

“Mueller, what are your thoughts?”

Wilhelm had been looking up at the underside of the L59 as his friends and crewmates lowered barrel after barrel out through the deck of the forward part of the cargo bay. The airship currently hovered ten meters above the ground, secured by her mooring lines as the crew practiced offloading cargo as they would do if they could not find a landing zone big enough to set down on the ground. Lieutenant Colonel Kostyshakov, to whom he’d been temporarily assigned for the duration of this mission, approached him, hands behind his back and that slight smile on his clean-shaven face.

“Sir?”

“How goes the rehearsal? If you’re to be my liaison, you must be ready to explain the nuances that I might not immediately catch.” Kostyshakov came to a stop beside Wilhelm and craned his neck upward to see what Wilhelm had been watching. “Is it going well?”

“This part is, sir. Our crew is very well trained with supply drops of this type. The hard part will be the animals.” Wilhelm instinctively drew his spine up straight, then belatedly realized that the Russian officer was several inches shorter. Would he see that as an insult?

Not that Kostyshakov had time to notice. A deafening scream rent the air, causing both men to spin aft toward the stern of the zeppelin. There, a mule dangled, suspended in a canvas sling that wrapped under its belly and hung from chains that led to the zeppelin’s winch. Wilhelm knew that the machinists, his friend Gustav among them, had been working all morning to move and reconfigure the winch to try to attempt this maneuver.

As Wilhelm and Kostyshakov—along with everyone else observing the unloading rehearsal—watched, the mule let out another scream of protest as the winch started to lower the sling. The animal kicked out with its hind legs, making its situation worse, as the sling began to lurch from side to side in response.

“Oh no,” Wilhelm murmured. “This is bad.”

“Bad? Why?” Kostyshakov asked.

“That oscillation is very hard on the winching gears. If the crew cannot get it under control, it could tear the winch right out of the support strut—or worse, cause it to grind itself up and start a fire. These ships are big, yes, but everything is very delicate.” Wilhelm breathed in sharply as the animal kicked again and showed no sign of ceasing to struggle.

The swaying got worse, until Wilhelm found himself biting his lower lip in fear for his friends overhead. A loud pop echoed across the field, and the mule in the sling jerked, and then plummeted to the ground with another scream of terror.

A sickening thud echoed across the suddenly otherwise silent field. A tall figure that Wilhelm instantly recognized as Captain Bockholt stepped toward the crumpled animal and drew a Luger P08. The captain fired, and the mule finally fell silent, freed from its misery.

“They had to cut the load,” Wilhelm said, hearing the sickness in his own voice. “Otherwise, it would have jeopardized the ship and everyone on her.”

“Hmmm. Sergeant Kaledin is going to be very upset about the loss of his mule. But, yes, I can see that. What do you suggest?”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes, you. You’re my liaison. Your captain wouldn’t have assigned you to me if he didn’t intend you to advise.” Kostyshakov’s tone was kind, but Wilhelm could hear the edge of impatience under the words. He took a deep breath, steeled his nerve, and opened his mouth.

“I suggest that your strategic recon team find a place where we can fully land, at least for the first lift, if not two. If panicking animals don’t cause damage to the ship, they will almost certainly injure themselves and then they’re no use to your forces, sir.” Wilhelm kept his tone respectful, but he told the bald truth.

Kostyshakov turned to look up at Wilhelm, his tiny smile returning. “There,” he said. “See? That wasn’t so hard. As it happens, I agree with you, but we may not have a choice in the matter. And if the animals die, they can always be eaten.”

“And so we will continue to rehearse,” Wilhelm said. “Perhaps we can get the animals used to the procedure. Maybe if they try a blindfold?”

“That should be interesting,” Kostyshakov said.

“Yes, sir,” Wilhelm agreed. Privately, he had a bet with Gustav that at least three of the horses didn’t make it to the actual day of the mission. But he wasn’t about to tell the Russian that. Not after watching the horrible demise of one of the poor animals.

Perhaps later, after the mission was complete. Still, poor “Lydia.”

Interlude

Tatiana: Alexei and his bodyguard

Alexei’s violent coughing had led to hemorrhaging in his groin. He lay in bed, in excruciating pain, and there was nothing anyone, including the doctors, could do.

As he moaned and cried, Mama sat with him, never leaving his bedside.

It had been almost six years since he’d had a bout this bad.

Deverenko was beside himself. The man who had been responsible for getting Alexei to wear all the various encasements he’d needed throughout his life wore a look of such utter despair that Papa gently suggested he leave. Most of the encasements, made of leather and canvas, to support Alexei’s legs, arms, and body, were now too small for his growing body.

Alexei had always fought them, insisting that they didn’t help, but we all knew that was just his stubbornness coming out. Like Anastasia, he had always had a mind of his own, and for days, I had expected that willfulness to surface.

But it hadn’t.

Once Deverenko and Papa left, it was just Mama and I, sitting at his side. A basin of melted ice rested in my lap, along with strips of cloth, freshly torn from our most threadbare clothes.

Mama pulled one of the rags off Alexei’s feverish face and set it aside. She rested her fingers atop his forehead, sweeping the strands of sweat-soaked hair aside.

I dipped a fresh strip of cloth into the chill water, gave it a squeeze, and handed it to Mama.

“I would like to die, Mama,” Alexei said, his voice barely a whisper. “I’m not afraid of death.”

Mama’s hands froze mid-motion. Mama’s hands, unfailingly steady through years of Alexei’s illness, trembled now. She set the rag atop his forehead as she shushed him.

His eyes had become enormous in his head as his fever had thinned him and turned his skin yellow. He blinked his eyes open, holding her gaze with his own.

“Mama, I’m so afraid of what they may do to us.”

Chapter Eleven

Governor’s House, Tobolsk

As winter settled over Tobolsk, Dostovalov and Chekov were reassigned to day shift. Kobylinsky informed them of the change himself in his office, across the street from Freedom House.

“Aside from the minor incident with that samogon,” he said. “You lads have done excellent work, and the Romanovs seem comfortable with you, so I’m transferring you to day shift. No need to freeze your asses off.”

This was, perhaps, optimistic of the colonel, as it was perfectly possible to freeze one’s ass off, in Siberia, in the winter, in broad daylight.

As he spoke, Kobylinsky’s eyes shifted to the window and his fingers drummed on the table. He was in a dark brown suit and coat. After an incident in which one of the men had torn off his epaulets, and the soldiers’ committee had demanded the abolition of rank insignia, Kobylinsky had taken to wearing mufti, even during duty hours.

“Thank you, sir,” Dostovalov said.

“Right,” Kobylinsky said, his tone vacant. “Well, off to it, men.”

The sun shone bright and clear on the morning of their first day. The air was still cold, but nowhere near as punishing as the Siberian night. The Romanov family, minus their mother and Tatiana, were out in force on the grounds. The children played while Nicholas and Prince Dolgorukov sawed firewood out back behind the mansion.

The change of duty was an agreeable turn of events, but Chekov noted with alarm that Dostovalov’s mood was entirely too buoyant for a minor improvement in their situation. Moreover, he noticed that Olga Romanova seemed equally cheerful, and glanced every chance she could at “Antosenka” when she thought no one was looking. Dostovalov, for his part, simply smiled and smiled and smiled like a smitten jackass.

Of course Dostovalov would develop a crush on the tsar’s daughter. Of fucking course he would.

Chekov forced himself not to glare at Dostovalov as they walked their paces around the Freedom House. Not that the moron would’ve noticed. While Maria and Anastasia made use of their swing set, kicking up snow with each forward swing, Olga ran around the yard, pulling her brother Alexei on a sledge through the snow. Dostovalov watched their antics with a beatific grin. Brother and sister were laughing uproariously as they careened to a halt in a snowbank on the edge of the lawn. Laughing along with them, Dostovalov walked over to the bank to help them extricate themselves.

“It’s all fun and games until they kill the hemophiliac,” Chekov muttered.

“Sergei, would you stop being such an ass?” Dostovalov hissed over his shoulder.

Dostovalov gently helped disentangle Alexei from his big sister, and then pulled Olga to her feet. Olga accepted his help to stand up. The pair smiled and held onto one another’s hands for a long moment, close enough to kiss, before Olga broke away and began brushing snow off of Alexei’s uniform. Dostovalov still looked on, grinning.

Idiot!

Something hard and cold hit Chekov in the back of his head, interrupting his fuming. He whirled about to find the youngest Romanov daughter, Anastasia, regarding him with a haughty up-turned nose and a second ball of ice and snow in her hand. Chekov regarded her with annoyance as he tried to scoop the snow out of his collar before it melted and trickled down to his shirt.

“And what was that for, you little assassin?” he demanded.

“Your ungentlemanly conduct, Comrade Feldfebel,” Anastasia said. “Your big friend went to my sister’s aid while you stood about doing nothing. What sort of guard are you?”

With that, the incorrigible teenager threw her next snowball, but Chekov stepped aside and the projectile whizzed past his head, thunking into the wooden fence behind him. A snort of genuine laughter escaped Chekov. He scooped up a handful of snow, and with practiced ease, packed it into a tight sphere, then pitched it expertly, hitting Anastasia right in her grinning mouth.

“Pah!” Anastasia ran a hand across her face and spit out a mouthful of snow; her now reddened face bore an immense grin. “This means war, good sir! Maria! To arms!”

Chekov sprinted around the corner of the mansion, boots sliding on the ice and snow, as the third and fourth Romanov sisters concentrated fire upon him. Snowballs splatted against Freedom House’s façade while Chekov furiously crafted more ammunition.

“Maria, go around back!” Anastasia shouted. “We’ll outflank him!”

Chekov ran and turned the corner around the back of the mansion himself before Maria could get there. He greeted her with a face full of snow. Maria laughed good naturedly as she shook her head to clear off the snow, and returned fire, but Chekov was already back around the front of the house, just in time to pelt Anastasia in the back of the head with another snowball.

Anastasia used a decidedly unladylike word and chased after him with another snowball. Chekov ducked away, laughing loudly. He laughed so much and so heartily that his abdomen ached from the unaccustomed exertion and, out of breath, he soon succumbed to a barrage of well-aimed and vengefully propelled snowballs.

“All right, all right, ladies!” He shouted, holding up his hands and tucking his chin into his shoulder to protect his face. “I surrender. Your victory is complete.”

Maria joined Olga, Alexei and Dostovalov who stood upon the front step laughing at the battle, but Anastasia let out a whoop and favored them with an impromptu war dance, circling around the defeated Chekov. Anastasia’s rendition sent everyone, Chekov included, into peals of mirth.

Chekov posted himself by the window to the balcony while Dostovalov stayed with the family. He trusted even Dostovalov wouldn’t be so stupid as to do something untoward in front of Olga’s father so he didn’t join them. Besides, Nicholas’s children were one thing, Chekov had no desire to associate with the deposed tsar, no matter how refined the former autocrat’s manners were.

His quiet vigil was interrupted only a few minutes in, however, by Nicholas’s cultured voice.

“Feldfebel Chekov, would you come here, please?”

Chekov sighed, but came as called to the study. The five children were arrayed about the room, Olga and Tatiana on the sofa, each with a book in her hand, Maria worked some brightly colored yarn with knitting needles while Anastasia and the boy, Alexei, played on the floor with his cocker spaniel, Joy. Dostovalov stood in the near corner, well away from Olga, thank God. Nicholas himself sat at a lovely chess board with intricately carved ebony pieces for the black and sandalwood for the white.

“Yes, Citizen Romanov?” Chekov said.

“Your friend tells me you are an excellent chess player,” Nicholas said.

Chekov glanced from Dostovalov’s grinning face back to the ex-emperor.

“Well, I wouldn’t know about excellent,” Chekov said. “Since the war started I’ve only had rubes like Anton here to play, but I do enjoy the game.”

Nicholas and Dostovalov chuckled good naturedly, but Olga shot Chekov an annoyed glance.

Oh, climb down, Your Highness. Your boyfriend is terrible at chess.

“In that case, please, have a seat.” Nicholas gestured to the leather upholstered chair in front of the ebony chessmen.

Chekov hesitated a moment longer but found no valid excuse not to play.

“Thank you, sir,” Chekov said as he placed his rifle gently against a nearby bookshelf and settled into the comfortable chair on the black side of the board. Nicholas moved King’s Pawn to King’s Four, Chekov immediately responded by sliding Queen’s Bishop Pawn two squares forward.

“The Sicilian Defense,” Nicholas commented. “Very bold.”

“Fortune favors us,” Chekov said, evenly. “Or so I’m told.”

Nicholas played well, making excellent use of pawn, rook, and bishop, but Chekov found him overly cautious with his queen, and his knights were an after-thought at best. After several minutes of forcing Nicholas to retreat from unfavorable exchanges into suboptimal positions, the former monarch smiled amiably at Chekov.

“Your friend was quite correct, Feldfebel,” he said. “You are an excellent player. Who taught you the game?”

“I played at university quite a bit, but I learned most from my father,” Chekov said. “He was a surgeon, but I think he would’ve loved to have been a chess grandmaster more than anything. He made it to the Moscow City tournament once and played Ossip Bernstein. He only lost as opposed to being massacred like most of Ossip’s opponents that day.”

“No small feat,” Nicholas said, nodding appreciatively. He moved his bishop to threaten Chekov’s knight. “Were you studying medicine at university? Following in your father’s footsteps?”

“No, I was studying economics,” Chekov said, responding to Nicholas’s threat by positioning a rook to threaten the sandalwood queen. “At least until the war broke out.”

Nicholas backed down from his attack as Chekov suspected he would, moving the knight directly in front of the queen to block Chekov’s rook. The resignation of impending defeat clouded his eyes.

“Papa,” Anastasia spoke up from the carpet. “Can we read more Sherlock Holmes tonight?”

“Oh, dearest, we only have a chapter left in The Great Within the Small,” Nicholas said. “I know detective stories are more fun, but it’s important to understand our situation and Nilus has the best read on all of this.”

Chekov’s pulse quickened and a hiss escaped his lips unbidden. Rather than complete the elegant trap he’d been setting to checkmate Nicholas he went on the offensive and began forcing exchanges of pieces.

“I take it you disapprove of Nilus?” Nicholas said as he removed Chekov’s rook with his queen.

“I wouldn’t dream of venturing opinions on such lofty matters,” Chekov said, moving a bishop to check Nicholas’s king. “I’m just a common soldier after all.”

Nicholas moved a pawn to obscure the bishop’s line of attack unsupported, Chekov took the pawn with a knight.

“Clearly you’ve impressive faculties, Feldfebel,” Nicholas said. “Speak your mind, good man.”

Chekov clenched his teeth. Dostovalov, who stood behind Nicholas, shook his head emphatically.

“If you insist, Citizen Romanov,” he said. “Nilus is a bigoted crackpot who scapegoats the relatively tiny population of Jews here in Russia for problems that have little to do with them, arguably that are even somewhat ameliorated by their presence.”

Chekov threw his queen across the board into the midst of Nicholas’s defenses.

“You know who did an actual scientific study on Jews in the Pale of Settlement?” Chekov continued, as Nicholas stared at the board, looking for some escape. “A fellow named Bloch. You’re familiar with him? One of the reasons Russia has any railways to speak of?”

“Yes, I know Bloch,” Nicholas muttered as he castled his king with this queen’s rook. “I was the one who saw to it his Future War and Its Economic Consequences was distributed at the Hague Conference. If only my idiot cousin had read it, perhaps we would’ve avoided this whole catastrophe. I know that Bloch had Semitic sympathies, but I’m unfamiliar with any such study of the Jews.”

“I’m glad you recognize the man’s talent,” Chekov said. “Bloch and a team of researchers compiled a five-volume study that comprehensively proved that not only do Jews do little harm; they enrich every single community of which they are a part, both culturally and economically. We were just praising Ossip Bernstein, for example, were we not? And he is, indeed, Jewish.”

Chekov took Nicholas’s rook with his own queen, cornering the sandalwood king behind a line of his own pawns and demanding the former tsar’s queen as a sacrifice to remove the threat.

“Your father’s ministers banned the study, of course,” Chekov continued. “And I’ve only ever seen but one copy of the full study while I was at university in Yaroslavl. Bloch’s research partner, Subotin, was able to publish a summary, titled, ‘The Jewish Question in the Right Light.’ It is somewhat easier to find, and infinitely superior to half-baked, self-serving mystical nonsense.”

“Come now,” Nicholas said, taking Chekov’s queen with his own. “You mustn’t think I hate all Jews, there are many who contribute to Russia, but clearly there are a larger proportion of malcontents amongst them than in the Christian, or Mohammedan populations. Surely, you’ve noticed the raw number of Jews among the Bolsheviks!”

“I think perhaps you’re confusing cause and effect, Citizen Romanov,” Chekov said as he removed Nicholas’s queen from the board with his own rook. “For generations Jews have been brutalized and murdered and you and your ancestors have done little but scapegoat them, eat away at their rights and reduce the sentences of the bastards who prey upon them, then you have the audacity to wonder why revolution might appeal to some of them.”

The room was absolutely silent until Anastasia stood and faced Chekov, hands balled into fists.

“You can’t talk to my father that way,” she said.

The remaining children were silent, Maria and Alexei looked uncomfortable, Olga’s features mirrored Anastasia’s fury. Tatiana’s expression was inscrutable, her gray eyes contemplative. Dostovalov’s eyes were bulging, his eyebrows threatening to retreat into his hairline.

“I can, miss,” Chekov said, quietly maintaining eye contact with Nicholas. “I can because he isn’t the emperor anymore, and he isn’t the emperor anymore because he refused to hear the things he didn’t want to hear.”

Chekov took the pawn in front of Nicholas’s king with his rook, which was backed by one of his bishops.

“Checkmate,” Chekov said, standing up and grabbing his rifle. “Dostovalov, you stay here. I’ll post on the balcony. Good night, Citizen Romanov. Thank you for the game.”

Dostovalov walked his paces in the main hall for several hours until a familiar silhouette detached itself from the staircase and hurried across the hall, out into the passageway. Olga poked her head back around the corner into the hall and grinned at him, beckoning with an ivory-skinned hand. She then tiptoed to the kitchen. No sooner had he stepped into the kitchen than she flowed into his arms, kissing him fiercely.

“Oh, Antosenka,” she murmured, her voice low to avoid waking anyone else. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting, it took forever for Tatiana to fall sleep tonight.”

“It’s all right,” he said, leaning back a bit to look into her eyes. “I just thought perhaps you found better company.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Olga said. “And that’s my joke, plagiarizer.”

“We’re just lucky Sergei is still sulking out on the balcony,” Dostovalov said. Olga leaned back, frowning. She withdrew from his arms, leaving Dostovalov with a confused expression.

“Why was your friend so rude tonight?” Olga said. “I know Papa is hard on the Jews, but why did he take it so personally? Is he Jewish?”

“Sergei isn’t a Jew, but it is personal for him,” Dostovalov said, his brow furrowing. “He has his reasons, but they are his to tell, not mine.”

Olga stared at Dostovalov’s unusually serious expression for a long moment.

“Antosenka, I’m not sure I trust him,” she said. “He sounded so hateful.”

“Sergei is a good man,” Dostovalov said. “You can trust him as much as you trust me.”

Olga frowned, but then her expression softened as she visibly changed her priorities. She smiled impishly as she pulled loose the sash on her thick winter robe, letting it fall loose in the center to reveal the silken nightgown clinging to her body underneath. Dostovalov sucked in a large breath through his nose and stiffened instantly at the reveal.

“As much as I trust you,” she said. “Really?”

“Well,” Dostovalov said, then stopped, coughing lightly to clear his throat. “Perhaps not that much.”

“Antosenka,” Olga said, her voice low and serious. “I want you to do it to me.”

“Do what?” Dostovalov said, then realizing his stupidity, shook his head. “Oh! Olga, we can’t.”

With a boldness that set Dostovalov on his heels, Olga stepped forward and grabbed his hardened cock through his pants.

“Oh, I think we can,” she said quietly, her breath taking on the same rapid cadence as his.

It would be so easy. Olga was easily the most beautiful girl—woman—in face and form he’d ever seen much less laid hands on. So easy to pull aside their clothes and have each other. God, he’d never wanted anything more.

“No, Olga,” he said, his deep voice tremorous. “God, what if your parents found out? What if you got pregnant?”

“I’m twenty-two and have never known a man, Anton,” she said, her voice shaking with passion and fear. “I won’t live long enough to marry; we both know that. I want a man, and I want it to be you.”

“You will,” Dostovalov whispered fiercely. “You will live to marry. I’ll see to it. I will kill anyone who touches you.”

“But you won’t touch me yourself,” Olga said, bitterly, turning away and putting her hands on the kitchen table. Her shoulders heaved as she took several deep breaths, keeping her back to him.

Dostovalov hesitated, then put his arms around her and pulled her back against himself. Olga resisted only briefly before leaning back into his embrace.

“I absolutely will touch you,” Dostovalov said, and Olga gasped as he gently cupped her breasts with his hands. “And just because we can’t consummate doesn’t mean you have to go to bed in agony.”

His left hand lifted the lacy hem of her nightgown and slid up the smooth skin of her thigh. Olga’s words were lost in a low moan of pleasure.

Tatiana awoke in the middle of the night from a terrible dream, shadowy figures shouted accusations from behind gravestones, hurled litanies of sin against her with judgments of death and worse as her sentence. The black wraiths ripped her father and mother to shreds with flashing teeth, they cut little Alexei at the wrists and left him to spill his life onto the floor. They engulfed and consumed Olga, Maria, and Anastasia, leaving behind only contorted, broken corpses.

Worst of all, she was sure in her dream that the litanies were true, the crimes they laid before her real. She sat bolt upright, breathing fast, sweating despite the cold. Taking several shuddering breaths, Tatiana steadied herself.

Just the same room we were in last night, and the night before that and the night before that.

Tatiana swung her legs out from underneath the layers of heavy blankets and put her feet on the cold planks of the floor. A search of the room revealed two gently snoring mounds where Anastasia and Maria lay, but on Olga’s bed…

Oh, damn it.

Tatiana rose hurriedly and draped herself in a heavy fur coat. She stepped out into the hallway, determined to catch her idiot sister in her ill-considered assignation with the big guard and force her to put a stop to it. A flicker of light, movement from beyond the glass door to the balcony caught her eye. The shorter guard, Chekov, the one who’d spoken kindly to her and brutally to her father stood on the balcony. Compelled by dreadful curiosity, the same kind of curiosity that leads one to poke at a sore tooth or pick at a scab, Tatiana diverted course and, on unsteady legs, walked down the hall to confront the guard who had dared snap at her father like an unruly recruit.

Chekov relished the bitterly cold night air out on the balcony. Anything was better than the company inside. The cold, unyielding stars were far superior in their silent regard to conversation with a delusional former autocrat, no matter how lovely his family.

How could he have been so stupid? Chekov shook his head at his own folly; letting himself get drawn into a conversation with Nikolashka. The man who’d ignored and avoided his duties as sovereign until the country was starving and on the brink of collapse. The idiot who’d played tennis even as the Imperial Fleet sank during the war with the Japanese. The simpleton who had the temerity to take personal command of armies engaged in the largest conflagration in human history when he wasn’t fit to manage a mess tent.

But most of all, the bastard who spared my mother’s murderers.

Chekov slammed a fist into the stone of the balcony railing.

I hope the Reds do shoot the sonofabitch.

Hours passed in silence. The Romanovs retired for the evening shortly after the chess match. The Red Guards across the street appeared to have bedded down. Chekov was left alone with his dark thoughts until well past midnight.

The balcony door creaked open behind him. Chekov turned expecting to find an angry Dostovalov coming through the door to confront him now that the Romanovs were asleep.

“Save the lecture, Anton—”

Instead of his tall, burly friend, Tatiana Romanova regarded him steadily from the doorway, starlight glinting in her sad, searching eyes.

“You hate us, yet you guard us,” she said, without preamble. “Why?”

“I don’t hate you, or your siblings,” Chekov said, looking back out into the night. “You’re children; children who should be in bed. It’s very late and it is freezing out here.”

“I don’t think you’re much older than me,” Tatiana said. “And you didn’t answer my question. If you hate my father so much why aren’t you across the street with them?”

She nodded at the Kornilov House, which now held some of the Red Guards.

“I’m older than you’ll ever be,” Chekov said. “And I don’t owe you an answer, miss.”

“No, you don’t,” Tatiana agreed, but still she stood there, staring at him.

Chekov held her gaze for a long time, jaw clenched. In the end the words came, useless as they were, because he wanted this beautiful, good, brave girl to know the truth of the world she lived in, the one her parents had sheltered her from her whole life. Perhaps it was unnecessary cruelty, but he wanted her to understand.

“What do you know about the Kishinev Pogrom?” Chekov said.

Tatiana just shook her head and pulled her fur coat tighter about herself.

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” Chekov said, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “I’m not Jewish, but my mother was. Or at least she grew up a Jew, she converted to marry my father.”

“Oh,” Tatiana said.

“Yes, ‘oh,’” Chekov said around the cigarette as he flicked his lighter open. “When I was seven years old, she went to visit her parents in Kishinev. She had just convinced them to talk to her again after she left their faith.”

Chekov took a long drag on his cigarette and his eyes lost their focus. Tatiana stood silently watching him, her expression grim. Chekov blew a cloud of tobacco smoke through his nostrils that mingled inextricably with the icy vapor of his breath.

“Father wouldn’t tell me what really happened,” Chekov said. “Just that mother had died and gone ahead of us to heaven. It wasn’t until some years later I found out how she ‘went to heaven.’”

Tatiana’s face was deathly pale now, her eyes wide as she listened to him. Chekov hesitated, then, his features settling into something cold, bitter, almost alien, he continued.

“Seven men broke into my grandfather’s home in Kishinev, slit his throat and stabbed my grandmother in the chest. My mother was still young enough to catch their eye, though. They held her down and took turns beating and raping her. She died of internal bleeding somewhere in the process,” Chekov said, his voice utterly hollow. “But the bastards did a sloppy job on grandmother. She survived her stab wound and brought charges of rape and murder before a magistrate. Miracle of miracles, they were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.”

Chekov took another deep drag off the cigarette.

“That is, they were sentenced to life in prison,” Chekov said. “Until one of your father’s ministers quietly commuted their sentences to five years each.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tatiana said in a small voice. Tears glistened in the corners of her gray eyes.

Chekov took in a lungful of the frigid night air and then another drag off his cigarette. He unclenched his fists.

“None of this is your fault, Tatiana Nicholaevna,” he said. “And it is only natural for a girl to love her father, as he so clearly loves you all. But all this misery, this happened because your father is a weak, stupid, bigoted man. As emperor he led his people so poorly that millions now side with madmen and murderers against him. Whatever happens, you need to know that truth if you are to survive in this new world.”

Tears spilled freely down Tatiana’s cheeks now. She gulped once, then turned on her heel and retreated into house, leaving Chekov alone to contemplate the stars and the all-encompassing night.

Tatiana shut the door behind her and leaned against the wall, burying her face in her hands, trying not to sob.

Even in her sheltered palace life, Tatiana knew about the pogroms in the abstract the way one knows about an unfortunate historical event or bit of news. The young, plain-faced soldier with the vocabulary of a scholar had made it real for her, put the human cost right in her face in a way no one else ever had. And as she mulled over the dressing-down he’d given her father, a cold sliver of doubt pierced her soul.

What if he’s right? What if Father failed us all? Heavenly Father, what if we deserve this?

Tatiana dried her tears and squared her shoulders, remembering what had drawn her out of bed.

Where the hell is Olga?

A search of the second floor revealed only her sleeping parents and siblings. Tatiana crept down the stairs, each creaking board setting her teeth on edge for fear it might wake Mama or Papa, or one of the other children. She slipped silently down the hall, past Gilliard’s room.

Heavy breathing and hushed voices punctuated by a low cry from the dining room drew her onward.

“Olga, you have to quiet down,” a deep male voice hissed.

“How can I?” It was Olga’s voice in the whispered reply, but as Tatiana had never heard it before, low and throaty and dripping with something primitive. “I’ve never felt this way in my life, oh, God, Antosenka…”

Tatiana rounded the corner into the dining room. Her sister stood, hands braced on the dining room table, her back to the big, handsome guard, Dostovalov. The tall, mustachioed man fondled her exposed breasts with one hand, while his other caressed steadily between her thighs. He lavished kisses on her neck as she rotated her hips and ground her rear back against him.

Tatiana’s limbs seemed to be made of lead, her tongue too thick in her mouth to talk. She stood, mouth agape, until Olga’s eyes met hers and her older sister screamed, snapping the surreal back to reality, albeit a reality in crisis. Dostovalov stumbled back against a cabinet, rattling the china and wine bottle inside.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Tatiana asked.

“What does it look like, Tatya?” Olga snapped as she jerked her clothes back into place. Her cheeks were bright red. Dostovalov stood in a corner next to a full wine rack, halfway across the room from Olga, his eyes firmly fixed anywhere but on Tatiana.

Chekov was the first to arrive, he took one look at his friend and strode right over to him and started laying into him in a low voice, Tatiana only caught, “you stupid ass.” Dostovalov kept his eyes on the floor.

Pierre Gilliard followed close on Chekov’s heels, black hair and thick handlebar mustache in disarray, a robe cinched over his pajamas. The sisters and soldiers fell silent instantly.

“Tatiana, Olga,” he said in clear but Swiss-accented Russian. “What is going on here?”

“I’m sorry, Pierre,” Olga spoke up immediately. “I… saw a rat.”

“Indeed?” Gilliard said, looking to Tatiana for confirmation.

Tatiana took a deep breath, allowing the moment to rest on the knife’s edge, waiting on her decisions.

Damn it, Olga.

“That’s right, Pierre,” she said. “Olga and I couldn’t sleep, we came down here to chat so as not wake up Maria and Anastasia. Olga saw a rat and yelled, then Chekov and Dostovalov here ran into the room. I assume because they heard the scream?”

She made eye contact with Chekov and saw in his nearly black orbs profound gratitude.

“That’s right,” Chekov said, his tone level. “And since things seem to be under control here, we should really get back to our posts. Good night.”

Without waiting for a reply, Chekov and Dostovalov beat a hasty retreat.

“Girls, you should head back to bed as well,” Gilliard said.

“What is going on here?”

Tatiana gasped a bit as her father rounded the corner behind Gilliard.

“I’m sorry Papa,” Olga said. “I’m afraid I woke up everyone up for nothing; it was just a rat.”

Nicholas looked at his eldest, then stared at Tatiana for a long second.

“Why were you down here in the first place?” he demanded.

Tatiana’s breath caught a little. Lying to Gilliard was one thing, but to her father.

Perhaps some of the truth…

“It’s my fault, Father,” Tatiana said. “I had a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep. Olga came downstairs too, she saw a rat when we walked into the dining room.”

Nicholas held Tatiana’s gaze for several heartbeats. Tatiana allowed her eyes to fall in contrition, thinking it appropriate to the story she revealed to her father. Apparently detecting no duplicity, Nicholas exhaled through his nose and his expression softened.

“I’m sorry you had a nightmare, dear,” he said. “But you shouldn’t wander the mansion at night.”

“I’m sorry, Papa,” Tatiana said.

“I apologize too,” Olga said.

Nicholas’s gaze shifted from Tatiana to Olga then back again.

“All right, girls,” he said. “Back to bed with you.”

Olga preceded Tatiana up the stairs. Tatiana stared at the back of her sister’s head in mute rage as they made their way as silently as possible back to their beds. She wanted to yell at her for cavorting like a whore with a soldier she barely knew, but even a whisper might be audible to their father when he came back to his bedroom. Angry as she was, she wasn’t ready to inform on her sister to their parents.

What the hell is the matter with you, Olga?

Certainly she and Olga had flirted with a number of charming young officers. They’d danced a little closer with their favorites than what was required by a proper waltz, and Tatiana herself had even allowed one of the boys to kiss her when her parents weren’t looking. But what Olga and that soldier had been doing…

Tatiana’s pulse quickened in arousal, just as it had sometimes during the innocent flirtations of her adolescence. This lust, though, made her feel perverse in a way previous thrills never had. She had seen her own sister in the grip of Eros and the only thing more disturbing than Olga’s stupidity was how badly a part of Tatiana now wished she’d gone further with one of her favorites.

“Chekov, what the hell were you thinking?” Dostovalov said in a low voice, glaring at Chekov from across the table in the canteen sometime later. It was early morning yet and they were the first ones through the door. They had already shoveled their stew as fast as possible to avoid letting it go lukewarm. Now they sat, hunched against the cold in the drafty building, conferring in low tones so as to avoid being heard by the cooks.

“What was I thinking? What the hell were you thinking?” Chekov hissed. “Screwing the tsar’s daughter in his own house? Are you out of what little mind you have left?”

“We weren’t screwing. I know you have little experience in such things, but one generally has to pull out one’s cock to screw a girl. My pants were up and buttoned,” Dostovalov said.

“Okay, you got caught before you could finish the deed,” Chekov said. “You want a medal for your restraint?”

“You think a little love-play is worse than calling the tsar a fool to his face?” Dostovalov said.

“Yes, you moron, it is,” Chekov said. “And, again, you got caught. What happens if Tatiana decides to confess everything to her papa after all?”

“She won’t,” Dostovalov said, maddeningly confident. “The Big Pair are too close to drive a wedge between. Tatiana would never inform on Olga. Face it, it’s not my pecker but your mouth that got you earmarked for every shit detail the First Rifles can find.”

Chekov frowned. He knew Dostovalov had a point. He’d been stupid to let himself lose his temper with Nicholas; private citizen or autocrat he was still a much more powerful man than Chekov. Kobylinsky, with Matveev standing behind him, had informed Chekov that he was off close guard duty and onto sanitary detail, VD inspection, and other such menial and degrading tasks until further notice. Despite that, Chekov knew that his friend getting entangled with Olga could only end in tragedy.

“It was still an inexcusably stupid idea to try to make love to Olga one floor down from where her entire family was sleeping,” said Chekov.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Sergei, what happens even if Nicholas does find out?” Dostovalov said. “He’s not the tsar anymore, he doesn’t rule a damn thing. For all that Kobylinsky kisses his ass, we all know the only real power in Tobolsk lies with that boy Matveev and that Latvian Jew and his Red Guards. Nicholas can do nothing to us without their say so.”

“Assume you’re right, assume the unit won’t punish you because of Nicholas. How quick before the Bolsheviks label you an Imperialist for consorting with Olga?” Chekov retorted. “How much quicker that I join you in a labor camp or in front of a firing squad for associating with counterrevolutionaries? They don’t even need a court-martial anymore for God’s sake.”

Dostovalov stared at Chekov for several seconds; the lines of frustration on his face eased and a resigned expression replaced them.

“You’re right. I know it’s dangerous,” Dostovalov said, “And you didn’t volunteer for more danger. But I love her, Sergei. I love her as I have never loved a woman before. I won’t stop. If you need to distance yourself from me, I understand, and I don’t hold it against you.”

“Distance myself?” Chekov said. “You damn fool. I—”

Overcome, Chekov stopped speaking and glared at his friend for several seconds. Then he stood up from the wooden bench and stormed out of the canteen without another word, pulling his thick coat closer around himself.

Outside the mess hall, less than a block from the door, Yermilov took stock of Chekov’s hunched shoulders and furious stride. When Dostovalov left and started walking the opposite direction from his short, ugly friend, his countenance clearly troubled, Yermilov smiled. He leaned closer to the two men standing close to him and jerked his head toward Dostovalov’s broad, retreating back.

“Lover’s spat, eh?” Yermilov said. His cronies laughed roughly.

“Let’s keep an eye on Dostovalov,” Yermilov said. “He tries to meet the Romanov peezda for another little tryst and this will be the time we have a little fun ourselves.”

A long day of emptying outhouses and staring at other men’s cocks looking for signs of chlamydia or syphilis left Chekov exhausted and despondent. He slept fitfully that night, waking several times at odd intervals. He hadn’t spoken to Dostovalov since breakfast and he was still furious with his big friend.

I should. I should cut ties and look out for myself. That moron has been trying to get us in trouble ever since we got here. He couldn’t just stick to whoring like a tomcat, he had to fall in love with the one girl likely to get us both killed.

Turning in his bunk, Chekov’s eyes fell upon on Dostovalov’s empty bunk.

Empty. He didn’t have the duty tonight…

Chekov rolled back onto his back and glared at the timber ceiling.

Not my business. He said as much. I’m not his father, and a doomed affair with Olga is more important to him than survival. He won’t listen to reason. If I try to stop him he’ll just tell me to piss off. He’s on his own.

Chekov took several deep breaths, willing himself back to sleep.

Son of a bitch.

Chekov swung his legs off the side of his bunk and slid quietly to the floor. He reached for his socks and pants and, swearing softly to himself the whole time, began to dress for the cold Siberian night.

Dostovalov peeled off a few bills and handed them to the guards on duty at Freedom House’s back door, both of whom grinned and slapped Dostovalov on the back before trudging off through the snow. Yermilov shifted slightly, let his rifle rest on the ground, and put restraining hands on the men lying on either side of him under the hedge.

“Almost,” Yermilov breathed. “Wait just a bit more.”

Yermilov kept his companions still until the bribed guards were around the corner of the Freedom House and then for twenty breaths more.

“Now,” Yermilov hissed.

The three men sprang from the snow-laden red bushes and charged. Dostovalov whirled to face them, but it was too late. Yermilov brought the buttstock of his rifle crashing down on the bridge of the man’s nose, sending him crumpling to the snow, blood erupting from his broken nose and busted mouth. The big man lay still on the ground, knocked cold by the blow.

“Take him to the river,” Yermilov said. “Break a hole in the ice and dump his body, then you can come back for your turns.”

“Wait,” the bigger of his cronies said in a thick voice. “No chance, we want to—”

“Do what the fuck you’re told, Ilyin,” Yermilov said. “We stay here arguing about it, someone will spot Dostovalov here and none of us will get a chance.”

Ilyin looked mutinous, but he and Yermilov’s other henchman grabbed Dostovalov by wrists and ankles and began to drag him through the snow, west toward the river.

Hopefully, the idiots don’t get caught by some Red Guard assholes. Assuming any of them are awake and sober enough to care at three in the morning.

Yermilov turned away from the door. From behind his size and stature were very similar to Dostovalov’s. He wanted to save Olga’s surprise for the last possible moment. From a sheath on his belt he pulled a knife, not his issued bayonet, but a smaller blade for closer, more intimate work. The kind of work he’d plied in Petrograd’s alleys since long before the revolution. Fortunately, the chaos of the Bolshevik coup had given him an opportunity to make an honest living out of his thuggery—at least it had until he’d been transferred to this outfit.

Kobylinsky and Matveev, those prigs, had kept him on a short leash since he’d been assigned to First Rifles. He’d been expected to stand his post and treat the reviled Romanovs with courtesy. Even after the men ripped off Kobylinsky’s epaulettes and “abolished” rank, the First had kept too many vestiges of its dreadfully dull discipline and standards for a man like Yermilov.

Now, though, all that dreary waiting was going to pay off.

The door creaked open behind him. Olga, her blue eyes aglow with excitement, stepped onto the back porch. Yermilov relished the split-second transition of her lovely face from anticipation to confusion to terror as he turned to face her. Before she could scream Yermilov stepped into her, pulling her body to his with his left arm and pressing the knife to her ivory skinned throat with his right hand. He propelled her back into the house. Keeping the knife to her throat, he used his left hand to pull the door quietly shut behind him.

“Don’t worry, Your Highness,” Yermilov whispered, grinning. “You’re going to get what you came for all the same, scream or struggle, though, and I’m afraid I’ll have to cut it short; then maybe I’ll go looking upstairs to finish. Nod if you understand.”

Olga, lips quivering, tears streaming down her face, nodded jerkily.

“Good girl, now into that bathroom,” he said. “And lock the door behind us, I’d hate to be interrupted.”

Ignoring the threat of falling on his ass, Chekov sprinted up the icy steps to the front door of Freedom House and into the mansion. Inside, he heard nothing at first, then faint sobbing from down the hall. Treading as lightly as possible, Chekov strode down the hall to the dining room where once he’d caught Dostovalov with Olga.

Rounding the corner, he found not his friend and Olga en flagrante delicto, but Tatiana, standing with her arms around Olga. Olga sat in an upholstered chair, her face in her hands, shoulders shakings, the small, quiet noises of a wounded animal issuing from her throat at irregular intervals.

“What happened?” Chekov said, his eyes wide. “My God, Anton didn’t—”

“No,” Olga choked out. “Anton wasn’t here. It was the ugly one, with the beard and the crooked teeth.”

“Yermilov,” Chekov said.

“He’s still outside,” Olga said. “He said his friends are coming back for theirs, and if I don’t let them, he said they’ll do the same to all of us and kill Papa, Alexei, and the rest.”

Olga took a deep breath, and curled into herself, her teeth clenched, holding back a wail.

Tatiana let go of her sister, and with quick, decisive movements opened a drawer in a nearby cabinet and withdrew a large carving knife. Chekov stepped in front of her and grabbed her wrist.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Tatiana regarded him with eyes that might have been chips of gray ice for all the warmth they held.

“I’m going to kill him,” she said. “Or he’s going to kill me.”

With a deft move, Chekov wrenched the knife from Tatiana’s hand and put it on the table. She reached for it again, but he put a restraining hand on her shoulder and shook her once firmly.

“No, you’re not going to kill anyone,” Chekov said, drawing his bayonet. “I am. Listen carefully; all either of you know is that you heard a crash and someone yelling. Yermilov shouting drunkenly, and then I came in and fought him off. Unfortunately, I had to kill him because he wouldn’t stop.”

“What if he kills you?” Tatiana asked.

“Then do the best you can,” Chekov said, already on his way to the door.

Chekov flung the door open and dove out into the frosty night, leaving the door swinging wildly behind him. Yermilov turned at the sound, his face twisted with contempt.

“Cunt, I told you to wait in—”

The rapist’s eyes widened at the sight of Chekov, bayonet in hand, death in his eyes, charging him. He tried to bring his rifle to bear, but the small, wiry veteran was far too quick, the distance between them too short. The steel tip of Chekov’s bayonet penetrated through uniform cloth, flesh, and sinew into Yermilov’s very bowels.

Yermilov’s hands clenched reflexively and the air rang with the crack-thwit-shhing report of his rifle as he fired, the bullet ricocheting uselessly off the stone steps of Freedom House. Chekov bore the bigger man to the ground, throwing all his weight behind the seventeen inches of steel lodged in Yermilov’s belly.

“Drop your rifle, Yermilov!” Chekov shouted into the still night air as he dragged the bayonet around inside the wound, then pulled it out and stabbed again. Warm, dark, almost black blood coated his hand and spurted up onto his uniform, it instantly began to congeal into a gory slush.

“Don’t make me do this, Yermilov!” Chekov said, and he withdrew and plunged the blade into Yermilov’s guts a third time, angling up, under his rib cage. The man’s eyes rolled back in his skull, he gave a gurgling gasp, jerked spasmodically three times, then lay still.

Chekov stood, his bayonet coming free of Yermilov’s destroyed abdomen with a slurping noise. He looked around as he took several ragged breaths. In the doorway of Freedom House Tatiana stood, looking upon the scene, her eyes calm and clear, her back straight. Her face might have been carved from marble.

As his heart rate declined, something occurred to Chekov he hadn’t thought about since finding out that Yermilov had raped Olga.

If Anton isn’t here, where the hell is he?

As the question spiked his heart rate once again, he noted a splash of blood on the snow on the steps, too high up to have been Yermilov’s. Scanning about rapidly it took mere seconds for him to recognize two sets of foot-prints and a large drag mark leading west, toward the waterfront.

Fuck, no, no, no.

Chekov wiped his bayonet clean on the skirt of his coat, sheathed it, slung his rifle and picked up Yermilov’s. He worked the bolt of the Model 1891, ejected the spent case and chambered a live round, then handed it to Tatiana, who took it with a quizzical look.

“I think they dragged off Dostovalov when he came to see Olga,” Chekov said, pointing to the wide trench in the snow flanked by two sets of boot prints. “I have to go after them. Wake everyone. The rifle is just in case Yermilov’s cronies get back before Kobylinsky gets more guards here.”

Tatiana nodded. Behind her light spilled into the hall, and Pierre Gilliard’s disheveled form emerged from the bedroom closest the dining room, followed shortly thereafter by other forms, male and female in their dressing gowns.

“Thank you, Sergei Arkadyevich,” Tatiana said, gravely.

Chekov shook his head, took his rifle in both hands and sprinted west as fast as his legs would carry him, praying he wasn’t too late.

Chilk-chilk-chilk

A cloud of relentless pain filled Dostovalov’s head as consciousness returned. The throbbing in his skull was quickly accompanied by sharper jets of agony radiating from his ruined nose and upper gums. His nerves inundated his foggy mind with further reports of damage and discomfort; he was lying on his face in the freezing snow and tightly bound with twine around his wrists and ankles that had cut off circulation to his hands and feet.

Chilk-chilk-chilk

“This ice is too fucking thick,” a dull voice complained from Dostovalov’s left. “Yermilov will have bored the girl out like a howitzer by the time we’re done here.”

Olga!

Dostovalov opened his eyes and rolled onto his side. He was lying on the riverbank in thick snow turned red and pink by his own blood and melted into slush by his body heat. Yermilov’s two cronies were poking away at the river ice with their bayonets. Dostovalov struggled against his bonds, pulling so mightily that the twine cut into his wrists, and blood fell in rivulets over his clenched fists. He coughed involuntarily, spewing out a sludge of his own blood, snot and snow that had invaded his mouth and misshapen nostrils.

His captors turned at the sound.

“Shit, he’s awake,” the same dull voice said. The taller of the two men stood, picked his rifle up off the ice and walked toward Dostovalov.

Dostovalov tried to shout, but hacked up more blood and phlegm instead, he strained harder against the bonds, felt a hand start to slip out of position.

Pull harder, Anton.

“Fuck this,” the shorter man said in a laconic voice. “Shoot him in the head and let’s get the fuck out of here. We can say we were never here and didn’t have anything to do with Yermilov’s crazy-ass plan.”

“Why don’t you do it?” The big man snapped back. “You want to keep your hands clean, tell them it was all me and Yermilov? Is that it?”

Dostovalov gritted his teeth and yanked his right hand free of its bonds, scraping a layer of skin off the back of his hand from wrist to knuckles. He screamed his pain and rage.

“Fuck,” the little one shouted and leveled his rifle at Dostovalov’s face. The big man felt every beat of his heart as he scrabbled frantically at the ground with his brutalized hands, trying to pull himself behind a tree stump for cover.

The crack of a rifle shot split the frigid night air.

No! Dostovalov shut his eyes reflexively. Olga, forgive me…

But Dostovalov felt no projectile pierce his body. Instead, when Dostovalov opened his eyes, his would-be murderer was lying flat on his back, the contents of his skull splayed behind him onto the ice. Another crack, followed by the sound of an overripe melon being sliced, and the tall one who’d been whining fell beside his comrade. Dostovalov craned his neck around to see a slight man, rifle leveled, emerge from behind a nearby cypress and march toward the dead men. Chekov worked the bolt on his rifle and examined each body in turn. Apparently satisfied that both men were dead, he turned back to Dostovalov.

Unsheathing a utility knife, Chekov started cutting the twine binding Dostovalov’s legs.

“Thank you, Sergei,” Dostovalov slurred through his missing teeth.

“Don’t talk,” Chekov said, his voice cold. “We need to get you to a doctor to see what can be done about your face.”

“No time,” Dostovalov insisted, dribbling on himself as he spoke. “Yermilov—”

“Dead,” Chekov said, pulling his larger friend to his feet. “I killed him.”

“Thank God,” Dostovalov said, leaning gratefully on the shorter man. “Then Olga is all right?”

Chekov exhaled sharply and shook his head.

“She’ll live. She’ll recover, but no, Anton, she’s not all right,” he said. “I got there after Yermilov had finished.”

“No, oh, Jesus, no,” Dostovalov moaned. “This is my fault.”

“Yes.”

Dostovalov stepped away from Chekov and glared at his friend in shock, swaying as the pinpricks of nerves reawakening shot through his feet and legs.

“What, Anton? You expect me to comfort you?” Chekov said. “I told you fooling around with the tsar’s daughter was dangerous and it was. You were nearly killed, you stupid bastard.”

“Yermilov singled us out because you humiliated him our first week here,” Dostovalov shot back. “And then, when I wanted to take care of him, you insisted we wait. So, yes, I nearly got killed and Olga—”

Dostovalov stopped, tears choking off his voice, he stood silently for a second, composing himself.

“Did it occur to you, Sergei, for one instant, that maybe you’re not so fucking smart as you think you are?” He continued when he had a modicum of control. “That this time, if we’d done it my way, none of this would’ve happened?”

“Maybe,” Chekov said. “And maybe we’d be standing trial for murder. The Bolsheviks have no problem shooting men for the encouragement of others.”

“I’d rather that than have allowed the woman I love to be raped,” Dostovalov grated.

The muscles in Chekov’s neck and jaw worked for a moment as he returned Dostovalov’s glare, but finally he looked away.

“What’s done is done,” Chekov said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time to stop Yermilov. I really am. But now, if you don’t want Olga to suffer any more than she has to, we need to get our story straight. I’m assuming you paid the guards on duty to take the night off?”

Dostovalov, tired of talking, just nodded.

“Okay, can you stay on your feet awhile longer?” Chekov said. “Can you make it back to Freedom House on your own?”

“Yeah,” Dostovalov said, despite the agony reigning in his skull and the lesser pains shooting through the rest of his body.

“Good, I’m going to find the boys you paid off, here’s what we’re all going to tell them—”

An hour later, in the deposed tsar’s study, Chekov and the two guards, Blokhin and Virkhov, stood at attention while Kobylinsky, Matveev, and Nicholas all listened to Chekov’s version of the night’s events with intense interest. Tatiana sat in the corner wearing her customary inscrutable expression. Nicholas’s own doctor, Botkin, was working on Dostovalov’s face downstairs. When Chekov was done speaking, Kobylinsky turned to the two guards who were supposed to have been on duty.

“Is this accurate?” Kobylinsky said.

“Yes, Comrade,” the younger of the two men, a boy named Virkhov said. His pal, Blokhin, nodded vigorously.

“Yermilov told you the guard roster had been changed mid-shift and you didn’t think to check with me or the colonel?” Matveev said, his face screwed up in incredulity.

“We’re sorry, Comrade Ensign,” Blokhin said. “We didn’t want to wake you, it being so late. Yermilov is one of the senior men, we didn’t think he had a reason for lying.”

“Get out of here,” Kobylinsky said. “We’ll figure out a proper punishment for you idiots later.”

Blokhin and Virkhov needed no further encouragement; staggering just a little, for Dostovalov had found them at the bottle, they made their way hastily toward the stairs.

“It seems I owe you a great debt, Feldfebel Chekov,” Nicholas spoke up. “I must ask, though, how you knew to come here so late at night?”

I was afraid you might ask that. Chekov had concocted an answer, of course, but it was the weakest part of their alibi.

“I’m afraid it was mostly a matter of providence,” Chekov said. “I’ve had trouble sleeping lately, so I was out late myself. When I saw two lads who I knew were on the guard roster for the night, I knew something was amiss. Them already being in their cups, I grabbed Dostovalov and we got here as fast as we could.”

Nicholas turned to his daughter.

“Tatiana, dear,” he said. “Is all this reconciling with your memory of events?”

“As far as I could tell, Father,” Tatiana said. “I awoke to hear the big ugly one screaming, then I heard a rifle shot and Feldfebel Chekov begging him to put his rifle down. Then Feldfebel Chekov gave me the man’s rifle because he had to go after the others.”

“Speaking of that rifle,” Matveev interrupted. “While I applaud your initiative, Chekov, handing over a rifle to one of the Romanovs was a poor choice. While we will protect the former emperor and his family and will, of course, continue to extend them every courtesy,” Matveev nodded at the ex-emperor, “they are still in our custody.”

“Apologies, comrade Ensign,” he said. “But Yermilov’s co-conspirators had assaulted and carried off Dostovalov by that point. I needed to act fast to save his life but did not want to leave the Romanovs defenseless until new guards could arrive.”

“You obviously did the best you could with a terrible situation,” Kobylinsky said, his voice much firmer than Chekov had ever heard it. The incident seemed to have put some fire back in the man. “You are to be commended.”

Matveev glanced sideways at the colonel but said nothing.

“Indeed,” Nicholas said, standing up. “Feldfebel, I have misjudged you. You are, indeed, every inch the hero your war record indicates you are. I am deeply in your debt. If there is anything within my diminished power that I can do to repay you, I will.”

The former emperor thrust his right hand out at Chekov. Chekov looked at the hand, then into Nicholas’s eyes for a long moment before he grasped his outstretched hand and shook once, firmly, before letting go.

A tall, thickset man with graying brown hair receding from a widow’s peak, a beard just long enough to curl at the chin, and round spectacles walked into the study.

“Well, Yevgenny,” Nicholas said to the newcomer. “How is our other hero?”

“I set his nose as best I could. He’s likely to have noticeable scarring but he shan’t be horribly disfigured,” Dr. Botkin said. “I gave him something for the pain. I also gave Olga a mild sedative, she was very upset by the disturbance.”

“Yes,” Nicholas murmured. “My eldest has always been very sensitive.”

Tatiana made eye contact with Chekov then for first time since entering the study. The sadness and terror in the girl’s face pierced Chekov’s heart, but he clamped down on the emotion.

I killed the bastard who did it. I’m not sure what else I could’ve done.

“Very well, gentlemen,” Nicholas said. “If there is nothing else you need of us, Tatiana and I shall go speak with the rest of the family.”

“Nothing else,” Matveev said. “Thank you, Citizen Romanov. Chekov, I want to see you and Dostovalov downstairs in my office.”

Once Dostovalov joined them, face covered by thick white bandages and his eyes hazy from narcotic effect, Matveev shut the door to his office and regarded the two soldiers with a grave expression on his round face.

“Lads, you did the right thing,” he said. “But I have to tell you I’m a little worried about your relationships with the Romanovs.”

“How’s that, Comrade?” Chekov said, frowning.

“Look, men, there are rumblings the Imperialists may try to take the Romanovs,” Matveev said. “The Central Committee is sending a new commissar to take charge here, and if you are caught fraternizing with the Romanovs, they may assume you will be a liability in the event of a rescue attempt.”

To Chekov’s relief, Dostovalov said nothing in response, but his eyes, though hazy from morphine, narrowed.

“We understand, Comrade Ensign,” Chekov said.

Matveev shook his head.

“I’m not sure you do, Chekov,” he said. “The new commissar will have the authority to summarily execute men for counterrevolutionary activities—no trial. Get in his way and I will not be able to save you. If you cling to the Romanovs, you will likely be buried with them.”

“This isn’t right,” Dostovalov said. Chekov glared at him, but Matveev nodded.

“It isn’t right,” he said. “But it is nonetheless.”

Interlude

Tatiana: Olga is indisposed

Olga woke late into the next day, disoriented and confused. I had brought up her meals and helped her bathe and change while Maria helped Madame Hendrikova take care of Mama, and Anastasia helped Madame Schneider with Alexei.

My sister stared at the bruises on her wrists as if she didn’t know how they got there. Her hands were shaking too badly when she tried, so I had to button up the sleeves for her. For a moment I thought she would break into tears but she didn’t.

I mixed some of Mama’s medicine into her tea, made her drink it, and tucked her back into bed. She nodded and closed her eyes.

And so it went for the next few days. I did her chores, giving her apologies to Mama and Papa who came to see her, but thankfully she was asleep both times.

Mama returned to painting little icons on paper to send as thank you notes to the people of Tobolsk who had sent us food, while my father received a guest. An old staff member, a monarchist from Petrograd arrived. He brought books and tea and also delivered clothes that Mama’s best friend, Anna Vyrubova, had sent.

I wasn’t supposed to know, but a gift of twenty-five thousand rubles also arrived. Papa used the money to pay the servants who had stayed on without pay. He meant for them to use it to pay for their way back home out of Tobolsk and gave the money to Prince Dolgorukov to distribute in secret. I overheard him say that it wouldn’t be enough, but that he’d see it done.

After dinner while Papa read from a book that Madame Tolstay had sent us, I slipped out to find Chekov. He was standing outside the guard house smoking a cigarette. I gave him a look and he frowned back at me, but put out the cigarette and followed me into the kitchen.

He looked over his shoulder as he took his cap off. As always he kept as far away from me as possible.

I reached into the pocket of my apron and pulled out a strand of pearls. Mama had a matching set made for each of us girls.

“See what you can get for this, please.”

I thrust my hand out at him but he didn’t move. He just stared at me, at my hand, at the pearls.

Finally I set them down on the table between us.

He approached with enough caution to make me think he wasn’t seeing a necklace at all, but perhaps a snake.

Chekov picked the pearls up and ran a dirty thumb across them. It was almost obscene, the way he caressed them, but when he looked up I didn’t see greed.

“You’d trust me with these?” he asked.

Didn’t he realize how much power he already had over our lives?

I gave him a nod. What else could I do?

“There’s something I want to tell you,” I said to him. “Something I need to tell you.

“You’ve always treated me as if I were very innocent. Oh, yes, surely, I am. But I think you have no idea just how innocent we all are.

“Once, when Olga and I were serving as nurses for the wounded—oh, yes, we did, and Mama, too—we decided to go into a store when our shift was over. We’d never been in a store in our lives, you see, not even once, either of us. So we went in and looked and, oh, it was wonderful. The choices people could make, choices neither of us had ever been able to.

“But then we realized it took money to make those choices and, not only didn’t we have any with us, we’d never even used money in our lives. Neither of us had the first, tiniest clue of how money even worked.

“In that moment I realized that, wherever we lived, however we lived, in this one way, at least, we were poorer than the poorest citizens of the empire. We were simply so ignorant.”

Chapter Twelve

Barquentine Loredana, Black Sea

Natalya was the de facto skipper of the ship now. A bright lass, she’d paid close attention to ship’s handling and seamanship under Vraciu. Whatever his myriad other failings, Bogdan Vraciu had been a competent seaman. Now, the crew followed her orders, those orders backed up by the frightfully ruthless set of Russian demons striding the decks.

Progress wasn’t appreciably slower under the reduced crew than it had been with a full crew, at least it wasn’t after Mokrenko clubbed one of them with a belaying pin and tossed his body to the deep. After that, little Natalya’s commands were obeyed with stunning promptness. Notwithstanding this, though, the moon had set just after ten in the morning. It was, if calm, the most pitch-black night Mokrenko could even remember.

Because of the darkness, the Loredana had only three sails set on the top three yardarms of the foremast and was creeping ahead under sail power alone. It might as well have been a fish underwater for all the noise it made gliding across the now glasslike sea. Because it didn’t make any noise, the passengers were able to hear everything around them quite well. What they heard…

The Kerch was no longer, “His Imperial Russian Majesty’s Ship,” which prefix the Empire, in fact, didn’t use. Neither had the Bolsheviks whose side the crew had taken yet gotten around to coining naval titles. Perhaps they never would. Nonetheless, though painted gray, the ship was redder than a party banner.

This was why the crew of the Kerch had taken some sixty-three officers, most from the Four-ninety-first (Varnavinsky) Regiment, though the Forty-first Artillery Battalion and the Twenty-first Caucasian Mountain Artillery Battalion had their representatives there, too, then tied them, attached iron weights to their legs and threw them overboard to drown.

Not a one of the officers so treated was in any sense nobility, either.

A few of the men were shot off the side by the crew, and that was a series of sounds that was very plain. Most, however, were simply tied, weighted, and dumped. Generally speaking they sank quickly. At least one, however, either preternaturally strong or just lucky in partially slipping his bonds, still struggled, more than half panicked, calling for a help that, of course, the only ship he knew of in the vicinity, the Kerch, was most unlikely to give.

“Shit, they’re murdering somebody,” said Mokrenko, “a lot of somebodies.”

Lieutenant Turgenev, standing with the Cossack on deck, nodded, unseen in the darkness. Turgenev was, while still a little weak from hunger and loss of fluids, otherwise completely recovered from his seasickness.

“Do you see their running lights?” the lieutenant asked.

Mokrenko strained for a bit before answering, “Ye… yes, sir. I see them.”

“One’s still struggling, at least one. Keep the crew and our men quiet. Have Natalya steer just to the left of the running lights; I think that man is to the left.”

A fresh spurt of calls for help seemed to confirm this.

“Yes, sir, but…”

“I’m going in,” Turgenev said. “I’ll save him if I can.”

“Sir, you’re being an idiot. You don’t have to do this.”

The lieutenant sighed. “Sergeant, if I don’t, I’m never going to be able to sleep at night again without hearing that in my head. Maybe I’ll fail, yes, but I have to try.”

“Well… shit!” Mokrenko exclaimed. “Fine, then, if you think you fucking must. But tie yourself off to a rope, before you go in. Be a better chance for you and for him. Hell, if you’re not attached to the ship you’ll never catch up to us… and we can’t afford the noise of furling the sails.”

“Right.”

Turgenev lowered himself over the side, with a length of rope looped around his waist, trailing by nine or ten arshin a life buoy from the running end. He started with a kick off from the hull, then assumed an Australian crawl stroke to eat up the distance.

The problem with that was two-fold. In the first place it made noise and, while Turgenev didn’t think the ship could hear, he didn’t want to take a chance. The second problem was that the noise prevented him from hearing, where the sounds of the victim or victims were his only guide.

“Shit,” he muttered, then took up a breaststroke, which was not only quieter, it better allowed him to keep his head above water.

“Heellllpppp! Heeeellllppp meeee…”

Turgenev altered his direction slightly to aim more closely for the sound.

“Hellll…”

There he is, less than a dozen feet from me, I think, but I cannot see a thing.

There came some vigorous splashing then, uncoordinated, spastic, as if panic had taken over completely. Turgenev thought it would be enough sound cover for him to take up a more energetic stroke. He did, with furious, calorie burning reaches and even more powerful kicks…

Only to reach… nothing. He couldn’t even tell if the water was disturbed by anything but his own swimming.

If he’s not here then he’s… Turgenev took a deep breath, then another, and dived down, then circled around, his feet propelling him as his hands reached for… nothing. Shit.

Oddly enough, it was the victim who found him, not he the victim. Just as the lieutenant reached the last of his oxygen, a single hand locked into a death grip on his left arm. There was nothing to do but go up, pulling himself with his one free arm while pushing with the kicking legs.

Turgenev broke the surface and only just managed to explosively exhale and draw in about a quarter of a breath before that dead weight on his arm pulled him under again.

Now it was Turgenev’s turn to panic. He knew he didn’t have much air left and he felt his body demanding it with a pounding heart and aching lungs. He struggled, he kicked, and just when he thought his fight was over that death grip on his arm loosened.

I’ll be damned if you’re going to die now, you son of a bitch, after all you’ve put me through.

Twisting once again, under water, with nearly the last of his strength and endurance, the lieutenant aimed back down again, once again feeling around for…

I’ve got him, he exulted. Now how do I save him?

Swimming is a miserably inefficient way of getting around, really. Pulling oneself along with a rope is much, much better. With one hand firmly on whoever the hell it was who’d nearly drowned him, he moved his other hand to the cord looped around his waist, and from there made his best guess of which cord ran to the life buoy. Once he’d made his determination, he looped the fingers of the other hand around the cord that ran to the life buoy, closed them, and began to pull, dragging himself and his charge upward, praying that he’d have enough oxygen and strength left to make it.

Ouch, the lieutenant thought, when he hit his head on the lifebuoy, which wasn’t as soft as all that, really. In a half second, he was gratefully breathing fresh, salty air, even as he dragged the other man upward into the air, then threaded one of his arms through the buoy.

There came a series of wet, gagging coughs, accompanied by spasms as partially filled lungs forcefully emptied themselves.

“You’ve got to be quiet, friend,” Turgenev advised. “I don’t know if that ship can hear us.”

Around more coughs, slightly suppressed, a weak voice said, “Thank you… whoever… you are. I’ll… try to be… as quiet… as I can.”

“Who are you?” Turgenev asked.

“Lieutenant… First Lieutenant… Sergei Babin… Four-ninety-first Infantry Regiment…”

“We’ll talk later, Sergei, because I think… right about now…”

And with that, the cord from the Loredana to Turgenev snapped up through the water, then began to drag him, the life buoy, and Lieutenant Babin through the cold water with a startling speed.

Babin sat in the galley, nursing a cup of not very good tea with a healthy dollop of not very good rakia added to it. His uniform was drying so, for the nonce, he was wrapped in a couple of blankets. Despite this, he looked utterly miserable. Mokrenko and Turgenev sat with the rescued man, while the medical orderly, Timashuk, checked for temperature and pulse.

The rescued lieutenant spoke without emotion, deadpan, exhausted, and distantly, as if what he was describing had happened to someone else.

“There were forty-eight of us,” said Babin. “Well, forty-eight from my regiment, the Four-ninety-first Infantry. I don’t know how many were from the artillery units with us.

“We’d been sent on a transport to demobilize at Novorossiysk, together with the enlisted men. When we got there, the sailors of the fleet—the red fleet—demanded the men go and fight the anti-Bolshevik Cossacks on the Don. They refused but they were still on the transport ship. The Kerch then threatened to torpedo the transport, which would have killed a lot if not all of the men, unless they turned their officers over to the Reds. So they did.

“We weren’t too worried at first. Some of the officers were even willing to go fight; after all, not a single one of us was even minor nobility. But the Reds weren’t interested in that. They disarmed us, tied us, tied weights to our legs, and threw us over the side. Well, most of us; a few were shot over the side.

“I was lucky, just lucky, that they made a mistake when they tied my hands behind my back. I was able to get them free, and then one of my legs. If not”—here Babin showed just enough life to nod at Turgenev—“even your best and bravest efforts would have been too late.”

“Not a one of us even from the minor nobility,” Babin repeated, a tone of incredulity creeping in. “So… why? Why kill all those officers? What good did it do them?”

“Terror,” answered Turgenev and Mokrenko, simultaneously.

Babin shook his head, closed his eyes, and leaned forward to rest his head on his arms, above the table. Both Turgenev and Mokrenko had the good grace to look away, not wanting to see Babin’s shoulders shaking.

They were nearing land. There wasn’t a lot of time left to waffle over important matters. In this quiet time before sunrise, in their shared cabin, which was both guarded and sealed from eavesdropping ears, Turgenev and Mokrenko sat under the flickering light of a gimbaled lantern. The lantern was now fed by kerosene lifted from the late captain’s cabin.

“Speaking of murdering people at sea, Sergeant, what are we going to do about the crew?”

“Kill them, of course,” Mokrenko answered, “even though I don’t like the idea. Still, what else can we do? We can’t let them into port to raise a ruckus about the ones we killed or the captain’s chest we took all their money from. We can’t leave them here. It’s not even a good idea to leave the ship still floating, really. Besides, they’re all pirates.”

“But kill them in cold blood?” Turgenev objected. “C’mon, Sergeant; there’s got to be another way.”

The sergeant shook his head doubtfully. “We can put them in a ship’s boat with some food and water but no oars, sir. Then what happens when they get picked up by another ship? What happens if it’s that Bolshevik ship that murdered all of Babin’s comrades? The Kerch, was it? Think those cutthroats won’t be able to put two and two together and come up with at least some questions about us? We’re too military, too much a team even though we tried—not especially well, in my humble opinion—to hide it. And not under their authority, hence a threat to that authority.

“Or maybe,” Mokrenko continued, “we try to put them ashore somewhere deserted. They can walk, still, so about the time we get to, say, Yekaterinburg, there’s a battalion of Bolsheviks waiting for us with our descriptions.

“Or we leave them chained below, they get found and…”

A light and gentle knock on the door stopped Mokrenko mid tirade. It could only have come from one person aboard ship. This was confirmed when she asked, “You sent for me, Lieutenant?”

“Come in, Natalya,” Turgenev said, gently, then added, to Mokrenko, “There are some questions we need to ask her before we do anything rash.”

The girl entered, then closed the door behind her. She’d dispensed with her dress and put on some clothing taken from the chest of one of the deceased sailors, killed in the attempt at murdering the Russians. She was tall for her age and sex and the sailor had been short, but she still had to cinch her belt tightly, while rolling up the trousers and sleeves.

“Sit, girl,” Mokrenko said. “The lieutenant has some questions for you.”

“Natalya,” began Turgenev, “first off let me say you’re doing a fine job of captaining the ship. Could you do it if we left it to you?”

The girl snorted with derision. “The crew would have me on all fours within the hour. They have before, after all. If you gave me a gun, they’d wait until I was asleep and do the same. Or they’d ambush me when I came out of my cabin.”

Mokrenko scowled while Turgenev’s face began to look mildly ill.

“Not just Vraciu, then?” the Lieutenant asked.

“All of them but the two queers,” she answered, “Zamfir and Vacarescu, and they didn’t try to help me, either. Vacarescu was the one the sergeant had bludgeoned and dumped over the side.

“When the captain was done with me, any given night, he’d turn me over to his son. When the son was done, I was sent to the crew.”

“There’s your cold blood gone, Lieutenant,” Mokrenko said. “I hate the bastards already. They’re all fucking rapists and deserve to hang, except the one who is guilty by silent consent. But even he is still guilty.”

“That’s not the only question,” Turgenev said. “Natalya, I’m not too sure about actually going to port, but can we get this ship into port without them? I mean the sails…”

“Sure, sir; the engine is fine and there’s plenty of fuel for this short a trip. Let me know and we’ll be in Rostov-on-Don before tomorrow morning. Or someplace else if you prefer.”

“How about docking?”

She shook her head. “We’d need the deck hands if we were going to tie up at the pier, yes, but there’s no need to dock. We drop the anchor in the harbor, then you can row ashore in the two ship’s boats.”

“Too many questions of an empty ship in port,” said Turgenev. “I think we sink the ship well away from port, and find our way there on foot.”

“Yes, sir,” Mokrenko agreed. “And there goes the last argument for sparing any of them. Now how do you want them killed, sir?”

“Natalya?”

The girl thought about that a moment, then said, “Drowning’s as good as hanging. Just throw them overboard.” Natalya’s face when blank then, and when she spoke again her voice was like something from beyond the grave, creaking and lifeless. “Once, early on, when I wouldn’t cooperate, the captain had two of the men hold my head under water until I passed out, then revived me and did it again… and again… I don’t know how many times. Eventually, I cooperated.”

“Including…” Turgenev didn’t want o think about that. Instead, he struggled for the unfamiliar name, “Zamfir, was it?”

The girl’s voice returned to normal, though her face remained blank. “The sergeant said it, sir, he’s guilty by silent consent.”

Turgenev went silent for a bit, looking down at the deck. Finally, he said, “Sergeant, this court, having heard from sufficient witnesses to establish guilt for rape, conspiracy to commit rape, and conspiracy to commit piracy on the high seas, sentences the prisoners to death. No need for any ceremony; just take a large enough detail and drown them, please.

“Oh, and send Sapper Shukhov to me, if you would.”

Mokrenko stood and saluted, pleased that his officer was not only doing the smart thing, he wasn’t dilly dallying about it anymore. “Natalya, you want to witness this?”

Life returned; the girl smiled grimly, answering, “Absolutely, Sergeant.”

“Go up on deck, Natalya,” Mokrenko said, “and order the sails furled and the men in the rigging to come down. Tell Visaitov to guard them carefully. Then meet me by the foremast, below. When we bring out the crew stand back out of the way. They may get violent?”

“Okay, Sergeant.”

Once she was gone, the sergeant mustered everyone but Timashuk, the medic, now at the wheel, the lieutenant, Shukhov, Babin, and Visaitov, now guarding Timashuk and the few of the crew working the rigging.

He ordered Shukhov, the sapper, to report to Turgenev. The remainder he assembled—Corporal Koslov, Novarikasha, Lavin, and Sarnof—around the forward mast by the passenger cabins. “This has to be quick,” he warned, “without any warning, forceful, decisive, and final. A cornered rat will fight, desperately. Koslov, Novarikasha; you’re the seizure team. You bring them out one at a time. Club them if you must. Lavin, you’re the binder. When the prisoners are brought out, you tie their hands fast and tight. Don’t worry about discomfort; they won’t feel it for long. Sarnof, you and I will be armed, watching over the other three. Got it?”

“Sure, Sergeant… yes… seems kind of cold blooded to me… still… didn’t like the bastards anyway.”

“Back here in five minutes with everything you need. Go!”

“So, Shukhov,” the lieutenant began, “we need a way to burn or explode the ship, with a longish delay, maybe two or three hours, to give us time to get away. It would be better if it looked spontaneous, an accident. Can you do this? How?”

“Well, I’m sure I can, sir, but without nosing around I’m not sure yet exactly how. Can you give me a little time, to see what I can come up with?”

“Sure. Once you figure it out, let me know what will work.”

The crew, when not on duty, were kept in a cargo hold below, filthy, wet, and rat-infested. Mokrenko, is his most forcefully guttural Russian, gave the orders while the girl translated.

“All right, you filthy swine, we’re going to scuttle the ship. With you, we’re putting you into a boat to row to shore. Or, if you don’t like that, you can try to swim or stay here and just drown. Don’t like either of those ideas? Good. Come up one at a time.”

The first one out, first by virtue of having the sheer bulk to force his way to the ladder, was the ship’s cook. As soon as he had his feet on deck, standing under the unwavering pistols of Mokrenko and Sarnof, Lavin spun him about, pulled his hands together, and bound them firmly at the wrist. Then the cook was pushed to the nearest ladder leading upward.

“Do we need to put a rope around your neck to keep you upright?” Natalya asked sweetly. The cook merely snarled and began climbing the steep ladder without any aid.

“Next!”

When all nine members of the crew who still remained were up on deck and bound, Natalya translated, “On your knees and pray to God. We’re going to kill you now.”

Naturally, this raised something of a ruckus among the condemned men. One man shouted, “You said we’d have a chance at life if we performed for you.”

“A chance is only a chance,” the girl replied, “not a certainty.” She hadn’t bothered to translate any of that.

“What did we do to deserve this?” that same sailor asked of Turgenev. “It was the others who attacked you?”

“It was not the others who attacked me,” Natalya said. “That’s actually what you’re to be executed for, rape, over and over and over again. Don’t you remember?”

“You said we’d be put in a boat and allowed to row to shore.”

“We lied.”

Zamfir stumbled over to kneel in front of the girl. “I never touched you, not so much as the lightest finger. Tell them, for the love of God tell them, to spare me.”

“Silence is consent,” she replied. “When you were on watch did that not free another man to rape me?”

“Please, Natalya?”

She shook her head, without showing the least sign of pity.

“Start tossing them,” Mokrenko ordered. He’d considered cutting their throats first, but had his doubts the men would consent to be mere butchers. The four men of his detail, by twos, began lifting and tossing the captives overboard. Some struggled; some wept. Most begged. The cook stumbled to his feet and ran across the deck.

For the nonce, Mokrenko ignored the cook. Natalya concentrated on watching the doomed men splash overboard, then their short struggles before they sank beneath the waters.

“Okay, let’s get fat boy,” said the sergeant.

“Nooooo!” shrieked the cook as four men surrounded him.

Hmmmm… wonder what that big splash was, thought Shukhov, puttering through the galley for material he could use to blow up or burn the ship.

The engineer found a full-sized barrel, loaded with sugar. Not caring much for the niceties, he found a hammer belonging to the cook and began to beat in the wooden top. Well, that’s a start. Now let’s see…

“I can do it, Lieutenant,” the sapper said. “I’ll be working a good deal of the night setting it up, but I can do it.”

“How?”

“Well, sir, I’ll set it up—except for a couple of key steps—before we drop anchor. Water drip into a bucket that tips a pot. The pot will contain lye; there’s plenty aboard. The pot will tip into one of the big ceramic bowls in the galley. That will be surrounded by four bowls with gasoline from the fuel tank, and all of it will be by the fuel tank. Last minute, I pull the batteries from the engine and pour the acid into the central bowl, then pull out the stopper to get the water drip going.

“When enough water has dripped, the lye in the pot gets tipped into the battery acid. That starts a fire—big fire, really—hot enough to set off the other bowls containing gasoline. Those, between them, torch off the fuel tank—I’ll puncture the tank to make sure there’s plenty of gasoline for the purpose. That all causes a… hmmm… this is more complex to explain.”

Accompanied by hand gestures, the engineer explained the mechanics of a boiling liquid-expanding vapor explosion. Two hands, spaced with the fingers and thumbs pointed toward each other provided the core of the diagram.

“When you’ve got a fire going outside of a fuel tank, fed by the fuel in the tank, the fuel inside gets heated.” Here, the fingers writhed, indicating rising temperature and boiling liquid. “The more heated it gets, the more the pressure inside rises.” Fingers and hands spread. “The more the pressure rises, the faster it pushes out fuel, which in turn causes a bigger, hotter fire.” Hands almost joined as fingers interlaced. “At some point in time, the tank can’t hold the pressure. It blows up”—hands and fingers spread widely—“releasing hot, misting fuel to the fire. Then… well, the blast is enormous.” The engineer’s hands fell to his sides, with finality.

“Enough to sink the ship?” the lieutenant asked.

“Sir, it’s going to be like thirty or forty tons of high explosive going off; I’m not sure there’ll be enough left of the ship to actually sink.”

“Okay, get it set up.”

“Yes, sir. And thus all but one of my demolition life’s ambitions will be satisfied,” said Shukhov.

“What’s the other one?” the lieutenant asked.

“I want to blow up a safe, a real safe. Preferably in a bank but anywhere will do. I’ve blown down trees and blown up bunkers, houses and bridges… and soon a ship… ah, but a good safe? That would be something to tell the grandchildren of.”

“You are a criminal in the making, Engineer Shukhov.”

“Yes, sir. I know, sir. Sad, is it not, sir?”

Southwest of Taganrog, Russia

With the ship stopped dead in the water, and while the lieutenant led everyone but Mokrenko, Babin, Natalya, and Shukhov through boat drills designed to get them as far from the ship as possible in the shortest possible time, Shukhov prepared the demolition but without either emptying the batteries of acid, filling the pot with lye, or puncturing the tank.

For their parts, Mokrenko and Babin moved everything the team had brought with them, plus the captain’s little treasure chest, plus a few of the things they’d found on the ship that might be useful, up on deck. This formed a growing collection on the side away from the shore.

Watching from the deck, Mokrenko had been, at first, rather disgusted with the obvious cluster fuck that was the ship’s boat. He saw oars being tangled, momentum being lost, and a good deal of instability in the boat as the lieutenant shifted people around.

Shaking his head and thinking, We’re so fucked, he went back below to grab a couple of packs. When he came back, the boat seemed to have regained a degree of stability, but the oars were still a mess. Rather, the oarsmen were.

You would think that, having learned to march in step, they’d be able to pull an oar in cadence, too. Tsk.

Lieutenant Babin came on deck then, dragging one of the cases holding half the rifles and ammunition behind him. He, too, stopped to watch the boat’s progress. He said it aloud, “We’re fucked.”

“Know anything about small boats, sir?” Mokrenko asked, hopefully.

“Not a thing. But you don’t need to, to know that’s not the way to do it.”

“Yeah…”

I wish I had two drums and a couple of mallets to beat out the cadence, thought Turgenev.

“All right, people, let’s give this one more try. We don’t know the actual commands, none of us being sailors or yachtsmen, but we can figure out what has to be done and make commands up for ourselves.

“Once again, when I say ‘Ready oars,’ push the oars out until the handle part is right in front of you and all the oars are parallel to the water, with the blade—that’s the thin part—pointed straight down to the water. Got it?”

“Okay… ready….oars.”

What actually happened then was that the men, the rowers, lifted their flaccid oars out of the water and held them, stiffly, more or less straight out.

So far, so good….I think.

“Next, when I say ‘Get ready to row,’[4] lean forward and push your arms straight out—yes, still holding the oar—so that the oars move up a little and toward the front….now… get ready to row.

“Yeah… no, Let’s try that one again. First… ready oars… now… get ready to row… and once again…”

With the glass bowls arranged on the floor, and a convenient can of gasoline waiting to fill up the outer half ring, Shukhov contemplated the fuel tank.

Hmmm, he thought, I’m not going to risk losing my kindjal to a quick retreat once I puncture the tank. Let’s go see what the galley has available.

With that, he left the engine room; a subset, but a slightly higher and much drier one, of the bilges where they’d kept the crew prisoner. Up one ladder and around the rearmost mast, or mizzen-mast, led the sapper back again to the galley. The crew had left most of the ship pretty filthy, but, to give the late cook his due, the galley was spotless, to include the pots, pans, bowls, dishes, and cutlery.

Puttering through one of the drawers, Shukhov thought, I want a steady drip, or two or three of them, not a huge gusher. I think that leaves the cleaver and butcher knives out of consideration. Hmmm… wonder if I could arrange something burnable that would not even begin to leak much until the fire from the lye, the battery acid, and the gasoline in those bowls sets it on fire. But what?

A-ha! I can make a good size hole but plug it with a wad of cloth… yeah, that’s it. Now, what kind of cloth shall I use? Something tight-woven and heavy, I think. Canvas would probably do nicely…

Mokrenko dropped the last rucksack on the deck, then walked a step to the gunwales, to watch the boat perform. Better, he thought. Maybe the lieutenant used to be a yachtsman.

Babin, after heaving down his load, went to watch. “They’re getting better you know, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir, but if the blast is going to be as impressive as Shukhov expects—thirty to forty tons of high explosive—I’m not sure there’s anything quite good enough or fast enough to get away from it.”

Babin’s eyes grew wide, then narrowed. “I wish I had some way to detonate that inside the Kerch.”

“The world would not be the poorer for a hundred or so fewer Bolsheviks, sir. Speaking of which, what do you intend to do once we reach landfall?”

“I don’t know. No wife—she died, years ago, and I’ve never remarried. No children. Maybe I’ll find an anti-Bolshevik faction and kill the Reds until they manage to kill me.”

“We may have a better offer for you,” the sergeant said. “I’ll bring it up with my lieutenant.”

Destroyer Kerch

The shout came up, “There’s something or someone off the port bow!”

The ship’s skipper—he’d been a petty officer not long before but was Comrade Captain Razin now—gave the orders to investigate. What the object turned out to be, once recovered, was one very fat, white-clad Romanian with his hands, now quite blue, bound behind him and a bad case of hypothermia racing at a snail’s pace to kill him.

Once the man was hoisted aboard, there being no way for him to climb, even though they untied him, the captain discovered that no one could understand a word he said. Indeed, with feeling—agonized feeling—rushing back into his tortured hands, the man could do little but scream and then moan for a long time. The crew had to pour hot, highly sugared tea into him, since he couldn’t even hold a glass or cup for himself. This was not just because of the state of his hands, but also because of his uncontrollable shivering.

“Anybody understand what he’s babbling?” asked the skipper.

Answered the mate, also a former petty officer, “Not a word, comrade, but it sounds… mmmm… Italian or Romanian, to me. I’ve heard that kind of language before. It’s not French. Not Spanish; he isn’t lisping despite the freezing. Italian or Romanian, most likely.”

“Should we toss him back in, Comrade?” asked the mate.

“Let’s see if we can get some use out of him, first. If he lives. Ask around and see if any of the crew speak either of those languages.”

Barquentine Loredana

“Well,” said Turgenev, as Mokrenko tossed him a rope to tie up the boat, “we’re not very good but we’re as good as we’re going to be in the time we have.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed the sergeant. No one needed to mention that they were already three precious days behind schedule.

“Have Natalya start the engine and set course for vicinity Taganrog.”

Within minutes, with squeals and groans, a few coughs, several puffs of dense, black smoke, and some disquieting chattering, the engine sprang to life.

Interlude

Tatiana: The Staircase

I rushed towards the ruckus coming from the stairs.

With our snow hill gone, boredom had gripped Alexei and he’d decided to make a toboggan out of a rug and used it to slide down the stairs.

Something had gone wrong and he’d hit his knee. Papa came into stairwell, terror hiding in his face. Relief flickered across it, but it was short lived. Alexei’s hands squeezed tight around his right knee. He was hunched over, his jaw clenched tight, a hiss of breath escaping in gasps.

I’d seen this before, when he’d fallen and hurt something in his groin. He’d been in agony for days as what would have been a muscle pull or a bruise for any of the rest of us, swelled up with pooling blood.

“I just want to be a real boy,” Alexei said, his voice filled with equal measure of pain and frustration.

“You are a real boy,” Papa said, “not Pinocchio.” It was an attempt to lighten the mood, to make Alexei feel better, the tone soothing and struggling so very hard to be humorous.

“No, I’m not.” It was as if someone other than Alexei spoke. Someone older. Someone harder. Someone wounded in a way that would never heal. “Even a wood puppet can slide down stairs without breaking.”

The ache in my chest grew, swelling until I thought my heart would be crushed. But no. It kept beating, despite the look on Alexei’s face, the one that said he’d be better off as a puppet, a lifeless thing that could feel no pain.

I took a step back as Papa drew Alexei into his arms. Tears pushed into my eyes. I blinked them back.

Blinked and held them in with a swallow. I knew then that I’d never forget the look on Papa’s face. That gentle face now lined with worry unlike I’d ever seen before. It may have been Alexei who’d hurt himself, but the fall had wounded Papa as well.

His face was like a mask. I realized then and there that it was a mask of glass that he’d been wearing all along. It was cracked, spiderwebbed by tiny fissures that had been welded together again and again, sanded over, polished. But this crack, this fissure, had made all the previous ones stand out as if they had never been fixed.

Since Alexei was a baby, his illness had cast a shadow over Papa’s reign. What was to be his joy, his heir, had been twisted into a weapon to be used against him. A weapon he loved so much he would allow it to destroy us all. This weapon—my beloved brother, for I loved him with all my heart—was why we had isolated ourselves from the world, wrapping our family in a cocoon of secrecy. If his illness were to become known then Russia had no heir. We had hidden Alexei from the world, and the world from ourselves. And it had all been for nothing. Papa was no longer tsar. Alexei was no longer his heir, no matter how much some of the men still thought of him as such.

It had all been in vain. If we’d only known then, what was to come.

And then it hit me. What if Alexei was my child? Would I have done things differently? Could I bear a child knowing that this would be his life?

I shook my head.

No, I would not.

I loved children. I loved being around them, whether siblings, cousins, or strangers. But I wasn’t Mama. I didn’t have her strength.

Mama who had such a high sense of duty, who had been wholly devoted to her maternal obligations, who lived and breathed for her family. Who was often so preoccupied with her burdens that she seemed absentminded, who lost herself in a melancholy reverie, who became indifferent to the things about her.

It had cost her—us—because the sensitive, loving soul that was Mama was, to outsiders, nothing but a cold and haughty empress. Her enemies had used the mask she wore to cover her sensitivity and to project reserve, against her. They had twisted everything that was good about Mama and used it to turn her into a weapon against Papa, against the empire, and there had been nothing anyone could do about it.

Even as the thought formed I knew it to be false. Mama and Papa had chosen not to do anything about it. They had chosen to believe that what others thought about them didn’t matter. That was not a luxury a Romanov could indulge in. If only they had learned it sooner.

Dr. Botkin came into the stairwell. He examined Alexei, who was rocking back and forth now, blinking back tears.

Papa moved around Alexei and grabbed him under the arms. Dr. Botkin grabbed his legs. Alexei’s breath hitched.

I moved aside to let them pass and allow them to take him into his room.

I knew what awaited my sweet, charming brother. Blood would pool under his knee and spread down his leg. His skin would swell. The pressure from the blood and the swelling would press on the nerves. He would moan and cry as the pain grew worse with each hour.

Just like the last time when he’d fallen and hit his knee, there would be nothing to alleviate his suffering. Nothing anyone’s tender love and care would cure. Papa no longer needed to steal moments out of his schedule to come in and distract him with stories. He could be with him the entire time, but that would likely make it worse for the both of them.

And worse for Mama as well. She too had no duties to tear her from her son’s side. They would both don those glass masks as they tried to comfort and amuse him, dying inside a bit at a time.

Alexei would burn, hot to the touch, delirious with fever. He’d groan piteously, his face unrecognizable in its deathly whiteness. All of his suffering and distress would come out, balled up into one word: “Mummy.”

And Mama would kiss his hair, his eyes, his forehead as if those loving touches could ease his pain or bring back the life that was always threatening to leave him.

How did Mama bear it? The impotence? The anguish of knowing that she herself was the cause?

Before, my sisters and I had lessons to distract us. But no more. We too would sit with Alexei and let the glass crystallize on our faces until the masks became who we were, until we could not pull it down for anyone. And inside would be the knowledge that any one of us girls could be in that bed had we been born boys. That any son of mine might inherit this terrible disease for which there was no cure—only tears and pain and death.

The cycle would repeat itself. Just as it had with Mama’s uncle, her brother, her nephews. Death pursued all men, but it paid particular attention to the men of my family, taking up residence in their very blood.

Would Alexei come back from this fall as he had from all the others? As if he had forgotten his suffering? As if he was safe from death’s pursuit? How long before his heart no longer filled with hope? How long before the gates of death finally closed behind him?

Chapter Thirteen

Barquentine Loredana

The ship’s days were numbered now.

The Loredana had two of the sails of the foremast set. With the wind coming gently from the northwest, these would not only help to push it away from the fleeing boat, but might confuse people, if any were observing, as to the crew’s course and destination. For that matter, it would reduce the chances of anyone spotting it until it was gone.

With the ship moving gently with the wind, the escape boat was being pulled along with it.

If what Shukhov said is true, thought Turgenev, standing at the stern of the boat, and I’ve no reason to doubt it, if we’re not at least two or, better, three or four versta away from that thing when it goes off, it’s likely as not to kill us.

With the crew, all the personal and group baggage as well as what was looted from the Loredana, the ship’s boat was crowded. Indeed, when Shukhov came back from his mission of sabotage, there wasn’t going to be a seat for him except atop a pile of bags.

Mokrenko sat up at the bow, with a shore spike clutched in one hand, the rope holding them to the ship in the other, and his cut-down rifle resting against one thigh. Behind him, the oar crew sat in pairs, port and starboard. From bow to stern, these were Koslov and Lavin, followed by Timashuk and Novarikasha, then Sarnof and Visaitov. The girl, Natalya Sorokin, sat on the middle bench, squeezed between Timashuk and Novarikasha. Lieutenant Babin, likewise, was crammed in between Koslov and Lavin. Lieutenant Turgenev stood at the rear, both to manage the rudder and call the strokes to the oarsmen. The ship’s cat, or the formerly ship’s cat, sat atop Natalya’s lap, reveling in an uncommon two-handed stroking.

Even as he reveled, though, the cat resented that there were rats left on the ship he’d likely never get to hunt down.

Each of the oarsmen likewise had his rifle close to hand.

Turgenev’s eyes shifted restlessly from the dimly seen lights of the town, glowing off the clouds overhead, to the ship, whence he expected to see Shukhov appear at any moment.

The pot was ready, the water source likewise ready to unplug. The engine was running, at low speed, to draw in air to the engine room. The lye and battery acid were both in their appointed stations. All that remained was to puncture the large fuel tank, plug it with canvas, and start the water dripping.

Shukhov, working by the faint light of a ship’s lamp, concentrated on the spot he’d chosen to plunge in the cook’s icepick; that, he’d decided, being a better implement for the purpose than any knife on offer. The pick, itself, was for the most part round and thin, but jutting from a square portion, much thicker, near the handle. With a quick jab, he drove his stout arm forward and up, the icepick angled to take the fuel tank from the curved underside.

“Shit,” the engineer said softly. “I should have known that any fuel tank on any ship owned by that Romanian reprobate would be weak, rusty, and defective.”

In fact, the icepick had gone considerably farther into the tank than he’d expected or wanted. Indeed, it was gone far enough, creating a large enough hole once Shukhov withdrew it, if he did, that he had his doubts he could make a decent plug. Already fuel was, if not quite pouring out, leaking at a rate a lot greater than he felt comfortable with.

“Shit,” he repeated, a little more loudly.

Briefly, the engineer thought about disassembling the entire apparatus and moving it to safety before pulling out the icepick and trying to plug the hole.

“But what if I can’t plug it? What if the swine of a child-raping captain’s fuel tank simply crumbles apart? It might.”

As well as he could, given the need to keep the ship’s lantern far from the leaking gasoline, Shukhov inspected the damage and the flow. It could be worse, he thought. This is maybe twice the flow I wanted. We can still outrun it… I think. Better than the alternative? Maybe. I’m going to go with that, anyway.

Mokrenko is never going to let me hear the end of this. On the other hand, if I don’t hurry, I’ll never get the chance to hear the beginning, either.

With a wild scramble, aided by ship’s ropes and the waiting hands of his teammates, Shukhov clambered over the side and down into the boat.

“Sir, you’ve got—we’ve got—to hurry,” said the engineer, rather more loudly and more excitedly than he’d intended.

Before Turgenev could say a word, Mokrenko asked, “Why? What did you fuck up?”

Breathlessly, Shukhov answered, “It was the fucking fuel tank… it was weak… rusted… made a bigger hole than I’d planned on. So we’ve got more gasoline flowing. That means a bigger fire once the water starts everything. It’s going to go off sooner than I’d planned, a lot sooner. We’ve got to get the fuck out of here!”

“Idiot,” Mokrenko muttered under his breath, as the lieutenant pushed the boat from the ship.

Calm yourself, Turgenev, the lieutenant thought. Taking in a breath, he let it loose, swallowed, and took another. Must look and sound confident in front of the men.

“Gentlemen,” Turgenev said, “we can get out of this if we maintain calm and pull our oars as one. You are all guardsmen on the oars, battle tested in some of the fiercest battles of the war, so calm you should be able to handle. The oars… well, we will ask God to help us there. So, gentlemen of the oars… get ready to row.”

Destroyer Kerch

The ship rocked gently, silent and still. There was no place much to go and nothing much to do, at the moment, so why go there to do it.

“Has that fat tub of a foreign sailor said anything worthwhile yet?” asked Comrade Captain Razin, the former petty officer, coming to the former wardroom, now called, until they could come up with a more revolutionary term, the senior mess.

“Yes, comrade,” answered the executive of the ship, nursing a glass of hot tea. “We found one of the sailors, a good communist, too, who spoke Italian. He said the other language was Romanian, which was about three quarters mutually intelligible.”

“And?” asked Razin, drawing a glass of tea from the samovar bolted to a counter.

“He’s a cook, a ship’s cook off a smuggler, the Loredana. He says the Germans hired the captain to take some Russians home, nine of them. He says they killed the captain and all the rest of the crew. He says, too, that they intended to kill him, but his fat both kept him afloat and insulated him from the cold.”

“Can he describe this Loredana?”

“It’s a barquentine, like any other, Comrade.”

Razin nodded, while thinking aloud. “Now why would the Germans go to all that trouble to send nine Russians back? Did he describe them?”

“Yes, Comrade, but from ignorance. He didn’t know what he was looking at or even looking for. Still… Cossacks, either entirely or mostly. Their swords and dagger gave them away.”

Razin sipped at his tea while looking up at the seam of deck and bulkhead, above. “So the Germans sent back Cossacks via a smuggler. Counterrevolutionaries? Seems likely, the bastards. Troublemakers at a minimum, I am sure.

“This cook have any idea where the ship was going after they let them off?”

“He said Taganrog or the nearest shore to Rostov-on-Don, Comrade Captain.”

Razin nodded. “Lay in a course for Mariupol. Stop about ten versts out. Then I want to parallel the coast—remember to watch out for the spit southwest of Sjedove—check out the harbor at Taganrog, then, if they’re not there, continue to as close as we can come to Rostov-on-Don.”

“Dump the cook overboard then, Comrade-Captain?”

“Don’t be an idiot; we’ll need him to identify this barquentine. We can toss him afterwards… unless the mess section wants to keep him.”

“They might,” the exec agreed. “I’ll ask. By the way, Comrade Captain, how are we even going to see this ship in this dark?”

“To stop the introduction of dangerous potential counterrevolutionaries into the country? Be serious; we’ll use the searchlights. It’s not, after all, like we have much in the way of threats here.”

“There’s one threat, maybe, Comrade Captain?” Without waiting for Razin even to raise an eyebrow, the exec continued, “Remember those counterrevolutionary officers we executed by drowning not long ago?”

“Sure,” the captain shrugged.

“Well, the Romanian cook thought it likely that the Cossacks had rescued one of them.”

“Shit.”

Barquentine Loredana

The ship’s rat was one of many. None of them had names but this one thought of himself, and was thought of by the others, as Number One Rat.

Chief rat or not, it was used to having to be a bit circumspect in its movements, as well as to having its way barred in many places. Thus, it was somewhat surprised to see the hatch open to what it thought of as “spacenoisystinky.” It was even stinkier now, and the stink a little different, less toxic and almost alluring.

Number One hadn’t gotten to be chief rat by virtue of taking too many chances. If something was alluring, it was also likely very dangerous. Standing on its rear legs by the hatchway’s wooden frame, Number One looked around the spacenoisystinky. There were, he decided, a lot of weird things going on, all of which spelled “danger” in classical rodent. Or would have, if rats could spell… and if there’d been such a thing as classical rodent. He decided he wanted nothing to do with any of it. Even though he rather would have liked a drink of water, the enticing drip-drip-dripping wasn’t enough to tempt him, given the strange smell. Instead, Number One turned away and, with faint scratching sounds from his claws on the deck, headed to a hidden passageway he knew of. That, in turn, led to the place he thought of as “foodfeedmeahgood.”

Now that was a treasure trove. Someone had spilt sugar, sliced open bags of grain, left out some meat and beans.

I’ll get the others for the feast after I’ve had my fill, thought Number One. Yummyyummyyummy.

Number One stopped his feasting when the galley porthole was suddenly lit up brightly by some external light source.

Ship’s Boat, Barquentine Loredana

Natalya was the first to really notice. “Lieutenant Turgenev, sir,” she said, “there’s something behind us lighting up what is likely the Loredana.”

The oars almost immediately fouled, nudging everyone lightly toward the bow.

Turgenev swiveled neck and body one hundred and eighty degrees to catch a glimpse. “Is that your little explosive device going, Shukhov?” the lieutenant asked.

“Too bright I think, sir,” Shukhov replied. “Mine should be a mostly dim glow, followed by the sudden rising of the sun. And it should have been over quick. We’d also have heard it by now.”

“Searchlight, I think,” offered Lieutenant Babin, “and a fairly powerful one. Could be…”

“Could be what?” asked Turgenev.

“Could be Kerch,” said Babin. “I saw at least one large searchlight aboard before they tossed me overboard.”

Fuck, thought Mokrenko.

“Reach into my pack,” said Turgenev to Babin. “Inside there is a good pair of German binoculars. See if you can make out anything. As for the rest of you, Sergeant Mokrenko?”

“Calm the fuck down, people!” Mokrenko barked. He waited a few moments until he sensed, in the darkness, that he had their attention. “Sir?”

“Once again,” said Turgenev, “get ready to row.” When there was an absence of sound of wood on water or wood, Turgenev decided they were ready. “Now row… together. One… two… three… four… one… two…”

“It’s hard to tell,” said Babin, once he’d had a chance to look through the binoculars, “but if I had to guess… that’s the Kerch, come to hunt us down. I can’t make it all out, but I can see the searchlight and I can see part of the bridge, one… no, two, of the guns. There are other destroyers out here on the Black Sea, but she was closest. I think it’s the Kerch.”

“Probably not to hunt us down,” said Mokrenko. “They’ve no reason to believe we even exist.”

Destroyer Kerch

“Bring up the fat cook,” Razin ordered, watching the portside searchlight playing back and forth along the hull of the anchored vessel. Bringing the cook took some time. When he arrived, it was without the Italian speaking sailor, which led to still more loss of time as that worthy was hunted down and brought to the bridge.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew stood to battle stations, manning the four open 102mm deck guns, both of the 57mm antiaircraft guns, the four thirty caliber machine guns, plus the four triple torpedo tubes. There was even a small team, quite needlessly, on the racks toward the stern that held the ship’s eighty naval mines, two of which they’d automatically prepared for laying.

Whatever else might be said of the Kerch, it couldn’t be said she was under-armed for her size.

The searchlight swept the deck of the barquentine. “Nobody at the wheel, Comrade Captain,” announced the exec. “I think she’s been abandoned.”

“Match course and speed. Get a boat over the side and a boarding party—a well-armed boarding party—ready. Also, bring us closer, no more than twenty-five arshin away.”

“We could close to almost hull to hull, Comrade Captain, and save a little time, no?”

“We could,” Razin agreed, “but getting the boarding party back might be difficult. Besides, we’re a frightfully open ship and unarmored, to boot. I wouldn’t want a dozen hand grenades going off on the deck.”

Barquentine Loredana

Aboard the Loredana, Number One had finally summoned his followers to the feast with joyful squeaks and hisses. On the galley’s deck and the counters, six score fat rats plus three gorged themselves on sugar, flour, and all manner of wonderful things. Like a lord, Number One sat atop a counter, enjoying the sight of his underlings feasting due to his own beneficence and boldness.

The galley sat close to amidships. Farther to the stern, in the engine room, also known as spacenoisystinky, two drips ran continuously. One was of the water, slowly filling a pot that would tip over a good deal of lye into battery acid. This was getting near to full or, at least, full enough. The other was from the fuel tank, where gasoline ran in a small rivulet down to the lowest part of the curve of the tank, and then onto the floor, in a building and spreading puddle.

One thing Shukhov and Turgenev hadn’t considered, since there’d been no obvious reason to consider it, was the action of the rocking of the ship on the entire Rube Goldbergesque self-destruct mechanism. This had been made a little worse with the setting of a few sails, thus allowing the ship to pass ahead of the wind. It hadn’t made much of a difference to the water drip, and it would not make a difference to the lye pour.

But the icepick? To that, it made a difference.

With each roll of the ship, the more heavily weighted handle of the icepick moved, imperceptibly. The ship’s bow rolls upward, going into a wave? The ship’s stern rides over the same wave? With each roll, the pick’s handle goes down. The stern then falls into a trough? With each fall, the handle moves a little up. Rinse and repeat, every minute or so, for some hours. Now add to that the pressure from inside the tank, so far not driven by heat, but still a force not to be discounted.

In short, eventually the ice pick fell out, allowing a much stronger stream of gasoline to leak onto the deck. This was not, so far, a huge problem.

Ah, but then the pot for water filled up enough to tip the lye into the battery acid. A good deal of the lye missed, due to the same roll that had dislodged the icepick. Enough, however, hit the battery acid to start a fire, which spread very quickly to the four bowls filled with gasoline next to it.

The burning bowls did not, directly, torch off the puddle of gasoline on the floor. Rather, the flames from the bowls set the gasoline leaking from the icepick’s hole and running down the tank’s bottom on fire. This burning drip set the gasoline on the deck to burning. The sudden pressure of that had the effect of pushing the hatchway shut. This did not, it should be noted, cut off the supply of oxygen to the fire since the engine was still working to draw in air. What it did do, however, was increase the heat on the tank, quickly and sooner than anyone might have expected. It was not too much longer before the pressure building up inside the tank began forcing gasoline out the hole in a stream. This, too, increased the heat on the tank, hence of the fuel, and hence of the vapor from the fuel.

Even this might not have ruined the timing too badly, but for the worn out, rusty, crappy nature of the tank, itself. Another tank might have held on longer against the rising pressure from the heating fuel, but not this one. With about a third of the tank filled with fumes under high pressure, and the rest filled with fuel just held from boiling by that pressure, something had to give.

It did.

Destroyer Kerch

“That’s her,” said the cook, via the Italian-speaking interpreter.

“Send the boat and boarding party over now,” Razin ordered. The captain had been scanning the ship, bow to stern and then stern to bow again, as the searchlight played across its length. With the launching of the boarding party, the searchlight crew put its focus on just sternward of amidships, at a spot the boarders would be able to climb up the hull. It was, in fact, the same spot where Turgenev, Mokrenko, and company had debarked.

Unlike the Cossacks escaping the Loredana, the Kerch’s boat crew were thoroughly practiced and much, much faster. They reached the barquentine quickly, followed by two men clambering up the sides to tie the Kerch’s boat off. Bearing slung rifles, the boarding party was soon all on deck. Moments later the rifles were in ready hands and the party was beginning to spread out.

The leader of the group was Comrade Pereversev, a clean-cut sort who was also a communist by conviction, and not merely one of convenience or envy. Pereversev sent two men to the bow, likewise two to the stern, and then, with the remainder, descended the ladder down into the darkened passenger and crew deck.

Looking to the bow, Pereversev saw nothing. Looking sternward, there was a faint glow leaking through a few imperfections and gaps in what he suspected was the engine room hatch.

“We’ll start there,” Pereversev ordered, adding, “One man, either side and just behind me. Now, who’s got the lantern? Light it.”

Someone struck a match, the sudden flash showing an open space, with no obvious threats. Within a few seconds, the glow of an oil lamp illuminated the deck.

“Come on.”

Carefully, the boarding party followed their leader toward the stern, heads and eyes scanning left to right, then right to left.

“It’s creepy, you know…”

“Shut up and watch,” said Pereversev. Silently, he agreed, It certainly is creepy. One hears stories… lost ships and crews… doomed men… The Flying Dutchman… and stop it, right now.

It wasn’t long before the boarding party was at the entrance to the engine room.

What gave was one end of the tank. It simply blew off, the super-heated gasoline suddenly flashing to vapor. The vapor immediately caught fire but so quickly that it was better defined as an explosion. That blew the hatch off the engine room, propelling it forward and carrying Comrade Pereversev forward with it.

Not so far away, Number One looked up from his feasting followers at the oncoming wave of flame. The rat had one unprintable thought before the blast took them all.

The passenger and crew deck instantly filled up with a mixture of air and gasoline vapor. This expanded forward into every cabin, nook, and cranny, as well as down below into the open cargo hold, and likewise into the galley. The fuel-air mix was beginning to escape up the open hatchways to the deck, but the wave of explosion spread outward before this pressure release could be of much use.

The explosive power was nothing like the theoretical that Shukhov had claimed. Rather than being the equivalent of up to forty tons of high explosive, the actual yield was much less, perhaps eight or nine. But eight or nine tons of high explosive, contained within the ship’s hull, was enough to shatter that hull.

Moreover, as more air was added to the mix, previously unspent fuel joined the conflagration. It spread uniformly, in a large brightly lit demi-sphere. Indeed, the sphere was so large that most of Kerch was caught inside it.

The thirty-eight men manning and supervising the guns and mines were the first to go. First, the explosion concussed them, even as it caused inhalation burns in most. Most were then tossed right overboard into the cold water, where it was a race between drowning and being strangled by their own blistering throats.

Up on the bridge, the thick glass shattered, shredding the exec and blinding Captain Razin.

The fuel-air mix really should not have been enough to sink the Kerch. Kill the exposed crew, yes, certainly, but sink the ship? No.

What happened were several things, more or less simultaneously. In the first place, a piece of wreckage from the Loredana struck one or more of the Hertz horns of the mines in the racks to the stern. This released sulfuric acid, which ran down to the battery. After a slight delay, that battery, which had had no acid previously, was charged up enough to send an electrical charge to the detonator. Explosion followed, which then crushed a great many more Hertz Horns, setting off all the rest of the mines, some ten tons worth of high explosive, in all.

That wasn’t all the damage done, though. There were 102mm shells in ready racks at each of the four guns. The fuses still retained their safeties, but the propellant was vulnerable to both blast and heat. Somewhere, one or more of the shells had their brass casings torn off, and their propellant set aflame. Get enough propellant going, and the distinction between it and explosive becomes rather a fine one.

And then there were the very large warheads in the torpedo racks…

Ship’s Boat, Barquentine Loredana

“Holy shit!” said Babin, still looking through the binoculars. “That was the Kerch going up with the Loredana.”

This caused Turgenev to turn about, briefly, just in time to catch the sphere of flame and the towering inferno, punctuated by some very sharp blasts. The oarsmen, too, stopped rowing to watch the show.

Shukhov, still perched atop some bags, was about to congratulate himself when he remembered, “Cover your heads everyone. Or, on second thought, maybe not. Anything with enough mass to reach us here isn’t going to be stopped by crossed arms.”

Something did come then, screeching across the sky. It didn’t come close, though; if it had the ship’s boat would never have survived high speed contact with the rear tenth or so of the deck over the former engine room. Still, it made a splash loud enough to hear.

“Okay,” said Mokrenko, “show’s over. Back to your oars.”

The sun was a thin hint on the horizon to the east when the party reached the shore. Mokrenko was first out, leaping over the side and splashing through the water until he ran out of line between the boat and the shore spike. Aided by the oarsmen, he hauled on the rope until the boat was firmly against the sand. Then, raising the spike high overhead, he used both arms to drive it into the shore.

At that point, Turgenev gave the order to ship oars. The entire party then, less Natalya, took hold of the boat, pushing it still farther onto the shoreline.

“All right,” said Mokrenko, “Koslov? Goat, get this son of a bitch unloaded. Sir, I’m going to need a few men and some money—maybe a lot of money—to go get us fifteen horses and a cart or wagon.”

“Take what you think you need, Sergeant,” Turgenev replied. “Don’t forget rations, either.” The lieutenant shook his head in disgust. “It would have been simpler for us if that swine, Vraciu, had kept his word and brought us all the way to Rostov-on-Don. What this will cost us in delay I can’t even guess.”

“A few days, anyway, sir,” Mokrenko said. “Which is a few days more than we have to spare. Visaitov, Lavin, and… yes, you, Sarnof; you’re coming with me.”

Taganrog, Russia

They found a stable a few blocks from the old Assumption Cathedral. Mokrenko’d had an urge to look inside. It was an urge that, given the sheer number of armed red guards around the church, he didn’t find especially hard to overcome.

“I’ve no horses to spare, soldier,” the stable master insisted. Long in the face, with a drooping mustache, he looked a bit like the horses he cared for… smelled a bit like them, too. Mokrenko instinctively trusted him, something that didn’t come easy to the Cossack.

“No,” the stable master insisted, “not at any price. What the Germans, Austrians, and Cossacks didn’t take, the Reds did. Indeed, the Reds took everything but a bare minimum to move utter necessaries around.”

“Of course they did,” Mokrenko agreed. “And who says I’m a soldier?”

“Soldier,” insisted the stable master. “I was once one, too. Takes one to know one.” The stable master made a quick headcount, “Or to know four of them.”

“We need horses and a wagon,” Mokrenko insisted. “My party is encamped down the coast. We were, yes, soldiers, demobilized and put on a boat to come home. Boat sank, but we managed to save ourselves, our gear, and a couple of others. We’ve got, as mentioned, baggage. A couple of sick, too.”

“Indeed?” the stable master asked in a voice replete with suspicion. “You boat was sinking and yet you managed to save your baggage as well as yourselves? Well, no matter. I’ve got a wagon, a good one, with four old nags to pull it. You interested in hiring me for the job?”

Mokrenko considered that. “How far will you take us?” he asked.

“How far do you want to go?” the stable master replied.

“Rostov-on-Don.”

Shaking his head, the local said, “Now that far I can’t take you. Not only would it take me away from here too long, but the odds are good some different group of Germans or Reds—or bandits, there’s little to choose among them—than the ones hereabouts would just confiscate my wagon and mares.

“I can’t take you,” he repeated, “but, I have a friend or sorts—my first cousin, actually—down by the docks. I think he could. How big did you say your party was?”

“There are eleven of us,” Mokrenko said, “including a refugee girl we’ve acquired—no, stop right there and curb your thoughts; she’s just a young girl who needs help getting to her home—and an officer from a different regiment from ours who wants to get home, too.”

“How much baggage?”

Mokrenko considered this. There were probably about eighty pounds per man, all told, some of which was disposable. He answered, “Maybe a thousand pounds.”

“Tell you what; help me get my mares in harness and I’ll take you to the docks. You can bargain with my cousin for passage up the Don. I won’t take part, mind, because while he’s my cousin, you are soldiers. This leaves me in a terrible ethical dilemma if I get between you. After you’ve worked out passage—pay him no more than half up front, I warn you; he’s a thief—we’ll go pick up the rest of your crew. Fortunately, with the cold, the roads are hard, so we’ll make good time.

“My name is Sabanayev, by the way, Igor Sabanayev; and yours?”

Sabanayev’s brown eyes twinkled as he said, “And so, Comrade Rostislav Alexandrovich—and, once you’re past Germans lines, I advise you and your friends to say ‘comrade’ as often as possible and as publicly as possible; the Reds have eyes and ears everywhere—I see your sick have almost all recovered nicely.”

“Quick healers, the lot, yes,” agreed Mokrenko, dryly.

“A suspicious man, which of course, I am not, would wonder if sickness were claimed in a play for sympathy.”

“One does not need to play for sympathy,” answered Mokrenko, primly, “when dealing with a fellow soldier. One need merely ask.”

In fact, thought the Cossack, I trust you mostly because you spoke of the Reds as if they were “the other.”

“Indeed,” Sabanayev agreed, “it is so.”

The stable master looked over the contents of the wagon, made a quick judgment, and added, “Your young girl, Natalya; she should ride on the wagon. Also that Lieutenant Babin; mark my words, he looks to be coming down with pneumonia. At the very least, he’s had a hard time of it recently.”

“He has,” Mokrenko replied. “Nearly drowned, actually.”

“Put him in the wagon, too, then. As for the rest of you, you should walk. My horses—poor old ladies—are tired and worn, and haven’t been as well fed of late as they’d like. We’ll make better time with the rest of you on foot.”

Interlude

Tatiana: Anger and Weakness

I was so happy to see Olga up and around doing normal things like helping with Mama and the younger children that I was expecting things to turn around. I blame it on my naïveté, on my need for something good to finally happen.

Why there was a part of me that thought that she’d simply get over being raped, I don’t know. I’d never dealt with rape. I’d never been around women who’d been raped. It wasn’t something one discussed in polite company, or at all.

Who would want the shame? Who would want the pity? Who would want the guilt? Who would want to know that she could not protect herself? Who would want to know that they could not protect their daughter, sister, or wife?

Papa was reading to us—I don’t remember which book—and Mama sat under blankets with Ortipo in her lap, listening and rubbing at her temples only occasionally.

Mama leaned to whisper in my ear. “Tatiana, check on the tea please.”

I got up and crossed the yard to the kitchen. As I approached, I heard the whistling of a tea kettle through the door.

I stepped inside and found Olga standing by the stove, looking off into space. She might have been looking through the window, but I don’t think she was seeing anything.

The kettle’s whistle came to a stop. Still she stared, as if she wasn’t even there.

“Olga,” I said, coming up behind her slowly.

She must’ve not heard me.

The scent of heated metal rose from the kettle.

“Olga,” I said again, louder.

Startled, she turned her head. We both reached for the kettle at the same time, bumping fingers. I wrapped my hand around the towel knotted over the kettle’s handle and moved it off the heat.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Her voice was hollow. So were her eyes.

I sat her down at the small kitchen table used to chop vegetables. Someone had left a stack of clean bowls set in the middle. Mismatched napkins had been neatly folded atop them.

Olga played her fingernails into the grooves left by knives and hatchets as I took a pot from the rack hanging above and filled it with water. I didn’t want to wait for the kettle to cool down.

“Mama wants her tea,” I said as I set a half-full pot atop the stove.

I sat down across from her, grabbing at her fidgeting hands and wrapping them inside of mine. She’d bitten her fingernails to the quick, something she had never done before.

She lifted her gaze to mine. It was no longer hollow.

“I don’t care,” she said without blinking.

I think a moment passed. I’m not sure. It must have been the shock of hearing her say that, of the time it took me to realize that she’d said it.

Olga pulled out of my grip, pushed the chair back, and stood. “I don’t care.” Louder, more forceful.

“Shh,” I said rising. “Someone will hear.”

“I don’t care!” Olga pushed the chair over. Her hands were fists now, no longer uncertain, no longer seeking refuge in fidgeting.

Before I could stop her, she moved forward, swept the bowls off the table, sending them to the floor. The impact sent the shattered pieces across the floor.

The chair was next, thrust on its side and sliding to block the door. Her eyes were frantic, seeking. She knocked the pot with its water off the stove. It rolled away, trailing wetness in its wake.

“Olga! Stop! They’ll hear.”

The barrel in the corner got a kick. It was too heavy to move. She eyed the rolling pin perched on the bottom shelf of the wall behind me and moved toward it.

For a moment—a very brief one—I wanted to join her, help her smash every bowl and plate, every jar, every bottle. Instead, I grabbed her shoulders as she went past me, spun her around and pulled her to me.

At first, she resisted. Her whole body was tight with tension, but I was determined. Determined not to let her go. Determined to hold on to her. Determined to make sure that she didn’t do something that could not be hidden.

I squeezed harder, anchoring my fingers in her clothing until my fingers hurt.

I don’t know why she didn’t cry out or shout. Her mouth was open like she was going to, but no sound came from it.

Her face was an ugly shade of purple, the kind that comes from not breathing.

For a terrifying instant I didn’t know what to do. If she screamed, it would be over. It would bring someone and Papa would hear. He would want to know what happened. Why it had happened.

He would see. He would know. He would suspect.

So I squeezed harder. She spasmed in my grasp, gulping for air, swallowing it down. She must’ve been breathing because her lips weren’t turning blue. She just seemed unable to speak.

And then, between one blink of an eye and the next, the stiffness in her body melted away and she collapsed in my arms, like a rag doll that had been torn open, the buckwheat inside it spilling out in a torrent.

It was like that with Olga.

We sank to the floor, her chin resting on my shoulder, the wetness from her tears hot and sudden. I could feel her jaw working beside my check.

“Breathe,” I said, massaging her back. “Breathe.”

Her chest swelled against mine. She was shaking. It was her fingers digging into my back, my shoulder now.

The words, “Help me,” were the barest whisper, more felt than heard against my skin.

But I couldn’t. Not really.

Oh, I did take her back to our room, made our excuses to Mama and Papa, made up a story that someone had spilled water on the floor and she had slipped, knocking over the chair and the bowls.

I did all those things. I lied. Over and over again.

There was a part of me that watched Papa’s eyes with the vain hope that he would, just once, be more aware. He watched with eyes that did not see, heard with ears that did not hear.

I wanted to think of him as a good and great man, a strong man.

But he wasn’t. He wasn’t any of those things. A seed of doubt was planted that day, the doubt that he had ever been any of those things.

Yes, he loved us. Loved Mama to the point where he could not see her for what she had become. Loved us children as well.

But his daughter had been raped right under his nose. He hadn’t been able to protect her. He could not protect any of us. Not himself.

He was a good man but he was an ineffective man.

For a long time I don’t know who I was angrier with—him or myself. I had contributed to that blindness, even prayed for it to hold because I didn’t want him to know, because I cared more for him than for Olga.

God rarely intervenes to save us from our own folly… or our parents’ folly.

Chapter Fourteen

Waffenbau Bergmann, Suhl, Germany

As it turned out—and it cost Brinkmann three days and a lot of difficult walking, aided by his cane, to find this out and fix it—the place to go was not Gaggenau, in Baden, but Suhl, in Thuringia. That was where Hugo Schmeisser worked, and that was where initial production of the MP18, the Machinenpistole of 1918, was being made.

In a side office, slightly insulated from the intense sounds of steel pounding or grinding steel, a tired and harried-looking, to say nothing of balding, Hugo Schmeisser faced an equally harried-looking and nearly exhausted Major Brinkmann. Between the two lay a table on which sat a shiny new submachinegun, with a brace of odd-looking magazines to either side, an inexplicable tool, plus one magazine that made a good deal more sense across the stock.

“Yes,” said Schmeisser, “we’ve received an order for fifty thousand of the things from the army. It shouldn’t be hard to divert sixty or even one hundred to General Hoffmann’s request. But it’s important you understand what you’re getting, Major.

“There is, in the first place, no option for single fire; it is fully automatic and fully automatic only.

“Secondly, at almost four point two kilograms, it is by no means light. Note that that is heavier than our standard infantry rifle, the Gewehr 98. Empty. Loaded, it is worse.

“There is no option to attach a bayonet.

“On the plus side, though, at that weight, firing a nine-millimeter round, even on fully automatic, the recoil is negligible to a fighting man. It might be negligible to a not very large woman, for that matter. Indeed, I would say that the amount of recoil is perfect for getting a spray of bullets just broad enough to increase the probability of a hit, or multiple hits, at likely ranges. Moreover, the sheer bulk of metal, which is what’s driven the weight, serves as a heat sink to help keep them from overheating.

“But then there’s the magazine.” Schmeisser reached out and picked up the box magazine, holding it out for Brinkmann to examine. His voice quivered with rage. “We gave the army this as a design, cheap, simple, reliable, compact.” He dropped the box magazine with disgust, then picked up a drum magazine, normally found with the Artillery Luger. “This is what the army insists we use; complex, not especially reliable, quite expensive, overly large, and a true taste of hell to load in the dark in a muddy enemy trench. Never mind how much it unbalances the gun!”

“Why?” Brinkmann asked.

“Because we were already making these drum magazines, a fact not known to me back in 1915 when I undertook to design this piece. It would save time, they said. Never mind the time I spent redesigning the gun to take the drum magazine. Idiots!”

“I don’t suppose…” Brinkmann began.

“Remaking them to take the box magazine? No, Major; that would be most impractical unless you have a few months to spare.”

“No, no, we don’t.”

“I’d rather thought not.”

“How many magazines can we have?” Brinkmann asked.

“Six or seven per; call it four hundred to six hundred,” Schmeisser answered. “Production isn’t quite what the General Staff anticipated. Loaded, they’re not exactly light, either. And we’ll have a loading tool—Oh, I can’t wait to tell you about loading these things!—per weapon, too. We don’t make the bags to carry the magazines in; there you’re on your own.

“And so, would you care to fire the thing before you take delivery?”

Camp Budapest, Bulgaria

The messenger from the quartermaster’s shop found Kostyshakov in the officers’ shower. “Sir! Sir! The Germans have come through for us! Captain Romeyko says you should come immediately. We have the machine pistols we were promised. Oh, beautiful things they are, too.”

Hiding his own excitement, Daniil said dryly, “Please tell the quartermaster that I will certainly take his request under advisement.”

No sooner was the runner gone than Daniil was furiously working to remove the soap from his body, then dry himself on the thin and miserable ersatz towels that were all Germany could provide at this stage of the war. Still dangerously damp, he wrapped his feet, pulled on his uniform and then his boots, donned his overcoat and began to walk briskly the eighty or so meters to the quartermaster’s shop.

“So show me this marvel of Teutonic weapons design,” Kostyshakov’s voice boomed, as he strode through the cloth-hung door to the shack.

Daniil took one look, then pointed his finger at the same runner who’d come for him. “Get me all the officers in the battalion, plus the sergeant major—both sergeants major—and the first sergeant for the Grenadier Company. Have them meet me in the officers’ mess.”

As the runner scurried off, Daniil looked at Romeyko. “Can you show me how to use this thing?”

“No,” the quartermaster answered, “but Feldwebel Weber has been shown how by Major Brinkmann, and he knows how.”

“Please, then, Feldwebel, show me how this works.”

There’s no delaying it anymore, Daniil thought, as his senior leadership tramped into the officers’ mess, lit by half a dozen flickering oil lamps. Now we’re going to have to do the sorting, and the commanders of First, Second, and Third companies are going to be crying fit to put them on stage as damsels in distress at what they’re going to have to give up.

“Gentlemen,” Daniil began, “let’s talk reorganization and assignments. Cherimisov, you first. What parts of the Grenadier Company are filled?”

“Just half the headquarters, the platoon leaders and platoon sergeants, the snipers, the Lewis gunners, and the flamethrower men from the engineers. Comes to sixteen men in total.”

“Okay. You’re going to be filled up to your full complement before we leave here. First Company; Baluyev?”

“I’m overstrength, sir, as you know.”

“Yes, I know. Everyone is. Now nominate two medics, four pioneers, one of them a corporal or sergeant, and two signalers.”

“‘I expected this, but not so soon,’” Baluyev quoted a graveyard joke. He began listing names but stopped after Cherimisov began violently shaking his head “no.”

“No, Lieutenant,” the Fourth (Grenadier) Company commander said, “two good medics, not two castoffs.”

Oh, well, it was worth a try. With a sigh and a grimace, Baluyev asked, “Corporal Kosyakin and Shulepov good enough for you?”

“They’ll do,” Cherimisov agreed. “Keep going.”

Baluyev began calling off names, about two thirds of which were accepted. Finally, he gave up the last couple.

Cherimisov nodded his acceptance at Kostyshakov, who said, “Number Two Company, your fair share would be twenty-eight riflemen and noncoms, soon to be submachine gunners, for the most part. Give them up.”

Captain Dratvin, commanding Second Company, said, “I asked for volunteers. There were seventy-two out of my current strength of two hundred and thirty. I am not nominating anyone who didn’t volunteer. Seventeen of those I am not going to nominate because—as God is my witness—I don’t think they’re quite good enough.”

“Right,” Kostyshakov agreed.

“Cherimisov, I’ve also scrambled these names. I’ll call a name, and you tell me if you want him. If you don’t want him, he’s out of consideration. If there are less than twenty-eight names you accept, you’ll have to go to the battalion commander to somehow convince him that the men you rejected in the first place were somehow good enough.”

“All right,” agreed Cherimisov, “with reservations.”

“Lebedev.”

“No.”

Dratvin crossed a name off the list with a pencil. “As you prefer. Vasenkov.”

Cherimisov spared a look at his first sergeant, old one-eyed Mayevsky. “Fucker never falls out. He never complains. Sure, he’ll do, sir.”

“All right on Vasenkov.”

“Ilyukhin,” Dratvin said.

Cherimisov spared a glance at Mayevsky, who said, “The boy’s a coal miner’s son. Brave men, they are, those who go down into the mines, never knowing when they might be buried alive. And the fucking acorn never falls far from the oak.”

“Ilyukhin’s fine.”

“He ought to be,” Dratvin said. “Zamyatin.”

Again, Cherimisov spared a glance at Mayevsky, who put out his hand, palm down, and wriggled it.

“No.”

“What?” demanded Dratvin. “There’s nothing wrong with Zamyatin!”

“Nonetheless, I don’t want him.”

It was at about that time that the arguments began.

Kostyshakov stepped out into the sun, exhausted, bleary-eyed, and desperate to never again endure another such meeting.

It was, indeed, morning before Cherimisov had his necessary eighty men, plus five more overstrength in case anyone got hurt or washed out. The officers shuffled back to their own companies to give the necessary orders, while the senior noncoms puzzled over how to move people around with the minimum disruption.

Those selected, when notified, felt a mix of satisfaction and fear. Cherimisov, after all, did have a reputation. And he never really smiled, almost inhuman, that way, he was.

Range Complex, Camp Budapest

Over on Range B, the machine gun range, Feldwebel Weber was putting the Grenadier Company, by platoons, through weapons familiarization on their new machine pistols. It was a waste of range, since the MP18s were close quarters weapons, while Range B was well over two thousand meters deep. On the other hand, they had to shoot the things somewhere; it might as well be some place where the sound of massed automatic weapons fire wouldn’t be thought unusual for anyone listening from afar.

Every man got to load—with much cursing, especially at the loading apparatus—and fire six drum magazines, 192 rounds, before moving on.

Note to self, thought Weber, This is going to take a thousand rounds per man, maybe two thousand, before they get good at it. Will the magazines take that much beating? I’d best ask Major Brinkmann about finding another six hundred or so.

From there, they rotated to the Range V, the grenade range, where each man threw two live grenades at close range and then fired their American-made M1911s. This was done under Lieutenant Federov’s and Sergeant Major Nenonen’s tutelage.

The pistols were actually more of a challenge than the MP18s had been. While the machine pistols were, broadly speaking, close to a rifle in terms of feel, weight, and handling, hence all the men had a fair idea of how to go about it, almost none of the enlisted men had more than seen a pistol. Thus, what was intended to be a quick refresher turned out to be a half day course.

Worst were the ones who were simply terrified of firing a pistol, and there were three of those. Nenonen or Federov had to stand next to these, gently coaching them through every step and every shot.

And I don’t think I will ever forget Dudnik, squeezing off the rounds with tears of abject terror coursing down his face. Though, on the plus side, terrified or not he didn’t quit.

And it’s not enough, mourned Nenonen. They need another two days, and then more every week until we set off.

It is beyond idiotic, Nenonen thought, watching First Platoon march off to the G ranges, to issue each man two incompatible weapons, a nine millimeter machine pistol and an eleven millimeter semi-automatic pistol. And I’d complain about it, I would, if I thought we had the slightest choice at this point. Still, I foresee problems.

On the other hand, to be fair, that big American pistol’s eleven millimeter, plus, bullet will put someone on his ass a lot more readily than a nine millimeter will, unless, as with the machine pistols, you hit him a couple of times. So maybe it makes some sense, if not logistic sense.

As Federov and Nenonen finished with one platoon of twenty-six men, including supernumeraries, they were sent over to the G Ranges and Captain Cherimisov, who would explain to them the drill he and Mayevsky had worked out for room clearance.

The G ranges—of which there were four of increasing size and complexity, plus non-firing, above ground buildings—were all for building clearing and noncombatant rescue. In the case of G1a1, what that meant was a one room shack with mostly open walls, one of four, above ground, in which squads could run through room clearing drills, in full light, without live ammunition, before descending into the underground room, G1, where they would practice with live ammunition.

Cherimisov waited until the entire platoon was seated, then began, “The first sergeant and I, with considerable input from the battalion commander, have spent a lot of time and expended a lot of thought on how to do this. By this point in time, everyone knows how to go into a building or bunker and clear it, leaving no one alive.”

The captain scowled. “That’s not our problem. It’s not a tenth of our problem. Oh, no; we have to go into a strange building, and kill some of the people inside, while not harming a hair on the head of any of the others. Moreover, the people we’re supposed to kill, once they realize what’s going on, are going to stop trying to kill us, and put their efforts into killing the people we’re trying to rescue. And if we fail to get the people we’re supposed to rescue out, alive and to safety, we will have failed. Miserably.”

Cherimisov gave the platoon a not quite smile. “It gets worse and harder. Because the enemy will try to move, or just go ahead and kill, the people we intend to rescue… hmmm… why don’t I stop being indirect with my terminology here? The enemy are the Bolsheviks, and I’ll call them that from now on. The people we’re trying to save? You already know this; the ‘people we’re supposed to rescue’ are the royal family, the Romanovs, tsar, tsarina, tsarevich, and the four grand duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. We have no particular idea at this point what any of the Bolsheviks look like, but you will all be studying pictures of the Romanovs diligently. Why? Why because if we have a choice between saving some maid or footman, on the one hand, or one of the Romanovs, on the other, the maid or footman lose.

“Remember, that value judgment is implicit in our oaths.”

“So, where was I? Oh, yes; the Bolsheviks, with any warning at all, will try to move the Romanovs, if they can, or kill them, if they feel they must.

“From there we can infer several principles we must follow. One is surprise, which comes in several forms. First is strategic or operational surprise; we cannot let them know we’re coming. The second is tactical surprise; when and where we hit”—Cherimisov slapped the back of the fingers of his right hand into the palm of his left—“it must be as a bolt from the blue. The third is technical surprise; the detailed manner in which we assault must be something so new to the Bolsheviks that they are shocked as nearly into passivity as possible.”

Cherimisov held up his left hand again, displaying his rather rare wristwatch. He tapped a finger against the crystal of the watch, saying as he did so, “Our second principle is speed. Every advantage we gain from surprise is fleeting. The longer we are in the area where the royal family is being held, the greater the chance we’ll be spotted. The longer it takes us to clear a room, the greater the chance one of the Bolsheviks will recover his presence of mind sufficiently to shoot the tsarevich.

“Oh, and by the way, the tsarevich is a bleeder. He will probably not survive even a flesh wound. If it ever comes down to you or him—or me—we must stand in front of him and take the bullet. We’ll have a chance, at least, of saving one of us.

“Our third principle is violence. We attack, attack, attack continuously, until the Romanovs are secure. We take no prisoners—no, not even if they try to surrender; every Bolshevik must be not only shot down without hesitation or compunction, but should be reshot once he’s down, to make sure.

“And, finally, we must be able to discriminate. I mentioned you will study the Romanovs. That’s not going to be all that helpful, for most circumstances. One thing we’ll have going for us is clothing. Probably most or all of the Romanovs, when we go in, will be in their nightclothes. These will probably be white or, at least, light in color. Probably the most dangerous Bolsheviks will be the ones on guard duty; they can be expected to be wearing some kind of uniform, no different from the ones you lot are wearing. Five of the seven Romanovs—the women—should have long hair. We won’t shoot people with long hair until we can examine them more closely.

“We’ll have a couple of things going for us, with regards to discrimination. One will be the flash grenades, that will blind anyone in any room where they’re used. Couple these to the dynamo lights you will be issued in a few moments. These you will wear on your chests, and activate just before entry. By their light, no great shakes but better than nothing, you will be able to see somewhat, while the Bolsheviks—oh, and the Romanovs, too—won’t be seeing much of anything. Secondly, we’re going to try to get the Romanovs to help us distinguish them.

“The entire family speaks English. So I want to you repeat after me, ‘Romanovs get down!’ Do it.”

After a chorus of barely intelligible attempts at that, Cherimisov decided, “We’re going to have to work on that one. A lot.

“All right now; everyone on your feet. Line up to draw dynamo lights, then the first sergeant and I will talk you through the room entry and clearing drill.”

Mayevsky lined up the first squad of the first platoon, six men, in three dyads, front to back. The rest of the platoon clustered round in a semi-circle.

“This,” he said, “is your standard formation for assaulting and clearing a room. Now listen carefully, shitheads; the way this is to be done is that the first pair have their machine pistols ready, the second pair are prepared to throw flash bombs, and the third pair stand by, but also have their machine pistols ready.

“Step one; kick the door open… Well, what the fuck are you waiting for; kick the door open!”

The front pair, consisting of the squad leader and one guardsman, looked at each other blankly.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Mayevsky. “This should be obvious even to you half-witted shitheels, the one who kicks is the one on the side of the door where the doorknob is. Now kick the door!”

The squad leader did kick it. The door opened violently.

“Step two, which should happen as soon as the door is open, is that the second pair pull the detonation cords on their grenades and throw them through the door. Man on the right throws gently, just hard enough to get it inside. Man on the left throws to hit a far wall. As soon as the grenades are thrown, they announce ‘Flash!’ and everybody closes their eyes and looks away, too.

“Okay, second pair, the door is open, do your part.”

That was satisfyingly quicker; the grenades went sailing immediately, even as every man closed his eyes and looked away.

“Idiots! You forgot to announce it. Try again.

“Fine. Now everyone waits until they see the dim outlines of two flashes getting just past their eyelids. This brings us to step three, use the thumbs of your firing hands to grab the ring from the dynamo lights on your chests and give them a sharp pull down. Do that, now.

“Will wonders never cease? You managed not to fuck that step up. Now you’ve got about five seconds of light to clear the room. If you’re both quick and accurate that’s all you need.”

Mayevsky then went to the door and stepped inside. “This step, the fourth one, is more fluid. First pair, come to me and go through the door.”

When they got to the door, a matter of half a step, the pair bounced off each other. “Problem one, two shitheads cannot normally get through one door at the same time. So who goes first? The door kicker! He shouts, as the captain said, ‘Romanovs get down!’ He then enters and takes to the wall on his side. He slides along this, with his back to the wall, shooting any man standing after the order for the Romanovs to duck. He continues sliding along the wall, shooting generally in the direction of the opposite wall.”

Mayevsky physically pushed the first man to do what he wanted.

“The other man in that pair goes in after the first man, slides along the other wall, the one perpendicular to the one the first man has his back against. He also shoots anyone standing.

“Now note here; we think that if a blinded Bolshevik is going to be able to orient at anything it’s going to be the door. Get out of the fucking door as quickly as possible, or you might well catch a random bullet.

“The next pair does the same thing, doorkicker side first—no, stop right there, numb nuts; your back is to the wall!—then the other man after. They look low for any threats—from the base of the opposite wall towards themselves—and take them out.

“Third pair follows the same pattern, doorkicker side goes in first. They look from the middle of the floor upward…”

Mayevsky took two of the open walled shacks, while Cherimisov took the other two, including the one with the platoon leader’s squad, which still had to be ready to jump in and take the place of any other. With the sun going down, it was obvious that, “No fucking way, sir; these men are not ready to advance to the live fire room below ground yet.”

Cherimisov reluctantly tended to agree. “Another day, do you think, or two?”

Mayevsky shook his head, doubtfully. “Could be three or fucking four, sir. They’ve got the basic idea down, but—if we’re reading the problem rightly—this requires clockwork precision and that the shitheads do not have. Also…”

“Yes?”

“Sir, I think we need an obstacle course, something to restore their coordination for the kinds of obstacles we’re likely to encounter.”

The captain nodded, thoughtfully. “The obstacle course is a good idea, Top; I agree. The rest? This is going to fuck up the schedule pretty badly. Here’s my thoughts; let’s make arrangements to send them back to Weber, Federov, and Nenonen, tomorrow, for a day’s more weapons work. We can pretend that was the plan all along. Then, later tomorrow we work on Second Platoon, here. First can practice tomorrow all the time they’re not actually on the ranges. Then Second goes to the weapons ranges again, and we run First through this. If they’ve got the precision down, we can take them down to the simple live fire room.”

“Yes, sir. Makes sense to me. I’ll make the arrangements.”

Range G1, Camp Budapest

There was an old Russian technique, going back at least as far as Victor Suvarov, in the late eighteenth century, of having the troops chant their principles of operation, which is to say, their doctrine. Thus First Platoon double timed to the range chanting, “Surprise… speed… violence… discrimination… surprise… speed… violence… discrimination… surprise…”

Mayevsky met the platoon by the entrance to Range G1—a pair of uprights and a crosspiece with the name emblazoned—and then, in a flurry of pointing arms said, “First squad… second… third… headquarters! Medic; your ass stays with me. The rest; form up at the doors to your buildings and stand by to assault on my order or the captain’s.”

The first squad to actually convince Cherimisov and Mayevsky that they were up to executing the simplest room clearing problem with live ammunition was second squad, under Sergeant Yumachev. They moved from the open walled shed down to the ramp leading to the underground room. This was an open excavation—whatever else might be said of the Russian soldier, he could dig—about twelve by fifteen feet, covered with logs and the logs then covered with dirt. The sides had also been revetted with split logs, or it would likely have collapsed before they were done with it. The door was hung on nailed canvas hinges, which allowed it to be turned around and upside down to change the position of the knob. For this run, however, the knob was on the left hand side, just as they were for the open shacks, above.

There was canvas laid over the top of the ramp leading down, to give the mens’ eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness they could expect in the room and when they executed the actual mission, presumed to be at night.

Inside, three dark painted wooden targets waited, erect, along with two narrower white painted ones on the dirt floor. None of these were anything much, solid but thin wood held up by very thin sticks. A bullet strike should put them down.

One final word Cherimisov said, before giving the order to go, “You’ve heard this before but it can’t hurt any if I repeat it; if I or anyone calls ‘cease fire,’ you are to immediately take your fingers off the triggers, pull and lock the bolt of your machine pistols to the rear, remove the magazine, then clear the chamber. Are we clear on this?”

“Yessir, yes, sir, yessirir, yes,” came the answer.

He looked over the group. Sergeant Yumachev looked ready to kick the door. To his right, tensed like a wound spring and quivering with anticipation like a racehorse in the gate, stood Sobchak. Behind those two, Guardsmen Yurin and Ilyukhin gripped flash grenades and the pull cords. The grenades were the real article, this time. Both had their machine pistols hanging from cords over their left shoulders. In the rear, Sotnikov on the left and Corporal Poda on the right held their MP18s muzzle-up by one hand, the thumbs of the others in the pull rings of their dynamo lights.

We need, thought the captain, to tie cords from the weapons to the dynamo lights so they can pull them without ever giving up control. Discuss with Top, this evening.

“Stand by,” said Cherimisov, “make ready… two… three…. GO!”

Yumachev’s foot lashed out, practically ripping the door from its hinges. As soon as it was out of the way, Yurin and Ilyukhin pulled the porcelain beads attached to the cords, and threw. Both threw to the far wall, which was not to plan.

“Flash! Flash!”

Every man closed his eyes and looked away. There was, however, only a single boom.

“Cease fire!” Cherimisov ordered. Fuck! Defective grenade. It would have to be early on, wouldn’t it? Couldn’t be the last try of the day; oh, no, that would never do. Now we have to wait half an hour. Double fuck.

The defective grenade not being their fault, Yumachev’s men didn’t lose their place in the order of march. Instead, with the defective grenade dragged outside with a grappling iron on a rope, and new grenades issued, the six of them once again stood in three ranks of two, ready to clear the room.

Once again the captain said, “Stand by… make ready… two… three…. GO!”

The door flew open under the shock of Yumachev’s boot. The first and second man in the stack each pulled the porcelain bead on their grenades, then flung them through the door.

“Flash! Flash!”

And there were two great flashes, following two smaller booms.

Yumachev opened his eyes and looked up. His right thumb pulled the lanyard of the dynamo light, then went back to gripping his machine pistol. The others followed suit. He stepped through the door and immediately opened fire on one of the dark targets. It went down.

As Yumachev stepped left while turning half right, keeping his back to the wall and scanning for more targets, Sobchak jumped through the door, firing. He, mirroring Yumachev, stepped right, put his back almost on the right wall, and fired again.

Unfortunately, Sobchak neglected to distinguish between a light painted target and a dark one. The target labeled “Grand Duchess Maria” fell over.

Next in was Yurin. He hadn’t gotten very far before Cherimisov shouted, “Cease fire! You all forgot to shout, ‘Romanovs get down!’ Now clear your weapons if you already haven’t, get out, and go practice that until you get it right. And tell the first sergeant to send down another squad.”

Camp Budapest

“Did any members of the royal family survive?” asked Kostyshakov, that night in the officers’ mess.

“Not a one, sir,” Cherimisov answered, with misery in his voice.

“Is the problem with the drill we’ve worked out?”

The captain shook his head, slowly, answering, “I don’t think so, sir. I think it’s a case of needing more practice in making quick distinctions.”

“You have any ideas?”

“Yes, sir, but it’s going to require a lot of ammunition. We need another underground range, this one in the form of an obstacle course of a sort, but different from the above ground one we put in, with dozens of targets, some light, some dark. Maybe some we get painted with civilian features, girls’ features. They have to be targets that appear very fleetingly, from odd places. It has to be confusing. And it has to make the men think quickly. And before we waste any more ammunition on something they’re just not up to yet, we need to get them to perfection on distinguishing these things in an instant. And I don’t want to use Range G4, the multistory complex one, because that’s supposed to be a graduation exercise. Besides, the light sucks more than we’d want for this.”

Kostyshakov thought about that for a few moments, chewing over the idea in silence. “No,” he said, finally.

“‘No?’”

“No, there’s enough time to build what you want. There’s not enough time to build it and run everybody through. So we’ll do something different.

“I’m going to task both Second and Third Companies to build one maze each. Well… not really a maze; just think of a wide, deep, snaking trench. No cut and cover, we’ll just dig down. The spoil we’ll pile on either side as bullet stops.

“We’ll put some platforms across so that the men running it can get from section to section. Then we’ll have all kinds of wooden targets—some we’ll paint as girls and boys—that can be moved, controlled, or released to gravity. We can move those around, too, so it remains unpredictable. Also, we can get or throw together some furniture and such to make it kind of an obstacle course.

“Let’s suppose we make them four arshin by four, and about sixty arshin of trench. That’s about eight cubic arshin per man in each of the two rifle companies. One day’s digging; call it. Then another day to set up platforms and a target system.

“Then we can run every man in each of your assault platoons through three, maybe four, times a day, for three or four days, if we must.”

Cherimisov thought about that. “I think that will work, as far as it goes. But I really wanted to be able to do it under limited light.”

Kostyshakov tilted his head to one side, looking at Cherimisov as if the latter had suddenly grown an extra nose on his forehead. “Have you never, young captain, heard of these things called ‘sunset’ and ‘night time’?”

Head straightening, Kostyshakov looked more closely. “When was the last time you slept, Cherimisov?”

No answer being forthcoming, he said, “That’s about what I thought. Go to bed. I’ll put the other companies to work on ranges G5 and G6.”

“Yessir.”

With a sketchy salute, Cherimisov stood, turned, and began to make his way from the mess to his own tent. On the way he heard several familiar voices—notably Mayevsky’s and the two assault platoon sergeants—discussing the day’s events. It was possible there was a slight trace of alcohol in the voices, but it could have been fatigue.

The troops will always bullshit, Cherimisov thought. Wish we could put it to some good use. I’ll just keep to myself and listen for a bit…

Interlude

Tatiana: The Sewing Circle

It broke my heart, seeing Olga withdraw into herself. She had always been the most serious of us girls. How could she not be? For nine years, Mama and Papa thought she would be the future tsarina. Papa even had a decree drawn up stating that Olga would succeed him to the throne. He made her co-regent, along with Mama, should he die before Alexei reached the age of twenty-one.

Yet when Alexei had been born she’d been filled with joy. Some might say that as a child of nine she couldn’t possibly understand, but they would be wrong. I remember the look on her face—the pride—when Papa made her Alexei’s godmother.

She could have resented Alexei, but didn’t, not even when he wouldn’t listen to her, when he’d misbehave so badly that Mama would blame Olga.

As she stared out of our bedroom’s window she seemed a very different person. It went beyond the melancholy woman she had grown into.

Once, she had spoken to me of the future of which she dreamed.

“I want to get married,” she’d said. “To live always in the countryside, always with good people, and with no officialdom whatsoever.”

I shared that dream. How it had soured.

Just the other day Olga had sat in the parlor with Mama, going through Mitya’s letters. Her eyes filled with tears which she wiped away with trembling hands. I believed that she was getting better, or at least, forgetting. She still kept mostly to our room and avoided conversation. Fortunately, Anastasia was happy to fill the silence with her own chatter.

Mama seemed to be too much in her own pain—and Alexei’s—to notice Olga’s and for this I was grateful. There were times when I thought that Madame Hendrikova suspected, but if she did, she chose not to speak of it.

I could hear the chopping of wood and the barking of dogs down below in the courtyard as I shut the door behind me. Olga didn’t seem to notice me coming in.

I knelt and reached under my bed.

“Here,” I said, pulling out a small box. “Can you help me with these?”

She turned around, blinking as if she’d just realized that I was there.

I opened the box and pulled out the letters sitting within to reveal a false bottom. A good tap popped it free.

Olga looked inside and her eyes went wide. Several of Mama’s brooches and earrings lay within, so tangled with each other they looked like cheap trinkets one might have thrown carelessly aside.

“Are you sure we should have these out?” she asked, glancing at the door.

“Mama wants us to sew them into our clothes. And a lot more besides these.”

Chapter Fifteen

Taganrog, Russia

The boat, while small, presented an image of order and cleanliness. It was gasoline powered, with a short stack, and lay about forty feet long by perhaps ten in beam at the waterline. A small, gray-bearded skipper stood just outside the tiny wheelhouse, arms folded and bearing a resentful and skeptical look.

“He told you I was a thief, didn’t he?” queried the old man.

“What?” asked Turgenev, standing on the dock while the others unloaded the wagon. “Who?”

“My cousin, Igor,” said the old skipper, pointing. “He told you I was a thief, right?”

“I don’t know if he used quite those words,” Turgenev answered. A quick glance at Mokrenko’s nodding head affirmed that the stable master had, indeed.

“Well, I am not a thief. But times are hard, fuel is dear and hard to come by, both, and there are risks. That’s why I charge what I do.”

“Yes, you are a thief,” said Igor, from the wagon, helping to hand bags down to waiting hands. His resolution not to get involved between the parties was apparently none too strong. “You charge too much.”

“Do I, you horse-stinking bastard? Let’s see you scrounge, beg, borrow, and steal enough gasoline to keep this boat moving, a boat, I remind you, that is about all that’s keeping trade going between us and Rostov.”

“Bah!” answered Igor. “You exaggerate, as always.”

Mokrenko shrugged eloquently, I have no idea what he’s talking about; taking his boat to Rostov is the cheapest and most reliable way to get there. Probably also the fastest.

“Relax, Comrade….”

“Also Sabanayev, just like my asshole cousin, but Ivan in my case. But save that ‘comrade’ nonsense for when there are Reds around. I loathe the Reds.”

For emphasis, Ivan Sabanayev spat over the side of his gently rocking boat. “Fucking godless communists bastards! Why, oh, why, did the Little Father abandon his people?”

“I suspect a few thousand red bayonets pointed at the throats of his children had something to do with it,” Lieutenant Babin commented.

Ivan’s sad nod agreed. “It’s still a terrible shame. Nor will any good come from this Bolshevik revolution. Well… never mind. Come; load your baggage and come aboard. You have my money, yes?”

“Yes,” Turgenev, said. “Eighty rubles in gold, yes?”

“Yes, unless you want me to send my boy to go buy—well, try to buy—some fresh food in the market. But I can’t use gold there; it’s too tempting, too rare. Do you have silver or, maybe better, paper. I’ll have to pay four times what it’s worth in paper, mind you, but at least it doesn’t attract attention.”

“Can you get us a few days’ worth of food?” Mokrenko asked. “or maybe a week’s worth.”

Ivan thought about that. “Maybe,” he answered. “The boy can try.”

Turgenev tossed his own bag in, then jumped aboard and bent to dig out eight gold coins from his store. He then pulled about forty more rubles in low denomination paper from the same bag. These he handed over. On second thought, he added another two notes and requested, “See if the boy can get a chetvert”—a bit over a quart and a half, British—“of a decent vodka. I think everyone could use a drink at this point.”

Got to love a thoughtful officer, mused Mokrenko.

“There are some newspapers, fairly recent, you can read while we wait,” said Ivan.

Mouth of the Don

“I don’t suppose you people are armed,” queried Ivan.

“We might be,” answered Turgenev. “Why?”

“Well… there are river pirates,” said the old man. “Ordinarily, they’re a lot like the Bolsheviks, just thieves, in other words. They stop my boat, take a small percentage as ‘a toll,’ as they phrase it. But ordinarily I don’t carry passengers. Passengers mean money. And you have a girl and they’re practically a medium of exchange, too.”

“Sergeant Mokrenko!”

“Sir. All right you shitheads, break out the rifles and load up.”

“Make a great show of the rifles,” Ivan said. “Odds are good that will be enough to scare them off.”

Mokrenko began posting the men of the strategic recon team around the boat, in such as businesslike way as to make it clear that trying to stop the boat would be a most bloody exercise. It must have worked, because at the points where Ivan tensed up, as if expecting trouble, no trouble materialized.

“You know,” said Ivan, after passing the second place where he’d been expecting the river pirates to sortie out to take their “toll,” “for another fifty gold rubles I’ll take you almost all the way to Tsaritsyn.”

“Define ‘almost’ and tell me how long it would take,” said Lieutenant Turgenev.

“About forty versta away,” Ivan replied, “and maybe three or four days. Nearest point is the town of Kalach, almost exactly west of Tsaritsyn.”

“Probably more secure than taking the train, sir,” Mokrenko said.

Turgenev nodded, but then said, “We don’t have the time to spare anymore, though. We’re five days behind where we should be, with no guarantees that we won’t fall further behind. No, thanks old man, but no. We need to hop a train.”

“It’s none of my business,” said Ivan, “but, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s your hurry?”

“We do mind, though,” said Mokrenko.

Rostov-on-Don, Russia

The town was still occupied by German and Austrian soldiery, courtesy of Trotsky’s silly notions about “neither war nor peace.” The two armies, under the direction of Max Hoffmann, had demonstrated that the Bolsheviks didn’t have the initiative Trotsky presumably thought. Still, they’d be going home, eventually.

The party had split up into four pairs and a trio, intending to stay away from each other until such time as they were past the chance of inviting close interest from the German and Austrian soldiery that seemed to be everywhere in the town, and nowhere so much as at the riverfront and the train station. The problem was security, not so much physical but in terms of safeguarding information about their mission.

People just talk too damned much, thought Turgenev. Best to stay away from any of them.

He did, of course, have a passport letter from Hoffmann, himself, but that was for ultimate extremities, which this was not. And using it was bound to cause some ripples, unfortunate ones, somewhere down the line.

There are two decent ways to do this, thought Turgenev. One is blending in with the other passengers and the other is not being seen at all. He thought the other was the better of the two.

Thus, currently, Mokrenko and Shukhov, the engineer, were off at the marshalling yard, trying to bribe the group passage aboard one of the freight cars.

And the downside of that, thought Turgenev, is that freight cars are generally unheated. Oh, well, we brought plenty of blankets…

The Russian running the rail yard was accompanied by two Russian-speaking soldiers, one Austrian, one German. The Austrian was senior, which Mokrenko took for a good sign, since they were almost always easier to deal with the than far more anal-retentive Huns were.

“What I don’t understand,” said the Austrian, a Major Leitner, beefy and florid-faced, but friendly enough, “is why don’t you just book a normal set of passenger seats and enjoy the ride. Do you know how cold those freight cars can be?”

“Once we get past your lines, Major,” Mokrenko said, “we’re getting into the beginnings of a civil war. Both sides may well be conscripting whoever they can get their hands on. Frankly, we’ve already all been conscripted for one war more than we cared to be in, in the first place. We just want to hide until we get close to home, and then disappear to our villages and towns.”

Leitner looked at the Russian.

“I don’t mind giving some discharged soldiers a hand getting home,” the Russian said. “And they’re right about the civil war that’s coming, even though nobody’s interfering with the movement of trains. But I’m going to have to bribe the passenger section to forget about their lost revenue.”

“We got a decent discharge pay,” Mokrenko lied. He was normally quite honest, but mission took priority when it was a mission of this importance. “We’ll gladly pay the difference.”

“All right,” said the Russian. “How many did you say there were?”

“Eleven,” Mokrenko replied, “but one’s not a soldier, just a girl who lost her parents and who’s got relatives in Tsaritsyn. She’s had a pretty hard time of it, the last few months, and just sort of attached herself to us as a better—above all, safer—bet than any other she’d seen.”

The Russian yard master pointed, asking, “See that car over there? Fourth one from the rear of that group?”

“The group with the locomotive backing up to it?” asked Mokrenko.

“That one, yes. Get your friends and meet me there. I’ll smooth things over.

“By the way,” said the yard master, “when you get to Tsaritsyn? Last we’ve heard here, the Reds own that. If you don’t want to be drafted again, I’d stay under cover until nightfall.”

The steady clack-clack-clacking of the train over steel tracks whispered of progress, and, for a change, at some speed.

Turgenev and the others were somewhat surprised that there wasn’t so much as a single stop and search between Rostov-on-Don and Tsaritsyn. The rail line, after all, was crossing what should have been the front line between hostile armies.

Lieutenant Babin, who had decided to join the group and commit himself to its mission, had the answer to that, when Turgenev brought it up. “Our army has collapsed completely. There are no security checks because there is no front line. Indeed, the most powerful non-Bolshevik Russian military organization within thirty or forty versta is probably us. It may be different once we get to Tsaritsyn.

“Until we do, though, and if we don’t want to freeze to death, I strongly suggest we bundle up.”

Railroad station, Tsaritsyn, Russia

“I have never,” whispered Sarnof, the signaler, “not ever in my life, been so fucking cold.”

Natalya Sorokina nodded vigorous agreement. At least it allowed her to quietly move a couple of muscles to generate a tiny bit of extra body heat.

“Okay,” Lieutenant Turgenev said, “I’m going to go out and do a little bit of reconnaissance… Sergeant Mokrenko—”

“No, sir.”

“What?”

“Sir, you’re the worst possible candidate to send out alone—and it will be worse in company—to recon a Red-held area. Every move you make proclaims your aristocratic background. You couldn’t act like a peasant if your life depended on it, which, in this case, it does. Ours do, too. Moreover, if you take someone with you, the habits of a lifetime will show. He’ll defer and you’ll act like you expect that deference.

“So, in short, if you have two brain cells to rub together, you’ll stay right here. I’ll go.”

“Am I that obvious, really?” Turgenev asked, before admitting, “Oh, I suppose I am. Fine, Sergeant, you go and take two men with you. Let me dig you out some money; maybe you can get us some more clothes if it looks like they’ll be useful. Hmmm… you might have to stay out overnight, so a bit for an inn, too.”

“What if I can openly buy tickets?” Mokrenko asked.

“Good point, let me dig you out some gold rubles and more paper…”

The station was an early version of, perhaps even a predecessor of, Belle Epoch architecture, with onion domes compressed into octagons bedecking the roof and replete with pilasters on all sides.

The first thing Mokrenko discovered, on passing into the station, was, We’ll blend in better in our uniforms, provided we make them look scruffy, than we would in any civilian clothes. And we can be armed, as well, without inciting any curiosity. Now the question is, should we put on those red armbands some of the men are sporting or not?

Leaving his two escorts, Shukhov and Timashuk, the medic, he walked up to one uniformed sort, a rather young and fierce looking man, and introduced himself, receiving, in reply, “Pavel Nadimovich Khlynin, at your service. You look to be a soldier, but from a worker’s or peasant’s background, yes?”

“Even so,” Mokrenko agreed. “I’m just back from the front, such as it is, Pavel Nadimovich. I need to get back home to Yekaterinburg. I’ve got a few friends with me, too, from the same area. Once I’ve made sure my mother and father are alive and well, I hope to be joining the Red Guards.”

A measure of the fierceness disappeared to be replaced by a warm smile. “A noble ambition that is, Rostislav Alexandrovich, and Yekaterinburg would be a good place to do it, since it is, by all accounts, firmly in the hand of the revolution.”

“That is excellent news,” Mokrenko replied, “most excellent.” He made a show of looking around, then more closely at Khlynin’s armband, and asked, “The armbands; are they just a show of support or a sign of enlistment in the revolution?”

“Good question, Comrade. Frankly, it’s not entirely clear to me which is the case. I see my comrades in the Red Guards sporting them. I see filthy capitalist and aristocratic robbers sporting them. I see people I am pretty sure just want to be left alone sporting them. I see people who support the revolution sporting them. And I see people who do not support the revolution sporting them. At this point, all they really mean is, ‘I am not an active enemy of the revolution, so don’t shoot me.’”

“I see,” said Mokrenko. “Well… is there a good place to buy some?”

Khlynin pointed in the direction across the street from the station, then let his fingers paint a simple map in the air. “Over there, take a left and around the corner; you can’t miss it.”

“Thank you, Pavel Nadimovich. For all your help,”—and in the supposition that I can pump you for more information—“can I buy you a drink or two?”

“Thanks for the offer, Rostislav Alexandrovich, but I am on duty… for… about another half hour.”

“I thank you, my friend. We’ll be back in half an hour, then. Now to go buy some markers of our show of support for the revolution, until we are placed to actively support it. Comrades, with me.”

With which words Mokrenko led the way out of the station and across the street to purchase one short of a dozen red armbands.

The tavern wasn’t much. The vodka wasn’t anything special, either. A drink turned into two, two into three, and three into a somewhat sodden Red Guard named Khlynin explaining everything he understood about the situation to date.

“In the first place, Rosti”—with a sufficiency of drink went a good deal of formality—“while everyone is picking sides and recruiting furiously, the trains all run as if there were no conflict at all. It’s almost completely inexplicable to an outsider but I think they’ll continue to do so. Food and coal, after all, must still get to the cities, coal to the small villages, and food to the coalfields. It’s in everyone’s interest to let them keep flowing.

“The most I can safely predict is that recruits for the revolution will not be allowed to move by train from White areas and vice versa, while each side will have to make do with whatever arms and equipment they can make or import into their own areas.”

“A strange thought,” said Mokrenko. “It’s as if we had kept up trade with the Germans even while fighting them.”

“It could be so,” Khlynin agreed. “I don’t know. I worked the railways, myself—still do, after a fashion—so I was exempt from conscription. I confess, the guilt of this…”

“Don’t feel guilty,” Mokrenko said. “You didn’t miss a thing. It was years of unending misery, failure, incompetence at the highest levels, bad food, clothing that, when it wore out, was always replaced by something cheaper and worse, and in the end, for nothing at all.

“I will say one thing, though; if you haven’t married yet you should have. So many men killed that even the best-looking women will be there for the choosing.”

Khlynin smiled a little drunkenly. “Now that much I can admit to. But with so many lovely blue- and dark-eyed girls, how can one choose between them.”

“For me,” interjected Timashuk, “there’s one girl. I haven’t had a letter in a while, but the last letter I got she said she’d wait until the gates of hell, itself, froze, if that’s how long it took.”

“If true,” said Khlynin, “she is a pearl of great worth. You must get home to her. Where is she from?”

“Tver,” said Timashuk, “or, rather, a small village not too far from there…”

Instantly, Mokrenko’s foot lashed out under the rough hewn table.

“But she moved to Yekaterinburg with her family, about four years ago,” Timashuk hastily corrected. “So that’s where I’m going.”

“Ah, Tver,” mused Khlynin. “I have heard the women are of surpassing beauty there.”

“It is so,” said Timashuk. “And so many that even a small and none too well-favored boy like me can find a prize among them.”

Mokrenko refilled Khlynin’s glass from a bottle provided by the bartender. “So who, if we need help with the rails, should we talk to in Samara?”

Train to Samara, Russia

The sun was still up, lighting the broad fields of wheat and rye to the west and, past the train’s own shadows, the mighty Volga to the east.

“And it was that easy?” said Turgenev, in wonder, for about the fifteenth time. The paper he’d been scanning for news of the tsar and his family he laid aside for a bit. “You just walk up, get the info, get the armbands, get the train tickets, and nobody says a cross word or suspects a thing?

“You were right, Sergeant Mokrenko; I’d have aroused suspicion, more likely than not, whether by my preparatory school accent or more subtle parts of my manner. Which makes me wonder…”

“Sir?” asked Mokrenko.

“It makes me wonder if I should even be here, if I’m that much of a liability.”

“You’ll earn your keep, sir, once we get where we’re going and have to start figuring things out. Note, too, that I was only able to get us passage as far as Samara. We’re going to have to change trains at Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg to get to Tyumen.

“Speaking, though, sir, of your inability to hide your roots, you need to get back to first class and pump the other passengers for information as well as make sure that none of them try to take advantage of your ‘sister,’ Natalya.”

Train to Tyumen

As it turned out, Khlynin had spoken and predicted truly. There were no official impediments to travel from anybody. There was a day’s wait at Samara, and another two days at Chelyabinsk, but these had to do with scheduling, not inference from Reds or Whites. Moreover, they were days both well fed and comfortable, in good but not lavish hostels and inns.

They’d also spent a little time in Yekaterinburg, just long enough to determine that the prisoners being kept in one guarded house were not the royal family, but a number of lesser members of the nobility, including the tsarina’s sister, the nun, Elizabeth Feodorovna, also known as Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine. They’d also figured out, quite quickly, that Yekaterinburg was solidly red. Finally, a purview of the various mines, banks, and other repositories suggested that a good deal of mineral wealth was sitting there for whoever managed to grab it first.

The word on the street was that the royals were in Tobolsk.

Food was, it was true, a little dear, but then, as Lieutenant Turgenev observed, “We’ve been living mainly off Vraciu’s gold and silver since we landed near Taganrog. Well, that and some paper currency. We’ve hardly touched our own gold or silver.”

The problem, when it arose, wasn’t from any official source or power but from the lack of any official source. In short, bandits did not exist only at sea and along river banks.

Passengers boarded and got off at each of the first ten stops on the line. Some looked well fed and content, others a little lean and hungry. There were men, women, children, and the odd pet among them. None looked exceptionally suspicious, and none seemed to be in groups large enough to pose a threat. Some were armed but, with discharged and deserting soldiers taking their arms with them, as often as not, this was seen as routine.

What was not routine was something that could not be seen: in this case the common purpose of some seventeen of the embarking passengers, split up among the first ten stops, and in no case numbering more than three men at any stop. They boarded, took their seats sometimes near each other and other times not, and proceeded to read, or gamble, or simply look out the windows and at the other passengers.

Mokrenko looked over the two who’d boarded together at one of the stations along the route, then taken widely separate seats in the car. They had the collars of their coats turned up, quite understandably, against the fierce and biting cold. He dismissed them as harmless and unimportant.

The train consisted of a single locomotive, a coal tender, one first class sleeper car, a first class dining and parlor car, a second class dining car, which held the kitchen for both, six second class cars, eleven freight cars, a caboose, and a second locomotive. The caboose looked less like a North American caboose and more like the boxcar from which it had been converted. Turgenev, Babin, and Natalya had gone to first class, while Mokrenko and the other seven men of Strategic Recon took up a good deal of the forwardmost of the second-class cars.

The central portion of their light wood-paneled car boasted a pair of wood-fired heaters, steel apparently, sitting on legs themselves atop tiled sections of the floor, with more tiles behind them, and with smokestacks running up through the roof of the car. They put out a rather pleasant smell but also tended to put people to sleep.

There was electric light in first class, but second had only kerosene-fired lanterns.

The car, which was right behind the dining car, had a dozen single seats, in six pairs, facing each other, on one side. On the other were a like number of benches, likewise in six facing pairs. The seats and benches were hard but, between the hour of the night, the heat, the steady clack-clack-clacking of the train on the tracks, and the fact that the eight men in them were used to discomfort, everyone but Mokrenko and Novarikasha were dead asleep, some with their heads resting on the half-tables jutting from the walls.

For that matter, both Mokrenko and Novarikasha, who had watch, found themselves nodding off and pulling themselves awake only by sheer acts of will.

The sergeant grabbed the junior man’s tunic and shook him awake by it. “Stay alert for a bit. Give me your cup; I’m going to go try to get us some hot tea from the dining car.”

Passage between cars promised to be bitterly, even finger threateningly, cold, so Mokrenko was careful to put on both his overcoat and his gloves. He left his sword behind, along with his rifle. His pistol was tucked into his belt, in front of his stomach, but under his tunic. However, Mokrenko being a good Cossack, his kindjal remained with him, hanging from his belt, and was plainly visible if his coat was open. Buttoning the coat hid it so that, when he entered the dining car, he appeared unarmed.

Moreover, as long as his coat was buttoned, he was unarmed; he couldn’t get to his dagger or pistol in a hurry if his life depended on it. As it turned out, what with a pistol pressed against his nose as soon as he entered the dining car, his life did depend on it.

Of course, he noticed the pistol first. The face that was covered below the eyes by a scarf and framed above by a large kubanka, he didn’t notice until a moment later.

“I just wanted to get some tea,” he said, helplessly. “I didn’t want to start a fight over it.”

“Get in and sit down,” snarled a voice full of desperate purpose.

“Can I get some tea on my way?”

“Just hurry.” Moving farther on, presumably covered by the gun, the Cossack saw two more seated passengers, by their dress from first class, cowering pressed against the side of the car while another robber, pistol held loosely in one hand, went through the contents of their bag and wallet with the other. These had been dumped out for inspection on a table.

It was then that Mokrenko realized that both were wearing standard Imperial Army overcoats, no different from his own, and both were open. Probably so they could get at their pistols. They’re likely soldiers, too, thrown on their own wits and having no more wit than needed to rob unarmed people.

The dining car attendant, standing behind a counter with his hands high overhead, said, “Be careful, sir; the tea is scalding hot.”

“Yes,” agreed Mokrenko, trying to keep his voice calm. He’s trying to tell me….ohhh… scalding hot, is it? Damn, though; one would be hard; two is four times harder. So how do I…?

The one robbing those two people has his concentration on them. I only have to deal with just one, at least initially. Can’t make a lot of noise. No pistol. My kindjal, then. Can I get to it in time? That’s a definite maybe. Is it worth the risk? Come on, be serious; they’re robbers; they’ll get the money we need to complete the mission. There’s no choice but to fight.

As calmly as possible, Mokrenko filled first his own army-issue cup, and then Novarikasha’s.

He started to go back to his own car, when the first robber he’d encountered motioned him to take a seat in this one. Mokrenko shrugged, as if indifferent, then began to turn away. He’d made a quarter turn, then lashed back around, launching two mugs of scalding hot tea at the face of the robber.

That one’s face was protected by his scarf, true, but his eyes were not. Those took the full measure of scalding tea, causing the robber to shriek, drop his pistol, and begin to claw at his eyes.

In that brief moment of respite, Mokrenko ripped his coat open, sending no less than three buttons flying across the car, one pinging off a window on the other side. In a half a second the dagger was out, just as the other thief began to turn.

Mokrenko knew he was too slow; the pistol was lining up on him before he’d been able to get a good throwing grip.

One of the passengers, a fat man with dark gray hair and beard, propelled himself at the gunman, tackling him around the midsection and driving him to his knees. The bandit’s pistol fired into the ceiling, punching a minute hole in the train car.

As the bandit clubbed the struggling old man with his pistol, Mokrenko lunged for him. Grabbing a hank of his greasy hair, Mokrenko yanked the bandit’s head back and plunged his razor-sharp kindjal into the man’s neck just below his ear, then he dragged it out and downward, severing the windpipe and the neck’s sinews and blood vessels in a visceral spray that left the bandit nearly decapitated.

Mokrenko then launched himself at the other one, still occupied with his own agony and in scratching his own eyes out. Two quick jabs and the robber’s heart, slashed through, gave out. Blood poured from chest and mouth. But didn’t yet stain the overcoat.

Only then did the Cossack turn his attention to his savior, the old man who’d launched himself at the second robber.

A woman, presumably his wife, was already on the floor, weeping and cradling her man’s head on her lap. He bled from some scalp wounds, but not so freely as to appear life-threatening.

“Will you be all right, sir?”

“Yes… yes, I think. Little dizzy now… not too bad.”

“Sir, how many people entered the first-class compartment that didn’t really look like they belonged there?”

“Not sure…”

“There were three,” said the woman, through her tears. “Only three. I think… maybe… one was the leader.”

“Did any of them go into the sleeper car?”

“Don’t think so, no.”

“Did they say anything besides some version of ‘your money or your lives’?”

“That they’d be getting off at the next stop,” she answered. “But why would they get off there? I’ve ridden this route several times, there’s nothing there to speak of.”

Mokrenko answered, “Horses; they’ll have their horses there.”

Now the question is, do I try to take the parlor car, with its three, or go back to my own car which has only two, I think, and where I can get reinforcements? Right, back it is.

Running his eyes over the two bodies, he decided that the first robber, the second he’d killed, was a closer match to him in size. He took from the corpse the kubanka and the scarf. Then he took that robber’s pistol as well as the other one’s.

“Sir,” he asked of the old man, “Do you think you can still shoot?”

“Poor excuse for an old soldier if I can’t.”

“Old soldier…?”

“Colonel, retired, artillery.”

“I should have known. Sir, there are two pistols. Can I leave you here, with the dining car attendant, to guard my back and keep the other robbers from passing through this car?”

“Yes,” said the old man, without doubt or hesitation.

Mokrenko cast a glance at the dining car attendant.

“I’ll help, yes.”

“Very good. Consider yourself under the command of…”

“Colonel Plestov,” the old man supplied.

“Thank you, sir. You will be under the command of Colonel Plestov.”

With that, the Cossack put the mask over his face, pulled the kubanka down on his head, drew his Amerikanski pistol, placing it in his pocket, which barely served to cover it, and started back the way he’d come.

Freeing his own car and the bulk of his men had proven almost laughably easy. The two robbers there had barely spared him a glance and a grunt before turning back to robbing the passengers. Rostislav’s pistol spoke four times, twice for each robber, and then the section had their hands down, their knives out and were carving throats.

Timashuk, the medic, was the odd one there. He sat atop one of the thieves, his dagger lunging again and again into the dead man’s chest. “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!” the medic repeated, mindlessly.

“Stop it!” commanded Mokrenko, changing the magazine of his pistol. “We have too much to do to leave messes behind. I need three men; Koslov, you cannot be one of them. So… Novarikasha… Lavin… Shukhov, get your pistols… forget the rifles and swords.

“Koslov? Goat, you take the rest and, when I start clearing forward you start clearing back. If you can’t hear it, and you probably can’t, start in ten minutes. A prisoner, if you can get one. I’d prefer two but no more than two. Kill the rest.”

“Yes, Sergeant. Timashuk, Visaitov, Sarnof, with me. Same order of battle for arms except take your swords.”

“Use whatever you can scrounge from the dead,” Mokrenko advised, “to disguise yourselves to get close to them.”

“Listen up,” Mokrenko told his half of the recon section, in the dining car, just on the friendly side of the door to first class. “I’m going to pull the same trick I did in our car; just walk in like I belong there and open fire without warning. I want you three to climb to the roof of the first class car, then crawl across it—got it, crawl; no footsteps on the roof—and one of you, Novarikasha, I think, to get down between it and the sleeper car. The other two continue to the locomotive. The colonel’s wife didn’t notice any there, but I think there must be one or two.

“Novarikasha, your signal to burst in will be either”—here, the sergeant consulted his watch—“seven minutes from my mark, or when you hear shooting or screaming. When you come in, for God’s sake remember that I am going to be dressed just like the robbers. But I’ll be the one with the Amerikanski pistol. And don’t hit either of the officers or the girl.”

“Now who’s got a watch? What? Oh, shit.”

Help came from and unexpected source. The old colonel offered, “Here, give them mine, Sergeant.”

“No, sir; keep yours. Here… Lavin… take mine. Sir, if you would tell me when seven minutes have passed?”

“Fifteen seconds, Sergeant,” said the old colonel. “Ten… nine…”

Mokrenko was already out the door. He crossed the curved open platform, above the coupler, then opened the door to the vestibule leading to first class. He instantly saw Natalya on the floor, some ruffian trying to get her clothes off as she fought back fiercely. The other two laughed over it, even while keeping their pistols generally pointed at the two officers still seated.

Turgenev is ready to charge, even bare handed. Well… no need. Sorry, girl, but yours is distracted so you’re lowest priority.

“You’ll have to wait your turn, Sasha,” said one of the robbers, “after we’ve had ours with the girl.”

Mokrenko shrugged his indifference. He was about to pull his pistol and open fire when he heard a fusillade of shots from the direction of the locomotive. In an instant, he had his pistol out, and began blasting. One of the robbers went down immediately, falling face forward. The other, in confusion, turned to the louder and more recent blast, but before he could get a shot at Mokrenko, Lavin burst in, followed by Shukhov. He put several shots into second robber. The third, just as he was about to get Natalya’s skirt up far enough, realized what was happening, backed off and raised his hands.

“You can have the girl first, no problem.”

Mokrenko looked at the weeping girl, looked at the would-be rapist, and then looked at the heating stove. He strode forward, then slapped the criminal upside the head with his pistol.

“No, not good enough,” he said to the bleeding thug. Then he bent and grabbed the man’s hair, dragging him by it to the stove. In a moment, the air was filled with the stench of melting and charring flesh, as well as a sizzling sound and a very loud scream. The scream went on for a long time, as the heat worked its way past the skin, past the skull, and began to cook the brain underneath.

Interlude

Tatiana: An ugly reminder

I was helping Maria and Anastasia make use of a pair of Papa’s long johns for their play without resorting to cutting them up and making them unusable again. As I contemplated the best way to keep Maria from tripping while wearing them, I heard a scream.

I rushed out of the parlor and bolted upstairs as I prayed that no one else heard and then prayed that I be the first to get back up to our room. But both Mama and Papa had been upstairs and they reached Olga first.

Mama was holding on to her, rocking her back and forth, barely holding up under her weight as she leaned into her. The look on Papa’s face was full of concern, but it showed no rage. That mask of his hadn’t cracked or fallen apart. That’s how I knew that I wasn’t too late.

As soon as Olga saw me, she let go of Mama and fell into my arms.

Mama sank down into the bed, hand pressed to her forehead. Coffee had become unobtainable and its lack caused her horrible headaches atop the tally of ailments she suffered day in and day out.

“I’m sorry,” Olga whispered as she pressed her wet cheek into my mine. “I had a waking dream. A terrible one.”

“A dream?” Mama said as she continued to rub at her temples.

Papa moved to take Olga into his arms, but she flinched away. I turned, placing my body between them and pulled her head closer into mine. “It’s all right. It was just a dream. You fell asleep, that’s all.”

I hated lying. I hated the deception. God forgive me, but it was necessary.

My own nightmares included Papa finding out that Olga had been raped. It would not only break him but I wasn’t sure what he would do. He’d swallowed his pride again and again. He’d taken the “demotion” to Colonel Romanov and “Citizen” Romanov. He’d merely nodded when the soldiers had voted to get rid of epaulets in order to establish a more egalitarian, soviet system. He had considered it a great dishonor, but despite his anger, he’d done the only thing he could—wear his civilian coat over his uniform shirts so that the epaulets would remain hidden. It was a bit of defiance, but one that did not endanger us. I wasn’t sure if his rage over Olga, if he’d known, could have been contained. So far, everything he’d done had been for Russia and to keep us safe.

Keeping us safe was the only thing he had left.

I’ll never forget the relief that washed over me when he merely nodded, accepting the explanation of a dream. He kissed Olga and helped Mama stand.

Shock followed relief as I stood there. As soon as the door closed behind them, Olga’s sobbing became a low, keening wail. Her pain washed over me and through me until I thought it would drown me. I shushed her, held her tight, told her it was going to be all right.

Eventually she let me lay her down and I found out why she remembered. Her courses had begun and the sight of blood had taken her back to that horrible night.

I wanted to do right by my dear sister and even then I had known that I could not. Such as it was, our family—and its safety—came first.

A tide of guilt washed over me as I exited the room and realized my relief at my parents’ willful blindness. I was grateful that they did not see, could not, would not.

I was grateful and I hated myself.

Chapter Sixteen

Range G5, Camp Budapest

The red range flag, warning people to watch out, flew from a stout pole raised over the range.

It had taken longer to build the new range than Kostyshakov had estimated. Indeed, the sun was already near to setting on this day, before the range was ready to use.

But, then, it always takes longer than you expect it to, he thought, while standing and waiting to be the first man to go down this particular subterranean shoot-fest. Sad, but true.

Cherimisov had offered Daniil a guided tour, but he’d begged off. “No, I need to see it as every one of your soldiers executing it will see it; fresh and surprising. And I’ll want to do it again after sunset.”

Then Daniil had asked for a submachine gun and a magazine bag with six loaded magazines, holding one hundred and ninety-two rounds. He also had his pistol, his German flashlight on his chest, and his Adrian helmet on his head. Another bag with another six magazines was slung across Cherimisov, for the night rendition.

“Okay, sir,” said the captain, “just stand by the window frame Second Company built. When I say ‘Flash!’ that will be your signal to go or to continue on to the next chamber. The rules of the game are, in the first place, shoot the ones in olive while sparing the ones in lighter colors, and in the second, get the ones in lighter colors behind you. Note that there are a couple of places where Second Company erected canvas barriers. I’ll drop those at the right time. You may expect the unexpected on the other side.

“Ready, sir?”

Daniil noticed both his pulse and blood pressure rising as he took the bolt handle from the safety notch on his MP18. He replied, “Ready.”

“Flash!”

Daniil hurdled the windowsill to stand on the floor of the trench. Ahead, he saw a light painted target with what appeared to be golden curls—frayed rope—around the “head.” Not a target, he knew. Overhead, walking behind and well above, Cherimisov used the toe of his right boot to lift the looped end of a rope off of a peg. Down below, instantly, a weighted target swung out from the side of the trench opposite the other target.

It took Daniil half a second to recognize another target, another half second to realize it was enemy, and then yet another half second to decide to engage. Above, Cherimisov counted aloud, “One… two…”

Daniil fired before “three,” hitting the target with two of five rounds.

“Decent for a first run, sir, but you’ll have to decide and engage faster—and so will the men—or you will be a very dead soldier. Mayevsky and I dry ran this thing several times, alternating playing Bolshevik. We figure you’ve got—maximum—a second and a half to decide and shoot. A bare second would be better and safer, though even then there’s no guarantee. Also, your burst was too long. Shoot for three rounds, sir. Yes, it takes practice. Flash!”

Filled with anger—at himself, not Cherimisov or the range—Daniil moved forward and turned the sharp corner of the next section. There were two dark targets. Daniil fired at one, hitting it, then turned to the other. Once again, Cherimisov lifted a loop from a peg. This time a weighted target of an innocent swung out, half covering the remaining enemy target. Daniil couldn’t just fire from the hip; he had to lift the machine pistol to his shoulder and aim.

Overhead, the captain counted, “One… two…” He got to “three…” before Daniil was able to fire at the target’s head.

“We figure, sir, that pulling one of the Romanovs in front of himself, rather than shooting immediately, will take up a second or two. So, while you were slow, you weren’t that slow. Flash!”

Breathing heavily, Daniil rounded the corner and came face to face with a blank piece of dark canvas. Above, unseen, Cherimisov toed-up another loop. The canvas fell. On the other side was a chamber full of furniture, couches, chairs, table, and a cabinet. Some pieces were real furniture, others had been tied and hammered together from thin logs. There were no targets immediately visible. Overhead a few logs crossed the trench.

Daniil saw a large rock begin to fall from the log. That distracted him enough that he missed the target half-appearing from behind a cabinet. Overhead, Cherimisov counted, “One… two… three. Sorry, you’re dead sir. You want to back up and try this again?”

“Yes, please.”

Daniil went back around the sharp corner as the captain hoisted up the canvas again. “Ready… Flash!”

This time Daniil was ready. To his chagrin, however, a rock descended from near the half hidden target and, while he was engaging that, another—very small—target popped straight up from behind a chair. “One… two… three.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you are a dick, Captain Cherimisov.”

“Yes, sir. Many times. The second target would have gotten you. Ready… Flash!”

After perhaps ten minutes, an exhausted Daniil emerged from the final chamber into another but much narrower trench.

“That was… quite something,” Kostyshakov said.

“Yes, sir,” the captain agreed. “Can we start using it?”

“How many people can you run through in a day?”

“Maybe ten hours of adequate light, fifteen chambers, about fifteen seconds per, at full speed—but they won’t make full speed right away, so call it thirty—and we can do both assault platoons, even reinforced, in maybe six hours. If the second rendition is faster than the first, as I think it will be, we can get both platoons through, twice, in one day.”

“What about resetting targets behind them?”

“Mayevsky worked that out. A team follows the assaulter a couple of chambers behind, resetting the targets. Almost no delay. And we have a scheme to change the targets around so that they can’t predict what will happen the second time through.”

“Then start; there’s no time to waste.”

“Yes, sir. You feel ready to do the other one? It’s not really for individuals, but for two-man teams.”

“No, just show it to me. Can you start a platoon on Range G6 as soon as they finish here?”

“No, sir; in the first place, though the range is quick, it’s also exhausting. In the second, I don’t have enough people to run both at once. And I don’t know that it would save time to stop and teach another group to run them, even if they built them. And besides, the rifle companies need their training time, too.”

“Yeah… yeah,” Daniil agreed. “That last point, in particular, is well taken. Now show me G6.”

That evening, in the mess, Daniil observed to Cherimisov, “Those German dynamo lights, they really suck, don’t they?”

“No, sir, not exactly,” Cherimisov answered, wearing his normal serious face. “They’re a lot better than nothing. But, yes, I wish they put out three times more light than they do, for three times longer. But… what can we do?”

“No idea. Then, too, it may be better with six lights going in a room.”

“Yes, sir. Maybe, sir. Except I’ve tried it with six men and it’s still less than ideal.”

Range G6, Camp Budapest

The moon had set a little after eight thirty in the evening. Even had it been up, as a new moon, or nearly new, it would have provided approximately zero illumination.

Everyone in both assault platoons, plus the supernumeraries, had been through Range G5 at least twice. Some had had to go through it a half dozen times before they could reliably be expected to identify and engage enemy targets, while sparing civilian ones, quickly enough to presume the enemy targets hadn’t had enough time, had they been real, to kill either the soldiers of the assault platoons or the targets representing civilians.

They’d also gone, by buddy teams, through Range G6. But that was in daylight. Now they were going to do it again, as many as could be gotten through before dawn. Indeed, without tents, wrapped only in their overcoats and blankets, the men of the grenadier company lay in neat rows, sleeping until awakened by dyads to go through the range. It was darker than—as Platoon Sergeant Kostin said—“three feet up a well-digger’s ass at midnight.”

“Sotnikov,” the platoon sergeant said, nudging the guardsman with his boot, “wake up your pal Sobchak and go report to the ready gate. Aim for the beacon fire.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Sotnikov rolled out from his blanket roll, then began to shake the man next to him. “Our turn, Sobchak. Get your gear on and let’s go.”

“Sure,” said the other, as he likewise emerged from semi-warm bedroll into bitter, biting, icy cold. Aloud, Sobchak listed the items he donned. “Helmet… on head… magazine bag strap, over right shoulder… nemetskiy dynamo light… chain around neck, light in front… water bottle… over left shoulder… left boot… on… right boot… on… machine pistol… in hand… bolt handle in safety notch. Okay, let’s go.”

Wearily, the pair trudged up to the medium-sized bonfire by the ramped entrance to the range. There were two pairs ahead of them, which caused an inner groan, right up until the German mess chief handed them mugs of steaming soup.

“Keep warm,” said Feldwebel Taenzler, in the broken Russian phrases he’d picked up since arriving in camp. “More—plenty more—if want.”

“Spasibo,” said Sobchak, echoed by Sotnikov.

“Bitte schoen,” replied Taenzler, with a friendly smile. He was fairly confident that all the Russians had picked up at least that much German during their time in the POW camps. And, if not, the tone and smile surely cover it.

As the pair nursed their soup there were sounds of heavy but intermittent automatic fire, as well as shouted commands, coming from the other side of the fire. A couple of minutes after those ended, First Sergeant Mayevsky came back to bring another pair forward. Ten minutes later, and then it was the turn of another pair. Finally, with two more pairs waiting behind them, the first sergeant came to get them. His speech was unusually civil.

“Listen boys—Sotnikov and Sobchak, isn’t it? Come over here to put your backs to the fire; you’ll need all the night vision you can muster for this one.

“Now this is a lot harder than the ones you’ve done so far. The nemetskiy lights really aren’t quite up to the job. So here’s my advice: stay pretty close to each other. That way, neither of you will get in front enough to get shot down by your own partner. Talk; talk a lot. Watch out for furniture you might trip over. And here’s a couple of pieces of string. Tie your machine pistols to the pull rings of the dynamo lights; it will allow you to start them up without losing any control of your weapon.”

“Hey, that’s clever, First Sergeant.”

“It was Corporal Shabalin’s idea; I can take no credit.”

Mayevsky waited a couple of minutes, while the two tied the pieces of string. “Okay, are you ready?”

“Sure, Top,” answered Sobchak.

“Sure,” Sotnikov agreed.

“Move ahead to the first window frame and announce to the Captain who you are and that you are ready. Just like the other ranges, he’ll tell you ‘Flash!’ to indicate you are to proceed. Remember to shout ‘Romanovs down’ in both English and Russian before you enter any chamber. Now, good luck.”

“Thanks, First Sergeant.”

Silently, then, the duo began their descent into the earthen ramp that led down into the trench. The limited light from the fire by the range gate ended there. There were no sounds but those from their own footsteps. Even that was limited by the ground, churned up but hundreds of pairs of feet already today.

“I don’t think they could have made this any creepier if they’d tried,” said Sobchak.

“What makes you think they didn’t try?”

“Good point… Oh, shit…”

“What’s the matter?” asked Sotnikov.

“Hit my fucking head on the…”

“Who’s down there?” asked the voice of the captain, unseen above.

“Sorry, sir, we misjudged how far in we were. It’s Sotnikov and Sobchak. We’re ready, sir.”

“All right,” Cherimisov said. “Flash!”

Both men gave a tug downward on their machine pistols, pulling the chains and causing the tiny generators in their lights to whir to life. By the glow, limited though it was, they could make out the window frame.

Sotnikov took up a position on the left bottom corner of the frame, scanning ahead. He knew that the target array for this rendition would be different from the ones they’d engaged earlier, in daylight.

Sobchak leapt through the window frame, rolling once on the other side before rising to one knee. His light went out before he could find a target, so he gave the MP18 another yank downward, before returning the stock to his shoulder. His eyes swept left and right but saw nothing untoward. In a second or two, Sotnikov had taken a position to his left.

“Me, forward,” said Sotnikov.

“Go,” agreed Sobchak. Giving the light another pull with his MP18, Sotnikov walked forward warily. He heard movement ahead, just as the light dimmed out. When he pulled the chain again, there was nothing there.

Was it in this section or the next one? I couldn’t be sure.

Sobchak heard Sotnikov say, “Your turn.” He gave the light another pull, even as Sotnikov’s also sprang to life.

Overhead, the captain said, “You’re awfully slow, gentlemen.”

“Yes, sir. But we can’t see much and I think there’s something ahead of us.”

Suddenly, a dark target dropped almost directly in front of Sobchak. He pulled the cord for his light and fired, hitting it several times, he thought. Well, at this range it’s hard to miss if you can see the target.

The noise is somehow worse in the dark, thought Sotnikov. Maybe it’s the surprise.

“Sobchak, where are you?”

“I’m set at the corner,” said Sobchak. Below him, almost before he’d finished saying it, Sotnikov was peering around the same corner.

How the captain knew they were there they couldn’t be sure, but he said, “Flash!” almost immediately.

“Romanovs down!” they both shouted, pulling the cords to their lights and jumping out, ready to fire. In the light they saw two dark targets, to either side of the chamber, and a light-painted one in the center. Two bursts and the targets went down. They made it to just past the light-painted target before their lights died out again.

Neither Sobchak nor Sotnikov could recall how many chambers there were to the trench system of Range G6. They couldn’t recall how many they’d passed through this evening. They knew they were confused. They knew they were tired. They weren’t quite sure any more, each, where the other was.

The chamber was set up with three enemy targets and two friendly silhouettes. One of the enemy targets was hidden; the other two stood in the open. Likewise, both friendlies were in the open, with one farther away from the entrance to the chamber and one nearer.

Sobchak was on one knee, his MP18 sweeping left to right. He fired, once, twice, at the two enemy targets. From his position, he couldn’t see the second friendly silhouette, this, quite despite pulling the cord on his dynamo light.

Sotnikov could see the second target. He also saw both enemy targets go down before there was a need for him to fire. He followed procedure—“get yourself between the Romanovs and any threat to them”—and so advanced to get on the other side of the second friendly target.

The floor was muddy here, a bit. Moreover, this was a chamber without any furniture to slow down movement.

Where the hell did Sotnikov go? wondered Sobchak. There’s no light, no shooting, nobody cursing from hitting his shins on furniture. He was about to call out when Sotnikov lunged forward in the darkness.

There was a third target in the chamber, and it was on a trip wire. Sotnikov tripped it, causing a weight to raise it from the floor of the chamber.

Not knowing exactly where Sobchak was, at that precise moment, and trying to get on the other side of the friendly silhouette, Sotnikov lined himself up with the target and Sobchak. At that moment, when Sobchak pulled his light to life again, he only saw an enemy target. He fired.

“Sotnikov, go,” said Sobchak. He received no answered. “Sotnikov!” Still nothing.

Maybe he’s behind me or turned the corner into the next chamber, Sobchak thought. He called again, “Sotnikov!” and was rewarded with a low, pain-filled moan.

With a faint inkling of what had happened, Sobchak whispered, “Please, God, no,” then sprinted forward, furiously pulling the cord of his light and frantically looking from side to side.

“God… no,” he said, when he came upon Sotnikov’s prone body.

“Medic!!!”

The medic, Antipov, had been following along and above with the captain, a stretcher on his shoulder. As soon as he heard the call he tossed the stretcher down into the chamber, them jumped down, following it. He was followed by the captain. The other two men, who had been following Sotnikov and Sobchak, resetting the range for the next pair, also bounded in, though from the same level.

“Put your lights on him!” Antipov exclaimed. “Let me see what I’m doing!”

Despite being in a state of shock and grief, Sobchak was the first to pull his light on. The captain and the other two followed suit.

There was blood everywhere, and a red froth coming from Sotnikov’s back. When turned over, Antipov discovered he was also frothing red at the mouth.

“Oh… this is so not good,” the medic muttered. “This is way past my level of skill. We need to get him to Dr. Botnikov.” The medic put leather patches over the frothing exit wound, and tied it off. He then flipped Sotnikov back over and did the same for the entrance wound in the back. He extended the stretcher, then asked for the others to help him get the wounded man onto it. When they had him placed, the four of them picked him up, somewhat roughly.

“This way!” Cherimisov ordered. “Shit, they were almost done. The quickest and safest way out is through the exit trench.”

Almost done, Sobchak mentally echoed. Almost done; God… why?

Sotnikov died on the way out.

Camp Budapest

The mess tent was just big enough for the eighty-four remaining men of the Grenadier Company, plus Kostyshakov, Romeyko, and the sergeant major. The others could have their breakfast outside; for now, the grenadier company needed to talk.

But mostly they need to feel that this was a one-off, thought Kostyshakov, so they can continue to train properly.

When asked what had happened, the most Sobchak could say was, “We lost track of each other, sir. Other than that, I have no idea of what happened.”

“I think I do,” said Cherimisov, who had talked extensively to Sobchak earlier in the morning. “Mostly. It was a combination of things. They lost track of each other, yes. But also the second Romanov silhouette ‘called’ Sotnikov to get it behind him, per our doctrine. No fault to Sotnikov. A target came up—it was automatic, on a tripwire—and blocked Sobchak’s view of Sotnikov. He engaged; it was perfectly proper to have done so. Unfortunately…”

“Yes, unfortunate,” echoed Kostyshakov. “Also unfortunately, we can’t really change the training; not if we’re to succeed in our mission. What we can do…”

He asked of the men stuffed into the mess like so many sardines, “Do you men know why we push the envelope in training, generally? Why we take risks?

“It’s because unless we do things realistically, and realistically for the most dangerous environment in the universe, we cannot know if our doctrine and equipment are good enough. So what I hope to get out of this session, beyond assuring you we won’t kill anyone deliberately, is fixing our doctrine and equipment. So, what can we do better?

“Sobchak, why couldn’t you make out Sotnikov on the other side of the target?”

The stricken soldier answered dully, “The targets are the same color as our uniforms, sir. They’re about man-sized. Their ‘faces’ are painted light about where our faces would be. And the light’s not really good enough to make out fine distinctions.”

“I think we all know about the lights. Nothing we can…”

“But, sir,” interjected Ilyukhin, the coal miner’s son, “there are better lights. Much better, if we can get them.”

Kostyshakov made a give-forth gesture.

“Coal miners’ lights, sir, carbide lamps. They’re small, light, simple, reliable, cheap to operate, and put out a good deal of bright light. They’re used on a lot of things, bicycles, some older automobiles.”

“Well… shit,” said Kostyshakov. “I never thought…”

From the muttering, some of it anguished, emanating from the crowd, nobody else had, either.

“Nobody did, sir. Even I didn’t really think of it until this morning. But we need to be careful of which ones we try to get. The German ones tend to be bigger, heavier, overbuilt. I’ve never seen one you can wear on the helmet, though they may exist. The old man really liked the Amerikanski ones, especially Just-Rites and Autolites.”

“I think our hosts might have trouble coming up with American lights, Ilyukhin,” Cherimisov said.

“Maybe less than you might expect, sir; before the war these things were traded and sold all over the world.”

“Maybe so,” the captain admitted. “You said they’re reliable. Are they so reliable we wouldn’t need spares?”

“Not many moving parts, sir,” replied Ilyukhin. “But there are things that can wear out. There’s a ceramic nozzle for the gas that can wear out in cleaning it; they do put out a fair amount of soot. Also there’s a felt filter inside, and a rubber gasket that keeps gas from leaking out of the chamber where the water and the carbide mix… well… mix isn’t quite the right word but it will do. Sometimes the ball that controls the flow of water will wear out, and let too much water into the chamber. But on the whole, sir, if you look in an honest dictionary for the word ‘reliable’? It should show a picture of a carbide miner’s lamp.”

“Military math, sir,” said Romeyko. “Shit goes wrong. If you want one to work, you must start with more than one. If we want… what? Eighty-five… no, eighty-four, now, we need more than eighty-four to begin.”

“Try for two hundred,” said Kostyshakov. “And see if the Germans will get us a repair kit with a lot of spare parts of the kind that wear out.”

“I’ll try, sir.”

“Sobchak? Sobchak? SOBCHAK!”

“What? Oh, sorry, sir, I was… thinking about Sotnikov. We were pretty close friends.”

“I understand, but you’re our only eyewitness. We need your attention here. We will have plenty of time to mourn later.” And I think maybe we need to ease you over to becoming a supernumerary and advancing one of the supernumeraries to your position.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“So would the light, these carbide lamps, have been enough that tonight’s accident wouldn’t have happened?”

“I don’t think so, sir. Our uniforms still match the targets’ and will match the Reds’ when we go in.”

“We can’t do much about the enemies’ uniforms. I don’t know what we can do for ours.”

A hand was tentatively raised.

“Yes, Fedin?”

A thin, wiry soldier stood up. “How about if we sew white cloth crucifixes on the backs of the uniforms, sir?”

“Problem there, is that when you boys are clearing a room you’ve mostly got your backs to walls. Don’t see where a crucifix on the back… Sobchak?”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference last night, sir. The target would have covered it up. No matter how big a cross it was, it would have been covered up.”

“How about white smocks?” asked the platoon leader for Assault One, the Finn, short, pale, and blond Lieutenant Vilho Collan.

“Five hundred plus sheets,” wondered Romeyko, aloud. “Or maybe six hundred. I don’t know. Maybe. Oh, and a seamstress, I suppose.”

“A sewing machine, Captain,” said one of the junior noncoms, Corporal Shabalin. “My old man was a tailor. I picked up enough of it, as a boy, for this kind of thing.”

“Sheets, white canvas, whatever our Teutonic hosts can come up with,” said Kostyshakov. “And the important thing will be white color, not the material. And, as Shabalin says, a sewing machine.”

Strelnikov, the spotter for sniper Maxim Nomonkov, said,

“Sir, it’s a long story but two sewing machines.”

“Two it is,” said Romeyko. “If possible.”

First Sergeant Mayevsky stood up and announced himself. “Sir, how do we know a fucking room’s been cleared? It hasn’t happened yet, but it could happen when we go back to the G1 through G4 ranges, and it is very likely to happen in action, that someone infiltrates behind us through stairways we didn’t know about, holes in walls the Bolshevik motherfuckers created themselves, holed ceilings and floors covered by rugs or furniture. And even if not, we’ll waste time we don’t have clearing rooms a second time. And what if the room being cleared a second time is occupied by some of our own people? Imagine a flash grenade going off in a room with one of the assault squads. I see a problem here, and it’s not a small one.”

Kostyshakov shrugged, not with indifference but with cluelessness. “I don’t know, Top. Somehow I can’t see us detailing one man per squad to carry around an open bucket of paint and a brush. Anyone?”

A very tall guardsman stood to his full six feet, four inches. “Lukin, sir. How about something simple, sir, like every man carries a piece of white chalk? No moving parts. It’s pretty obvious and visible, or will be if Ilyukhin’s lights are as good as he claims. Chalk, sir.”

“Sir,” asked one of the men, a Guardsman Poda, “what if there’s no snow. Do we want to be wearing white smocks that will make us stand out like sore thumbs against the ground?”

Kostyshakov shot a look at Shabalin.

“Let me think over that one, sir,” said the corporal.

“Not as much of a problem as all that,” said Mayevsky. “If there’s no snow on the ground on the approach, we take them off—they’ll be thin, right?—and hide them under our uniforms. Then we put them on, a matter of a couple of seconds, before we begin the assault. Once inside, the Bolsheviks will be blinded, while we’ll be able to see, so it won’t matter if we’re all in white.”

“Shabalin,” said Kostyshakov, “can you make these so they’re easy and quick to get on and off, but aren’t so loose they get in the way?”

“Would it be okay, sir, if they just cover down to, say, the crotch? For that matter, if we’re worried about moving quickly without fouling our own legs, those overcoats could use a bit of shortening, like maybe an arshin’s worth. Or… Jesus, I’m a dummy. Take a bit but how about if I take every man’s overcoat, cut it down, and then sew a white lining in it along with making some new button holes and adding some buttons?”

Kostyshakov looked up and to his left, chewing his upper lip and trying to picture it. Finally, he decided, “Romeyko?”

“Sir?”

“Add in about three thousand buttons to the request. But Shabalin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t remove the bottoms of the overcoats. Instead, trim them up so that they can be buttoned out of the way but let down for just standing, lying, or marching in the cold. Can we do that?”

Shabalin thought about it. “I’ll need more people than just me and Strelnikov, sir. For this much work we probably could use a dozen good seamstresses.”

“Romeyko?”

“I’ll ask our hosts, sir.”

“One other thing, sir?” asked Cherimisov.

“Yes?”

“If these miners’ lamps Ilyukhin is talking about are that bright…”

“At night, in a place as dark as a mine, very bright, sir,” said Ilyukhin.

“In that case, other than for a dress rehearsal we can probably do our live fire exercises in the day. Sir, we’d never have lost Sotnikov if I’d been able to see down into the chamber.”

“Not all of them,” Kostyshakov replied, “all these men still have to get used to a rescue under realistic conditions. But, yes, we can cut down the amount of nighttime work by a good bit.

“Anyone else?”

A junior noncom stood up. “Corporal Turbin, sir. We’re probably going to Siberia, right? In the winter? Has anyone considered skis or snowshoes?”

Shit, thought Daniil. “Romeyko?”

“On the list, sir.”

“Anyone else?”

“Poison gas… Big versions of those lights Ilyukhin talked about to blind those shooting at us… ladders that fold so we can carry them and can be fixed to climb… how do we get through windows in Siberia; they don’t open… and how about an Orthodox chaplain? Men going into battle need a chaplain!”

Interlude

Tatiana: To die or not to die?

Almost a year has passed since Papa abdicated the throne of Russia.

We sat in the Southeast room, sipping tea. They—the petty tyrants who run our lives—had declared that butter and coffee were luxuries we were no longer allowed to have. We accepted the restriction without complaint, yet I feared they saw it as defiance, because a few days later the soldiers’ soviet decided to condemn our snow hill.

Its crime: being a source of amusement.

It was then that I realized that they were out to crush our very souls, to take away from us everything and anything that might bring us joy. Yet I knew that I could not convince my parents to act differently, to give in and show them what they wanted to see: suffering and begging.

That is what these people wanted. They wanted to see us suffer, openly and frequently. They wanted to feast on our pain and tears, to see us rip into each other, to fracture our family in every way imaginable. They wanted to take what was left of our dignity and devour it.

How empty they must be to find fulfillment in such things.

Mama passed one of the sweetmeats that the townspeople had brought us. I nibbled at it, not because I wanted to make it last, but because it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

If a hill was to be condemned for being a source of amusement, what would the empty men whose hate for us seemed to grow each week do to the kind people of Tobolsk who risked sending us eggs and other delicacies? I needed to find a way to ask Papa to turn away or discourage them, to let them know they were endangering themselves.

I got up to follow Papa and Monsieur Gilliard when they left the room, but Mama called me back to help clear the table.

A few moments later, I excused myself, pleading a need to use the bathroom and snuck to the door of Papa’s study.

Whispers drifted through the door.

“There is no Bolshevik Government at Tobolsk, Your Majesty,” Monsieur Gilliard said. “Kobylinsky is already on our side.”

“The guards,” my father objected.

“They are insolent, but careless. We should make our move before that changes.”

I nodded silently. Even I had noticed this. I thought their carelessness was part of that arrogance that let them think they can run a regiment by vote, with each man deciding for himself what is and isn’t acceptable. Seeing one man’s sloppiness, the rest follow, for it takes effort to do one’s job well, and if there’s no penalty for a job poorly done, or reward for one well done, then most of them seemed to have chosen the easy way. Most, but not all. The fanatics were motivated by their newfound ideology. They were the dangerous ones.

I held my breath in the silence, waiting, seeing in my mind’s eye that heavy cloak on my father’s shoulders.

“Who will help us?” my father asked. “I can’t rely on good intentions.”

“All we need are a few bold spirits, Your Majesty.” Gilliard again, soft and uncertain.

Their voices dropped lower. I pressed my ear to the door in time to hear my father insist on two conditions. “My family must remain together. And we will not leave Russia.”

I leaned my forehead against the door and closed my eyes. I waited for Monsieur Gilliard to argue against the second condition. I held my breath, and finally, in the silence, realized that he would say no more. The firmness of Papa’s tone on the matter was not to be defied. Not even by someone like Monsieur Gilliard.

I pushed the door open. They turned to look at me. My cheeks and ears turned hot.

“Please, Papa. We have to leave. This is Soviet Russia now.”

“No.”

Just that. Nothing more. We stood across from each other in that room. It was a horrible breach in protocol. It was not my place, but I could not remain quiet. Not any longer.

I waited for him to rebuke me, to call me a child, to tell me to go back to helping my mother, to tell me that I had no say.

Monsieur Gilliard seemed as embarrassed as I and perhaps it was his presence that spared me the dismissal that I deserved.

“Your mother will not leave Russia,” Papa said. “Not even Soviet Russia.”

I spent the next few days trying to get time alone with Mama, away from the guards, from my siblings, to beg and plead with her, but before I had a chance to say anything, fate intervened once again.

On the nineteenth of March I was cleaning up after lunch, still preoccupied with how I would get my mother alone, what I would say to her, when she said, “I would rather die in Russia than be saved by the Germans!”

She said it with such force, such power, that I dropped an empty teacup. It shattered. Apologizing, I rushed to clean it up, my heart pounding in my ears, the words, I don’t want to die, catching unspoken in my throat.

Over the next few days I struggled, trying to understand what would make Mama want to die—want all of us to die—rather than be saved by the Germans. Wasn’t it better to live, to get a chance to influence the world? Even if we did nothing but fade into obscurity, wasn’t that obscure life, the one they’d always wanted, better than death?

Chapter Seventeen

Train to Tyumen, Russia

The cooked-brain corpse on the parlor car floor would serve as a reminder to the prisoners.

“I’ll take care of the questioning, sir,” Mokrenko assured Turgenev. “You may not care for what I’ll have to do.”

“After what they tried to do to Natalya,” said the lieutenant, “you can do what you like with the filthy swine. Including”—the lieutenant pointed with his chin at the brain-cooked corpse on the floor—“toasting them.”

The rear door to the parlor car opened.

“Here’s two of the bastards, Sergeant,” announced Koslov, prodding, at bayonet point, two bound prisoners as he entered the parlor car. Goat wrinkled his nose at the stench of burnt flesh.

“The rest?”

Goat simply smiled, then drew his thumb across his throat.

“And the cost to us?”

With a deep sigh, Koslov answered, “Shukhov was shot, but Timashuk says it’s not bad. He’s patching him up now. But…”

“Yes?”

Goat gave a deep and regretful sigh. “I’m afraid to say that Visaitov didn’t make it.”

“I see.” Mokrenko turned his attention to the two prisoners, neither of whom looked much hurt. “I’ve less than no reason to bear you two shits any good will. So here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to separate you. Can you smell that stink? That’s the smell of someone’s face pushed against a red hot steel stove until the face burns and then the heat cooks his brain. We’re going to ask you some questions. If your answers match, then you don’t get your face burnt. If they don’t match, then you do. Note that there are two sides to your face, and when those are used up, you’ve still got arms, legs, chests, backs, feet, and genitals.”

Without warning, Mokrenko kicked one of the prisoners in the balls, causing him to give off an agonized moan before bending over and then sinking to the floor of the car.

“That’s just so you know how much trouble you’re in,” he said, before telling Goat to, “Take the other one back to our car. We’ll take care of this one. Novarikasha?”

“Yes, Sergeant?”

“You and Lavin get control of this one. I am going to ask the other one a question or two. Then I’m going to come here and ask the same question. If they don’t match, faces to heaters; got it?”

“Got it, Sergeant.”

With that, Mokrenko went to the second-class cabin and asked of the prisoner, “What is your name and patronymic and what is the name of the other one?”

The prisoner gulped, but answered unhesitatingly. “I am Vladimir Boroslavovich. My comrade is Stanislaus Fyodorovich.”

“All right, for now.” Mokrenko then went into first class and asked the same question, receiving the same answers, inverted. He then explained again, that if the answers didn’t match perfectly, there would be pain.

“Now, how were you going to get away from the train after completing your robbery?”

“We have horses waiting about an hour further up?”

“How many horses? How many men?”

“Four men, twenty-four horses.”

“Why the extra horses?”

“If we found a girl we wanted to keep, or if there was a substantial pay chest on the train. And for the food, of course.”

He then went back to second class, asking the same series of questions. One answer was different: “Six men, twenty-seven horses.”

“Cook his face for a count of five,” Mokrenko commanded, then went forward again, giving the same order. When the screaming subsided, he explained, “One of you lied to me. You will both suffer for it. Face to the heater for a count of five,” he ordered Novarikasha.

“Twenty-seven horses!” the prisoner blurted out. “Six men! Please don’t burn me. Please.”

“Count of five,” Mokrenko repeated. The screams went on for a lot longer than five seconds.

“How will they hold the horses?” Mokrenko asked, once the screaming subsided.

“They won’t,” said the prisoners, through gasps and tears. “They’ll be tied to a rope and that to two trees.”

Mokrenko went back to second and got the exact same answer.

“Where is your camp?” he asked Vladimir.

“Not too far, maybe twelve versta; that’s the truth.”

“Do you have any captives there?”

“A dozen women, last I counted. No, wait, the chief had two for himself, so fourteen women. Well… some are more girls than women.”

“Very good.”

Back in first class the answer was substantially the same, except that Stanislaus had no trouble remembering the correct number of women and girls.

“How many men are back at the camp?” Mokrenko asked.

“Just two,” Stanislaus answered. “The women and girls get locked up when we go on foray, except to cook and… well… you know.”

What a shitty fucking world, thought Mokrenko.

Once the robbers’ rifles and pistols were passed around to willing men who gave a reasonably convincing story of previous shooting experience, and the Strategic Recon Section’s were assembled, there were twenty-five rifles and nine pistols manned and waiting for the word. Strat Recon kept their pistols in their belts.

Mokrenko asked the old colonel if he’d be so kind as to tell the locomotive’s engineer and brakeman that, if they didn’t stop, he’d certainly shoot them.

“But why, Rostislav Alexandrovich?” the colonel asked. “You can… ah, you don’t want them to see your faces or ask any questions?”

“Even so, sir. As a matter of fact, I’d appreciate it if you would take complete credit for all of this, for having tackled and shot the robbers yourself, plus organizing the passengers.”

“I don’t really understand,” said the colonel.

Mokrenko thought quickly, coming up with a suitable tale. “Well, sir, the Reds have put a price on our heads. If they have any inkling of where we are…”

“I see,” said Plestov. “Well, I don’t know how believable I will be, but I’ll try.”

“I’m a much better liar than you are, dear,” said the colonel’s wife. “You will be a little confused by a blow you took to your head, so I will tell them in Tyumen of your fierce courage and how you led the passengers of the train to victory.”

“Flatterer,” said the colonel, a warm and loving smile spreading across his face. “No wonder I’ve stayed with you for the last fifty-five years.”

Wonderful woman, thought Mokrenko.

After Mokrenko briefed him on the situation, Lieutenant Turgenev covered his face and walked the length of the train, giving orders to his own men and the newly armed passengers. “By order of Colonel Plestov, acting commander of the train, put on as much of the robbers’ garb as you can. When we start to slow, open the windows no matter how cold it is. As soon as we stop, rifles out the side and kill anything human that looks armed. Shoot the ones right in front of you, first, then look to the sides. Try not to hit the horses. When the rifles go out, all unarmed civilians drop to the floor and cover your heads. By order of Colonel…”

Six men, wondered Mokrenko. Odd that there should be six men for twenty-seven horses. I’d have expected no less than seven, really. Because, after all, the robbers—the mostly late robbers—didn’t walk to the station where they boarded from here. They must have ridden and then these six brought the horses to this stop. But there should have been seven or even eight men for this. Unless….now damned, what was that breed of horse… the one’s the Tatars’ cousins use? Short… furry… survive out in the open in the worst weather… find their own…? Hmmm…

Mokrenko went over to the bound robber with the seared face. Kicking the man lightly, he asked, “What kind of horses do you people use?”

“Yakuts,” the thief answered. “Well… related to them anyway.”

“Aha; that’s the name I was trying to remember. Where did you acquire Yakuts?”

“Where else; we robbed a train that had them.”

“I see.”

“What’s going to happen to us?”

“Probably nothing very bad, if you cooperate,” Mokrenko replied. “You’re going to lead us to your camp. Once we’ve freed your captives, I see no reason to kill you.”

I also see no reason to keep you alive, either, but that’s for another time.

Colonel Plestov got up and walked, slowly and carefully, to the locomotive. A few minutes later, Lieutenant Turgenev felt the train begin to slow, causing him to be pressed back into his plush seat.

Turgenev wore a mask taken from one of the thieves. His rifle, sans bayonet, had its muzzle resting on the seat opposite him. As soon as he felt the train start to slow, he reached up and unlatched the window, then opened it. After that, leaning forward, he took control of the rifle, while still being careful to keep it below the level of the windows. Up in first class only Colonel Plestov was armed, though each other car, plus the dining car and first-class sleeper car, had three or four armed men to it, each under one of the men of Strat Recon.

Turgenev didn’t have much hope for accurate fire from the civilians, but at the very least, They’ll draw fire from my men. Shame about Visaitov. Can’t afford to lose any more. And at least he wasn’t a specialist. I don’t know what we’d have done if Sarnof had been killed. Note to self, for the future any team dispatched like this must have redundancy.

Mokrenko, standing on the small platform outside of his car, saw the horses all lashed to a single rope stretched between two trees. Never ridden a Yakut before. Should be interesting.

Natalya stood with him.

As soon as he caught a glimpse of the getaway party, he began to wave furiously. He also held up Natalya by one arm and shook her, to show the remaining thieves that the foray had been most fruitful. Her head hung down and her hair swished on her neck as if all the will had been beaten or raped out of her. He couldn’t hear them cheering the prospect over the shrieking of the train’s brakes, but he saw it well enough.

“Thanks for going along, Natalya,” he said. “Good acting job. Now I’m going to pretend to throw you to the floor. As soon as I do, crawl to cover inside.”

“Kill them all, Sergeant Mokrenko,” she said, as soon as she was out of sight.

Mokrenko started counting and evaluating. Only one man by the horses—his life is mine—and the other five… five?… yes, five… waiting roughly mid-way between the train and the horses. He looked more carefully at the horses. Hmmm… no, they’re not all tied to the rope. There are two sleighs, two horses each, also.

Before the train quite stopped he walked over to the prisoner in second class, kicking him hard enough to break ribs. The prisoner cried out, then bent over with clutched arms nursing cracked ribs.

“I told you to tell me everything. You should have mentioned the sleighs.”

At that, Mokrenko went back to his window, bent, and, like Turgenev, got control of his rifle.

The train slowed… slowed… slowed… and finally stopped. As soon as it did, Mokrenko’s rifle was the first to emerge from the open window. His shot, too, was the first. The robber nearest the horses threw up his arms and fell straight back.

As soon as that shot was heard, twenty-four more rifles opened up on the remaining five robbers. Most shots missed, of course, they always do. But few magazines were quite empty before the one hundred and fifty-odd rounds in the twenty-five magazines and chambers had felled the last of the robbers.

Immediately, all but four of the Strat Recon team charged out, followed by Babin and Natalya. The latter looked on without pity as a few shots finished off the wounded.

Moments after that, the remaining four men came out, or five, if one were to count the corpse of Visaitov, slung across the shoulders of Timashuk. They pushed ahead of them the two remaining thieves, one of whom was still bent, clutching his ribs.

The horses were a bit spooked. Instinctively, the Cossacks of the team went to calm the equines down and ensure they were all in good health.

“Fascinating beasts,” said Novarikasha, gently stroking one of the Yakuts. “They’ve got fur at least three inches long and thick, and they’re fat, fat, I say, despite this weather.”

With the train still stopped, the men went back and began to unload their personal baggage, to include Visaitov’s. This was carried to the two sleighs and deposited, more or less evenly. They left the rifles for the passengers who had joined the fight, but collected back the pistols and Visaitov’s rifle, less the pistols previously given to the colonel and the dining car attendant.

After Mokrenko reported they were ready to move, Lieutenant Turgenev went to stand by the locomotive. He rendered Colonel Plestov a flawless salute, which was as flawlessly returned. Plestov then told the crew to continue on the journey, that he was sending the other men out to hunt down the robbers at their camp.

There wasn’t a lot of discussion. “What the hell,” the lieutenant said, “we’re five days ahead of schedule now and there are fourteen women and girls enslaved and needing rescue.”

And that’s why I follow you, Lieutenant, thought Mokrenko. I am probably ten times the soldier you are but you have the heart of a true and worthy gentleman.

Natalya’s thoughts, expressed rather differently, were, I wish I could be a virgin for you. You deserve that.

The two remaining robbers were mounted on horseback, hands bound behind them. Mokrenko was careful to tie a rope around the neck of each one, lest they decide to escape and warn the others. A few horses were tied in the string to the back of each of the sleighs. The remainder were not tied in a string, but led by five of the men of the team. Visaitov lay tied flat in the back of one of the sleighs.

“Now, you dickheads,” said Mokrenko to the prisoners. “You will lead us to a covered and concealed position about half a verst short of your encampment. If you try any games, the ropes around your necks go over trees and your horses leave you behind, kicking and choking. Hanging’s said to be a slow, hard way to die. Am I clear enough?”

When they’d reached a suitable position, Turgenev called a halt. The two prisoners were then removed from their horses and bent into C shapes, with the ropes leading from their necks being tied to their ankles. Turgenev and Mokrenko led four other men forward, leaving Natalya, Babin, Timashuk, and the wounded Shukhov to guard the horses and the prisoners.

There was a small snow-covered hill—or perhaps a snowdrift with delusions of grandeur—behind which the men with the lieutenant sheltered while he and the sergeant scoped out the encampment, perhaps one hundred arshini away. That consisted of half a dozen buildings, all of them made of logs, and two of them, at least, inhabitable and, based on heat shimmer above chimneys, apparently inhabited. In a fenced snowfield, a couple of dozen more of those marvelous horses hooved their way through the snow to eat the grass beneath.

“Fucking rabble,” Mokrenko said.

“What was that, Sergeant?” the lieutenant asked.

“Was I speaking aloud? Shit, sir, I thought I was just thinking it. But look, sir; there’s smoke coming from two chimneys. There are people there, but no guards. Even if there are only two of them, as our prisoners said, one of them should be on guard. So, yes, fucking rabble.”

“Yes, rabble,” the lieutenant agreed. “Unfortunately, they’re rabble with fourteen women and girls as hostage. What do you want to bet they’ve got two or three with them in one of those buildings, for obvious reasons, while the others are locked up in the other one? Do we want to risk the females?”

“Not if we can avoid it, sir, no.”

“Then… we need to entice them outside. Who are the best two shots among us?”

“Myself and Lavin.”

“Not counting you.”

“Lavin and… oh, Koslov, I suppose.”

“Okay, leave those two with me. Go back and mount up everyone else. Keep dressed like the train robbers. Come riding in—put Natalya on display like a great prize—and entice the two remaining out. Koslov, Lavin, and I will then shoot them, once they’re away from the women.”

“I kind of like that idea, sir. How much time for you to get ready?”

“We’ll be ready in a couple of minutes. We’ll be right here, so make sure that you and the rest are not in line between us and the remaining robbers.”

“Do my best, sir.”

“I know you will. Keep your pistols where you can get at them.”

“Yes, sir.” With that, keeping low, Mokrenko and the rest returned to the covered and concealed position where waited the rest of the party.

The horses weren’t loud and the snow and trees tended to muffle what sound there was. Mokrenko expected this, and so came in with Shukhov, disguised but otherwise prominently in front, bent but showing a bloody bandage around his midriff. Behind him rode Mokrenko, himself, leading a horse on which was perched Natalya, with her hands behind her. She wasn’t tied but, rather, had an unsecured coil of rope loose around them. Only one sleigh had been taken and the four remaining men of Strat Recon led only a few of the available horses.

On the way, Mokrenko passed them by where the lieutenant, Goat, and Lavin hid behind the snowdrift with delusions of grandeur. He’d already explained about leaving the three a clear field of fire.

Some things, thought the sergeant, are just too easy. Fucking rabble.

On cue, two men came out, only one of them armed and the other doing up his trousers with both hands. The armed one observed, “It went badly, this time, eh? Well, I warned the chief, more than once…”

Three shots rang out in an instant, their bark preceded by the sharp snaps of near-passing thirty caliber bullets. Two hit the armed man, one in the belly, one in the chest, laying him flat on the ground, lifeless and oozing bright blood onto the white snow. The other, Mr. Just-Got-Finished-With-A-Girl, as Mokrenko mentally dubbed him, was not so lucky. He took one in the throat, causing him to clutch it, hopelessly and helplessly, while blood gushed out. In mere moments, though, he, too, lay lifeless on the snow.

Mokrenko and the others dismounted, quickly. Two went for the other building from the chimney of which poured smoke, while two more, including the sergeant, drew pistols and stormed through the half open doorway.

Inside they found two women. One, an aetherially beautiful eastern Tatar or Yakut woman, or a close cousin to them, tended the fire in the masonry stove in the middle of the room. The other, young—far too young, thought the sergeant—clutched a fur blanket to cover her chest. He didn’t think she was wearing anything underneath.

“Who are you?” asked the Tatar or Yakut girl, looking up warily.

“My name doesn’t matter,” the sergeant replied. “Think of me—of us—as your liberators. At least we were given to understand that you women and girls were held captive here.”

“For about six months,” the woman replied. “Some of us a little more, some a little less. And our captors?”

“Dead, all dead, except for two.”

“And my horses?”

“Those we have. We don’t need them all or, at least, not all the ones we have plus the ones in the field. We’ll pay you for what we take. Why, by the way, horses? Why you?”

The lovely woman sighed sadly. “We were told the tsar was paying a good price for stout horses for the war. My father tallied up the extras we had, matched that to the price, and decided we could spare fifty. So he sent my husband and myself, with our children, west to Yekaterinburg to sell them. Our train was robbed. My husband and son killed. My daughter, like myself, was forced to become a whore for the scum who robbed us and murdered my man and boy.”

“You’re not a whore unless you both charge and do it willingly,” Mokrenko corrected. “Even the fucking Moslems know that much. Neither you nor your daughter are whores. How much were you expecting to get from the tsar for your horses?”

“Eight hundred rubles, in gold, apiece,” she said.

“I’m a little surprised the Imperial Army was willing to buy Yakut horses. They don’t really meet the standards, even though I am sure they’re fine animals.”

“The representative who came to town said that the casualties among horses had been so high that the standard was being dropped for many of them, or there would be no new horses at all.”

“That makes a certain sense,” Mokrenko agreed. “It’s a little high, but we can pay that for what we’ll need. Up to the lieutenant, though.”

“What’s up to me?” asked Turgenev, coming through the door, rifle in hand.

“What we’ll pay this woman for her horses. They belong to her.”

“I see. Well, yes,” agreed Turgenev, “of course we’ll pay a fair price.”

“Perhaps,” said the woman, “you are our liberators, indeed.” She thought for a moment, then said, “Come, there is something you must see.”

“See to it, would you, Sergeant? I want to check out the other buildings.”

“Sure, Sir. Lead on, Mrs…?”

“Saskulaana. That’s my given name.”

“Saskulaana,” repeated Mokrenko, savoring the sound. Truly, there is beauty to be found in every corner of the Earth. “Very lovely, if you don’t mind my saying so. Now what was it you wanted to show me?”

Leaving the large Russian stove, she led the sergeant over to a separate chamber, just off from the main room. It was something of a treasure trove, he noted, with stocks of fur, warm clothing, heavy cloth, tools like shovels and axes, and all manner of useful things stolen from the railroad.

“This was their chief’s quarters. Mishenka was his name. I don’t know his family name.

“There,” she said, pointing. The object at which she pointed was a mid-sized iron safe. “No matter how hard he tried, he could never get it open.”

“Where did it come from?”

“They took it from a train. I think it was heading east from Yekaterinburg.”

“Indeed? Well, I have someone…”

There was something else in the room, a large pile of baggage and clothes.

“And this is?”

Saskulaana answered, “It’s part of how they kept us here, when they were generally too lazy to post guards. We were allowed a single garment apiece, exchanged as needed. All of our warm clothes, though, were kept here so that it was death to escape, most of the year.”

For the moment the prospect before him took Shukhov’s mind off the pain of his still fresh and recently outraged bullet wound.

“If only I had some nitroglycerine,” he muttered. “Well… make do or do without,” he decided, heading to one of the sleighs to recover his mini demolitions kit.

Mokrenko accompanied the engineer because, after the miscalculation with blowing up the Loredana, only partially mitigated in the sergeant’s mind by the fortuitous destruction of the Kerch, he didn’t entirely trust Shukhov’s abilities, demolitions-wise.

It had taken all of them, including the fourteen freed women, to both round up the horses and get them in shelter and to drag the thing on rollers out of the building, and then on sledge to a spot the engineer had picked for his first attempt at—oh, be still, my heart—safecracking. How much did it weigh?

I’d guess a bit over a ton, thought Turgenev, straining to move it with the rest.

“I need a pot and a good fire,” Shukhov had explained. “‘Why?’ you ask. Because while I don’t have nitroglycerin, I do have TNT, and it has a low melting point. Oh, and I need some fat or grease.”

“Are the fumes toxic?” asked the sergeant.

“Yes, but they won’t be bad outdoors if we don’t go out of our way to breathe them.”

Saskulaana brought one pot and a tripod in one hand and, in another, a pot with coals from the big Russian stove in the main room. Several of the other women brought armloads of wood, small enough gifts, they thought, for the men who had freed them from slavery. One girl, small and slight, brought a pot of fat, since the engineer hadn’t specified how much he would need.

“Perfect, ladies, perfect,” the engineer assured them. “Now go back to the building where it’s warm and safe.”

The safe lay on its back, door to Heaven. A close inspection told Shukhov that, The door is tight enough to the frame to make sure the TNT stays in the crack, rather than going into the interior of the safe. This is good.

It’s also good—better than good, really—that the Germans gave me TNT rather than hexanite. I wouldn’t dare try this with that toxic shit.

Carefully, using the sticks, logs, and kindling provided by the women, Shukhov nursed the coals into a fire. On this, he placed the pot, then tore the packaging from the TNT. He recognized that the letters and words on the paper packaging were in English, but whether they were American or British high explosive he couldn’t say.

Free of its packaging, the two blocks of TNT were dumped into the pot.

“Sergeant,” asked the engineer, “could you find us a longish twig about the width of the blasting caps?”

This wasn’t especially hard to find. He broke the twig in two, dipped each in the fat, and then jammed each one at an angle into the crack between safe door and wall.

Humming, but making sure he stayed upwind of the pot, Shukhov stirred the explosive as it liquified.

Once it was a liquid, yellow and still fairly thick, he picked up the pot by the handle and, using a gloved hand, then carefully began pouring the contents to fill the crack. He could only do this on three sides, as the side by the hinges was quite tight and flush to the wall.

The liquid TNT filled the crack in a safe that was, by now, ice cold. One effect of this was that the TNT tended to freeze in the juncture of door and safe wall. This helped ensure that none of it, or so little as not to matter, would leak into the hollow of the safe even if there were a gap somewhere.

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.

I think it’s in the hands of fate, really. If Romeyko can come up with skis, I’d prefer the skis. If all the Germans can find for us are snowshoes, snowshoes it will have to be.

And then there’s that request for poison gas. I can certainly see the use of it. And Dr. Botnikov says we could make it ourselves with the right materials. Why bother with that, though; the Germans and Austrians have plenty and would likely lend us some.

But how would we use them? A cylinder? Oh, hell, no; the wind is far too unpredictable. There are no shells small enough for our infantry guns and, even if there were, there wouldn’t be enough gas in one—or fifty—to do much good. Grenades? Similar problem with the added disadvantage that, if we did manage to get enough in one, my own people would be too close. I suppose we could take in a couple of dozen larger shells with us and put some explosive in where the fuse normally goes. But then what? We push them through a window into a basement full of Bolsheviks? What’s the gas do that the high explosive wouldn’t already? And if we’re using high explosive, alone, we can rely on the concussion in a closed space and don’t need the weight of the shell.

So I think, screw it; no poison gas.

On the plus, we don’t have to take two good men and put them to work making white smocks. The Germans asked the Austrians and they’re providing us what we need, along with trousers. As for shortening the coats, the Germans suggest pinning them up. I think that works for me.

Meanwhile, apparently the Bulgarians mine a good deal of coal and have plenty of those carbide lamps Ilyukhin suggests. May even be here by now…

Quartermaster’s Office, Camp Budapest

“I asked for two hundred,” the rat-faced Captain Romeyko said, apologetically. “They sent me one hundred and forty. Of those, after he looked them over, Ilyukhin tells me sixty-five are good, and he might be able to fix up another forty or so from parts. To be fair, they did sent us a fair number of parts, flints, gaskets, even some reflectors and nozzles.”

“How long before we have these one hundred and five, give or take?” asked Daniil.

“Three days to fix that many up, sir. I’ve gotten Ilyukhin a couple of helpers.”

“So long? No!” Kostyshakov shook his head, emphatically. “We need those things in the hands of the assault platoons and their immediate attachments immediately. Yesterday, Sunday or not, would have been better.”

Said Romeyko, “Takes a certain amount of training, the coal miner’s son says, to use them safely and to get the best use out of them. And most of them still will need work.”

“Okay, fine,” Daniil agreed. “Today, late today, Ilyukhin trains the grenadier company to use them, as well as the officers and senior noncoms of the other three companies. Issue is to the grenadiers’ assault platoons and engineers, plus the company headquarters. As he fixes more, they’ll be issued to the other three.”

“Why should Number One Company get any, sir? I’m not complaining, just asking.”

“It’s a good question, Romeyko. In the first place, because I want to have one. In the second, because being able to see your hands in front of you at night is useful to you, to the adjutant, to the heavy machine gun section, to the infantry gun section, and even to Kaledin, leading his horses and mules…”

“Okay, sir. Ummm… speaking of horses and mules, we have some problems.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been working with the liaison noncom—I think he’s a noncom—Captain Bockholt sent us, Mueller’s his name, trying to figure out loads. It’s tough. You want to see, sir?”

“Yeah, show me.”

Romeyko pulled up a cloth to reveal a couple of chalkboards. “Sir, I started with the presumption that we’ve only got about nineteen tons per load. That’s more than they took to Africa, and assumes we’ll be able to load some heavy equipment and supplies low, to make up for ballast, plus that they’ll be able to reduce fuel a good deal. It also means we’ll have to land near a body of water and cut a hole in the ice for them to pump in more water for ballast. I think you knew that.

“It’s also a five- or six-day round trip. That’s got a couple of different implications. One is that the first troops on the ground will start eating carried rations on Landing Day minus three, and will not stop eating carried rations until maybe twenty-seven days later. That means that for every man we send in the first lift, we have to provide over eighty pounds of food. And, in this weather, that means probably one hundred pounds would be better. So our nineteen tons of lift means also that we can only carry a maximum of one hundred and thirty-nine men.”

Kostyshakov looked over the calculations on the upper left hand corner of the chalkboard and said, “Okay, but…?”

“But I don’t think we should do it that way. Instead, we should go in as light as possible, in manpower, and carry extra food for later lifts. So, sir, I suggest that the first lift should be nothing but the Fourth Company and a small slice of your staff, no more than ten men, say. That means we can bring in an additional six tons, plus a little, of food and fodder.”

“Speaking of fodder, the very last ones to come in should be Kaledin’s mules and horses.”

Kostyshakov held up one hand. “Stop right there. I need at least six horses to come in early, with the first lift, to mount some of the grenadier company for local security patrolling.”

“Ugh,” said the quartermaster. He began scribbling on the chalkboard. “That seriously screws up my calculations. But… okay, off the top of my head, six horses, about four tons, just in themselves, and then twenty-seven days of oats and hay… at twenty-six pounds a day, plus water for three days, at eighty pounds a day, minimum, for the three days of flight. Let me think… that’s just under two tons for fodder, three quarters of a ton for water…

“Sorry, sir, but that’s not doable. We need to leave behind maybe two horses, or maybe seven or eight men.”

“No,” said Kostyshakov. “Short the horses’ fodder. We’ll bring in more with later lifts. Hmmm… I thought the captain said twenty-one tons of lift.”

“He did, but once we figured out the modifications we would need to store the gear, the supplies, the equines, and the troops, we came up with about two tons of wood, chain, rope, buckets, and hay to spread under the horses and mules when they let go, which they will.

“Okay, sir, so we’ve got one lift and one company on the ground, with a half dozen horses. The next lift…”

The sun was still up, though it hung low in the west. The men of Fourth Company, plus another twenty from the other three companies, sat in a natural amphitheater between the camp and the ranges.

Ilyukhin had never spoken in front of a crowd before, let along one the bulk of whom outranked him. Still, he had the commander’s backing, both commanders’, as a matter of fact, and the courage of a coal miner to guide and guard him. If he was nervous, it was tolerably hard to see it.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “oh, and you, too, Corporal Bernados, if I can have your attention.”

The joke at Bernados’ expense went over well, even if it was a tired joke in a dozen armies already. The engineer corporal shut up, since talking was what had made him the butt of the joke, then gave the coal miner’s boy the shish, the Russian version—thumb between index and middle finger—of the universal, one fingered salute. This got more laughs, still.

“Now,” continued Ilyukhin, “fun and games being over, if you would line up by twos and take one lamp for each two men, then return to your seat.”

After each pair had taken a lamp, Ilyukhin held up one of the lamps for illustration’s sake.

“There are at least four different models of lamps here. Most are Amerikanski. Some are British. Some are either locally or Russian made. A couple, even, are German. They all operate the same way and they all have similar risks. Oh, yes, there are some risks here.

“To begin with, the lamp works by combining water with calcium carbide to produce acetylene gas. The gas escapes out the nozzle of the lamp where it is set afire to produce light, which light is reflected in the shiny silver curved concave plate on front, around the nozzle.”

At the word “gas,” one of the senior noncoms from Second Company, Sergeant Dmitriev, began to look slightly nervous. Dmitriev was a late-caught POW, so had had the chance to be gassed by the Germans. Most of the cadre, having been caught earlier, had not had this experience, hence tended not to think about the fear of gas on the part of those who had, in fact, been gassed.

“Let’s look at the parts of the lamps, shall we?

“In front, as I mentioned, is the reflector. In the middle of the reflector is the nozzle, the place where the acetylene comes out. If you look at the reflector, about halfway between its edge and the nozzle, you will see a rough, serrated wheel. That’s the striker. You can’t see it unless you look at the striker edge on, but there is a round flint under it that is being pushed against it by a spring.

“When the acetylene starts flowing, you can turn the striker to produce a spark to light it afire. In a bit, I’ll show you an old timer’s trick for that that the old man taught me.

“Look on top; you will see three things. One is the water chamber. The other is a cap that keeps the water from splashing out when it’s filled. Go ahead and use your thumbs to open it.

“The last thing on top of the lamp is the control lever. This sets how much water is allowed into the calcium carbide chamber—the chamber below—to produce acetylene. All the way to the left, no water is flowing. All the way to the right, a fair stream is flowing. In between it provides less water than to the left and more than to the right. Make sure, for now, that your levers are all the way to the left.”

As expected, the men didn’t just make sure the levers were all the way left, nor that the water cap could be opened. Instead, they fiddled with both an average half a dozen times each. It was with difficulty that Ilyukhin controlled his exasperation at both the waste of time and the risk to the lamps.

Children; I’m in an army composed of children.

“Now hold the top piece firmly in your left hand and grasp the bottom firmly in your right. Turn the bottom piece to the right until it screws off.”

Ilyukhin waited a bit, then walked around to help out those who were having trouble. To be fair, those having trouble were simply afraid to risk breaking these very unfamiliar lamps.

Returning to “center stage,” the coal miner’s son then said, “Go ahead and put the acetylene chamber down between you. Look now at the back of the lamp, by the water hole. Some of you have thick wire hooks there; others have flat and broad ones. Those, once we have enough to issue to everyone, are going to get forced into the slot of your helmets where the French insignia used to be. This wouldn’t be enough to hold the lamps steady. Look below the hooks. See the thick wire projections coming out from the center?”

Here, Ilyukhin made a tripod from the index, middle, and ring fingers of his right hand. This he placed against the palm of his left. “It takes a tripod, you see, to get stability. Between the hook and the two prongs, a tripod will be formed, resting on and stuck in your helmets; that will keep them in place, and pointing wherever you aim your head.

“Big improvement over those pull toys we’ve been using, no?

“Now, a little warning; these things can leak gas from places where you don’t want them to. If you look around the edge of the calcium carbide chamber you will see a rubber—or maybe in some cases thick leather—gasket. If that is defective, and you don’t get a good seal of the chamber, the gas will escape and catch fire. You can burn the shit out of yourself, trust me, if this happens.

“Also, one nice point. When the water and calcium carbide meet, they create not just acetylene, but heat. When your hands are freezing cold, you can wrap them around the calcium carbide chamber and warm them.”

Ilyukhin picked up a two-pound can of calcium carbide and opened it by prying the lid off. “I am going to pass this around. Each pair of men take about ten little pea-sized pieces and put them into the bottom chamber of your lamps. Do not screw the chambers on yet.”

Ilyukhin waited while the can of calcium carbide made its rounds. Shortly after the first row of students had taken their allocation and put it in the lower chambers, he said, “I’m now going to pass around a bucket of water and a cup. Open up and fill the water chamber of your lamps. Make sure that the control levers are all the way to the left before you do. Close the small round cover tightly as soon as you have filled it.”

That took still more time. Nonetheless, the time came when the pitcher reached the last pair in the back row.

“Now here’s the trick I told you about.” Ilyukhin quickly screwed his chambers together. He then moved the control lever about halfway to full on. “I’ve now got water dripping down into the calcium carbide. Watch my hand.”

He then covered the reflector with the fingers of his left hand, while holding the lamp with his right. “Note that my middle finger is resting on the striker. What is happening is that acetylene is building up in the area my fingers have sealed as it comes from the nozzle. My hand over the reflector is holding it in place. Now when I do this”—here, Ilyukhin pulled his left hand sharply away, dragging his middle finger over the striker, creating a spark that set the accumulated acetylene afire. It quickly devolved into a single bright flame, coming from the nozzle—“we have light.

“Go on and do it now,” he finished.

The men screwed the lamps back together, then turned on the water flow. Sergeant Dmitriev took one sniff of the garlic aroma coming from his own plus the lamps all around him, and screamed, “GAS!!!”

Dropping the lamp before any of them but Ilyukhin’s had been set alight, Dmitriev covered his nose and mouth in the crook of his right arm, stood, and tried to run away. “GAS! GAS! GAS!”

This started a near riot as about half the others, knowing that some forms of blister agent did, indeed, give off a garlic aroma, likewise dropped their lamps and tried to run.

Kostyshakov drew his Amerikanski pistol and fired it into the air. “Freeze, Goddammit. It’s NOT that kind of gas.”

Fuck, thought Ilyukhin, I should have realized.

“It’s harmless gas,” the instructor said. “Yes, maybe it smells like some that are not, but it is. Just relax. Nobody’s trying to poison or burn you. Now, gentlemen, if we may continue…?”

Kostyshakov thought, If the mere threat of being gassed can panic a fine old soldier like Dmitriev, maybe I should reconsider bringing some with us.

Camp Budapest

There’s an old army saying, common to many armies, actually, to the effect that uniforms come in two sizes, too large and too small. This was certainly true of the snow-white camouflage smocks and trousers the Austrians provided to the Germans, with no knowledge that they were to be used for Russians.

Fortunately, the Austrians produced skis—and those all fit, of course—along with the smocks. Also, fortunately, the overwhelming bulk of the smocks were too large, rather than too small.

Even with the lamps now issued and in use by the Fourth Company and some of the leadership and specialty groups of the others, Kostyshakov had put in place and continued a moratorium on maneuvering live fire training until such time as distinctive white uniforms could be provided, to prevent another case of target misidentification.

“But time is getting short,” he ordered. “Smocks and trousers that fit to the Fourth Company and the others going on the first lift. The others we’ll alter as we can to make them fit.”

“Skis must be fitted to the skier,” said Sergeant Major Nenonen, the Finnish Operations sergeant major. “And so must the boots, as well as the boots to the skis, and each individual ski to a given foot, right or left.”

The Finn found himself spending a lot more time doing things other than operations than he found strictly wise. Still, if no one else knows how and I do, what’s to be done but do it myself? And they don’t, but within a couple of hours, Romeyko’s clerks and the senior noncoms will have learned how to measure a man for skis and boots, and to fit the latter to the former.

“Come right up, Top,” said Nenonen to Mayevsky.

The one-eyed Fourth Company first sergeant was tall. Nenonen sized him up and said, “Put your hand straight over your head, would you, Top?… yes… call it ‘three arshin, four inches.’” Nenonen hunted along a large number of skis, sorted by size, right to left. “Hmmm… these look about right. Put your hand up again, please.”

Nenonen placed one ski’s rear end on the ground and put the tip up to Mayevsky’s hand. It just reached the first sergeant’s palm. “Am I good or what? Okay, now what size boot do you wear?”

“I take a size forty-five,” said Mayevsky.

“Size forty-five!” Nenonen called out to one of Romeyko’s clerks, who promptly produced an Austrian ski boot.

“Looks a little goddamned big to me,” said Mayevsky.

“They are. You’ll end up wearing either two pair of wool socks or a double foot wrapping, because of the cold. No real need to try them on, since they are loose, but hold them to the bottoms of your feet to make sure they’re a little big. Ah… yes, they’ll do fine.”

Nenonen drew a flathead screwdriver from his pocket. “Okay, Top, now let’s fit these to your skis. Later on, I’ll show you how to lacquer and wax the skis and how to attach climbing skins for uphill climbs. Also how to care for the metal edges. For now, watch closely because the next man you will fit yourself while I watch and critique. Oh, and, yes, let’s get you a couple of pairs of real socks. They’re not great socks, but they’ll do for as long as we will need them…”

En route, Camp Budapest to northwest of Sliven, Bulgaria

It did snow in Bulgaria but, being so far south in the Balkans, with so much moderation of climate by the nearness of sea, it didn’t snow all that much. To find snow, one had to look for it. That was why Second Company, Fourth Company, and a slice of Headquarters and support were currently trekking, all in white, from their normal camp to the mountains north and west of Sliven. A fair sampling of their German guards, of course, came along too, while the best of Kaledin’s patients, now fairly healthy animals, but in need of exercise, followed along, towing Taenzler’s Gulaschkanone and wagons with tentage and rations.

As they marched, they sang:

It was an old song, “Soldiers, Brave Lads,” of a century prior, written around the experiences, the lives, of Russian soldiers fighting Napoleon. It was also a simple song, suitable for simple soldiers. If simple, it was also buoyant and boisterous.

When the last verse of that one died out, echoing in the hills around Sliven, they broke into the “March of the Siberian Riflemen”:

Given where they were headed, the song made a certain sense. They left out the fourth verse, by common consent, since that one sang of invading Germany and Austria, reaching the Rhine and Danube. This the officers and men thought would be in very poor taste, all things considered.

They marched with their rifles and machine pistols slung, simple packs across their backs, bedrolls slung from their left shoulders to their right hips, and their newly issued skis and poles over their shoulders.

When they got close to a village, Kostyshakov called over Feldwebel Weber and asked if the German guards might sing something to avoid suspicion. Taenzler, overhearing, called out, “Die Wacht am Rhein,” since, after all, singing about defending against the French wasn’t remotely anti-Russian, while singing about invading Russia would have also been in extremely poor taste.

Thus, a reborn regiment of the Russian Imperial Guards, of no name or number yet, marched through main street of the little Bulgarian village of Nicholaevo with the words ringing on the breeze and from the houses,

Good-naturedly, the Russians, who had heard the song often enough in their prison camps, joined in with either words or by very loud humming or whistling. The effect was, on the whole, rather impressive.

Past the village, the Germans stopped their singing while the Russians started a new song, from another Guards regiment, one which began, “The Turks and the Swedes know us well…”

Setting up camp, despite the best efforts of both Russian and German noncoms, was slow and confused. The snowball fights that kept breaking out didn’t speed matters up any, either.

Daniil was tempted to simply storm into the middle of it and start bellowing orders. Or at least have his sergeant major do so. But, No, this is not a critical task and time, today, at least, isn’t pressing. As long as they get it all set up sensibly that will be fine. And let them have their fun, anyway. They’re good boys and have done well, so far. Hmmm… maybe a little vodka?

Much to his chagrin and shame, Vasenkov found himself having a good time throwing snowballs, pitching tents, and even joking over dinner. The march had gone well, so the commander, that lackey of Tsarism, Kostyshakov, had ordered an issue of vodka for the troops. It was nothing too generous, of course, just a few ounces per man, doled out by the German, Taenzler, but it gave the entire enterprise a festive air, something free and fun.

I’ve never seen morale so high here, thought the hidden Bolshevik. I suppose booze, freedom, and fresh air must be opiates of the people as much as religion is.

Field Camp, west of Sliven, Bulgaria

“Hold the poles loosely, dammit,” Nenonen bellowed, in a voice that threatened to cause an avalanche, to the hundreds of novice skiers struggling to move on their new skis. “Your hands will tire, gripping them like that, and then they, and you, will be useless. Let the loops take the force when you push off. Use your hands only for the lightest control.”

Nenonen sought out Kostyshakov, who was having a smidgeon less trouble than most, and asked, “You think you’re ready to take off, sir?”

“Well… lead from in front, and all that,” the commander replied. “That said, let me see if I’ve got it straight, Sergeant Major; I push down with one ski, causing it to flatten out, and the way the hair on the climbing skins is facing, it causes it to grip the snow? The other one slides forward because the hair isn’t facing that way? I use the poles a little for balance and a little to push forward, but not too much because my arms tire faster than my legs?”

“Yes, sir, and… No, goddamit!” Nenonen’s voice returned to a bellow, addressing any number of the practicing troops. “I thought we had this down when you were doing one ski at a time, people; kick-glide-kick-glide!” Turning his attention back to Kostyshakov, he continued, much more sedately, “So, yes, sir. All that. Shall we see if you can make it to the base of that low hill and back?”

Back to the troops: “Angle your bodies a little forward, dumb asses! Opposite poles by your lead foot!”

With Kostyshakov seen off, to the west, Nenonen began skiing himself around the area, critiquing, giving tips, and selecting. “You, Sergeant Bogrov? You look like you’re ready to head off. See the commander about halfway to the low hill? Go on and follow him there and back.”

Father Basil wandered the area of the camp, talking to the troops and passing on the occasional benediction. Unlike them, he stood out by wearing his normal black cassocks and skufia. On two occasions he stopped to join in a snowball fight. By mid-morning, the shifting wind brought him the smell of a pretty nice stew, coming from the odd wagon with the smokestack on it. He wandered over to investigate.

“Hello, Father,” said Feldwebel Taenzler, “Stew’s almost ready; care to try some?”

“That’s actually what I came to talk to you about,” said the cleric. “Today is Friday. It’s a fast day for us. So are all Wednesdays. It’s not a strict fast day, insofar as the men can have oil used in preparing their meal, but no meat or fish.”

Taenzler understood the problem immediately, if not in its full scope and depth. “Not even fish, Father? And I thought we Catholics were strict. But what am I to do? I’ve been begging, borrowing, and occasionally stealing food to put some meat on their bones. There is meat—horse meat, to be sure—in this stew. I can’t just dump it; they need the nutrition, the fuel.”

Father Basil considered this. With a whole continent on the verge of starvation, wasting food struck him as the greater sin, the thing more offensive in the sight of God.

“We fast more than half the year, Feldwebel, but… well… there are a lot of exemptions and exceptions. Let me think. We’re are travelling, I suppose. Even if we’re stopped for a couple of days. That allows some relaxation of the rules. Were you planning on feeding them before three in the afternoon? It is possible—according to Saint Isaac—to end the fast at three PM, by which time Christ’s body had been taken down from the cross. And then, too, when receiving the hospitality of others, which—since you’re a German, feeding Russians, this would be a case of—one doesn’t turn up one’s nose. You have a few Lutherans and even some Catholics among the battalion, yes? Well… a battalion is a kind of family, and when families are of mixed faiths that, too, allows some leeway. And, then, too, these men are still thin; I noticed it right off. To deprive them of food after their long captivity would be injurious to their health, and this is not permitted…”

“Father,” said Taenzler, “I know some Jesuits that I would just love to listen to you talk with. I’ll feed them this, as you say, today, and in the future… can you help me work out a menu?”

“Why, certainly, my son. I’d be happy to.”

“You know, Father,” said Taenzler, “the world would be a better place if more people were like you.”

Basil shrugged. “The world would be a better place if more people tried to be like Christ.”

“Amen, Father.”

Field Camp, west of Sliven, Bulgaria

As with everything else, it took longer than it should have to get the men capable of skiing cross country on the flat. Now it was time for uphill… and down. Lieutenant Collan, the first platoon leader of Fourth Company and another Finn, stood in his skis on the top of the same low hill that had been the turn-around mark for the last two days. The lieutenant seemed almost unnaturally happy, standing taller, somehow, than his scant height suggested he even could.

Daniil stood at the base of the hill. Quietly, Nenonen coached him. “Remember, sir, tips wide apart and ankles folded a little towards each other and forward to ascend. The steeper the slope up, the wider apart. Tips close and ankles rolled together and back to slow yourself or, if there’s a track in front of you, one ski in the track and one dragging on the outside.”

“This, Sergeant Major, is not my idea of fun.”

“Yes, sir, I know. But it’s a lot like learning to dance with a girl. You look and feel stupid when you’re first beginning, and spend every moment of the lessons embarrassed to tears… ah, but once you learn how…

“Now up you go, sir. And remember, poles behind you both up and down.”

En route from Sliven south to Camp Budapest

There were a half dozen men, one of them, Fedin, from Fourth Company, who had to be carried in the now much-lightened wagons. These had broken legs and twisted ankles and, in one case, a fairly bad concussion from a collision with a tree. Three of those, at least three, would likely not recover in time to make even the last lift. There were enough extra men to more than cover the losses, though.

Even Vasenkov, the Bolshevik, marched with a song in his heart. That was the most fun I’ve had since I was drafted, six years ago. Then again, that’s a really low bar to meet.

The Germans took over the singing again, as the battalion was passing through a Bulgarian village. This was the first chance since starting out that Vasenkov had actually had a chance to think. He didn’t like what he was thinking.

I am a Bolshevik. I detest the tsar. I detest the entire aristocracy, to include the tsar’s family. I was thrilled when I heard they were overthrown and more than a little pleased when I found out they’d been sent to Siberia, a fitting place given the numbers of revolutionaries the tsar and his minions sent to that cold and miserable place.

And yet these men with me, here, in this battalion… they have become my friends and comrades. How do I turn on Levkin, who shared his private bottle of vodka with us? How do I stab Sergeant Bogrov in the back, when he’s been such a kind teacher this whole time? I confess, I do not know if I can.

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.”

“That’s giving us a lot more than an even split,” said the Yakut.

“Yes and no,” said the lieutenant. “Gold is gold; it always has value. But the four hundred thousand or so paper rubles you each get could turn into so much trash overnight. My recommendation would be to take the paper, and that five thousand in gold, each, and turn all the paper into gold and silver as soon as you get where you’re going. If you can. As much of it as you can.”

“Paper’s pretty much useless among my people,” said Saskulaana. “Might my daughter and I take, instead, a fair share of the gold and the rest can have paper? Or you can take my share of paper?”

“Sure,” said Turgenev. “Let’s say… mmm… five horses and two bags of gold between you, the rest to go with us?”

“Agreed.”

“The rest of you ladies?”

The remaining women chorused their assent.

“Very well. Sergeant Mokrenko?”

“Sir?”

“A rest night for the men. We’ll leave at first light, tomorrow.”

“Sir, what about the two prisoners? They’re still outside, freezing.”

“Leave them to us,” said Saskulaana. “We owe them something.”

“They didn’t tell us everything,” Mokrenko observed, “so our offer of a chance to live is nullified.”

“They’re yours,” said the lieutenant. “Oh, before I forget; we need to bury Visaitov. I don’t want to leave him for the wolves and we can’t really take him with us.”

“Digging in the permafrost, sir?” said Mokrenko. “Do we have an extra two weeks?”

“Put him in one of the buildings,” suggested Saskulaana, “and set it alight.”

“Agreed,” said the lieutenant, though his agreement was touched with sadness. “Sergeant?”

“Sir?”

“Loot the robbers’ treasure trove, would you, for anything that might be of use to us?”

“These are good men,” said Saskulaana, after the two prisoners had been castrated and their throats had been cut. “These are decent men. No girls are to go to them, but only women, fully grown. Are there nine of us for that?”

The Yakut was better dressed than she had been upon the arrival of their liberators. Indeed, they were all better dressed, as they’d been given back their own clothes. So, for that matter, was Natalya, who had been fussed over and dressed by the now free women and girls.

“Eight of you,” said Natalya, as a female automatically brought into the women’s conspiracy. “The lieutenant belongs to me.”

“But you are so young,” said the Yakut.

“Eventually, he belongs to me. But I claim him as mine now.”

“Eight of us,” agreed Saskulaana, with a knowing smile. “Come, ladies; let us go willingly to our men. And do not forget the one outside on guard. Evdokia, don’t you have a specialty for a man standing in the cold?”

“I do, indeed,” agreed one woman, a pure Russian by the look of her, blue-eyed, blonde, round-faced, and with a most impressive chest. “Let me just find something to keep my knees from freezing…”

The Yakut already knew who she wanted, and had marked his place on the floor by the great Russian stove when he’d first rolled out his bedroll.

“Shshshsh,” she whispered to Mokrenko, as she pulled back the blankets covering him. “I mean you no harm. Oh, quite the opposite…”

Tyumen, Russia

Although it was not an idyll, nor without its risks, nor without the needs to maintain security, the ride to Tyumen had been as happy a time as any of the men had known since 1914, and happier than any of the women had known in the past half year.

All idylls, though, come to an end. This one came to an end at the outskirts of the town, where the men had to say goodbye to all the women except Natalya.

Whoever fell in love, Turgenev asked himself, watching the tear-filled goodbyes, who didn’t do so immediately or, at least, very quickly?

Mokrenko was particularly smitten.

And no wonder, thought Turgenev, looking at the Yakut woman. She wore her own fine furs, with a light fur hood drawn up over her hair. A triangular beaded fabric diadem decorated her forehead. Her hair hung down straight from behind, to both sides of her slender neck, to cover the fur in front of her breasts. The lower portions of delicate ears peeked out between hair and hood. On her neck hung a necklace of flat, crescent shapes, a mix of wood, horn, and amber. Everything seemed well-calculated to adorn a heart-shaped, elfin face, with two large almond eyes, a delicate chin, perfect eyebrows, and a mouth that begged to be kissed.

“Where might I find you?” he asked Saskulaana, “If I live, I mean.”

She smiled, having won the battle to bind a worthy man to her. “I’m a Sakha,” she replied, “or, as your people say, a Yakut. Well, three fourths. The other quarter is Russian and, yes, I am an Orthodox Christian.

“Where else would you find me except near the town of Yakutsk? I’ll be with my clan within a couple of hundred versta of the town, generally to the southeast of it.”

“Can you wait? Will you wait?”

“I will wait two years,” she said, decisively, “and will look for you in the town every six months. If you have not come for me by that time, I will assume you have forgotten me.”

“I will never forget you, while I live,” he said, “but I might not live.” He considered the time, the hardship, and the risk, then agreed. “Two years is long enough for you to wait, one way or the other.”

“Who knows,” she said, eyes twinkling. “Perhaps when you come I may have a not quite two-year-old surprise for you…”

His eyes widened to a degree she would have thought impossible.

“If you are… if you do… will this make it hard for you among your people?”

“Are you joking?” she laughed. “With the amount of gold I’m bringing back, no one would dare criticize me for anything. We don’t have queens, exactly, among my people, but I’m going to be the nearest thing to one. That also means I’ll be easy enough to find.”

Great Lake Shishkarym

The lake, or rather, lakes, since the area was dotted with them, was about thirty versta east of Kutarbitskoye, Russia, and about fifty almost due south of Tobolsk. It was an area barren, miserable, and cold, all three. If anyone lived anywhere near here, they were keeping indoors.

“It’s perfect,” said the lieutenant. “No towns. No witnesses. Water we can get at with a little cutting. Trees for shelter and firewood. Perfect. And it fits the limited guidance Kostyshakov had for us on a place to bring in a zeppelin.”

In other words, this place sucks, thought every man in the section. Dig in.

Setting up a decent camp for the men and horses took about a day. They had, by the time Turgenev and those accompanying him left, a tent, double-walled on a stout frame, enough firewood and food for a month. Left behind were Lieutenant Babin, Koslov, Shukhov—still healing and somewhat the worse for the long ride, and Novarikasha. They also left both sleighs they’d taken at the rail line, and another three they’d found in the robbers’ encampment, as well as any horse not needed for the trip. All the treasure of the robbers’ camp, less the money, and certainly to include several cans of kerosene, remained here, too.

The remaining six, including Natalya, rode north to Tobolsk with eight of the horses, two of those packed with necessities, to include enough cloth for a lean-to, if they needed to erect one, plus a single sleigh.

Tolbolsk, Russia

It was overcast and windless in Tobolsk, something much to be desired given the sheer, terrifying Siberian cold. The town was a mix of the rough-hewn and the sophisticated. There’d long been a lot of wealth to be extracted here, which explained a good deal of the sophistication. And rough-hewn, specifically in the form of log cabins, some of them more in the line of log palaces, was explained by the sheer amount of wood available. The roads would probably have been mud, in warmer weather, a misery to all who might travel them, but for now, amidst the usual Siberian cold, they were hard and fine.

Ahead, the town’s kremlin, or fortress, loomed steep and menacing. It was an old fort and, while its white-painted walls would not have stood a day against even the cannon of two centuries prior, none of the local threats had ever had even those.

We made it on time, thought Turgenev, with wonder. Despite the distractions, diversions, troubles… all that, we still made it on time.

Sarnof, the signaler, already had a message composed, for when they found the telegraph office. It read, in the original, “Arrived Tobolsk Stop looking for market.”

They passed by one rather large, two-story log structure. On the side facing Great Friday Ulitsa, it had eight windows per floor, each with a peaked pediment above it. There was a single gable on the roof facing the road. After they passed it, Turgenev turned around in his saddle to read a sign on the roof proclaiming “PHOTOGRAPHIA,” as well as one very large window—he estimated it at perhaps four arshini by about six—composed of some forty panes.

Hmmm… I wonder if we can get them to… think carefully, first. Vast potential for compromising ourselves.

“Sergeant Mokrenko?”

“Sir?”

“What would you think about getting that photography shop to get pictures of the town for the main force to study and plan with?”

“Good idea, sir, if we could do it without compromising anything?”

“Great minds, Sergeant, think alike.”

Next, on the same side of the road, they passed a large church or perhaps a cathedral. A sign outside proclaimed it to be The Cathedral of the Annunciation. It was set back from the street, slightly, but had a bell tower with cupola that towered over the surrounding buildings.

It wasn’t but a few minutes later that the horses brought them to a very large and quite ornate house, with guards posted on the doors.

“Sergeant? You do the talking if there’s any to be done.”

“Sir.”

Mokrenko asked one of the guards, “Comrade, can you direct us to a hotel? We’ve been on the road, looking to buy furs, for too long now, and could use a hot bath and some decent food.”

The guard addressed spat on the ground. “Decent food in Tobolsk is hard to come by. A hot bath? I seem to remember what those were, but it’s been so long. ‘Decent’? You want a decent place to sleep? We’re all sleeping in the basement of this place, if that gives you any idea. For that matter, this place has rented rooms in the past; there’s even one guest and her daughter here now. But we’re full. Even so, there’s a none-too-reputable place north of here and a bit to the east. This road doesn’t go all the way; you’ll have to take a left, a right, and then another right. If you find yourselves at the river turn around and go the other way.”

“Thanks, comrade,” Mokrenko replied.

On the left they passed a stockade in front of a smaller house, though it was still of respectable size. There were guards ringing it, not just posted on the doors.

I think, thought the lieutenant, that we’ve found the royal family.

From the vantage point of the horses, they could see a bit into the yard the stockade defined, and even to what looked, by the smoke coming from the chimney, to be a kitchen building to the west. There was a snow-covered hill—or just a hill of snow, it was impossible to be sure—standing in the yard.

Mokrenko glanced left from time to time, trying to see if there was any unambiguous sign of the royal family. He caught faint shadows and images, through the windows of the place, but these were not unambiguous. Two people, one of whom seemed vaguely feminine, cut wood in the yard, but that didn’t prove anything. Another, by his dress a young boy, chased some turkeys about the yard.

“Move on! Move on, you lot!” commanded one of the men ringing the place. “The former royal family is no fucking business of yours.”

Well, that answers that question, doesn’t it? I wonder if we could see into the compound from that cathedral back there. Mokrenko turned as far as he could to the right and determined, I think someone could. Have to check it out when I get the chance.

“Sorry, Comrade,” said Mokrenko. “We didn’t know. Just seemed odd to have so many guards. We’re in the fur-trading business, just in from the taiga, and, given the close guard, I wondered if maybe it was being used as a warehouse for especially valuable furs. Naturally, that would interest us.”

“Oh, they’re valuable, all right, but not for furs. Go look up around and behind the kremlin; there are a couple of traders there.”

“Thanks, Comrade.”

Heading farther north, and after taking those suggested turns, about as far from the royal family as the latter were from the photography studio, the half dozen passed by what the lieutenant said was the town’s electric plant. Not my call as to whether it’s a proper target for the main force, but they need to know about it so they can decide.

“There are a lot of churches here,” observed Natalya, riding beside the lieutenant.

“About one for every thousand people in the town, or maybe more,” said Turgenev, softly. “And none of them burnt and none of them, so far, appear to have any soldiers—presumably Reds—quartered in them. That might tell us something of the outlook of the townspeople. But then, too, I’ve heard that there are an enormous number of very rich people here, and that may be of use to us, as well.”

“I think we turn right here, sir,” said Mokrenko.

“The place feels unsettled to me,” Natalya said. “The way the people walk… the way they look over their shoulders. Something has changed here, and very recently. And I don’t think anyone is really in charge yet.”

“I think you’re right,” said Turgenev, adding, “you, my dear are a very clever girl. We’ve passed a lot of what look like discharged soldiers so far. How many do you think there are?”

I’d have been a good deal happier if he’d said, “clever woman” or even “clever young woman.” But then, by calling me a girl he also avoids having to think about the uses to which I was put, and maybe even helps me not to think about them.

“A couple of thousand, I suspect,” said Natalya. “They may not all be disorganized rabble, though.”

They came to a hotel soon, but it was anything but inviting. Said Turgenev, looking it over while hiding his disgust, “I’d like to set ourselves up a house where we can be secure from prying eyes and eager ears. But to do that without risk we’ll need to nose around a good bit. And that takes time, while time demands shelter. So, in the interim, this… hotel… I suppose.

“And from here on out we’re all on a first name and patronymic basis.”

In Tobolsk, virtually everything was dear. This was unsurprising in a place mostly cut off from the rest of the world by snow and ice for eight months out of the year. That applied, too, to the accommodations. Indeed, given the quality of the appointments—the section was fortunate to have their own bedding—the price demanded was nothing less than insulting.

“We’ll take the insult,” whispered Turgenev to Mokrenko, who looked about ready to contest matters. “Rostislav Alexandrovich, we’ll take it; for now there is no choice.”

“One other thing,” said the proprietor, “there is a shortage of firewood in the town, mostly because of a shortage of labor. Even the tsar—excuse me; the former tsar—and his family, I have heard, cut their own. A very modest amount, enough to keep water from freezing, comes with your room. Beyond that, if you want to be comfortable, you can either sit in the dining room or go cut your own. If you cut extra, I’ll take the value of it off the price of your room.”

“This seems very fair, sir,” said Turgenev. “Perhaps we’ll be able to cut some extra. Is there, perchance, a place to find uncut wood or should we trek to the forest? And, on the subject of trekking, is there a good stable nearby for our horses?”

The proprietor looked right and left, carefully, then leaned close and whispered, “Were I you, I’d take your horses out of town. There’s a stable not too far east of the edge of town. But if the Bolsheviks see your horses, they’re likely to commandeer them, ‘for the revolution,’ which you may take to mean for their own convenience and profit.”

“Thank you, sir,” the lieutenant said. “Rostislav Alexandrovich, would you…”

“Be happy to, s… err… l… err… Comrade.”

Shit, I never told them my first name and patronymic.

“As my name is Maxim Sergeyevich Turgenev, I’ll make sure a dinner is saved for you. Hmmm, for the two of you; I think you should take someone else with you. Timashuk, you should be the one to go with Rostislav Alexandrovich.”

Half an hour later, the horses had been taken away, all the gear, including the ridiculous amount of gold and currency, had been moved up to the party’s rooms. These were three, plus a bath and a sort of living room. There was no proper Russian stove, such as stood at the confluence of lobby and dining room. At about two tons even the stout logs with which the hotel had been built would have given way under it. Instead, there were some smaller and less efficient heaters in the corners of the rooms.

“What do you want me to say to headquarters, s… err… Maxim Sergeyevich?” asked Sarnof. “I’ve already encoded one saying we’re here and safe.”

Turgenev dropped his voice to a whisper. “That won’t do anymore, Abraham Davidovich. For now… let me think… Line One: We’re here. Two: One man lost. Three: Royal family here. Four: We have over forty horses and five good sleighs. Five: Question: Should we try to buy rations? Six: Question: How much? Seven: There are about two hundred and two guards. Eight: Political leanings unknown. Nine: Cannot judge their competence yet. Ten: Target building is two stories and a basement. Eleven: Building area, per floor, about a fifteenth of a deyatina. Twelve: As many as two thousand and two disorganized rabble, under no command, in the town. Nothing but trouble. Encode that—don’t use the line numbers at all—and then go find the telegraph and send it off to Sweden.”

“That’s going to require consulting the novels we brought, s—comrade. We didn’t think of all this with this much specificity before we left. I may not be able to get it encoded until too late. Moreover, I think we need to follow the telegraph lines out of town, to find a place where I can tap in and send messages unseen.”

“Also, why two hundred and two guards, specifically, Maxim Sergeyevich? We don’t know to that level of accuracy. Same for two thousand and two.”

“The guards because no matter which way they read it, it will be about right. As for finding a place to tap the telegraph lines—also, come to think of it, a place to cut them—we’ll do it in good time,” agreed Turgenev. “Which is to say, we’ll look tomorrow, first thing.”

As it turned out, by the time Turgenev and Sarnof got to the telegraph station, it was closed. That meant a long, disappointed trudge back to their hotel, to an uninspired meal, which was at least hot, in a warm room, and then to cold rooms with cold beds. Mokrenko and Timashuk, the medic, made it back before dinner was over.

“Maxim Sergeyevich,” said the sergeant, sitting down at the rough table, “we are in the wrong line of work.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, yes, based on what that pirate of a stable master is charging us for the keeping of our horses. When the war is finally over, I propose we forget furs and form a company to import hay to Tobolsk. We’ll need some stout wagons, mind, as well as strong teams of horses, since hay, between Tyumen and here, seems to acquire the weight of solid gold…”

“That expensive, was it?” Money was, honestly, the least problem the team had. Even at Tobolsk prices, they were well set.

“Near enough to, yes,” answered Mokrenko. “To be fair, though, the horses already there were well cared for and, one supposes, it probably is expensive to bring hay in or even to cut it locally. I told him that our horses could forage for themselves. ‘Then let them go forage and stop wasting my time,’ the bastard answered.”

“That wouldn’t have had them at our beck and call when we need them,” Turgenev said.

“I know, which is why I agreed to the son of a bitch’s price.”

“Nothing to be done for it,” Turgenev said. “Eat up, though, you and Timashuk. The food’s… well… we’re in Tobolsk. It will do.”

“There was one bright spot,” Mokrenko said. “Pirate or not, where his business is concerned, the stable master is pretty free with information.”

Turgenev was about to kick the sergeant under the table when Mokrenko added, “Apparently, the best—well, at least the most convenient—fur wholesaler to deal with is the Stroganov concern.”

As Mokrenko and Timashuk finished their meal, the proprietor came over to their table. “You can stay here as long as you like,” he said, “but within the hour that great stove in the corner will start getting cold. As goes the stove, so goes the room. I advise buying a bottle and going to your rooms to drink yourself to sleep. Nothing else much helps with the cold.”

“I shudder to ask,” said Mokrenko, “but how much is a bottle of vodka in this place?”

“A chetvert, which is the minimum I would recommend, will cost you one hundred and thirty-five rubles.”

“Dear God,” said Timashuk.

“Everything,” said the proprietor, “costs more in Tobolsk.”

“We’ll take it,” said Turgenev. “Can we borrow half a dozen glasses, while we’re at it?”

“Surely. Those are already paid for and, unless you break one, I won’t have to pay more for them.”

Once arrived at the central sitting room of their suite, and after a quick check for chinks in the walls through which they might be heard, the lieutenant said, “We’ve never worked out where we’re going to sleep. There are only three beds, all doubles.”

“The men can share beds,” said Mokrenko. “The problem is with the girl.”

“I am sure,” she said, “that Maxim Sergeyevich is too much the gentleman to lay a finger on me. I’ll dress warmly before bed, so I do not impose on his modesty nor he on mine, and he can share a bed with me.”

Imagine my disappointment, she fumed, a few hours later, laying cold and shivering, despite her clothing, the blankets, and another body for heat, when it turned out that he is, in fact, too much of a gentleman to lay a finger on me.

Ulitsa Great Friday 19, Tobolsk, Russia

Once again, Mokrenko had had to explain to the lieutenant that he ought not be the one to speak to the photographers. “Your accent is still all wrong, Maxim Sergeyevich. Maybe the photographers will be sympathetic to the royal family and closed-mouthed. But maybe they’re flaming Reds, too. Better I should go and ask. Meanwhile, you and the rest can go scout out the town and start working on diagrams.”

Thus it came to be that Rostislav Alexandrovich Mokrenko found himself passing by the mansion wherein the Romanovs were held prisoner. He passed it, waving to the same soldier who had hustled them on earlier. Then, taking a short left off of Ulitsa Bolshaya Pyatnitskaya, and then an immediate right, Mokrenko found himself in the photography studio of Maria Ussokovskaya, in the house she shared with her husband, also a photographer, Ivan Konstantinovich Ussakovsky.

It was the wife, Maria, who opened the door for Mokrenko, asked his business, and led him upstairs to the studio. On the way, the sergeant was surprised to see postcards of the town being offered for sale, as well as portraits of the entire royal family, as well as their servants, retainers, teachers, and friends. He was especially shocked to see one of the infamous Rasputin decorating a portion of one wall.

Mokrenko wasn’t especially surprised that both were home. He’d assumed, not unreasonably, that the husband shared in the business. As it turned out, though, no, the husband, a government official, was home because the Bolsheviks had taken over the town and he didn’t know if he even had a job.

“And you know, Rostislav Alexandrovich,” said Ivan, a man of average height, hirsute, with his hair parted in the middle, “these people are lunatics. I mean, sure, a new government wants new people; I can understand that. But there are old services that still need to be performed and they haven’t a clue even of their existence and value. You would think they might ask, but, no; these people are already certain they know everything of value. I have never encountered such arrogance. Compared to the average Red, the tsar, himself, is a model of humility. And his daughters? The most shy and self-effacing…”

“Beautiful girls, too,” said Maria. She kept her hair rather short and had just missed being pretty. Even so, though, she was very well built and, on the whole, presented a pleasant aspect. “I’m a fairly good photographer, if I do say so myself, but I have never yet been able to capture even a small portion of how lovely those girls are.”

“Are you constrained from selling the portraits you have taken?” Mokrenko asked.

“Only if I’d signed a contract to that effect. Generally, I do not sign such.”

“Where did you manage to get portraits of the ex-tsar and his family?”

“At the governor’s mansion, which they’ve re-named ‘Freedom House,’ of course. The poor creatures are only allowed out one day a week, Sunday, to go to church, and that only for a few hours… and not always. We had to take their pictures for the ID cards they’re forced to carry—it’s only for the humiliation; as if everyone doesn’t know who they are—and I did a little extra.”

“May I see?” asked Mokrenko.

“They’re not secret or anything,” answered Maria. “Of course, you can.”

Mokrenko’s eyes it up when he saw the collection. There were not only portraits of the royal family, but in the course of taking those the Ussakovskys had also taken pictures of between a third and a half of the interior of the house. I shouldn’t be surprised; this is the closest photographer, so of course this was always where the tsar or the Reds were most likely to go.

The sergeant noticed the woman’s eyes were misty, as she sorted out the photographs for him. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She sniffed, slightly, “It’s just that those poor people have been put on soldiers’ rations, and not generous soldiers’ rations, at that, and have had their budget cut to the bone. And they’re freezing in that drafty old house. I feel terrible for them. It’s not fair, either; the girls and the little prince did nothing to deserve being mistreated.”

“I wonder,” asked Mokrenko, deciding that these people could probably be trusted either to support the royals or to not put two and two together, “if you would sell me copies of all the pictures you’ve taken of the royal family and their entourage. Also, if I may, I’d like to buy a selection of the postcards you have made of the town. There are some other pictures, too, I would like, if you have the time…”

“What a strange place,” said Turgenev, after dinner, when back in their quarters. “We found the market today and saw the strangest things.”

“Where’s that, Maxim Sergeyevich?” Mokrenko asked. “And what was strange about it?”

“Center of town. Some booths. Some people just laying their wares on cloths on the ground. But it was the kind of things on offer that was strange. For example, I saw a general’s full-dress uniform. Why would there be a general’s full-dress uniform here? And milk? Do you know how they sell milk here? They cut it with an axe, then weigh it and sell it by the pound!

“There were fur dealers there, too. Lesser lights than the Strogonovs, these were men, oh, and a couple of women, eager to carve out their own share of the fur market for themselves. I think we can get some good prices there. And you, Rostislav Alexandrovich?”

In answer, the sergeant laid out a sheaf of photographs. “There are more coming,” he explained and then, dropping his voice to a whisper, he said, “but with these we can truly brief the main force on the layout of the place, no?

“Oh, and Maxim Sergeyevich? I think you need to visit the cathedral we passed as we rode into town. Some very interesting things to be seen there.”

Interlude

Tatiana: Dear Aunt Ella

Despair is a sin.

It was that thought that kept me company in the middle of the night as I lay there, exhausted, yet unable to sleep.

If I slept the nightmare would come back. I’d been snatching bits of something I could not call rest ever since the night that Olga was violated.

Raped. She was raped.

I sat up and threw the covers off, adrenaline coursing through my veins, heart racing. Clumsily, I shoved my feet into slippers and rooted through the blankets and coats atop my bed for my robe.

My fingers were still shaking as I cinched the robe tight. Given what had happened—Raped. She was raped.—I shouldn’t have dared leave our room, shouldn’t have dared leave my sisters, but I also couldn’t spend another moment curled up like a child, hiding under the blankets, pretending sleep while I waited for Olga to start muttering and whimpering to herself.

I blundered my way past my sisters’ beds, through the quiet halls to my father’s study. There was something about its musty smell, the aroma of cigars, the lingering scent of uncleared glasses and ashtrays that soothed.

My fingers found the lamp and clicked it on.

One of Mama’s blankets sat in a pile nearby. I picked it up to fold it, defaulting to habit, succumbing to the need to do something. Instead, I draped it around my shoulders, sat down, and pulled a few blank sheets of paper and a fountain pen from one of the drawers.

Dear Aunt Ella, I wrote. The tip of the pen paused at the start of the next line. A drop of ink pooled at the tip as I pressed it into the paper.

I eased it off before it could bleed more of its black blood.

I wanted to write about cheerful things, the kind of normal, frivolous things that make up happy times. Instead, my heart bled all over the letter.

I wrote about what happened, about Yermilov, the man who defiled my sister, who took all of his hatred of us and used it to hurt her, to tear her body and mind and soul apart.

My hand trembled as I wrote, distorting the script.

A tear dropped, hitting the fresh ink, spiderwebbing the black blood from the pen with its misery.

I could see Yermilov’s hatchet face, his dark eyes, alive with hatred. Hatred for Russia, for us Romanovs, for royals and nobles.

God help me, but I could feel his hot breath in my ear, putrid and wet. It wasn’t Olga he was hurting. It was me. And then Maria. And Anastasia. Alexei.

The ink on the paper no longer formed letters or words, or even lines. My chest was shaking like it did when it was too cold and I couldn’t stop it.

The things I saw in Yermilov’s eyes. The power. Power over us, our lives, our bodies, our minds. I wouldn’t understand it until years later that what he had done was for power. Finally, he was, at least in his own mind, equal. The Romanovs had been brought down. One of us, and in some ways, all of us including Mama and Papa, were under him, at his mercy, crying, begging.

All of us bled for him.

What a rush of power it must have given this small, angry, despicable creature that thought of itself as a man and what it could do as manhood. What a rush to put the mighty in their place, to fuck an uncommon girl, to hurt her, put her in her place, to give her what she and her kind deserved.

Finally, for once in his life, he had power over all the wrongs done to him, and somehow he thought that they could be remedied with raping an innocent who had no power, no say, in whatever injustices the world had dealt him.

And it would be many years before I could understand my own guilt because there was a part of me that was glad it hadn’t been me, that all I had to complain about were my bad dreams. And I was glad that Yermilov was dead and that the little ones—my dear sisters and brother—would not have to fear him.

By the time the ink was dry, both my pen and my eyes were empty.

I felt wrung out, my limbs heavy, but I could finally take a breath without shaking. I thought that I could sleep again, at least for a little while, without nightmares. My eyelids drooped and I pushed away from the desk so that I would not doze off.

I gathered the sheets together, stacked them neatly, and took them to the hearth.

One by one, I ripped the sheets into small pieces, scattering them into the pile reserved for kindling. I dared not send the letter. Papa must not know. Not now, not ever. It would destroy him.

The last sheet shook in my hands, the last few legible words, No one cares. The world has forgotten about us, glaring back at me.

Chapter Twenty

Range G6, Camp Budapest

Down in the multistory underground building, otherwise known as Range G6, the boys of Fourth Company practiced what soon acquired the name of “ladder drill.” This involved rapidly porting their self-created flexible ladders to a wall with an opening, setting them up without losing any fingers, and ascending them by squads, fast.

Every time, thought Daniil, that I think we’ve got a handle on the problem, something new comes up. And half of it that I should have thought of, myself, was, in fact, thought of by the rank and file.

Take this, for example; if the people we want to free are on the first floor of a building, then we cannot go in on the ground floor, or we’ll be, in the first place, late in securing them and, in the second, we’ll drive anyone we don’t kill in among them. So… what should have been obvious to me, and wasn’t, was obvious to a private who was paying attention.

Note to self: Mark Guardsman Repin down for promotion and more advanced schooling, both for realizing we needed ladders and coming up with a design.

The design in question was, essentially, three six-foot ladders, with one in the middle tied to one on each of its ends, and iron pipes of the right dimension to hold them together and upright, once assembled. It was probably obvious enough a solution, but had taken a certain amount of trimming to make the upper portions of the downward two sections shorter so that the pipe would slide over them. It had the disadvantage of having two places with uneven rungs, and no really good way to shorten it if the target window or porch or door was low.

They’d experimented with one other design, an eighteen-foot ladder that was composed of two ladders, joined at the top and with a hooked chain to keep them upright. That had proven to be prohibitively heavy for rapid emplacement or carrying any distance in a hurry.

Still, at two poods per ladder, these aren’t exactly light either. There’s a difference though, between heavy and impossible.

There were only four ladders built, though given the rough usage, I am pretty sure we ought to build another four. Yeah… another four.

Down below, one of the squads—Sergeant Bogrov’s, I think it is—seemed to have come up with an ideal drill for the ladders. This involved running forward to a wall, with four men, two on each side, carrying the ladders, and the other two watching out for threats. As soon at the top of the ladder reached the wall, Kostyshakov saw, all four let go. The back pair then bent, grabbed the section lying on top, and ran backwards with it. While that was going on the front pair pushed the iron cylinders into place. Then the four elevated the ladder and dropped it just under a window in the wall ahead of them. It took about eighteen seconds to erect one, from reaching the wall to the first man scrambling up, after a little practice.

“Sir?”

Kostyshakov turned to see one of the men from the intelligence office. Guardsman Bernadelli, if I recall correctly.

“Message, sir, from Strat Recon. There’s a good bit in it, but the really important things, says Sergeant Major Nenonen, is that they’ve found the royal family; all are in Tobolsk. That, and Strat Recon has acquired fifty good horses.”

Daniil suddenly felt his heart lift so far and so fast it threatened to emerge from his left shoulder. Everything we’ve done, so far, was just a waste of time without this. Thank you, God, and thank you, too, Lieutenant Turgenev.

“Wonderful!” he said to the messenger. “Best news I’ve had in months. Have the Germans been told?”

“No, sir. For different reason, Sergeant Major Nenonen says you ought to tell them. He also says you had better come to headquarters before you do.”

“I’ll be on my way. Tell Strat Recon that we’d like hidden space for five hundred men and as much food as can be reasonably obtained.”

“Yes, sir.”

Daniil started to read down the twelve items in the message. The number in line twelve was a shocker. I need to ask for more details about them. I’d be willing to take on two thousand rabble, but what if there’s more a chain of command than Turgenev thinks?

“The war’s over,” said Basanets, the ungainly-tall battalion executive officer, rarely seen but almost always operating behind the scenes. “As of yesterday, it’s over. Well, not in the west but the Reds signed a treaty with the Germans. They’ve given up… God, I don’t want to think about what they’ve—we’ve—given up to the Nemetsy.”

“It works out to a third of our population, half our industry, and almost ninety percent of our coal,” said Nenonen. “And I don’t know what to do. Finland is on its own; am I a Finn or a Russian soldier or what?”

“Did you agree to do this mission?” snapped Kostyshakov.

“Yes, sir. Of course, I did.”

“Did you just say ‘our’ to describe what’s been stolen from us?”

“Yes, sir, naturally.”

“Then you’re a Russian soldier, at least until we’ve accomplished our mission, and for as long after as you adhere to the Empire.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, I never meant I’d abandon the mission. It’s just…”

“I understand.”

“Do we tell the troops?” asked Basanets.

Kostyshakov went silent then, and stayed that way for some time, thinking. If we tell them how do we control them and keep them from taking revenge on the Germans here? No, people are not rational. And an army is just a mob with a sense of teamwork. And how do we accomplish our mission without the Germans. We’ve no chance of getting anywhere without that airship. And we’re not even quite ready to go even if we went now. I wonder…

“Who knows?” he asked Basanets.

“Within the hour the whole camp will.”

“I see. Assemble the battalion. I’ll speak to them in two hours’, no, three hours’ time. Are Major Brinkmann or Feldwebel Weber available?”

“Brinkmann’s already gone to consult with General Hoffmann, sir,” said Nenonen. “Weber’s here.”

“Send someone for him.”

“It’s simple greed and paranoia,” said Weber. “I wish I could put a better face on it than that, but I can’t. Before leaving to see Hoffmann, Major Brinkmann told me that Hoffmann was dead set against this scale of theft, but he’s already on thin ice with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, so couldn’t do much.”

“Is the mission still on?” asked Kostyshakov. “Will we have the zeppelin to take us where we’re going?”

“As far as I know, sir. Certainly, I’ve seen no changed orders.”

“Any suggestions on how I present this to my troops? We’ve all gotten along very well, so far, but this could turn your guards into real guards and my Imperial Guards into sullen mutineers.”

“I’d say… be fairly up front and honest, but maybe not fully honest. For example, it wasn’t the tsar who gave away all this, it was the Bolsheviks. That’s still more evidence that they’re enemies of Russia, isn’t it, sir?

“As for us, what choice did we have? Did Germany have a moral choice? Should we, in fact, have condemned tens of millions of Russian citizens, as Christian as we are, ourselves, to Bolshevik slavery, to atheism, to the dictatorship of the Reds?

“Did Germany have a practical choice, either? We’ve got millions of men, here, ourselves and the Austrians, all of them desperately needed in the west. How do we move them where needed without a thick buffer it would take the Reds—or the tsar, for that matter—months or years to reoccupy?

“And then there’s the future…”

“Break ranks,” Daniil called out in his loudest shout. “Break ranks, gather round, and take seats.”

“Anyone who hasn’t heard yet, raise your hands.” Perhaps fifty men, or a few less, hadn’t gotten the news.

“Okay, for your sakes, here it is: The Reds have effectively surrendered to Germany, ceding about a third of our population, half our industry, and a huge portion of our coal, maybe as much as nine tenths.”

Not unexpectedly, the battalion began a low grumbling, with the men casting angry glances the way of the German guards, though not, interestingly enough, at Taenzler.

“In the first place,” said Daniil, “who can blame them? You think we would not have sliced away a good chunk of German and Austria-Hungary if we’d won? Be serious, boys; it’s the way the game is played. We played; we lost; and now the Reds are paying up.”

The grumbling reduced but did not go away.

“Now savor that, for a moment,” said Daniil, “the Reds gave it away. Not the tsar, not the people, the Reds. You want to be angry at someone, don’t turn on the Germans who’ve been helping us these last several months; think about the Reds who are holding our true ruler and his family as prisoners.

“Moreover, what should the Germans have done? Left all those people, our countrymen in the past and in the future, to the none too tender mercies of the Reds? To the terrorists? To the atheists? To the people who shout ‘power to the people’ but only mean ‘power to the people who shout power to the people’? We should be happy that a third of our people have been kept out of the hands of the Bolshevik slave masters. For now, unless we succeed in our mission.

“Finally, I want you to think about the future. Specifically, I want you to think about how we get our patrimony back. The Germans aren’t actually taking much for themselves, you know. So, if we do our job, and Russia acquires a legitimate ruler again, there’s no particular reason not to expect our country to be made whole again, given a little time.

“Now, I have time for a few questions, but not many as we have to get back to training…”

Brest-Litovsk

“I have a question, sir,” said Major Brinkmann, during one of the walks that had become quite infrequent since the beginning of what Hoffmann thought of as The Budapest Project.

“No need, Major; yes, of course I intend that the Russians should still go and save their royal family.”

“Thank you, sir; I and they appreciate that, I am sure. But the question is really how do we do this legitimately, now that we’re at peace with the Bolsheviks. Sending enemy armed forces on our airships to liberate their prisoners, you know, is not exactly a friendly act.”

“Hmmm… good point, Brinkmann. Let’s see. In the first place, I have carte blanche from the kaiser to do what it necessary to free his cousins and the Hesse and by Rhine women. Mind, he tends to fold when confronted by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, so I can’t do any of that too openly. So… we have an airship…”

“An airship and two fighters, now, General.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot about the two fighters. Where are they, by the way?”

“They’re at Jambol, with the airship. Once a crossing point over the lines is picked they’ll displace forward with their pilots and ground crew to act as escorts, to and from.”

“Ah, good. Now where was I?”

“‘We have an airship… ’”

Hoffmann was not merely the best staff officer of the war, he was great in a crisis, cool, calm, collected, and—above all—ruthless. “Ah, yes. We have an airship, but it’s at loose ends. So we’re going to report it as in serious need of maintenance after its flight to Africa, much more serious than originally thought—and didn’t you say they’re making substantial modifications to carry troops? Well, there you are. Then we’re going to form a corporation, I think, in Sofia. Consult a lawyer there.”

“A corporation?”

“Yes, an air transport corporation. Where there’s a will there’s a lawyer; find a competent one and let him figure it out. But let’s call it something like ‘Sofia-Moscow Air Transport.’ Then we lease the airship to the corporation. Of course, the corporation will pay for the lease with money we’ll give them from captured Russian pay chests, but let’s not worry about trivia, eh? I think maybe the airship ought to have a double-headed eagle painted on it, too, to let anyone who sees it know it isn’t German.”

“All well and good, sir, I mean, except for the fraud and lies parts. Oh, and the theft and conversion and…”

“Cease, Brinkmann, your naysaying. It’ll be fine. Now, as for the crew… arrange discharges into the reserves for the lot, then instant hiring, at much higher pay, by Sofia-Moscow Air Transport, Incorporated. Explain to them that they can go along with it, or they go into the camp that will soon enough be vacated by the Russians. I’m sure they’ll see reason. Oh, and tell them they’re back in the kaiser’s service as soon as their mission is complete.”

Brinkmann sighed, thinking, This is so much harder and so much more dangerous—to us, personally—than he seems to…

“And, yes, Brinkmann; I know the risks we’re taking. Would you rather have the Bolsheviks on Germany’s border, eventually, or to take a few risks now?”

Camp Budapest

Romeyko was ready to tear his hair out by the roots. After spending days, and nearly twenty-four hour days, at that, working with Weber and that aviator, Mueller, calculating how to get the battalion to western Siberia in five lifts, Kostyshakov had had the gall to come back and say, “Forget the animals, the fodder, and the wagons; they’ve all been taken care of for us.”

And then the inconsiderate bastard had had the effrontery, as he left the quartermaster’s office, to call over his shoulder, “Figure out, too, if we need to buy food there.”

Okay, then; let’s start by trying to work it as three lifts, with three days’ travel, loading, and unloading travel each way. That means the Fourth Company will be in flight or on the ground, needing to eat, for… mmm… three days out… six days until the next lift… six days until the last lift… then maybe one to get to the objective…

No, wait; assume we leave to cross the front—which Weber informs me has moved east a good deal—at night. Okay, that means we leave… mmm… after lunch on departure days. Two hours to load, since the animals and their fodder aren’t a factor anymore… so only one meal required in flight. Zweiback, cheese, and what passes for sausage. So only one pound, for dinner only, in flight, lift-off day. That saves two and a half pounds per man…

“Hey,” he said to one of the clerks, “get me that new German, Mueller. Tell him to hurry.”

“Yes, sir; you sent for me?”

“Ah, Herr Mueller, thank you for coming so quickly. There are some questions I cannot answer that I hope you can.” And he seems very young, but looks more than adequately intelligent.

“If I can, sir, and if it isn’t classified…”

“Well, only you can tell us what is and isn’t a secret. Here, look at the map.” Romeyko stretched their best large-scale map out over the chalkboards, brushing sticks of chalk away with one hand. “We’re going from here to—so it appears now—Tobolsk, Russia, or a spot a bit south of it. We don’t want to be seen crossing the lines, such as they are. So when are we going to have to take off, to make the crossing in the dark?”

“No matter what we do, sir,” said the German airship sailor, “if we’re leaving around the twenty-sixth of March, it’s not going to be all that dark?”

“No?”

“No, sir; it will be a nearly full moon up and it rises at about five-thirty, PM. The sun sets half an hour after that and rises just after moonset the next day. In that time frame, there is no time we can count on complete darkness. What we’ll do, though, is make sure that we never get between the moon and a major settlement. That should help.”

“Ah… so when would we have to take off to cross over near say…” —Romeyko’s hand searched the map—“this place, Yekaterinoslav, so that it’s as dark as it can be when we cross?”

“Let me think, sir… distance looks to be about eleven hundred kilometers.” Mueller turned his finger and thumb into a makeshift compass calipers and measured off the distance. “Yes, close enough to eleven hundred. We can travel at about one hundred and three kilometers per hour so… let’s call it eleven hours of flight to get to Yekaterinoslav. To cross lines at nineteen-thirty, well after the end of evening nautical twilight, we’ll need to leave at eight-thirty in the morning.”

Romeyko did some more scribbling on his chalk boards. “That should work,” he said. “We can feed an early breakfast and lunch, lunch out of Taenzler’s Gulaschkanone, right at the airship’s hangar.

“So let me see…” More chalky scribbling followed. “If we load for the first lift one hundred and thirty-seven men… at ninety of your kilograms each… and sixty-seven hundred kilograms of food… yes, that should work.”

“What about the horses and mules, sir?”

“Did no one tell you? No animals; our forward reconnaissance team has found us enough and more. We needn’t take wagons either.”

“Praise God,” muttered Mueller. “You can load more men or ammunition now.”

“Well, yes,” agreed the rat-faced Romeyko, “but then we’re on God’s work, no?”

Mueller only nodded, then said, “The skipper will be doing handstands of joy when he finds out he won’t have horses and mules shitting all over his airship.”

“Likely. Can’t blame him. Okay, now for lift two…” Scribble-scribble-scribble-erase-curse-throw-a-piece-of-chalk. Then pick up another and scribble some more. “Okay, lift two… one hundred and fifty-three men, mostly from Second Company, two infantry guns with limbers, one hundred and sixty-one kilograms, plus another two hundred and ninety-one in 37mm ammunition, plus forty-eight hundred kilograms of food. That sound sensible to you?”

Mueller couldn’t read Cyrillic, so had to go with Romeyko’s words. “We might need to put in some ladders to get men up to hammocks in higher spaces but I think that’s feasible, sir. Plenty of room for the guns and their limbers on the cargo deck.”

“Good so far. Now let’s think about third lift. It’s got to contain Third Company and most of what’s left of Headquarters and Support… one hundred and eighty-four men… two heavy machine guns with a ton of ammunition… just under two tons of food.” Romeyko shot an inquisitive glance at Mueller.

Said the German, “I don’t see a necessary problem, though sleeping space will have to be sorted out. I’m going to ask the skipper, when I see him in three days, if we can put in one hundred and eighty-four hammocks from the beginning, so we don’t have to screw around with reconfiguring while loading, in a no-doubt panic-stricken hurry.

“Ummm,” continued the German, slightly embarrassed, “sir, have you or any of your men flown before?”

“None of us, so far as I know,” said Romeyko, “and I certainly have not.”

“Then I’m going to ask the captain, too, if we can violate regulations and get everyone a little tipsy. I don’t even want to think about dealing with a hundred tough Russian Imperial Guards in a panic and running amok… in an airship.”

“Tell you what,” said the quartermaster. “You ask your skipper and I’ll talk my commander into it because, you are absolutely right, we do not want a panic.”

“So,” said Romeyko, “up to two and a half days in the air. Half a chetvert of vodka per man. There goes the food savings from feeding early breakfast and lunch. Oh, well.”

“One other thing, sir?”

“Yes, Herr Mueller.”

“I went up last night and watched your troops clearing one of the underground buildings you’ve set up. Those carbide lamps, sir? I asked one of your officers how they worked. Well, the skipper will not let them get aboard in anyone’s hands. That won’t be a negotiable point; they must all be collected and completely cleaned out of carbide. With the water chambers kept entirely separate from the carbide chambers.”

Romeyko groaned as he immediately saw the pain in the ass of that. “We’ve got a dozen different sizes and makes. If we don’t keep them together, it will be a pure bitch getting the right sections together again. We had one young idiot who set himself afire when he mismatched from two different types.”

“Sir, I’m telling you what my captain is going to say. No fire hazard will be permitted aboard an airship. Umm… sir, are you flying with us?”

“Yes,” said Romeyko, “though I’m planning on going on the third lift.”

“Well, sir, all that space in the airship? It’s almost all hydrogen gas. Very flammable, sir. Also tiny little molecules that leak out of the gas bags continuously. Sir, do you know what our aircrews do if they take a hit from a tracer and catch fire? They don’t try to fight the fire; there’s no chance of that. They just cross themselves and jump to their deaths, because it’s better than burning alive. Not even any time to put on a parachute, assuming you’re optimistic enough to trust something with a forty percent or more failure rate. Just jump and get it over with.”

“I see,” said Romeyko, with a sudden vision of doing the same himself. “When I talk to Kostyshakov about the vodka, I’ll explain to him the problem with the carbide lights.”

“And matches, sir. And cigarette lighters… any smoking material, actually. Ummm… sir, besides the vodka, you haven’t accounted for drinking water. They’re not going to be very active, of course, tied into their hammocks but they’ll still need some.”

“Can we drink from your ballast tanks? They’re full of water, right?”

“Well… yes. It might not be very pleasant water. But the problem there is that, as you drink the ballast, and then piss over the side, the ship gets lighter and rises more.”

“Yeah,” Romeyko conceded. “Silly of me. I… hey, is there more than one ballast section?”

“Yes, sir, several.”

“Can we drink from one and piss in another?”

Range G6, Camp Budapest

It was dress rehearsal, the final rehearsal, the proof of concept, the Sine qua non of the whole enterprise. They’d been training in the day on the theory that the carbide lamps would provide almost as good light at daylight, but they knew this wasn’t quite true. Even with six men, with six working lamps set on the highest setting, it wasn’t quite equal to daylight still.

But it was decent, particularly with six of them flaring in a single room.

Pretty good, thought Daniil, standing on the lip of the great hole containing the two-story underground log building. Only the top floor of that was open to view. Control inside depended on the Fourth Company cadre.

Second platoon had already gone through, and done well. Then, after a couple of hours’ worth of setting up the building again, undoing the damage, and putting out some fires, it was First platoon’s turn.

Staggered up the ramp leading down to the ground level of the buildings, in a column of twos, waited, in darkness, the company cadre and the men of First Assault Platoon, Fourth Company (Grenadiers), plus their engineer, sniping, and medical attachments. The platoon was down to thirty men, including attachments, from the thirty-two they’d started with, as a result of one training fatality, Sotnikov, and one trooper, Sobchak, who simply lost self-confidence and asked to be moved to a position less taxing. Sobchak was a company runner now. There were also a couple of men with small injuries from training but, at this point, they’d rather die than miss the festivities.

If pretty good is enough.

“Annnndddd… GO!” ordered the First platoon leader, Lieutenant Collan, the atypically short but still highly Nordic Finn.

Instantly, the platoon sprang into action. The scene lit up as twenty-eight lights—everyone’s but the sniper team’s—on twenty-eight helmets flashed to life, the men rolling the strikers with middle fingers. Then the lead squad, under Sergeant Tokarev, launched themselves forward, Tokarev and Guardsman Korchagin, each with a substantial section of log on his back, taking security while the other four carried the ladder forward.

Boom! and the ladder was on the ground. Creak-squeak and it was extended to its full eighteen feet. Groans and grunts from the four bearers as pipes were set and then, with another thud, it was hoisted against the wall, the top end just below a window. Up the ladder scrambled first Tokarev and then Korchagin. Dropping his MP18 to hang by its sling, Tokarev lifted the log overhead and smashed it through the light wood window frame in a move that would have smashed glass had it been there. Then pulling a flash grenade from his belt, Tokarev armed it, counted off three seconds, and tossed it into the room beyond the window. He closed his eyes and dropped his head below the level of the window until he sensed the flash through his eyelids.

Up, up, Tokarev scrambled. Shouting, “Romanovs down!” in Russian and heavily Russian-accented English, he scanned the room for visible targets. One he saw he serviced in an instant, with a short burst from his machine pistol, then he leapt through the window.

There were two hay-stuffed assemblies of female clothing on the floor. “Civilians get to the corner! Keep low! Crawl to the corner!” Tokarev ordered, in Russian this time, and done rather pro forma. Through the window came Korchagin, Corporal Shabalin, Jacobi, the shotgun-armed, demolition pack carrying engineer, and then, one by one, Guardsmen Fedin, Lukin, and Blasov.

Blasov kicked open the door to the next room, while the others made ready. Two more flash grenades sailed through the door, exploding with muffled booms.

“Romanovs down!” rang out, even as the platoon leader, Lieutenant Collan, entered the room through the window, one runner in attendance. Following Collan, Second squad, under Sergeant Yumachev, began piling in, with the other engineer in tow.

Submachine gun fire rattled from further into the building.

“Shield your eyes,” was followed by the thunderous bang as Jacobi blasted a lock apart with his shotgun.

“Romanovs to the floor! Romanovs down!”

“That way!” ordered Collan, pointing with an outstretched arm in a direction perpendicular from the way First squad had gone.

“Follow meeeee!”

Boom-flash! “Romanovs down!” The MP18s resumed their chatter.

Sergeant Bogrov’s troops were erecting a second ladder, Kostyshakov saw. He noted, too, that the snipers had taken a position just at and behind the building’s corner. Preventing reinforcements, I suppose, that being all they can do on this range.

Between the flash grenades and the muzzle flashes, this place is like a movie theater with the projector rolling too slowly.

“Romanovs down! Get to the corner!” Boom!

Funny how it sounds like cloth ripping when three of the MP18s let go at once.

“Vasenkov! Bok! Guard that stairway down!”

“Sergeant Bogrov, Headquarters, assemble on me!”

That’s Collan. Fine boy. We need to find a way to keep Finland in the Empire, whatever it takes. They’re just too good to lose.

“Romanovs down!” Boom. Chatterchatterchatterchatter. “Follow meeee!” “Urrah!” “Down! Down! Down!”

From the initial entry point, Kostyshakov saw some of those bundles of clothing filled with hay being ejected. One of them fell on the sniper, Corporal Nomonkov.

They’ll climb down in real life, the way sacks of hay cannot. But the escort part the boys seem to have down pretty… well, yes, pretty damned good.

“Romanovs down!”

Daniil stuck around for the after action review. He didn’t have a lot to say, himself, beyond, “Well done. After everything I’ve seen, yes, we can do this. Oh, yes, we fucking can.”

“Captain Cherimisov?”

“Sir.”

“Dismiss the men. Squad leaders on up, battalion mess for our movement orders.”

“Sir!”