The Romanov Rescue

Chapter Twenty-one

Tobolsk

The negotiations were for appearances’ sake and nothing but. With the amount of money on hand, Turgenev—for once in a position where his aristocratic accent and manners weren’t a handicap—could have bought considerably more than two warehouses and one safe house.

As it turned out nothing worthwhile was for sale. There were, however, places to lease. There were, in fact, two warehouses for lease, perhaps twenty-five arshini by thirty, in one case, and thirty by thirty-five, in the other. One was near the pretty much abandoned for the fall, winter, and spring river docks, the northernmost set, sitting inside a little apparently artificial bay. The other was at the southwestern edge of the town, perhaps a versta and a half from the Irtysh River.

The safe house, a decent sized log building with a good Russian stove in the center of the main room, was a bit to the south and several blocks to the east of the Cathedral of the Annunciation. It was two floors, with a basement, the basement having a kind of root cellar to it. The rent was appalling but, as the realtor explained, “It does at least have a winter’s worth of firewood with it. That’s something, this year.”

“Can’t you…?” began Turgenev, forcing a tone of exasperation into his voice that he really didn’t feel.

“Sir,” replied the realtor, who recognized “quality” when he saw it, “if I tried to drop the rent a kopeck the owner would skin me. And if I told him I was renting to a competitor—you gentleman are in the fur trade, yes?—he’d pour salt on the freshly exposed flesh as he cut.”

“But I’m taking a lease for a whole year!”

“Even so. Sir, I can’t.”

With feigned disgust, Turgenev pulled out some of the oversized currency exchanged with Saskulaana and proceeded to peel off five hundred and one hundred ruble notes.

“Can you direct me,” he asked, as he passed the wad over, “to where I can buy a large quantity of food? We’re going to be bringing in a hundred hunters and trappers for two months and they’ll need to eat.”

“Oh, sir, this is the worst time to try to buy food in Tobolsk. We have no rail line so everything must come down the river or be pulled by animals. The river stays frozen for another two, maybe two and a half months. Yes, of course there will be some for sale, but you can expect the price to be outrageous.”

“Even so, they must eat. I don’t suppose…?”

“I’ll make some discreet inquiries.”

Turgenev translated this as, “I will consider which of my relatives to favor and will jack up the price accordingly.”

“You could, too,” said the realtor, “do some hunting yourselves for meat. The animals, too, will be a little thin but still.”

“Rostislav Alexandrovich?”

“Yes, Maxim Sergeyevich?”

“Since we have a couple of rifles, why don’t you and one other of our party take a few horses, rent a sleigh, and do a little hunting.”

“Define ‘a little.’”

“A thousand pood would not be too much.”

“I’ll see what we can do. Do you mind if I range rather far? As we came north from our earlier scouting expedition I saw a lot of sign.”

“Certainly.”

While Mokrenko was making his arrangements, Turgenev took Natalya for a walk about the town. Whatever she imagined might be the purpose, there was not a shred of romance in his intent. She was, frankly, just cover. Who, after all, does combat reconnaissance with a young girl in tow?

Three blocks west from the safe house and a bit to the north led them to the Cathedral of the Annunciation, the very place, though Turgenev didn’t know it, where the royal family was sometimes allowed to attend services.

They found the priest inside, standing at the altar and gazing intently at one in particular of the icons. Turgenev was loath to interrupt but, finally, ahemed his way to the cleric’s attention.

“Excuse me, Father,” Turgenev said. “I represent a fur trading firm looking to expand our enterprise here in Tobolsk. We’ve taken a house a few blocks east of here. My sister and I were looking for a place we could attend mass.”

“You don’t want to come here,” said the priest, who further introduced himself as “Father Vladimir Khlynov.” “My predecessor, Father Alexei Vasiliev, is in terrible disfavor with the Reds guarding the tsar and his family, so Bishop Germogen exiled him to a monastery for his own safety. I cannot encourage anyone to attend this church; those men are fanatics and vindictive, both.”

“A terrible combination,” Turgenev agreed. “Are you, personally in disfavor?”

“No,” answered the priest, “but while I am serving as in charge of this cathedral I might as well be.”

“What happened?”

Father Vladimir gave a sad sigh, then stated, “The tsar was here for mass at Christmas and the chorus, at Father Alexei’s direction, sang the ‘Mnogoletie,’ the wish for a long life to the tsar. The Reds were not amused. But then we didn’t do it to amuse them, did we, but to let our tsar and his family know that we support them still.”

“Do you?”

“How can I not?” replied Vladimir. “They cannot come to mass here, anymore, so I go to them when it’s allowed. And, when it isn’t, I go up to the bell tower and bless them, from a distance.”

“We saw the tower when we arrived,” Turgenev said. “Can you see them from up there?”

“When they’re in the right area, yes.”

“Could I see?” Natalya asked.

“Surely, child,” the priest replied. “Why don’t you and your brother just go on up? While you’re up there, say a prayer for our tsar and his family, why don’t you?”

The lieutenant observed, “A single sniper up here, Natalya, could command Ulitsa Great Friday all the way to the Church of Zachary and Elizabeth.”

“Does that matter?” she asked.

“It might. It might be a place for Kostyshakov to put in a sniper or machine gun team. It might be a place we need to make sure the Reds don’t put in a sniper or machine gun team.”

“I need to make a confession,” she said.

Turgenev had been dreading this moment. The girl’s crush had been obvious for some time, probably at least since the time he’d pulled a half-drowned Babin from the Black Sea. And he liked her, too, of course. Nor did he blame her for the abuse she’d suffered. But he was too old, or she too young, for anything romantic. Maybe in five or seven years.

“Go ahead,” he said, dreading the expected revelation.

She leaned against the wall, back toward the governor’s house. It was mostly to steady herself. Even then, though, she hung her head, ashamed.

“I should have told you when you first freed me but, you see, when the Bolsheviks murdered my parents, they knew who I was. Their abuse because of that was horrific, much worse than simple rape. So I didn’t want anyone to know who I was anymore lest I be beaten or raped… well, raped differently… because of who my parents were. I suppose they didn’t tell Vraciu because then he might have shown me some consideration before selling me back to one of my relatives.”

“Tell him what?”

Again, she sighed. “Tell him the reason they abused me… sold me. Maxim Sergeivich, with the deaths of my parents, I inherited… well… their status. I am a baroness. No, no huge estates, but a ‘proprietary’ baroness all the same, since we do… did… have a decent sized farm. But… well… it’s worse than that, really. The royal family… mmm… we’ve met. I was little then but they might still recognize me, because I look so much like my father.”

“Does anyone else—anyone else in our party—know?”

“Sergeant Mokrenko guessed, I think. Then he caught me out, twice, at least twice, as having a better education than a simple peasant girl ought to have had, or to be expected to have had.”

“Yes, if anyone would have guessed…” Turgenev laughed at himself. “You know, Baroness Sorokin, I can’t tell if I’m disappointed or thrilled.”

“Disappointed, why?” she asked.

“I was afraid you were about to utter a declaration of undying love.”

“Why,” she asked, dryly, “would I make a declaration of something that is so obvious? I’ve decided you think I’m too young and love you the more for that. I am; I am young, not stupid or blind. But in five years, or seven, at the outside, and maybe as few as three, Maxim Sergeyevich, you belong to me. Period. If, that is, you are not disgusted by what they made of me, the Reds and the crew.”

“Don’t be silly. You want to talk about peoples’ bodies being used for obscene purposes? I’ll tell you about the war sometime. That was an obscene purpose. And I had no more will in it than you did.

“All right,” he said, “in five years we’ll open this discussion again. In the interim, how do you actually feel about the royal family?”

“I don’t know the tsarevich, Alexei,” she replied, “but the four girls—OTMA, they call themselves, as a group—are wonderful. You would think they would be spoiled, right? Self-centered? Stuck up? Bitchy? They’re not. They cleaned their own rooms, made their own beds, and took cold baths. Think about that; cold baths, in Saint Petersburg, in the middle of winter? They’re regular people, at heart. They’d all adore being regular people, in fact.”

Turgenev went silent for a moment, thinking hard. I wonder if…

“Hmmm… you know, it would help if we had someone who could act as a go between. Do you think you could get in there as a maid to them? My little spy? But without telling them much of anything… or anything at all?”

“I will try. For you, I will try.”

Governor’s House, Tobolsk

It turned out, as such things will, to be harder than that; the former tsar wasn’t hiring. Turned away at the gate by the main entrance to the Governor’s House, Natalya wasn’t sure what to do. She turned south again, heading to their safe house, and was met by Turgenev coming north on his continuing reconnaissance of the town.

“I don’t know what to do, Maxim Sergeyevich,” she said, when they turned east toward the center of town and the market. “How do I get in to work in a place that isn’t hiring because they have no money to pay staff?”

Turgenev didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he mentally counted the paces from the southwestern corner of the Kornilov House, to its northwestern corner, and then the same for two eastern corners of the Governor’s House.

“Olga is looking out the window,” Natalya said. “No, don’t turn and stare. Just trust me, she’s there with… mmm… someone I don’t recognize… a man.”

“Too busy counting to look,” the lieutenant replied. “In any case, I believe you. Now. remember these figures, Natalya… thirty-four arshini, forty-one arshini.”

“Thirty-four and forty-one,” she echoed. “What are those, anyway?”

“The exterior dimensions of the Kornilov House and ‘Freedom’ House, on their long axes. I’ll get the other dimensions later.”

“Oh. Why do those matter?”

“I’ll explain to you later, if you remind me. Indeed, you can help me with a certain project I have in mind.

“As to what to do, I don’t know, Natalya,” Turgenev replied. “If you offered them money to let you work there, it would raise suspicions. Maybe if we had a way to introduce money to the household, they could then hire staff. But would they hire a new girl or take back old staff they’ve had to let go? I confess, I don’t know. While we think about this, let’s go shopping for some rope and, after that, maybe get some lunch.”

“What kind of rope?” she asked.

“Different kinds or, rather, different colors.”

“What for? The horses?”

“No,” he answered, with a shake of his head. “If we can yet find a way to introduce you into the house or houses, I want to use it to trace out floor plans for my boss, so he can plan how to liberate the family.”

Natalya considered that for a bit, then her eyes widened. “With rope you can make a floor plan and then roll it up, so no one notices… is that it.”

“I’ve said it before; you’re a clever girl.”

She thought, Five years, seven years, and maybe as few as three.

As it turned out, the market was not a great place to buy rope, though the lieutenant did manage to acquire about two hundred arshini of a thin, plain hemp.

“You can find more and of different types,” said the vendor, “either down by the river docks or at one of the logging firm’s warehouses.”

Natalya wasn’t paying any attention to the rope transaction, but simply looking around at the generally used wares on display and the people shopping for them. She saw a Tatar bargaining for a smoked fish with some old woman. The bargaining was in Russian. Near those two some fur-wrapped man wearing waders ran a complex net through his hands, examining it closely. Not far from there, a milk salesman chopped off chunks of frozen milk, weighing them for sale to someone dressed in a way Natalya had never seen, in furs of different kinds sewn together to form patterns. Their bargaining was completely silent but conducted with gestures. Two women chatted while watching the spectacle, much as Natalya was.

“What’s that language?” she asked, pointing with her chin at the warmly and well-dressed women, talking between themselves.

Turgenev followed the direction and saw the same two women. He listened to their chatter for a bit, then said, “It’s vaguely Germanic but not German. Some of the words even sound somewhat French. English, maybe?”

“I don’t speak that,” she said. “French, yes; Mokrenko caught me with that. German, too. No English.”

Hoisting the coil of rope he’d purchased over one shoulder, he said, “They’re here, so they likely speak Russian. Let’s go ask.”

“Sophie Karlovna Buxhoeveden,” was the answer, in Russian, followed by, “And this is my friend, Miss Mather.” Sophie then proceeded to translate some of that into English for her friend.

“Buxhoeveden… Buxhoeveden,” Natalya rolled the name around her mouth a few times before coming up with, “Baroness Buxhoeveden; you were a lady-in-waiting to the tsarina.”

“Shshsh, young lady,” Sophie cautioned, “I have enough trouble already with the local authorities. And how would you know that, anyway?”

“That’s a long story,” Turgenev interrupted. “Oh, and please excuse my manners; Maxim Sergeyevich Turgenev, at your service. You seem very concerned about the local ‘authorities.’”

“I’ve heard too much about what the prisons are like for a ‘political’ not to be. And since the Bolsheviks asserted their authority here in Tobolsk, not so long ago, I’ve felt the need to be careful. I mean, when it was just my dentist who was a Red, it wasn’t so bad. And she, at least, was a competent dentist.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to see the inside of one and I have no political baggage whatsoever.” This last, of course, was not remotely true. “Could I offer you ladies lunch? And, for languages; do you and your friend speak French?”

“We do.”

“So do Natalya and I. Let French, then, be our language.”

There was another hotel near the town center. It, too, offered meals for a price in a warm dining room. Turgenev, Natalya, and their two new acquaintances went in there and waited for someone to bring menus.

Looking around, the lieutenant said, “Place like this, I’d expect them to just post the menu on a chalkboard.”

At the next table, a man, sitting alone, and already well on his way to drunkenness and slurring his words, said, “Why botha? The men… men… menu this time of ye… ar is always the sa… me. Rye-ey bre… ad and soup. Sometimes the soup is bif… sometimes… sterlet…. sometimes… well… sometimes you don’ really wanna know. To be fairrr, when they have sterlet, it’s actually pppretty ggggood.”

“Comrade,” said Turgenev, “I know it’s not my business, but isn’t it a little early in the day for this?”

“Whennnn… you haf los’ your jo… ob… that you hel’ for t’irty year… zzz… wha’ diff… er… ence… t’e time o’ day.”

“You have a point,” the lieutenant conceded. “Who did you work for.”

“T’e tsa… tsa… t’e tsar.”

There is a God, thought the lieutenant. Well… there is, but His hand may not be in this. Small town, after all, and what’s a recently fired servant to do but get drunk.

“I am Maxim Sergeyevich Turgenev,” the lieutenant introduced himself. “To whom do I have the honor of addressing myself?”

The drunk leaned over and reached out a hand, only to collapse to the floor unconscious.

“Been expecting this to happen,” said one of the waiters of the hotel. He called over a couple of men to pick the drunk up and toss him outside into the icy street.

Turgenev intervened. “Don’t you have rooms here?”

“He isn’t paying for a room. Out he goes.”

The lieutenant reached into a pocket and pulled out some gold ten-ruble coins. “How many days in a decent room—with a fire—will this buy him?”

“With meals?” asked the waiter.

“Yes.”

“Six days.”

Certain he was being cheated, still Turgenev said, “Then take these and take him up to a room. And what is the soup for today?”

“Sterlet, served with bread and butter. Despite what the drunk just said, there is a little more pattern to the menu than that. Fridays and Wednesdays are always fish, yes, often sterlet, but sometimes other fish. Mondays tend to beef, Tuesdays to pork. Thursdays will be chicken or some other kind of fowl. Saturdays and Sundays are not that predictable, so it’s best to ask.

“I can tell quality when I see it, too,” said the waiter. “Today being sterlet, well, you gut a sterlet, you also get caviar. Would you and your…”

“My sister,” Turgenev supplied, “and our friends.”

“Of course. Your sister. And friends. Well, would you and your sister and your ‘friends’ care for some caviar with thin sliced toasted bread and sour cream?”

“Sour cream? In Tobolsk? In the dead of winter?”

“We have a deal with a nunnery that runs a dairy not too far from here. So will you have it?”

Turgenev stole a glance at Natalya, who seemed about ready to drool at the prospect.

“Yes, please.”

“And the soup and bread?”

“Oh, by all means.”

“Thank you, Maxim Sergeyevich,” whispered Natalya across the table after the waiter had left. “Yes, thank you,” added Sophie, a sentiment echoed in English by Miss Mather.

In the course of the meal, which was, as the drunk had claimed, “pretty good,” Turgenev worked on extracting whatever information he could glean from Baroness Buxhoeveden.

“I was staying at the Kornilov House,” she admitted, “right up until the Reds demanded I move out. Fortunately, Miss Mather was able to accommodate me in her rental.”

Turgenev resisted the impulse to be polite and offer perhaps better accommodations. That she knows things I want to know does not necessarily mean she should be trusted with things I do know.

“As for the royal family; they’re cold, hungry, miserable, and frequently unwell. But they persevere; it’s an inspiration really.”

“How are they doing for money?” Turgenev asked.

“That situation is not good. They’ve had to let many of their personal retainers go;” she replied, “that drunk was apparently one of them, though I couldn’t put a name to his face.”

“I’m not sure he could, either,” muttered Turgenev, in Russian, rather than French, raising a titter from both the Russian-speaking females. Returning to French, he asked, “Is there a way to get money to them?”

“It’s been done,” Sophie answered. “I’ve been a conduit to pass things to the valet, Volkov. But I think a certain amount, whether of money or food, finds its way into someone’s pocket or larder before it gets to the family.”

“I confess,” said Turgenev, “that the idea of the ex-royal family living in want disturbs me. Is it possible, then, do you think, to have someone else carry money in?”

Sophie thought about that for a moment. “Well, there are people who work inside but have quarters outside. So maybe.”

“What is better to send, gold and silver coin or currency?”

“A ten ruble gold coin,” she answered, “is worth as much as a one hundred ruble note, for some purposes. But, then, the notes are lighter and easier to pass.”

“A mix, then, but I insist that what I send to the tsar gets to the tsar. Can you, Baroness Buxhoeveden, make arrangements for my sister, here, to bring money in. I’ll be happy to give a ten percent premium to whichever person still working inside gets her in and out.”

Sophie thought upon this, weighing the greed and corruption of both the Bolshevik guards and some of the tsar’s remaining staff. “Kirpichnikov,” she said. “He’s a cook cum pigkeeper. It’s very hard to tell where cooking ends and pigkeeping begins, too. But he’s said to be extremely loyal and can come and go without much difficulty. He could, I think, bring an assistant with him.”

“Perfect,” said Turgenev.

Governor’s House, Tobolsk

Since Natalya had been seen at the gate before, it seemed wise to disguise her a bit. This was done partly by lowering her standard of dress from the way the freed women had dressed her to something more approaching what would be expected of the local peasantry. The market had been most useful for this. Other changes included putting her hair up in twisted braids and adding a few smudges to her face. Perhaps most importantly, given that she’d be dealing with men, was that she now sported enormous breasts, monuments to both one of Sophie’s own bras and one or more of the imperial mints.

“It will have to do,” said Sophie, standing back and scrutinizing her handiwork.

There were, as usual, two guards on the gate. One held his rifle at port arms, more for show than for any other reason, while the other unlatched and pushed slightly open the broad wooden gate. Both had a hard time keeping their eyes off of Natalya’s false chest.

“Thank you, my friends, thank you!” exclaimed Kirpichnikov. He had a small basket hanging from one arm. This, by way of a tip, he passed over to the man who’d opened the gate.

“And who’s your little friend?” that guard asked. “She looks familiar, at least a bit.”

“Oh, I’m going to put her to work as a scullery.”

The guard shrugged. “But how are you paying her?” he asked. “You-know-who has no money.”

“She doesn’t cost much. She’s an orphan. These days, such as her can be put to work for the price of a meal.”

If there was a double entendre there, the guard chose to ignore it. He waved the pair through.

None of the royal family were out in the outer enclosure, though there was a big pile of unsawn wood standing near a saw and a couple of wooden sawhorses.

“This way, girl,” Kirpichnikov ordered, leading her past a picket fence, through a rectangular opening in another wall, and to the kitchen, which was a separate building to the west of the main mansion, connected by an enclosed passageway.

Once they were safely inside, and no guards were seen hanging about, the cook and pigkeeper pointed east, toward the house. “Follow that passageway,” he said. “There will be stairs to your left after you get to the house. The royal family will be either upstairs or in the dining room which will be to your left front. You have maybe twenty minutes to get back here and get to work on the pots and pans before it begins to look suspicious. If you see me with a guard when you return, thank me graciously for letting you use the toilet, clear?”

“Yes,” Natalya answered, “clear enough.”

“Now go.”

Given that she weighed half a pood—about seventeen pounds—more than usual, with most of that being top heavy and front-centered, Natalya walked gracefully enough. That had required a bit of practice, too. Reaching the house and entering it, she stopped for a moment, to listen. There were no sounds coming from the room Kirpichnikov had told her was the dining room, so she turned and began to ascend the stairs.

At the top floor, she did hear voices. Most she didn’t recognize but from her left front, over where the dining room stood, she thought she heard the Romanov girls. They were speaking Russian, but actually had non-Russian accents, a result of growing up in a household where the only language their parents had shared from the beginning, and still the lingua franca of the family, had been English.

She hurried across the floor and finding the door locked, knocked a few times to gain admittance.

The door was partly opened by a stout girl, stout, though terribly pretty with enormous eyes. Those eyes could not be mistaken for anyone else’s.

“Let me in, Maria,” said Natalya, to the girl blocking the doorway. “For the love of God, let me in.”

“Do we know you?”

“Yes, from happier times. Now get out of the way and let me in.”

They all spoke in whispers, with Natalya making her re-introductions. “I’m that Natalya. My mother and father, sad to say, are dead, murdered by the Bolsheviks. A… a friend asked me to try to get some money in to you. Speaking of which, have any of you any idea how cold gold can be on one’s tits? And it doesn’t help when they’re small tits.”

With that, Natalya partially disrobed, then began taking out small packets of tightly cloth-wrapped gold coins from her sort-of-kind-of brassiere. The girls, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia stood open-mouthed, at the sudden shower of wealth.

“That’s about six thousand, five hundred rubles in gold,” Natalya informed them. She then began to pull tightly tied bundles of cash from up under her skirt. “That’s about forty thousand in currency. It’s really only worth maybe as little as four thousand in coin. Now I need some clothing to fill up this enormous bra in its place.”

The girls quickly began assembling a set of false breasts from whatever cloth could be spared.

As Turgenev had coached her, she continued, “And now, if you want the largesse to keep flowing, you need to take control of this money and show it to your parents. And then you have to get them to hire me. Can you do this?”

“We can’t show it to Mother,” the tallest one, Tatiana, said. “She not only talks too much but everything that happens that isn’t a complete disaster is, in her view, a sign from God of our eventual release.”

“Besides, she’ll probably waste it,” added Maria, the somewhat stout girl with the huge eyes. “Tati, you should take control of it and arrange to hire… by the way, tell me again, how do we know you?”

“We’ve met when my parents were guests of your family. I was little then; it was before the war. I am… well, since the murder of my parents I am now Baroness Sorokin. But you can’t tell anyone that.”

“Are you associated with Little Markov and a rescue attempt?” Tatiana asked.

“Who’s Little Markov? And, no, I am sorry, but I don’t know anything about a rescue attempt.” Well, one truth and one lie. Forgive me, please, God. Though, in fact, I don’t know much about it. As Maxim said, “What I do not know cannot be tortured out of me.”

“Little Markov,” Tatiana explained, “is a nice boy, a lieutenant of the Crimean cavalry, who writes to mother and would desperately like to rescue us from this place. I don’t believe it will happen.”

“Sorry, then,” Natalya said, “but I’ve never heard of him. Anyway, time is short. If you can arrange to hire me in some capacity, pass the word to Kirpichnikov. He’ll know where to find me.”

“Why,” asked Anastasia, the youngest of the lot, “would you bring all this money then ask us to hire you for a fraction of it?”

“No time! I have to go now. Just arrange the hiring.”

Camp, south of Tobolsk

Mokrenko arrived, after a day’s hard ride, to find things well in order, the horses healthy, and a guard properly posted.

Lieutenant Babin rolled out from a lean-to shelter. Mokrenko saluted, then dismounted from his short Yakut horse. Corporal Koslov stood up from the fire he was attending and joined the trio. After an exchange of pleasantries, Mokrenko asked, “How’s our man, Shukhov?”

“I’m fine, Sergeant,” came from one of the other lean-tos. “Fine enough that, if you people need me to blow something up in Tobolsk, you had better bring me there. I’ve already prepared the lake, here, for blasting. If you need me to blow anything substantial up in Tobolsk, you had better get me some more explosive.”

“Is he well enough to travel?” Mokrenko asked Babin, sotto voce.

“Probably. I’m not a doctor but I can, at least, say there’s no more external bleeding and no sign of infection that I can see.”

“All right, I’ll be taking him with me, then. As for the rest of you, just wait. Cut wood for four big bonfires. And Lieutenant Turgenev says—well, a message from the rear says—that it would be a great help if you could hunt for a lot of meat. As much as we can get. Cold as it is, it will keep in this weather until needed. I’m going to be ranging to the east and northeast of here, looking for the same. I’ll be taking four of the horses and two of the sleighs; Shukhov can drive the other one. We’ll take my horse behind one of them.”

“Define ‘a lot,’ Sergeant.”

“As much as you can get. ‘A thousand pood would not be too much,’ Lieutenant Turgenev told me.”

“I doubt we’ll get that much,” said Babin, “but tell him we’ll do the best we can.”

“No man can ask more,” Mokrenko agreed, then bellowed, “Shukhov, you lazy excuse for an engineer, pack your bags! And set up two sleighs; we’re taking them for the town.”

Interlude

Sverdlov and Trotsky: Strange happenings

Sverdlov could have figured it was someone coming to pay a call by the ringing bells from the carriage or sleigh. It had been, as was perhaps to be expected, Trotsky with some potentially dire news.

The Cyrillic type on the paper in his hand began to blur in his vision, but Yakov Sverdlov forced himself to focus on the report. Trotsky wouldn’t have hand delivered this summary at midnight if it weren’t important. Recently shuffled from Foreign Affairs to Military Affairs, the lateral demotion had done nothing to dim Trotsky’s ambition, nor dissuade him from waking up Lenin’s right-hand man for trifles.

On the heels of two major setbacks, Trotsky was still somewhat timid in council, and wanted Sverdlov’s backing to bring up new business. Trotsky had initially opposed the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and had failed to gain anything of note at the negotiations of Brest-Litovsk, but rather the opposite.

Reaching the end of the report, Sverdlov set the paper down, removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“So, the Germans are sifting through our people,” Sverdlov said. “Is that it?”

“Yes, Comrade Sverdlov,” Trotsky said.

Sverdlov opened his eyes and examined the Commissar for Defense. A man of middling height with a shock of brown hair over a prominent forehead, beakish nose and goatee, Trotsky’s eyes were bright and penetrating, even at this late hour.

“You don’t think they’re just sifting for manpower to use against the Western allies, do you?” Sverdlov said.

“No, I don’t,” Trotsky said, “though that’s one of the stories they’ve apparently put out. From what we can tell, they’re not asking anything about the Western Allies, but about ideology; how they feel about the tsar, about communism and such. Furthermore, it’s not a broad enough effort for them to recruit significant manpower. The Germans have more than a million of our people imprisoned, but they’re focusing their efforts on a few Guards regiments and maybe some Cossacks. Even if every man they’ve interviewed volunteered to fight for them, it wouldn’t be enough to make a difference in France. They can burn up twenty thousand men a day there, some days.

“At this point, my best guess is that they intend to toss the men they’ve recruited into the scale, here, to start or exacerbate a civil war.”

Sverdlov drummed the fingers of his right hand on the report.

“Right,” he agreed. “We’re the target. It’s not many men, but perhaps enough to cause trouble for us. You’re right, Leon, bring this to the committee at the next meeting. I will back you.”

“There are some other oddities, too,” Trotsky said. “Some very strange things going on.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Airship Hangar, a mile and a half north of Jambol, Bulgaria

Sergeant Kaledin was pleased, actually, that they’d nixed the plan to carry his horses and mules aboard the airship. Oh, they were healthy enough, those that had survived, but he really didn’t know how they’d take to the changes in air pressure, the confinement, the noises and smells. Just as well they’re not going. And I’m glad that German had the presence of mind to put my poor mule, Lydia, out of her pain. She was a good mule and should not have been allowed to suffer.

Glad, too, I never had to make that case; I don’t think anyone would have supported me.

Kaledin led, rather than rode, a light wagon pulled by one of the surviving horses. He’d made this trip already, twice, to bring tentage for two hundred men along with a good deal of food. More wagons stretched behind him.

Most of the battalion remained back at Camp Budapest, but the first contingent to leave—Fourth Company—marched ahead of the Cossack sergeant, singing rather joyfully at being, finally, on their way to do great things. Shortly before turning off the road and heading straight for the hangar, they passed the ruins of an almost completely erased monastery that had once stood over a healing spring. The locals knew that a spring was there, somewhere, but the Turks who had destroyed the monastery had done such a fine job of the destruction that the people of the neighborhood had long since lost the memory of just where it had been.

Up ahead of Kaledin, the men marched with skis and poles over their shoulders. Kostyshakov, marching at the point, just ahead of Captain Cherimisov, turned about and called out, “First Sergeant, can you and the men give us a song?”

Mayevsky saluted and began:

At which point Fourth Company and that slice of Headquarters and Support with them began to belt out:

The song continued with verses about leaving home, letting a falcon loose to fly, the falcon striking from the air, and an old man who was very strict indeed. Finally, it was also about going home at last.

“God,” said Kaledin, the Cossack, “but I do love the Russian Army.”

“They do sing rather well, don’t they?” observed Captain Bockholt to his exec and navigator, Maas, from the gondola of the airship.

“Yes, sir. If they can keep it up, we’ll have a more entertaining trip—or four or five—than usual.”

“I’m going to go find their colonel, Kostyshakov. Station yourself in the cargo bay to support Obermaschinistenmaat Engelke, in case any of the Russians want to argue matters.”

“Sir.”

With that, Bockholt left the gondola via the ladder to the ground. From there he left the hangar by a side door and strode to the little tent village, no more than thirty tents, if that, set up west of the hangar.

As soon as Kostyshakov spotted Bockholt, he told Cherimisov that he was going to see the German, and dashed away from the formation. He and Bockholt met in the middle ground, between airship and tents, and shook hands.

Said the skipper, “We’ll be ready for a eight-thirty departure tomorrow to cross over the lines, just south of Yekatarenoslav, at half past nineteen hundred, tomorrow.”

“Why just south?” asked Kostyshakov.

“Angle of the moon. We don’t want to silhouette ourselves against it, but we equally don’t want it lighting us up for the city to see.”

“The two fighters?”

“They’ll take off about an hour before we’re supposed to get to Yekaterinoslav, with orders to down anything they see flying not positively identified as friendly. We’re big, so more visible, but anything likely to see us will still—probably—be seen by them.”

Bockholt continued, “For the rest of the trip we’ll try to avoid major cities and bigger towns. It’s not that we won’t be spotted; we will. Rather, I want us, if we’re going to be spotted, to be spotted as far from a telegraph station as possible.”

“You heard no animals are going, right?”

“Yes. And you cannot imagine my joy at avoiding having my ship crapped on by a couple-score horses and mules. Or having them panic. Speaking of panic…”

“The vodka’s in the wagons, Captain,” said Kostyshakov. “Mind, I don’t know that any of my men would panic, but I also don’t know that they won’t. I’ve never flown before, myself, and I don’t mind saying I find the prospect a little frightening.”

“So did I,” said Bockholt, “before I tried it. Once I did, though, well! It’s truly enjoyable… most of the time.”

“And when it isn’t?” asked Daniil.

“Hmmm… how many of your men speak German? No, I’m not changing the subject, but they need to be briefed on procedures and concerns.”

“Well? Not many of them. Most of my officers do and a few of my noncoms. Is there a list of things the men should be told?”

Nodding, Bockholt answered, “There are a few. Number one is that it’s going to be cold up there, so cold—especially at night—that you will imagine Siberia in the winter to be downright tropical. And the hammocks we’ve slung for the men will let body heat out in all directions. They need to put on anything and everything they have that will hold heat in.”

“Right. We knew that.”

“Did my man, Signaler Mueller, explain about the no fires rule?”

Kostyshakov nodded, “He did. We’ve collected up all the carbide lanterns and separated the chambers. It was a major pain in the ass, too, to mark them so we can get matching ones back together. I’ve also had all the matches and lighters collected, as well as the tobacco, so they’ll have no motivation to try to create a fire.”

Bockholt smiled, appreciatively. “They will have a motivation, of course, but there’ll be nothing to burn they’ll want to burn. Still, I cannot thank you enough for that. But speaking of cold and fires; we have a very limited ability to produce hot drinks. I need every bit of it to keep functional the men who must run the airship. There’s none to spare—literally none—for anyone or anything else. I considered getting a thousand thermos bottles for hot drinks for your men, but the weight would have meant going over our limit.”

“I understand.”

“Ammunition?” Bockholt asked, though he was beginning to think his worries and doubts were silly.

“All stored with the cargo, to be issued, for the most part, only once we’re on the ground. Some of it is ready-stored. We’ll give that to the security men just as they debark.”

“Acceptable,” the skipper said.

“We’ve set up scales,” he continued. “As each man arrives at the loading spot, fully equipped, we’re going to weigh him. My crew will then lead him to a hammock that will give us the best balance for the airship. We’ll try to pay attention to unit integrity, but I cannot promise it.”

“Do what you must,” agreed the Russian.

“We’ve cleaned and sterilized one ballast bladder for drinking water,” the skipper continued. “Another is designated for urine. Since there’s a delay between drinking and pissing, it is faintly possible we’ll have to move someone around in flight. We won’t unless we must.

“We’re carrying fifteen chamber pots and have separated out and enclosed with cloth fifteen places your men can relieve themselves. They’re marked, nine for crapping and six for pissing. Your quartermaster, Romeyko, has designated two men per lift to be the chamber pot… mmm… caretakers.

“I know my man, Mueller, suggested we’d be able to let the men stretch a bit and walk about. He was in error. We must have absolutely minimal moving about,” said Bockholt. “Too many risks from people moving about in the ship.”

“I understand that,” said Kostyshakov. “Going to be hard on cold men.”

“I know,” agreed the skipper, “but not as hard as causing damage to the ship, six hundred meters above the ground, might be.”

“Point. How long will it take to load?”

“Our best estimate is three hours but I’m holding out for five. We’ll need to start putting men into their hammocks at five in the morning.”

“Lord God, what is that heavenly aroma?” asked Mayevsky of Taenzler, the pair of them standing by the Gulaschkanone, itself in the center of the little tent village.

“Meat in the stew,” the German chef replied. “Good meat. And good vegetables. And spices. Fresh bread with none of those less than desirable additives or undesirable subtractions. This is what I told your commander about; the kind of food that gives mixed feelings since we only feed this kind of food to our men when they’re about to be ordered into the attack.”

Taenzler shook his head a bit. “It’s not just for morale, but also for strength, energy, and health. Which makes me wonder why we don’t feed it to the men when they’re about to be attacked. It’s not like it’s all that hard to predict, after all, what with bombardments lasting weeks.”

“Above my pay grade,” said Mayevsky, “but, for us, no, you were never that predictable. This is tonight’s meal, yes?”

“Yes. For tomorrow morning I’ve got syrniki, draniki, and real butter, jam, and honey. We’ll issue the lunch and dinner—cold and dry, all of it, but the vodka and the salo, I’m afraid—with breakfast. After that you start loading. Though I’ve oversupplied tonight’s meal and anyone who wants to take some tomorrow will be welcome to it.”

“Feldwebel Taenzler,” said Mayevsky, with complete seriousness, “you’re a fucking treasure. Anyone’s army would be lucky to have you. And if you ever want a job with a different army…”

“First Sergeant Mayevsky, thank you, but when this obscenity of a war is over I just want to go home to my wife.”

“Ah, the wife,” Mayevsky sighed. “I miss mine, too. I haven’t seen her in almost four years.”

“Same. She writes. Says times are hard at home, food even worse and more scarce than what we get. Not enough coal to heat the house. And the little ones… it’s awful.”

“Cheer up, old man,” said Mayevsky. “At least you’ve had word. I’ve had nothing for over a year.”

Taenzler nodded, chewed his lower lip for a bit, and then walked to the other end of the Gulaschkanone. He extracted a bottle and a couple of glasses, then opened the bottle and filled the glasses from it. The bottle went back to its hiding spot before he returned and passed one of the glasses over.

“Ansatzkorn,” Taenzler explained, though the word meant nothing to Mayevsky. “Here’s to the success of your mission, the end of the fucking war, and getting home to wives and children we hope are still alive and well.”

“May it please God,” said the Russian before clinking glasses with the German and tossing off the glasses.

Half-choking and between gasps, the German explained, “It will serve… as a rather… strong… disinfectant, too.”

Vasenkov couldn’t help himself, he liked the old German cook who did so much to keep the men of the battalion well fed. As he passed by the Gulaschkanone, in the evening’s fading light, he had half a loaf of bread under one arm and his mess kit held out by the other.

Using his ladle, the German scooped up and deposited a most healthy portion into the mess tin. Then he scooped up some more, about half a ladle, and deposited that, too.

“Eh, there’s plenty,” he informed the Russian. “No sense in letting any of it go to waste.”

In fact, the Gulaschkanone was supposed to be able to serve two hundred and fifty men. The mere one hundred and thirty-seven of the first lift hardly overtasked it.

It’s not impossible, either, that Taenzler was padding the head count a bit. (“Oh, it’s easy as pie, Podpolkovnik Kostyshakov. Every man here is still officially here until the last of you has left and the camp is closed. Since there are no plans—at least, none I’ve been informed of—to close the camp, I drew a few days, okay, maybe a week, in advance… exigencies of war and all that.”)

Vasenkov took his meal and went to sit. He’d always appeared something of a loner to the rest of the men, though competent enough, to be sure, that no one went out of their way to sit with him, leaving him alone with his troubles.

On the theory that whatever an imperialist or capitalist wants you to do, you should do the opposite, I have secreted on my person three wooden matches. I could, I imagine, under one pretext or other, get close to one of those leaky gas bags they warned us about, make a hole, and light one off. Bring the whole thing crashing down like a meteor streaking from the heavens, but moreso.

Of course, I, too, will be riding that flaming meteor down. I have always been willing to lay down my life for the revolution. Well, at least since having my eyes opened to the future by the works of Marx and Lenin, I have. But suicide? This is altogether a harder thing. I’m not sure I can.

And even if I could bring myself to do it, kill all these men who are my comrades and friends? No; I don’t think I can do that either.

But I also cannot stand by and just let the royal family be rescued to serve as a rally point for the enemies of the revolution. If I believed in a God, I’d pray for guidance. What am I to do?

Vasenkov was one of the first to be loaded aboard. After a good—no, it was a remarkably good—breakfast, with his bedroll slung over one shoulder, his MP18 draped from his neck by his sling, pack on his back, breadbag and canteen properly slung, with his skis and poles over one shoulder, he presented himself.

“Skis, poles, and pack marked with your name?” asked his platoon sergeant, Feldfebel Kostin.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Vasenkov answered.

Kostin took the skis and handed them to a platoon runner to place in a forming criss-crossing pile on the cargo deck.

“Anything in your pack you need?”

“Oh, shit!” said Vasenkov. “Yes, Sergeant. Thanks for reminding me! My mittens!”

“Dig ’em out, then. Then turn over your pack to Sobchak.” This was the same Sobchak who had mistakenly shot his partner and friend, Sotnikov, and was now serving as a runner. The pack, too, went into a growing pile.

“This way, Vasenkov,” shouted the first sergeant, glaring with his one good eye and gesturing with one hand. The first sergeant stood at the base of a flexible ladder, one of several, that led upward to and past a large number of hammocks. There was a scale by the first sergeant with one of the German crew in attendance. The German weighed the Russian—“Skinny fucker, aren’t you?”—did some scribbling with a pencil on a notepad, then pointed to a hammock about eleven arshini above the deck.

Mayevsky asked, “See that fucking hammock the German pointed at, Vasenkov. The top one on that row? Empty?”

“Yes, First Sergeant.”

“That one’s for you. Up you go, boy. No dawdling. Get up there; make up your bed roll; and get in it. Once you’re in you can have a belt of your vodka.”

Vasenkov scrambled up the ladder leading to his bunk. With one hand on the ladder he used the other one to take his bedding from across his shoulder. Untying it proved to be difficult, one handed, so he ran an arm through the ladder up to the crook of his elbow and used both hands. Then he whip-snapped the bed roll lengthwise along the bunk. After spending a few moments opening it and spreading it out, he found that he had not the first clue as to how to actually get into the hammock.

There were reasons I avoided the navy.

Standing below and watching the mayhem, Mayevsky thought, There’s always something you miss. We should have had training in this, too.

He pointed out the problem to the German sailor running the scales. The German muttered something that the first sergeant took to mean, approximately, There’s always something that you miss.

With a great Teutonic bellow, the German caught the attention of every man in the bay. Once he had that, with practiced skill, he, himself, scrambled up a ladder and demonstrated how it was done. This involved locking one’s arms into the outside folds of the hammock, lifting one’s lower body up to it, and then rolling over.

Well, shit, thought Vasenkov, as he retrieved his bedroll, draped it over his shoulder, and pulled himself in. Once settled in, it was still no easy matter to get the blankets and ground cloth under his body. He managed, eventually, as did all the others but one. That one, a cook from the First Company, fell to the deck screaming, arms and legs waving in panic. He hit with a thump that shook the ship, then had to be carried off with a possible back injury.

Some hundreds of German and Bulgarian ground crew stood around in clusters, each holding a strap that led to single, stouter straps that, in turn, led to the airship. Daniil couldn’t tell how many of the lighter straps led from each heavier one, but it seemed to be about ten to a dozen, maybe more in a few spots.

“Notify Strategic Recon that we’re on our way, Basanets,” said Kostyshakov, just before boarding himself. “Our estimated time of arrival is between one and four, AM, the day after tomorrow, winds depending. Fires to mark the landing spot, but not within one hundred and fifty arshini. Local security is their problem until we’re half unloaded.”

“Yes, sir,” said the Exec, who then pointed with his chin at something or someone behind Kostyshakov.

Daniil turned to see Mueller, the signaler cum liaison, standing at ease. “The captain requests your presence in the forward gondola, sir. He says, ‘This is something the Russian commander is going to want to see.’ From experience, sir, the captain is right.”

“I suspect so,” agreed Kostyshakov, in German. Turning to Basanets, he continued, in Russian, “We’ll be on radio listening silence unless something disastrous happens, something that scrubs the mission anyway. But you can get messages to us. Also, confirm that the two escort fighters at Yekaterinoslav are going to take off at the right time. Yes, not really our job, but maybe our lives if the Germans screw it up.”

With that, Daniil followed Mueller back inside, then along the walkway that led to a ladder which, in turn, led down into the open and then into the command gondola.

“Ah, Podpolkovnik Kostyshakov; this is something you won’t want to miss!” exclaimed Captain Bockholt. “The only thing more exciting than take off is coming home in one piece and unburnt.”

In front of Daniil’s eyes, the great hangar doors were slowly swung open wide. One of the command crew said something in aeronauticalese to the captain, who gave an equally incomprehensible answer. No matter, the import of the message was made clear as the ground crew began walking forward, dragging L59 forward with them by the straps.

It is grand, thought Kostyshakov. But it’s not the view or, rather, not the view alone. Rather, it’s knowing how big this bastard is combined with the view, the knowledge that men can not only build something this big but move it by hand and foot power.

It took just over two minutes from the moment its nose reached the opening for the airship to fully emerge. Presumably on command, all the men holding straps let go. The ascent was fairly gentle, but there was no doubt, even without being able to see, that the ship was going up.

“There are problems with ascending,” Bockholt explained. “If we go too high, the air pressure differential causes us to lose hydrogen. Lose enough and we lose lift. And, too, the lower temperature up there causes the hydrogen to lose volume hence to lose lift, too. Unless we’re bombing England, when we have to go as high as possible to stay out of the reach of the defenses, the smart course for an airship is rather low, a couple of hundred meters. That’s another reason for us to traverse Yekaterinoslav at night. Of course, too, we’re going to have to go a bit higher to get over the Urals.”

“How will we know where we are?” Kostyshakov asked.

“A mixture of dead reckoning—landmarks, compass, and speed—but we also use celestial navigation, chronometer and sextant, just as if we were on a ship at sea. Don’t fear, we’ll put you down where your forward team said they’d be waiting.”

Daniil took a last look out a side window. The ground was fast slipping behind. About two hundred and fifty arshini up, I should think.

“I think I should be getting back to my men, Captain.”

“Of course, sir. Sleep well. You’re as safe as in your mother’s own arms.”

My mother’s arms were never this fucking cold, thought Kostyshakov, shivering miserably, like everyone else, in the unheated compartment. Some of the men apparently had no trouble falling asleep, indeed, seemed to go to sleep as a way to avoid the misery.

Note to self: If I survive, and am ever in a position to do something about it, a way to heat airships, the designing of. Other note to self: After the troubles are over, back to school for engineering.

Nice to hear no one is panicking. Rather, it’s nice to not hear it. This whole flying thing? I’m not sure it’s got a future for anything but lunatics who actually like being someplace they can fall to their deaths from. For me, I swear, I will never take this mode of transportation again if I can avoid it. What was it that old Englishman said, something about being on a ship is being in prison, but with the added chance of being drowned? Well, at least on a ship you can walk around freely. Being on an airship is being in an insane asylum, with a straightjacket on, and the chance of being burnt alive.

Daniil took out his signed picture of Tatiana Nicholaevna Romanova. He never let any of the officers or men of the battalion see that he had it, lest they think this was all a personal crusade. But he’d look at it, sometimes, in the dead of night, by the light of a candle.

The fact is, I don’t even know if you still want me. There were only those couple of letters before I was captured, and those I had to destroy lest the Germans use them against you and Russia. Only this picture did both I and the Huns miss. Well… I can hope your heart has not grown cold toward me. And, if it has… well… this is still my sworn duty to you and your family.

Yekaterinoslav, Russia

It was about an hour before sunset, the weather clear and fine. Two German fighter pilots stood by their machines on an unimproved grass strip. The planes were both fueled, with a ground crewman standing by each to twist the engines to life.

Sergeant Karl Thom was an experienced pilot, first flying a reconnaissance plane and then, with twelve victories, to date, as a fighter pilot. He deeply resented being pulled from his slot in Jagdstaffel 21 for this nothing mission at the ass end of nowhere.

Adding insult to injury, he hadn’t been sent off with a new Fokker D. VII, oh, no. Instead, when tasked, his commander had decided that an old Albatros D. V would be plenty good enough.

To be fair, thought Thom, at least he let me take my pick of the D. Vs. And, given there’s nobody here to fight, a D. VII would have been a waste. I’m just angry at being pulled from the action. Well, that and that the D. V is a simply rotten aircraft, from its tendency to fall to pieces in a dive to its miserably placed instrumentation suite.

Thom’s mate, from a different squadron entirely, was also a Carl, with a C, Sergeant Carl Graeper. Graeper didn’t seem nearly as annoyed as Thom felt.

Maybe it’s because his squadron, Jasta 50, wasn’t getting D. VIIs when he was pulled out.

Thom consulted his watch. “About that time,” he announced to Graeper.

Both men climbed up their aircraft and into the cockpits. Two of the ground crewmen stood in front of the planes, their hands grasping the propellers. Another pair stood on tires, helping the pilots to settle in.

At a signal from their pilots, the former jerked the propellers counterclockwise, causing the motors to shudder into life. They sprang back, instantly, to avoid losing hands to the spinning blades. Then each pair bent down to drag away the chock blocks that held the planes in place.

Thom fed a little more gas to the engine and was rewarded with a steady drone and a propeller that disappeared into the thin blur in front of him. He began to taxi to the runway, then swung unto a wide right turn. The grass stretched out before him. Using his left thumb, Thom applied throttle, increasing his speed rapidly. In no time he was airborne and making a slow spiral upward.

Glancing over his left shoulder—God bless whoever decided to get rid of that miserable, sight-blocking headrest—to see Graeper rising behind him on the same basic upward spiraling pattern.

The spiral gave way to a long, slow set of turns, scanning three hundred and sixty degrees around for any threat to the airship he was tasked with protecting. There was nothing there, though.

For all the need for me here, I could have done as much by flying in France.

Making another left-hand turn, it was the shadow of the airship that Thom first saw, a huge, darkened, and regular shape on the ground. Until he realized it was too regular, the pilot initially thought it was a cloud casting that shadow. Adjusting he gaze, then, he saw it, the L59, lower than he really expected, gracefully and effortlessly moving toward Yekaterinoslav from the west.

Again Thom consulted his watch. A bit early but the sun will still be down before they cross by the town.

He began to descend to a lower level, largely with the fixed intention of getting on the ground before it became necessary for the ground crew to light beacon fires.

L59

High in his hammock, Vasenkov thought, I do not think I have ever been this cold in my life. Forget the calming effect; if it weren’t for the vodka making the blood flow faster, I think my hands and feet would be nothing but blocks of ice. And it’s worse for me than most because I am so thin.

But vodka won’t keep me from freezing solid on its own.

From his bread bag he took a sausage, squared off, hard, and dry, as well as a chunk of bread. “Landjaeger,” Taenzler called these. We don’t have sausage like this back home. Oh, well, how bad can it… At his first bite, Vasenkov realized he had fallen in love. These are perfect, wonderful. The perfect blend of lean and fat, perfectly cured, dry on the outside but, oh, so juicy on the inside. “Two with some cheese and a half a pound of bread makes a meal,” he said. I can see where they would.

Now if only those religion-addled fools in the other hammocks would stop praying so loudly…

From Yekaterinoslav, the L59 didn’t make a straight course for the landing point south of Tobolsk. Instead, it went generally east-northeast to a spot about thirty kilometers north of Severodonetsk, then turned due east, passing over the Volga River well north of Tsaritsyn. From that crossing, another five hundred kilometers saw it turn on a course of forty-five degrees, heading straight for the Urals’ southern foothills in the vicinity of Krasnoshchekovo. All of these legs were lengthened by the fact that the ship took a zig-zag course, partly to avoid towns likely to have telegraph service and partly to cast doubt about their ultimate objective.

It wasn’t until they passed a point just north-northwest of Petropavel that Bockholt ordered a turn, due north, toward the landing zone south of Tobolsk.

And then…

Landing Zone A, south of Tobolsk

Daniil was back in the control gondola, having been awakened by Mueller, who looked completely worn out, a sunken-faced, slack jawed zombie.

One suspects, thought Kostyshakov, that it’s a tougher job than it looks from the outside.

This part they hadn’t really been able to rehearse. Kostyshakov hadn’t had any real choice but to kick the strategic reconnaissance team forward as soon as possible, with only limited guidance on how to prepare to receive an airship. The airship’s crew had had limited time to both figure out and then show the men of Fourth Company how to secure an airship.

Going to be a total clusterfuck, thought Daniil, especially in the dark… even with moonlight.

The moon, for that matter, was pretty low in the sky. We’re so fucked.

A sudden light from above, from the skin of the airship, caused Daniil to jerk his head up. But where is the light…

He looked out of one of the open windows and down. There, hanging below him, was a very bright flare, rocking from side to side as it descended under a parachute. I did not know they could do that.

Within a couple of minutes, Daniil saw a bright flash from below and forward, followed by a tremendous bang and a rumbling sound. A couple of minutes later four large fires sprang up, two by two, forming a rectangular box around a narrow inlet in what appeared to be an icebound lake, below.

“Very good,” Bockholt said, with something approaching a tone of wonder in his voice. Turning to Kostyshakov, he added, “I don’t think my own men could have set it up any better. They even got the wind angle as right as they could, given the terrain.”

“What now?” asked Daniil.

“Now we vent hydrogen to reduce buoyancy and descend. It’s a little tricky. It’s also incredibly wasteful of hydrogen; that’s why we wanted your troops to blow a hole in the ice so we can pump up water as ballast to make up for the loss of load when you all unload. I wish there were some other way to do this, but there isn’t. Maybe someday.”

Back in cargo, First Sergeant Mayevsky was kicking hammocks, some of them, and prodding others from below with a stick he seemed to have acquired from somewhere. “Up you turds! Up! It’s time to earn our pay again. And if any of you lowlifes have somehow been so negligent as to have let yourself freeze to death, so signify by staying in your hammocks. We’ll just throw you overboard from a thousand feet. Don’t worry; you won’t feel a thing…”

Interlude

Sovnarkcom, the Council of Peoples’ Commissars: Beware the Hun

The fire roaring in the hearth, combined with the body heat of the men assembled in the meeting chamber of the Central Committee, managed to bring the temperature in the room up to stifling—no mean feat in early spring in Petrograd. All the Party Commissars, from State to Railway Affairs, were gathered around the long wooden table that dominated the center of the room. Sitting at the head of the table, sweat glistening on the dome of his massive bald forehead, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin listened intently to the newly elected minister of agricultural affairs, Semyon Sereda. Sereda was the fourth man in as many months to occupy the Agricultural Commissariat since the October Revolution.

Lenin’s eyes were red-rimmed with lack of sleep and darted nervously about the room, from the faces of the Commissars to the doors and back again as he listened to Sereda’s litany of bad news. Seated at Lenin’s right hand, Yakov Sverdlov regarded his friend and leader with frank concern. It was only two months since the last assassination attempt on the man, less than that since they’d forcibly disbanded the democratically elected Constituent Assembly.

The strain is visibly aging Ilyich before us.

Still, worn ragged or not, no other man had the same vision, the same will. The Revolution needed Vladimir Ilyich Lenin at its helm. Sverdlov had long since renounced the God of Abraham, so he eschewed prayer, contenting himself with a fervent hope that Lenin would remain cogent and healthy enough to continue the work for a while longer.

Semyon finished his doom-laden report.

“… in summary, comrades, we have shortfalls in every crop imaginable. Worse than that, our ability to move produce from the farms to the cities before those crops spoil is diminishing daily due to sabotage by monarchists and other undesirables. Furthermore, the kulaks often hide the grain we so desperately need—or if we don’t send sufficient force, will often fight our troops to keep their grain.”

“Bloodsucking rich bastards,” Lenin said. “We know the problems, Semyon, what solutions might we enact?”

“Comrades, I wish your permission to commit a larger body of troops to redistribution activities and to incur summary punishment for kulaks who do not cooperate,” Sereda said. “The kulaks will be less likely to resist once they see a few of their neighbors hanging from a scaffold. Also, if we can focus the peasants’ and workers’ anger and anxiety on the rich landowners, that binds them all the more tightly to the Revolution.”

Lenin leaned back and stroked his goatee for several seconds.

“Yes,” Lenin said. “An excellent thought, Semyon, work with Trotsky to allocate the troops. Is there anything else?”

In the silence that followed, Trotsky looked at Sverdlov for permission to bring up the reports from Hungary. Sverdlov nodded slightly.

“Comrades, I have a matter that may be of some import,” Trotsky said.

“What is it, Leon?” Lenin asked.

“The first item is that the Germans have been recruiting former Imperial Guardsmen, in numbers that wouldn’t matter to their war in the west, but that could matter to us. In relation to this, comrades in Hungary offered us, as a show of good faith, a potentially troubling bit of intelligence. Reports of strange activities on the part of the German Army there,” Trotsky said.

“Where in Hungary?” asked Lenin.

“Somewhere around Budapest, but our friends have not been able to pinpoint a site.”

“That is hardly our concern,” Sereda said. “We are now neutral in their war. Besides, no location? It could be all fanciful.”

“Agreed,” Trotsky said. “It could be. But what if it’s not and the Germans want them for further operations against us? Perhaps something covert?”

“That seems a little fanciful, too,” Sereda said.

“Is it?” Sverdlov interrupted. “The Germans saw to it Comrade Lenin made his way back to Russia when it suited them. If our Revolutionary activities are worrying them now, it’s not inconceivable they might use the same tactics twice.”

“An excellent point,” Lenin said. “Ensure we keep funds flowing to our friends in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. If the Germans intend to use our own people against us, we must know about it.”

“What else, Leon?”

“Someone massacred a group of bandits who were attempting to rob the Trans-Siberian near Yekaterinburg. A retired colonel named Plestov claimed to have organized the resistance there, but our man on the ground didn’t believe it was possible. This Plestov is practically senescent, and the train’s other passengers were no soldiers. We didn’t have any Red Guards in the area at the time, nor were any of the White Army formations, as far as we can tell. So who would have done it?

“And then there was a ship that blew up, taking one of our destroyers with it. The timing is too good, too precise. I think the Germans have already introduced some people to thwart the revolution by raising a counterrevolution. Ten men here, twenty men there, and pretty soon the kulaks are in arms against us, with competent leadership and maybe weapons.”

“That could be troublesome,” Lenin agreed. “A series of sparks that ignite a forest fire.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Great Lake Shishkarym

It’s very hard, thought Lieutenant Babin, to just wait for something, in the bitter cold, in the open, with no real expectation of the thing you’re waiting for ever showing up. Turgenev said they’d be here by between three and five, but…

The lieutenant’s thoughts came to a sudden halt, as a bright star burst in the heavens, illuminating the underside of what could only be a gargantuan airship.

Germans, thought Babin, they overbuild everything.

“Corporal Koslov,” the lieutenant cried out.

“Here, sir.”

“Blow the charge in the ice.”

“Sir!”

“Novarikasha?”

“Here, sir.”

“Start lighting the northern signal fires. I’ll get the southern ones.”

“Sir!”

Babin trotted over to the southernmost of the beacons and picked up a can of kerosene waiting there. Taking the top off, he poured half the contents onto the wood piled four feet high, a mix of tinder, small sticks, and more substantial logs. Then he pulled from a container in his pocket a wooden match, one of perhaps a score. Bending his leg to lift a boot, Babin struck the match on the sole. Instead of tossing it, he knelt and gently moved the flaming lucifer to the kerosene-soaked tinder. He was quickly rewarded with a fireball, rushing upwards into the night, and then, shortly after, a good deal of tinder alight and moving to light fire to the small sticks.

There was a great boom roughly centered between the pyres. Shortly after the explosion, bits and pieces of ice, smaller and larger, began pelting down.

Immediately, Babin set off for the second southern bonfire. As he ran to it, he saw one of the northern pair spring to life. Within no more than five minutes, they had all four lit.

Looking up, he saw that the airship had lined itself up in the open space between the fires, and was gracefully descending.

I will tell my children about this sight. Assuming we live, of course.

Along the sides of the airship, the crew let down the leads that had been used to guide the ship out of its hangar at Jambol. Inside the passenger and cargo compartment, the ship’s exec issued a coil of rope each time as he let out one man at a time to meet with Mueller or Machinist Proll. These then led each debarked passenger to one of the leads used by the handlers on the ground, tied one end of the rope coil to the lead and, in broken, recently learned Russian, directed the former passenger to find a tree to tie the rope off to, “Tightly!”

They alternated the tying off, forward-rear-center-center-rear-forward.

It took a good deal of stumbling and no little amount of cursing before Mueller could go and stand under the control gondola to tell the skipper, “She’s tied off, sir.”

“Very good. Lieutenant Colonel Kostyshakov seems to be on the ground somewhere. Please find him and advise him that his men can unload the materiel.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and Mueller?”

“Yes, sir?”

“After you find Kostyshakov, pack your bag in a hurry; you’ll be staying here with them. Next time we show up, I want them trained to tie us down in mere minutes. Work out useful signals with the exec. Also, make sure Kostyshakov understands we’ll need all his people to set us free once unloading is completed. And you are to make it happen.”

Mueller’s heart sank a bit. He tried to think of an objection but, No, he’s right that we need a more rapid and efficient tie down. And I’ve got everything I need, probably better than the Russians have, to be honest, to keep from freezing to death here. But… shit.

“Yes, sir.”

Tobolsk, Russia

Natalya walked along a section of rope laid out in the southeastern rented warehouse. She counted off, “… fourteen, fifteen, sixteen… window here… seventeen, eighteen, nineteen… stairs down to the basement here,” she stopped to point, “door leading to the kitchen over there.”

As she recited the latest findings from her spying in both the Governor’s House and the Kornilov House, Turgenev, Mokrenko, and Sarnof tied colored pieces of rope and cloth to the sections of rope already laid out, marking the windows in white, stairs in red, and other features in other colors. Furniture was outlined in black, but, since it tended to get moved around, was less precisely located than the walls, windows, stairs, and doors.

“Wonderful,” congratulated Lieutenant Turgenev, meaning it. The girl preened and then flushed pink. The others affected not to notice.

“There’s something else going on,” said Natalya, “but I’m not sure what to make of it.”

“Go on,” said Turgenev.

She hesitated, then began, “Two of the guards, Chekov and Dostovalov—Chekov’s the senior of the two—are involved with two of the Romanov girls, Tatiana and Olga, respectively. Anyone with eyes to see could see it. But that seems to rule out men, generally.” Because yours is a dumb sex, my very dearest. “The tsar does not see it. The tsarina is usually bed-bound, so has never had a chance to see it. But the other two girls, Maria and Anastasia, most definitely do see it. If they rolled their eyes any harder they could see the backs of their own skulls from the inside.

“It’s not a romantic connection with Tatiana, but it’s something complicated—and powerful. But for the other two… well… they’re in love. Obvious as the nose on my face. No, that’s not good enough; it’s as obvious as the hill leading to the Kremlin of Tobolsk. But…”

Again, Turgenev prodded, “Go on.”

“Something terrible happened to Olga, I think. Something like… what happened to me. And if guilt were heat, Dostavalov could heat the whole building on his own.”

Turgenev inclined his head to one side. “You don’t think that he…?”

“No, I don’t. It was someone else. I overheard a couple of the guards talking about Chekov killing someone who, and I quote, ‘was in desperate need of a good dose of killing.’ But somehow it was Dostovalov’s fault, or he believes it was, even if he didn’t do it. I can’t tell you how I know, but I do know. It’s part of being a woman.” And stew on that “woman” word for a while, Maxim Sergeyevich.

Natalya glanced at Turgenev, eyebrow raised, but he didn’t challenge her self-designation.

“That’s going to complicate things, I suspect,” said Mokrenko.

“How’s that?” Turgenev asked.

“I’d be really surprised if Kostyshakov hasn’t given the word and been training the rest of the battalion to take no prisoners. It’s what I’d do in his place.”

“Sure, makes sense,” agreed the lieutenant.

“Now picture what happens when one of the rescue force is about to eliminate, say, this Chekov person, and Grand Duchess Tatiana tries to save him.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine. “Shit. Ugly.”

“She might or might not,” Natalya said. “The relationship between those two is complicated. But I have no doubt at all that Olga would stand between Dostavalov and a charging tiger, unless he overpowered her to stand between the tiger and her.”

Turgenev nodded slowly, then said, “And even if the rescue force can kill those two guards without harming the girls, what do the girls do at seeing their loves shot down? This is going to be tough enough for the rescue force without having to carry two of the Romanov girls…”

“They’re big girls, too,” Natalya interjected.

“… two of those big Romanov girls,” Mokrenko continued, without a pause, “while those girls are crying and screaming and kicking and biting, doing everything, in fact, except cooperating.”

“Where do these men sleep?” asked Turgenev.

“In the basement with the other guards,” she answered. “Of whom, by the way, there are about a hundred in each building. I couldn’t be more accurate than that, sorry.”

“Would they be missed?” Turgenev asked, adding, “No need to apologize; we haven’t been able to be any more accurate than you.”

“You’re not going to kill them, are you?” Natalya asked. “They’re really very nice men. War heroes, too, in fact. Also, there are two sailors there who care for and guard Tsarevich Alexei. They’ve done so since well before the revolution. Devoted to him, actually. Klementi Nagorny is one, Ivan Sednev the other. If you opened up a dictionary to the word ‘loyal’? There would be a little picture of Klementi Nagorny and right next to it one of Sednev. What about them?”

“Worse and worse,” Mokrenko muttered, then quickly added, “and no blame to you, Natalya. Without the information you’ve gotten… well… this thing would be a lot closer to impossible.”

Turgenev asked, “Is there anything else you can add to our rope and cloth diagram, Natalya?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “Not without getting out a tape measure and acting very suspiciously.”

“Fine. We’re kicking this up to higher. Rostislav Alexandrovich, let’s roll up our diagrams, put them on a sleigh, and go see the big boss.”

“There’s another problem, though,” Natalya said. “The tsarina. I don’t know if she’s actually that unwell or just playing for sympathy, but you’ve got to account for the possibility she’ll need to be carried.”

“Oh, great,” said the lieutenant, letting his forehead fall onto the fingers of his left hand. “I don’t think any of us considered that. And I suppose the tsar and their children would never leave without their mother?”

“Not a chance,” she replied.

Great Lake Shishkarym

When Turgenev and Mokrenko arrived on their sleigh at the forward assembly area, they were unsurprised to see a zeppelin there, disgorging men, equipment, and supplies, but shocked almost speechless at the size of the thing.

“You know, sir,” Mokrenko said to the lieutenant, as he pulled the reins to bring their pair of Yakut horses to a stop, “as much as anything I’ve ever seen, that airship tells me the Germans are just too dangerous to leave free. We’ve both seen how good they are, tactically, in the field, but that thing shouts that they think too big, dangerously too big.”

“First name and patronymic, Rostislav Alexandrovich, first name and patronymic.”

“Sir, we’re among our own. I won’t forget when we’re in Tobolsk, but it would be too hard to explain here.”

“All right, then, Sergeant Mokrenko. But we can’t, either of us, forget once we leave here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mokrenko stood up in the sleigh. He looked around and saw Panfil and the rest of the 37mm cannon section working with a couple of the stouter looking Yakut horses to move around their guns and limbers. Couple of days practice still needed, I think.

He was pleasantly surprised to see every man clad in white from head to foot. That makes fine sense.

Elsewhere, his own friend Kaledin seemed to be doing much the same with sleighs and pairs of the Yakuts. Not far from the lake’s edge, a very informal looking encampment was surrounded by a dozen burly guards. No one inside looked familiar. Indeed, they looked like a collection of random citizens, and none of them looked too happy about being there. I wonder…

Turgenev caught sight of the commander, Kostyshakov, walking to their sleigh. “Bring the sleigh,” he said to Mokrenko.

With a shake of the reins, and a pull to one lead, the Yakuts padded off, turning themselves and the sleigh in the direction of Kostyshakov. When they were about ten or so arshini from the commander, Mokrenko pulled back, making the horses stop. Then the two of them stood and saluted, while Turgenev reported that he and Mokrenko wished “to speak to the commander.”

Kostyshakov made a come here motion with his fingertips, saying, too, “Come on, Maxim, I’m not all that formal.”

“Well, yes, sir; I know, sir,” replied the lieutenant. “But I’ve got a problem and I’m not sure how to deal with it.”

“Right, come on, let’s go to the tent. There’s hot tea there and…”

“Sir,” said Mokrenko, “if I may ask, who or what are those people over there being guarded?”

“Local civilians, hunters, that kind of thing, Sergeant. As soon as we landed the first group and got organized, I mounted up as many as knew how to ride and sent them out on a long sweep to drag in anyone who might have seen us or the zeppelin. Some of them are still out hunting, too, especially in the area between us and Tobolsk. But for about ten miles around here, there shouldn’t be anyone free but maybe for the odd ghost.”

“I see, sir. Thank you.”

“Sergeant Mokrenko,” said Turgenev, “I think you should come with us. You’ve got insights the commander should have.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed the sergeant, once again flicking the reins and causing the horses to walk sedately in the direction of the tent.

On the way, Turgenev related the problem with the four men, Chekov, Dostavalov, Sednev, and Nagorny. He thought he saw Kostyshakov’s face tighten a bit at the mention of the possibility Tatiana Nicholaevna might be emotionally involved with one of them. It was only a momentary dropping of the curtain, though, so the lieutenant couldn’t be sure.

Still interesting, if I really did see that.

In the tent, Daniil drew tea for the three of them. Lumps of sugar sat on a small tin plate. “So what are you suggesting?” he asked of Turgenev.

“Sir, the possibilities seem to me to be three: One, ignore the problem. This I cannot recommend. Two: Kill the four of them. Especially in the cases of Nagorny and Sednev, this I also cannot recommend. Three: We kidnap the lot and hold them.”

“Well, no,” Kostyshakov agreed, “we can’t ignore it. I’m inclined to say kidnap them if you can; kill them if you must.”

“Yes, sir, we’ll try that, then. The other thing is the Nemka.”

“What about the tsarina?” he asked. Few Russians really liked “the German woman.” “I’ve met her, you know. She’s not so bad, really, just very shy and fully aware she’s not much liked, without the first clue of what to do about it.”

“She’s going to have to be carried out of the house,” said Turgenev. “She’s alleged to be weak, sickly, and is generally bed ridden. She is usually in a wheelchair when she’s not in bed.”

“Crap,” said Daniil. “That means we can’t take her out one of the upper story windows, so we’re going to have to secure the main floor, as well. How many guard did you say were in the building?”

“We think about a hundred in each of the basements of the two buildings, sir. You would think we could be more accurate than that but we can’t. They’re not disciplined enough to be able to count those on duty and multiply for the number off duty. The town is full of discharged soldiers, half of them or more armed and still wearing uniforms and we can’t be sure which is which. They’re as poor on insignia as on discipline. We can’t count the number of squatting holes and multiply by eight because they have a little problem of shitting anywhere. Same with urinals. They tend to eat down in their basements, too, so we can’t count them at meals.”

“I’m beginning to think I should have listened to that soldier about poison gas,” Daniil muttered.

“What was that, sir?” asked Turgenev.

“Nothing important; never mind.”

“We did bring something that might be useful, sir,” Mokrenko said.

“What’s that?”

Turgenev smiled. “With the information from our little spy we were able to assemble floor plans, very accurate for the Governor’s House, maybe a little less so for the Kornilov House, for all the above ground floors. She was willing to go to the basements but I told her not to, too dangerous for a young lady and ours has already had problems enough.”

“Good,” said Daniil, “very good. We can use them to lay out a rehearsal…”

“No need, sir,” Turgenev said. “In the sleigh? All that rope and cord? Roll it out. Wherever there’s a loop drive in a stake and make it a ninety degree angle. That’s the layout of both floors of both houses. There is one important exception, accuracy-wise. The walls are about two arshini thick, to include the interior walls, except where there are windows and doors. Nobody will be shooting through those with anything smaller than a cannon.”

The lieutenant reached into his coat and extracted a small sheaf of papers and photographs. Handing them over, he said, “These are the codes for the cord diagrams, plus a layout of the town, and pictures of everything important in it. Also a scale of how long to get to what seemed to me the obvious target areas from the safe house and warehouses we’ve rented.”

Daniil immediately started thumbing through them. “You know, Maxim, I’d had my doubts about sending you, a mainly Military Intelligence type, to lead this mission. I was wrong.”

“Thank you, sir. The sergeant deserves as much or more credit. One other thing, sir?”

“Yes?”

“I think you and the company commanders, as well as the Fourth Company platoon leaders, ought look at the town, personally.”

“I don’t disagree. But we’d probably stand out a bit.”

“No, you won’t, sir,” said Mokrenko. “Wear army uniforms without insignia. Dirty them. Don’t bathe for a while or go roll in pig shit. Put some dirt on your faces. Address each other as comrade or first name and patronymic and no one will look twice. Like the lieutenant said, we have a safe house you can use, though I think the warehouse by the river docks would be better.”

“I can take Fourth Company’s officers with me now plus the commander of Second Company. Will the sleigh take us all?”

“Sure, sir,” Mokrenko replied. “These little Yakut horses are plenty strong enough for that.”

“Then let me round them up. We’ll leave within the hour.”

Tobolsk

It was brightly moonlit when Turgenev and Mokrenko returned to the safe house, with their five passengers, Kostyshakov, Dratvin, short, dark, and stocky, plus Cherimisov, Collan, and Molchalin, the latter of whom rarely spoke much. Back at the landing zone for the zeppelin, the rest of the force went through clearing drills under their senior noncoms.

For the five of them, Kostyshakov had decided, the safe house would invite less commentary from the neighbors than the five of them, alone, would, in an otherwise empty warehouse. With the passengers covered by a tarp, just before they entered the city proper, Mokrenko drove up Ulitsa Slesarnaya, then turned left on Yershova, and left again to enter the frozen way leading to the back yard of the safe house.

They found Natalya waiting for them. After bowing and curtseying for the presumptively august personage of their commander, she launched into what amounted to a panic-driven tirade, though the object of the tirade were the Bolsheviks.

“Since you’ve been gone,” she exclaimed, “another two hundred and fifty Bolsheviks have shown up from Omsk!” She pointed, frantically. “Right over there; across the intersection! Another group of fifty red fanatics has come from Tyumen! Supposedly another four hundred and fifty are coming from Yekaterinburg! And there’s rumor that another group is coming all the way from Moscow or, at least, at Moscow’s direction, to take the royal family elsewhere!”

Kostyshakov spoke, first taking the girl’s hand, “That’s fine. Natalya, isn’t it? The lieutenant and the sergeant have told me of your good work. We can deal with these, though it may be a little harder and bloodier than we hoped. Do you know where these new troops are staying? Do you know when the other four hundred and fifty are coming?”

“I don’t know about that four hundred and fifty,” she said. “As for the Omsk men, they’re at the Girls’ School.” Again, she pointed, “Right. Over. There. I don’t know about the other two groups. I do know that the Omsk men and the royal family’s guards are talking about cooperating to get rid of the Tyumen lot.”

“Where do rumors come from,” Kostyshakov asked, “in a place cut off by snow and ice?”

“Telegraph office,” was Turgenev’s immediate reply.

“Right. Now can we bribe or threaten them into revealing who is coming, when?”

“Bribe, I think,” said Sarnof. “Maybe a couple of hundred gold rubles to the head of the office to get the information. Although, it might, you know, be less suspicious if I took him to lunch again, one telegrapher to another.”

“Right,” agreed Daniil, again. “We’ll go with Option B. But bring enough gold with you if that doesn’t work.”

“Yes, sir. First thing in the morning… well, I’ll make the offer first thing in the morning. I trust the chief of the station, to a degree, but am far less sure of his underlings.”

“Now, the objectives. Tentatively, I want to send one company to take care of the Omsk detachment, less than one to secure a perimeter around both houses, one platoon to take care of the Tyumen lot, and one platoon from Fourth Company for each of the two houses.”

Turning to Turgenev, he asked, “Anything sound inherently unworkable to that?”

“No, sir, on the face of it it sounds workable.”

“Sir,” asked Shukhov, the engineer, “if there’s a small target I could conceivably rig a bomb to take the whole building out. Assuming, of course, you brought enough explosive in the zeppelin. For myself, all I’ve got left is enough to do a thorough job on the telegraph line.”

Mokrenko interjected, “Sir, while we’ve maybe enough to take on Omsk and Tyumen, plus rescue the family, we don’t have enough to take on the Yekaterinburg mob, too. What if they’re here tomorrow? What if they’re here tomorrow along with those sods sent by Moscow?”

“The short version, Sergeant, is we can’t dawdle much anymore, can we? We recon… get back… wait for the zeppelin… move here… let’s call it a week from tomorrow night. The last combat company won’t be here until just before then. And even then, we’ll have left a good deal of the reserve ammunition and the replacements detachment behind.”

“And if they get here sooner?” Mokrenko asked.

“Then we’ll have to figure something else out. Maybe hit them on the way to Tyumen, as they cart off the royal family. We have to hope, too, that their orders aren’t to murder the royal family immediately.”

“Maybe…” Turgenev began.

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Maybe if we move now we could get in position to ambush the newcomers.”

Kostyshakov shook his head. “I like our odds of hitting them at night when they’re mostly asleep better than I like our odds of finding them as they approach, and fighting them in broad daylight.”

“Finding them won’t be such a problem,” said Turgenev. “They’ll follow the telegraph line. Defeating them… while being sure that none get away to warn the guards? That’s a lot tougher.”

“Oh,” Natalya interjected. “Finding them; that reminds me. Nagorny never leaves the tsarevich’s side, and Sednev rarely does. But whenever Chekov and Dostovalov are off duty and not asleep they’re usually in a little dive called ‘The Gilded Lark.’ I walked by it, earlier, to see. It’s a pretty pretentious name for what is not much more than a hole in the wall.”

“We’ll need you to take us by that, too,” said Turgenev. “In fact, while the commander and the others rest, why don’t you take myself and Rostislav Alexandrovich by it now?”

The tavern was only a few blocks to the north of the safe house, nestled in among some shacks no better than itself, with a crude, handpainted sign on the road indicating what it was. The noise coming from the tavern sounded like nothing so much as a brawl. Natalya was reasonably sure she heard the words, “Menshevik swine” and “Bolshevik filth” being bandied about, interspersed with the sounds of breaking bottles and chairs… and possibly heads.

“At those prices,” observed Turgenev, looking at the lettering under the sign, “even here in Tobolsk, one expects that the vodka will be of the very worst.”

“Maxim Sergeyevich,” said Mokrenko, “I think perhaps you should escort the young lady to the general vicinity of the Governor’s house before she is missed. Meanwhile, purely in the interests of reconnaissance, I am going in there. If we decide to kidnap the two who have grown close to the Romanovs, it would probably be a good thing if I didn’t seem a stranger to the wait staff.”

“Don’t shoot anyone, Rostislav Alexandrovich; it would raise too many questions.”

“Speaking as a good Menshevik or Bolshevik, myself, of course,” said the sergeant, as he ground his right fist into his left palm, expectantly, “whichever may prove most convenient in the near future, I would not dream of it.”

Telegraph Station, Tobolsk

The telegraph, itself, was silent. The chief telegrapher of the place, clad in a suit of old-fashioned cut, with a thin bow tie on, leaned back in his chair, reading a two months out of date newspaper. He immediately looked up, then, wearing a broad smile, stood up. The paper he left on the table.

Sarnof was a frequent caller at the station, enough to be on a first name and patronymic basis with the staff there. So far his cover for sending obviously coded messages had held, “We are a highly competitive business, Arkady Yevgenovich; furs, and our markets fluctuate daily. Any advantage that can be gained for our employer, any business secret we can keep to ourselves, pays large dividends.”

How long this would continue to work was the subject of difficulty sleeping compounded with not infrequent nightmares.

“Good morning!” exclaimed the chief of the station. “Good morning, Abraham Davidovich! What brings you here today?”

The best lies contain a good deal of truth, Sarnof reminded himself, before answering, “A deep curiosity about just how bad the situation in the town is about to become, and whether we can expect a full scale civil war between the guards on you-know-who and his family, and the newcomers from Omsk and Tyumen. My boss, Maxim Sergeyavich, says we may have to cut our losses and leave with what we’ve already gotten if it gets much worse.”

“Well, just between you and me,” said the civilian telegrapher, “I think it’s going to get a lot worse.”

“How could it?” asked Sarnof. “Fights in the streets? Fights in the taverns? Armed men being stood off from other armed men at the old governor’s mansion?”

“Four hundred and fifty more Bolsheviks coming,” answered the telegrapher.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Sarnof, “as if we need more of them. How long?”

“Not sooner than ten days from now, I think. I asked my counterpart in Yekaterinburg and he says they’re a disorganized rabble, still trying to commandeer enough food and drayage for the trip. But…”

“Yes?”

The telegrapher pointed with his chin. Turning around, through the paned window, Sarnof saw a cavalcade trotting down the frozen street toward the telegraph station. The leader wore a combination beard and mustache that reminded Sarnof of nothing so much as the hairy space between a woman’s legs, though it remained a matter of some doubt whether any human female had ever been so thickly matted. The signaler wondered if a smile had ever crossed that face. Could you even see it, one wonders, past that thick bush of a goatee.

“That lot have come to take the tsar and his family away.”

The cavalcade stopped at the telegraph office, with the leader dismounting, handing his reins to an underling, and striding confidently into the office. He made a look at Sarnof that as much as said, “Get out.”

I wonder if that block of ice has ever had a human feeling in his life?

“So, lunch at the hotel by the central square at one, Arkady? My treat, today, of course.”

“I’ll be there, Abraham Davidovich.”

And with that, Sarnof took his leave and, stopping only to get a quick count of the numbers of the newcomers, hurried back to the safe house, to report.

Safe House, Yershova Street, Tobolsk

When Sarnof arrived back, he saw Mokrenko sitting at the kitchen table, sporting an impressive shiner and individually checking each tooth in his upper jaw for firmness of fit.

“Where’s the lieutenant?” Sarnof asked. “Better, where’s Kostyshakov?”

Moving a front tooth that seemed a little looser than one might prefer, Mokrenko sighed, said, “Helluva fight, that was,” then answered, “They’re with Natalya, the captain and platoon leaders of Fourth Company, looking over the Governor’s and Kornilov’s houses. Kostyshakov and Dratkin are with the lieutenant, scouting out the Girls’ School.”

“Well, we’ve got a new target and problem. The Reds who are supposed to take the royal family away have arrived, on horseback, about one hundred and fifty of them and they look like they know what they’re about.”

“Shit,” said Mokrenko, standing and reaching for his coat, loose tooth forgotten. “Tell you what, you go by the Governor’s house and tell them what’s up and to come back. I’ll go find the lieutenant and bring that group back.”