Chapter Twenty-four
Some Members of Number Four Company, Preparing to Set Forth
Safe House, Yershova Street, Tobolsk
It took until noon to find and bring back the reconnaissance parties. By that time, Sarnof had gone to the hotel where they’d first stayed to pump the telegrapher for information over lunch.
“Time and tide wait for no man,” said Kostyshakov. “We strike tomorrow night. The third zeppelin load should be down by the time I get back to the lake camp. We won’t need the fourth load for this, but only for after this.”
Cherimisov nodded, then said, “We can do this. The men will have been practicing the assaults on both buildings for some time now on that rope schematic Lieutenant Turgenev so thoughtfully produced. All the rest need to do is contain the Reds. If you send one company less one platoon after the Omsk men, to hold them in place, one platoon after the Tyumen men, and one company less one platoon after these newcomers, then use one platoon to seal off the area of the two houses, we can clear the buildings, guard the people we’ve rescued with one platoon, then reinforce the group keeping the weakest group of Bolsheviks pinned, eliminate them, then all of us go after the next weakest, and so on.”
“So think I. But we’ll need a couple of things. Lieutenant Turgenev?”
“Sir?”
“We’re going to be coming in a column, mostly on skis, with those stout little Yakut horses pulling the infantry cannon, the machine guns, and the sleighs. Might have to put the heavy weapons on the sleighs, actually. We’ll be very quiet. We’ll need an easily identifiable release point from our column of march to lead us to assembly areas, just after dusk. That means you need to meet us with . . . well, probably four men, two to lead us to each warehouse.”
Turgenev shook his head, doubtfully. “Don’t think we can, sir. We’ve still got to kidnap the two guards and Shukhov has to blow the telegraph lines. That’s everybody I’ve got.”
“I can lead one party,” said Natalya.
“Give me Shukhov,” Mokrenko added, “before he sets off to blow the lines down. He and I and . . . let me see . . . Timashuk, I’ll need him to make sure the prisoners don’t die on us. But it would be better to present them with really bad odds, so they don’t try to resist.”
“Two more men, Sergeant Mokrenko,” said Daniil, “because you’re right that more numbers will help with a kidnapping.”
Turgenev thought furiously, then said, “Mokrenko, Timashuk, Sarnof, and Shukhov for the kidnapping. Myself, Natalya, and Lavin to lead the companies to the warehouses. That leaves us one spare for that.”
“That works for me,” said Kostyshakov. “Best of the bad hand we’ve been dealt. Now, I hope I remember how to drive a sleigh.”
“Doesn’t take much skill, sir,” said Mokrenko. “The Yakuts are surprisingly gentle horses.”
“Do we know,” asked Turgenev of Natalya, “if those two special guards will be going to the Gilded Lark tonight?”
“They’ve the night off,” she answered. “I know that much. I also know that’s where they usually go. I think Chekov, who isn’t much of a drinker, takes Dostovalov there to keep him away from Olga.”
“All right, then,” finished Kostyshakov. “Gentlemen . . . if we’ve neglected or forgotten anything, we’re just going to have to pull something out of our asses. If someone would set up one of the sleighs for me . . . ?”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Mokrenko.
“Now where,” asked Kostyshakov, “should our link-up point be?”
“You wouldn’t have seen it,” said Turgenev, “covered as you all were on the sleigh, but there’s an island south of the town, formed by the Tobol and Irtysh Rivers. Nobody lives that way. The trees of the island block any view of the lower town and vice versa, while the upper town is too far away to see much. We’ll build a small fire and put up something to keep it from being seen in the upper town, either from the walls or the towers of the Kremlin of Tobolsk. We can meet there and then split, with one group going for the warehouse by the docks, and near the royal family, while the other goes for the warehouse south of town. We could, if you want to try it and think the men of Fourth Company could be as quiet as mice, billet the company here, in the safe house. There’s a basement the size of the first floor, and half the rooms above are unoccupied. It won’t be comfy and it will be tight, but it puts you within a few minutes of the Romanovs.”
“Let me mull that over,” said Kostyshakov. “But I think that with that reinforced company of Reds across the intersection it’s too risky. I like the advantage of proximity but dread being seen before we launch our attack.”
“From our point of view, sir, it wouldn’t make any difference. You can tell us where you want people when we link up. Just remember that the warehouses can fit hundreds, easily, while we will be a little pressed to squeeze under a hundred into this place.
“What’s our sign and countersign?”
Kostyshakov considered this briefly, then decided, “We only need a running password. Make it Liberty or Death. One other thing.”
“Sir?” asked Turgenev.
“People get lost in strange terrain, especially at night. You, young Lieutenant, will come with us to guide us back.”
The Gilded Lark, Tobolsk
Although it was just a hole in the wall, and somewhat sparsely furnished after the fights that had taken place, the tavern was warm, had sufficient rough wooden boxes and crates for tables and seating. Also, despite the generally poorly washed clientele, the smell of food was as thick and hearty as the food itself, and went a good way, if not all the way, toward covering up the stench of people.
Those people were almost entirely soldiers, though whether they were ex- or current was a hard call, since clothing shortages had an amazing number of men wearing their old uniforms, sans insignia, or, perhaps in some cases, someone else’s cast-offs.
Mokrenko really hadn’t had a good look at the surroundings, the previous night, since he’d plunged immediately into a riot. Most especially had he not noticed, since they’d likely fled at the first sign of trouble, the waitresses hauling glasses of vodka, mugs of beer, and trays replete with bread and soup, plus the occasional plate of pelmeni.
There were no photos of the pair but Natalya had described them well. “One is short and stocky, but very graceful and quick. You will be surprised at how much so. That’s Chekov and he looks—and is—far more intelligent than his comrade. The other one, Dostovalov, is tall, strong, and has his head currently bandaged against a rather bad blow he took. You won’t have a hard time getting the latter to drink himself insensible, but with the former you might.”
Looking around upon closing the tavern’s leather-hinged door behind him, Mokrenko didn’t see either man, and certainly not such an oddly matched pair together. He let a waitress—blonde, almost pretty, and remarkably large-breasted—lead him to a bench. She introduced herself as “Xenia.”
“Bottle of vodka and a glass,” he replied, when she asked him what he’d be having. Then he looked at the menu over the bar and asked, “What’s in the pelmeni?”
“Oh, today is special,” she replied. “Then owner came back with a nice deer, so it’s venison pelmeni. They’re wonderful. I can say that because I snatched a couple when the cook wasn’t looking.”
“I predict you’ll go far,” Mokrenko said to the girl, inciting a saucy answer, accompanied by a knowing wink, “I’ll go further than any of the other girls here; faster, too.”
That got her the laugh she expected.
“Let’s try the pelmeni, then.”
After the previous night’s festivities, it seemed no one was willing to talk politics and risk another fight breaking out. Indeed, it seemed no one was willing to get so close to anyone else they didn’t already know. This left Mokrenko alone with four empty chairs while the other chairs filled. Two of those chairs, after polite inquiries, found their way to other tables. When someone asked for a third Mokrenko answered, “Ah, no, sorry; I have a couple of friends coming to join me.”
Fortunately, no fight broke out over the matter.
Or at least no one is fighting yet, thought Mokrenko. But, needs must when the devil drives, and I’ve got to get them somewhat inebriated and outside.
The vodka and pelmeni arrived before the two guards did. So intent was Mokrenko on the food that he almost missed them when they came through the door. He found Natalya’s description spot on, except for one thing. She never said what an air of sadness and doom surrounds the bigger of the two.
Chekov and Dostovalov walked silently, side by side, down the street leading to their current favorite hole in the wall, after the Reds taught the old butcher a nasty lesson. Dostovalov, himself, was the very picture of misery. He wouldn’t even be here, but would have been with his beloved Olga, except that the newcomers had relieved the guards of their duties and forbidden them from coming into the main or second floor of the house. At the same time they’d locked down on the Romanovs, hard, even as they were stuffing several dozen more aristocrats and staff into the house.
“Don’t worry, don’t complain,” the chief of the new men had ordered, “you won’t be here for long!”
No, not long . . . not here . . . not anywhere, thought the short noncom.
Chekov had his own issues. Tatiana was his friend, one of only two in the midst of this terrible world. And despite his best efforts not to, he cared for her sisters and brother as well.
What will we do? What can we do? I don’t give a shit about Nicholas or his hypochondriac loon of a wife, but his children deserve to live. I’ve spent years trying to isolate and harden my soul, and now if Tatiana and her siblings die, a part of me will die with them. And Anton is likely to kill himself in a futile attempt to save them if I don’t sit on him. Tatiana will still die, Olga, Maria and Anastasia and the boy, Alexei, will all still die.
And then I will be alone with only the coldest, blackest pieces of myself for company.
Chekov stopped at the tavern door and listened. Ah, good, no riot tonight. Helps, I suppose, that the Tyumen mob have been run out of town.
How will I even earn my bread, after this? Fighting for the Reds? Murderous bastards, and when they’re not murdering innocent children, they’re starving the commoner in the name of progress. I could join the White Army—but they prey upon my mother’s people as readily as they do the communists. If the God of my forebears does order the universe, He must be little more than a sadistic puzzle-maker.
He turned the latch and pushed the door half open, just enough for him and Dostovalov to get through while letting as little heat out as possible. Now to find a seat in this mess.
The tavern had filled up quite a bit since the sergeant’s arrival. Both Chekov and Dostovalov searched left and right, near and far, for an open couple of seats. Since no one else invited them over, Mokrenko waved and made an expansive “come on down” gesture.
Seeing his friend hesitate, Dostovalov said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, cut it out. We’ve got no secrets to spill. We’re about to be unemployed. I cannot see my one true love before she leaves and you are about to lose your arguing partner, student . . . and friend. We’re about as important as the horse turds we passed getting here. Nobody is a threat to us, my friend, because we just do not matter.”
Ordinarily, thought Chekov, I’d sit outside rather than share a table with a gregarious stranger, but he’s right. What difference does it make now? No future, no job . . . no Tatiana. So what difference?
Gratefully, the two made their way over and took rough, uncushioned boxes for their seats.
Introductions proceeded apace, “Rostislav Alexandrovich Mokrenko . . . Sergei Arkadyevich Chekov . . . Anton Ivanovich Dostovalov.”
“Gentlemen,” said Mokrenko, pointing to the vodka, “please, help yourselves. I just got paid by my company and am pretty flush at the moment. Oh, my manners; Xenia? Couple more glasses.”
“What company is that?” asked Chekov, innately suspicious at any show of generosity from a stranger.
“Pan Siberian Import-Export Company. Originally started in Vladivostok, I understand, but branching out to the west now.”
“You haven’t been with them long . . .” At that point, Xenia arrived with a couple of apparently clean glasses, which she set down on the table.
“Oh, hi, Anton Ivanovich,” she said to Dostovalov. “Haven’t seen you in a week or two.”
“Old friend?” asked Mokrenko, after the girl had left to see to another table.
“Something like that,” Dostovalov replied.
Mokrenko nodded, then answered Chekov’s question. “No, not long. They were recruiting good shots who could ride and didn’t mind living rough when I was discharged from the army. I had nothing better to do and the pay promised to be a lot better than the army had ever given me.”
“I knew you were a soldier,” Chekov said. “Don’t ask me how.”
Mokrenko reached for the bottle of vodka and poured a couple of mid-depth drinks. “Probably the same way I recognized you two as soldiers. It wasn’t the uniforms without any insignia; half the men of the town are wearing old uniforms. It’s in the walk, in the voice, in the mannerisms, and in the way you look around suspiciously. It’s me sitting here with my back to the wall and you two taking turns looking to see who comes in the door. If you’re one of us and halfway observant you just know. Though I suppose you could have been sailors, too.”
“There are, in fact, a couple of sailors who work around us,” said Dostovalov. “Good men, devoted to the . . . ouch! What the fuck was that for?”
“I’m sure Comrade Mokrenko isn’t interested in our work or who we work for,” said Chekov. “I kicked you so you wouldn’t wear out our welcome.”
“Not especially interested, no,” Mokrenko agreed. “Though if you ever get discharged look me up; the company always has openings, as far as I’ve been able to see. And they pay in gold and silver, none of this paper crap.”
The sergeant noticed that Dostovalov had tossed off his vodka rather quickly after being kicked under the table. He refilled the glass without being asked.
“I hate eating alone,” said Mokrenko. “You guys hungry?”
“We can’t impose . . .” began Chekov, before Mokrenko cut him off with, “I told you; we get paid in gold, and good wages at that. I can afford it. Hey, Xenia!”
Three and a half hours later, the first bottle of vodka was gone and the second was more than half finished. Both Mokrenko and Chekov were pretty sober or, at worst, mildly tipsy. Dostovalov, on the other hand, despite the food he’d eaten, was utterly drunk, slovenly drunk, crying in his arms drunk.
“He acts—he drinks—like a man who knows his soul is damned,” said Mokrenko. “What could he have done . . .”
“It’s not what he did,” said Chekov, “it’s what he failed to do. Long story, and ugly. And I don’t have the right to pass it on.”
“I understand. Well . . . can you carry him on your own? He’s a big boy, after all.”
“Oh, I can get him home eventually,” was Chekov’s reply, repeating, “Eventually.”
“Tell you what,” said Mokrenko, “you take one arm, I’ll take the other, and we’ll both port him home . . . .ummm . . . where is home, by the way?” He reached into a pocket and then put some small coins on the table.
“For the nonce, it’s the basement of the Governor’s house. A basement suddenly a lot more crowded than it used to be.”
Mokrenko forced his eyes to widen. “You’re guarding . . . mmm . . . you-know-who?”
Chekov nodded, then said, “For another day or so, maybe two. Well, not guarding, exactly, since we’ve been relieved. They’re being taken away by some Bolshevik fanatics soon.”
“You don’t sound happy?” Mokrenko said, standing, pulling first one, then the other, of Dostovalov’s arms through his army-issue coat. Then, he pulled the drunken Dostovalov up well enough to get control of an arm.
Chekov, walking around the table to take the other answered, “I’m not quite happy about it, no. He, on the other hand, is devastated.”
“You sound rather less happy than ‘not quite happy.’ ”
“Honestly, I don’t know how I feel. I am . . . fond . . . yes, fond . . . of one of them, and like most of them . . . even the tsar is more ignorant than evil . . . .okay, all together now . . .”
With a pair of grunts, they pulled Dostovalov up and away from the table, the triple discrepancy in height making the exercise a lot more difficult than one might have expected. To get him through the door would have been impossible without either dropping and dragging him or, as was offered, the assistance of Xenia.
With Xenia’s help, in any case, they got through the door and into the street. Down it whipped a bitter wind from above the Arctic Circle. Its force, fury, and frigid bitterness brought Dostovalov to a limited degree of consciousness. He began to weep and muttered the name “Olga,” more than once.
They reached a point at which the sergeant could see the two men and sleigh he’d posted by an intersection. They began to walk toward the trio.
“Oh, that’s his problem,” said Mokrenko.
“The center of his problems,” Chekov said, “but he has still others.”
“Well, one is that he’s going to catch pneumonia with his coat opened up.” Without a word, Mokrenko slipped out from under Dostovalov’s arm, leaving the entire weight of the man to stagger Chekov. As he did so, he pulled his M1911 from under his own coat.
“Friend,” he said to Chekov, once the latter could see the pistol under the streetlights, “while it would pain me to shoot you, still I will shoot you at the first peep above a whisper or act of resistance.”
“Bastard,” spat Chekov, albeit quietly. He was still struggling to hold Dostovalov up. “And stupid bastard at that; I haven’t enough money to even pay for the vodka and meal.”
“This isn’t a robbery,” Mokrenko said. “Moreover, I am doing you a number of favors at the moment, even if you can’t see them. Now let the drunk down and you lie down on your belly as well.
“This would have been easier if you’d drunk your fill. I should have listened to Natalya.”
“You know the new servant girl?” Chekov asked, as he lay Dostovalov on the ground.
“She works for us, for my . . . mmm . . . organization, yes. Now get on the ground.”
About that time, Timashuk, the medic, left Shukhov and the sleigh behind, and trotted up the frozen street.
“Tie their hands and feet,” Mokrenko ordered, “starting with the short one. Don’t be any rougher than necessary. Search them for matches or anything that might be used to start a fire.”
“The short one has a pistol,” Timashuk said, tucking the pistol into his own pocket.
“Who are you people?” Chekov asked, as he felt his wrists being bound behind him.
Mokrenko leaned down and whispered, “We’re the people who are going to save your girlfriend and her family.” Turning to Shukhov, he said, “Bring the sleigh here. We’ll load them on, cover them up, and take them to the safe house.”
The safe house had never been designed to be a prison. Even so, there was a kind of storage area in the basement, unheated but at least dry, with a strong door with a lock on it. Chekov, feet untied, was marched down to it by Timashuk, pistol at the ready. Meanwhile, Mokrenko and Shukhov carried Dostovalov down. Down below, two pallets had been made up as beds, with hay for bedding and several blankets each. Between the pallets stood a wooden box with an assortment of food and a couple of jugs of water. A chamber pot, courtesy of the owner of the place, stood to the right of the stout door.
“I wish I could take your parole,” said Mokrenko to Chekov, “but, under the circumstances, I really can’t. You could try to make noise to attract attention but—and I’ve already tested this—from down here nobody can hear you outside.” Here Mokrenko decided that a brazen lie was in order. “Indeed, I tested it also by shooting into the floor there; if you dig you can find a couple of Amerikanski bullets. Nobody heard those, either. You might contemplate the implications of that, before you decide to make trouble. I regret the lack of light but you might just be dumb enough to start a fire. We’d leave the house and let you burn alive, of course, so no skin off my dick, but I’d really rather you stay alive.”
Chekov scowled. “You said you were going to ‘save my girlfriend’ and that the new serving girl, Natalya, was in on this. In the first place, while Tatiana isn’t ‘my girlfriend,’ we are friends. I’d help save her if I could while Dostovalov would gladly die for his Olga. Let us help!”
Mokrenko shook his head. “Don’t be silly. The teams that are going in to rescue the royal family have been training for months. Even we are not fit to go in with them. They’ve rehearsed the assault dozens—no, scores of times—on an outline of the actual houses . . .”
“Not houses,” said Chekov.
“Of course, houses, plural; the Governor’s House and the Korni—”
Chekov cut his words off. “No, the newcomers under that Bolshevik fanatic, Yurovsky, have taken over the Kornilov House. All the aristocrats, the staff, and the guards have been booted over to the Governor’s house and the wooden one just to the north. They’re stacked in like cordwood, and it would be worse if about twenty-five of the guards hadn’t elected to follow their proletarian sensibilities and to just walk off the job. And why not, since the Romanovs aren’t going to be there to be guarded for much longer?”
“I didn’t see—”
Again, Chekov cut him off fiercely. “Of course you didn’t. I was paying attention to the turns; you completely avoided Great Friday Street and went down Slesarnaya, didn’t you?”
“Correct,” said Mokrenko, impressed.
“How many men are coming?” Chekov asked.
“About five hundred.”
“It’s not enough.”
At that point, Sarnof came down from upstairs. “Has anyone seen Rostislav Alexandrovich? Has anyone . . . oh, there you are, Sergeant. We have a problem.”
Like we need more problems. “What’s the nature of it, this time, Sarnof?”
“Took me a while to decode the message, but the airship has a problem with one of its engines and will be delayed for a couple of days. Third lift is delayed.”
Oh, shit. Not five hundred men. Not even three hundred. Not even three hundred including us. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck.
Camp and Landing Zone, South of Tobolsk
Kostyshakov nearly screamed, “They what!?!?”
“The zeppelin carrying Lieutenant Lesh’s Third Company,” said Captain Basanets, from on high, “it never came. We’ve got no way to contact them from here, either.”
“So what have we got, then?”
“One rifle company, Second, the heavy machine guns and the light infantry cannon, the antitank rifles, most of the engineer platoon, plus the Fourth Company. In all, there are two hundred and eighty-seven men on the ground, or two hundred and ninety-five if we count strategic recon.”
Mentally Daniil recited what he knew was waiting for them in Tobolsk, Two hundred original guards, two hundred and fifty thugs from Omsk, fifty worse thugs from Tyumen, and soon another hundred and fifty fanatical cavalry from Yekaterinburg. I’ve got to take on six hundred and fifty men, with less than half that many? God, I know You like to test men, but I don’t think . . .
“We can still do it, sir,” said Cherimisov, from the back of the sleigh. At Daniil’s doubtful glance the captain said, “Well, we still have to try. We’ll never get another chance. They may be cold and rotting corpses in the ground before we find them again. Sir, it doesn’t matter what the odds are; we have to go anyway.”
And that much, at least, I know is the merest truth. We don’t have a choice.
“Get me Romeyko,” Kostyshakov said to Basanets. “No, wait; he’s still in Camp Budapest, isn’t he? Instead get me the senior man from the quartermaster’s shop. In fact, get me the senior man present from each staff section, and supporting platoon . . . and get me that coal miner’s son . . . mmm . . . Ilyukhin.”
“Well, sir,” said the coal miner’s son, “while, yes, you can make acetylene explode—indeed, it will on its own under some circumstances—you really don’t get much rumble for your ruble. A full pound of the calcium carbide only makes about a half a cubic arshin of gas or maybe somewhat less. Now that, of course, spreads out and mixes, but it’s still not all that much. And we only have . . .” Ilyukhin shot a glance at the representative from the quartermaster’s office.
“We’ve got a hundred pounds, sir, plus every man with a lamp is carrying a bit under a pound of his own. It’s not much.”
“All right, then,” Daniil agreed, “we’ll skip that idea. You may return to your unit,” he told Ilyukhin. “How are we fixed for regular high explosive?”
“That’s in the engineers’ bailiwick,” said the logistics NCO.
“About eight pood TNT, sir,” said the engineer platoon leader.
Kostyshakov just nodded, then said, “Let me mull that one, then,” said Daniil. “Now, one hour, every man ready, the sleighs packed, the lanterns charged with their fuel. Meet me here, everyone; I want to address the men.
“Oh, and Dratvin, Cherimisov, before you go, we need to have a little talk.”
* * *
The hour passed not so much swiftly as furiously, as the men raced to pack themselves, fit their skis, and get the heavy weapons ready for movement. For now, the few tents would be left behind.
As the men assembled in the now familiar semi-circle, Kostyshakov thought, I need to put on a performance that would credit an actor at the Mikhailovsky. The important thing, here, is to let them know—well, think—that I’m not worried. They won’t fret over how literal my words are, but will take the grand jest to heart.
“Very well, gentlemen—at ease!—it seems that God has said we’re just too good, and the enemy too weak and contemptible, for us to need every man to take them on. It’s on us, one short company of grenadiers, one rifle company, heavy on the light machine guns, plus two heavies, two antitank rifles, and two infantry guns. Plus engineers with flamethrowers.
“Moreover, since they are stinking Bolshevik rabble, they needed to be reinforced. At about six-hundred and fifty of them, and a bit under three hundred of us, I still think God is being generous to us. Why, as it is, we’ll have to hang our heads in shame for the rest of our lives that it took three hundred men of the Guards to destroy twice as many Bolshevik rabble. We will have to console ourselves, when telling our families and friends, in the future, that, if the job was too easy . . . well . . . it was a mark of God’s favor on us, and nothing else.
“But . . . you know . . . then again . . . Second Company? Captain Dratvin— Ivan Mikhailovich—would your men be too upset if I left them behind, to even up the odds with the Reds? I mean, seriously; they’re fellow Russians, however misguided they may be. They deserve at least a chance, don’t you think? What say you, Captain Dratvin?”
Dratvin folded his arms across a compact torso, and scowled, “I say, sir, and I speak for every man in the company, that if you try to leave us behind you will have a mutiny on your hands. Now, if you’ll take me, alone . . . yes, sir, yes, I know; that would too thoroughly disadvantage the Reds. But, you know . . . if my men can’t go, well, I am still going.”
Daniil scowled and said, “Mutiny, do you say? Mutiny? There is no more serious crime in the military! What say you, men of Second Company? If I leave you behind what will you do?”
The chorus was most impressive. “MUTINY!”
Daniil sighed. “So you really all insist, do you?”
“YES, SIR!”
Daniil theatrically put his forehead into the crook of his right arm, while exclaiming, “Tsk . . . all these long months and I find myself in command of nothing by lowly mutineers, practically Bolsheviks themselves. Oh, the shame of it.”
The laugh that followed told him the men understood the little play he was engaged in.
“Fourth Company, since those mutineers of Second Company insist on going, surely you will voluntarily stay behind, so that at least some of us will have bragging rights in the future. Captain Cherimisov?”
“Not a chance, sir. As little glory as there is to be had on this trivial excursion, we’re not letting Second Company have all of it!”
“Grenadiers? What say you?”
“NO, SIR. We’re going!”
Act over, Daniil smiled and said, “By the three hundred, then, shall we save them. Follow me.” With that, Daniil pivoted left, skied to the right flank, and began the long trek to the north.
When the sun fell, about halfway to Tobolsk, it could be seen that they were ghosts, phantoms, sliding across the often bleak and snow-clad Siberian landscape without a sound. Of course they were phantoms, the more obviously so from the few eerily bright lights that led the way. Eyes, they must have been, eyes from some hell-spawned demons.
No, no, might some have insisted; they were a monster, a millipede but composed only of snow and ice and demon-frost, as their legs flashed, driving their skis onward. Of course the assemblage was a monster, nothing ever seen in historic memory in frozen Siberia resembled this, though some of the old legends may have spoken of it.
But, no, they were neither ghosts, nor phantoms, not even an icy millipede. Rather the glowing eyes told of the biblical monster, Leviathan. They were, thus, a snake, a landbound leviathan almost straight out of Psalms.
They are my men, thought Daniil, feet sliding as fast as any of his men, following me into danger and death . . . and I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy or proud in my life.
The ground fell behind quickly as they slid at a steady five miles—eight versta—an hour, heading to the north. The moon rose on their right, within twenty versta of setting out. It was a waning gibbous moon, bright enough to cast ghostly shadows across the land and across the sleigh- and ski-borne column. Given their white smocks and trousers, they remained approximately as invisible as if they had been in complete darkness. The lights were soon put out, as unnecessary, Leviathan sleepwalking to take a nap.
The column pushed on, unheard, unseen. Oh, occasionally a voice might be heard by those very close: “Pick it up, Blagov; you’re falling a little behind” or “Next break, Isayev, check your bindings. Looks like they’re getting loose to me.”
Breaks were simple and infrequent. Indeed, there were only three. One was after going about half an hour, precisely to let the men check and adjust their bindings and their packs. The other was not quite midway in the trek. The third came at about midnight. And then, finally . . .
“Liberty or Death,” said a small, female voice.
“Natalya?” asked Turgenev, up front with Kostyshakov.
“Yes, it’s me, Maxim,” the girl replied. “Lavin kept nodding off, so I told him I’d take the watch. Get up, Lavin; they’re here.
“But things have changed a bit,” the girl said, more to Kostyshakov than to Turgenev. “In the first place, your third load for the zeppelin is delayed. I supposed you must know that they didn’t show up. But at least they’re not crashed and dead.”
“That is welcome news,” said Kostyshakov. “Go on.”
“Yes, sir.” The girl continued, “The layout of the enemy and our . . . mmm . . . friends is different too. All the prisoners and their staffs are now stuffed into the Governor’s House. The guarding has been taken over by the newcomers from Yekaterinburg, and they are mostly alert, mean, and tough. They’ve also taken over the Kornilov House for their own barracks. The old guard company is still stuffed into the basement of the Governor’s House and the wooden building just north of it but now they’re overstuffed. They’re not allowed into the upper story, nor even the ground floor. Colonel Kobylinsky made his objections and only shut up when the leader of the Yekaterinburg men said he would be shot if he uttered another word.
“On the plus side, the Tyumen men left in a huff. And Sergeant Mokrenko has the two guards locked up in the basement.”
Kostyshakov digested that, then sent word back, “Orders group, up to the point.”