“No.” Filip couldn’t support the Bolsheviks. “But I’m not sure we’re on the right side either. We’re in the middle of a mess.” All around, people were dying. They were starving, falling ill with disease, and being swept before armies and bandits. “Our country needs us at home.” Hungary had attacked Slovakia, and according to accounts printed in legion newspapers, the fighting had been intense. They wanted to go home. Their country wanted them back. And most of Russia wanted them gone. So why were they still in Siberia?
They made their report, eventually. Kolchak ordered the saboteur shot without trial. It was all Filip could do to keep his mouth shut—and he wouldn’t have stayed silent had the man not been caught in the act.
No trial. Even the tsar had given suspects trials and had frequently given them exile instead of execution. Filip wasn’t so blind as to think the tsar had been an exemplary ruler, but the forces fighting to replace him hardly seemed an improvement.
Kral put a hand on Filip’s elbow. “They’re working to bring us home. We’ve got to protect the rails just a while longer.”
That was Filip’s permission to leave, and he took it. Kral was his friend, so Filip nodded and mumbled a thank-you. But what he really wanted to say was that the legion had been told
Omsk. Siberia. Russia. Filip wanted out. Once again, the legion was surrounded by hostile forces—both open enemies and slippery allies. That seemed to be how it always ended up. They couldn’t trust their allies—not the ones who had helped them defeat Germany and Austria-Hungary, not the ones working with them to stop the spread of Bolshevik power. The Allies had broken their promises. So had the Whites. His wife had betrayed him. God had abandoned him. But his brothers in the legion had always been there for him, and if they stuck together, eventually they would make it out. Or at least that was what Filip kept telling himself.
When they’d arrived in Omsk that spring, the White Army had offered the legion barracks, but they’d stayed in their boxcars, where they’d have an easier time defending themselves. The locals called it Czech Town. Filip strode to the boxcars, guided in part by the barks and howls of a pack of wild dogs that had found sympathetic Czech and Slovak cooks and had adopted the legion as a result. Now refugees fought the dogs for the kitchen scraps. Filip felt sorry for the refugees. But since not all of them were trustworthy, the dozens of guard dogs filled a need.
He washed the sweat from his face before going to his quarters. The day had been hot, but the evening breeze made the temperature more bearable. The men in his teplushka were quiet when he came inside. Solemn. Severe.
“Have the Hungarians advanced in Slovakia?” Filip asked.
Dalek shook his head. “They were pushed back.”
“Then what’s wrong?” It felt like a funeral. Filip wasn’t happy about the saboteur’s death sentence, but summary justice was the normal course of events lately. They were used to it.
Dalek glanced at Anton, who sat on a bunk, hunched over, his face hidden in his hands. Then he handed Filip a letter. “It’s from Larisa.”
The legion ran a postal service, but letters were still rare enough that they were normally passed along so everyone could read them. The men craved news almost as much as they craved trousers without holes or teplushkas with better insulation. But if the letter was from Petr’s wife, why had Dalek looked at Anton?