The look of concern didn’t leave Sokolov’s face, but he nodded. “Every minute counts. There’s a river about a mile east. We’ve got to cross it before they find out we’re gone and send the dogs after us.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Anton shivered as he stood guard near the Omsk train depot. It was only November, but winter already held Siberia firmly in its grip, with short days, cold temperatures, and gray views. Petr came to relieve him.
“Any letters?”
Petr shook his head. “No.”
Anton nodded and headed somewhere warmer. Maybe it was better, for now, not to know. If word did come confirming Marek’s death, he wasn’t sure he could take it. At least for now, he could hope his son lived. But if conditions in Vladivostok were anything like they were in Omsk, then it was a fool’s hope.
Omsk had a new nickname: City of Death. Refugees crowded inside, hoping to escape the Red Army only to find typhus and spotted fever instead. Those who lived slept in shifts, sharing the same dirty room in a cramped apartment with a dozen other people. They ate what they could. And they died in droves. Their bodies lay in piles, stripped of boots, coats, and usable clothing. If Vladivostok was similar, what chance did a fifteen-month-old boy with no mother have? Anton had begged God to protect his son, but he’d also prayed for his wife—from the moment they had parted until he’d learned of her death. Heaven hadn’t heard him.
“Anton? Could you lend a hand?” Dalek’s voice carried from a nearby platform. Several legionnaires and YMCA volunteers were transporting wounded men off a boxcar. The injured wore uniforms with the white and green epaulets of Kolchak’s Army.
Anton hustled to help. What would this war have been like if he’d been a doctor or a medical orderly instead of a soldier? Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference with what really mattered—regardless of how much he did or didn’t know about medicine, he hadn’t been with Veronika when she’d needed him, and he hadn’t been able to help her.
He grabbed the head of a stretcher, and Dalek grabbed the foot. But as Anton moved, Dalek stayed frozen in place.
“What is it?” Anton asked.
Dalek nodded to the patient, a field-rank officer with bandages around his left thigh. The injured man seemed to notice the delay and looked to Dalek.
“Oleg Petrov. That’s your name, isn’t it?” Dalek pulled the stretcher, and Anton followed.
“Yes. Have we met?”
Anton knew that name. Oleg Petrov was the man who’d run off with Filip’s wife. But if he’d gone to Shanghai with Nadia, why was he being unloaded from a hospital train in Omsk?
Dalek’s tone was measured. “I think we have a common acquaintance. Nadia Ilyinichna Linskaya Sedláková.”
Petrov smiled, as if sipping a glass of fine wine, and Anton was tempted to drop him on his head. He knew the pain of losing a wife. Revenge against the disease that had taken Veronika was impossible. But vengeance for Filip was within Anton’s literal grasp.
Petrov’s voice was weak from his injury, but the words carried to Anton’s ear. “Nadia. Yes. I was friends with her brother. Our families intended us to marry. I saw her last winter at some station near Yekaterinburg. So beautiful. She’d married one of you lot.”
Dalek’s face was hard, mirroring the contempt Anton felt. “You offered to steal her away, didn’t you? Take her to Shanghai. Is she there now?”
Oleg’s eyebrows crinkled up. “I offered to take her away. She wouldn’t come.”
“She refused you once, yes. But then she changed her mind the next day, and you ran off together. Isn’t that what happened?”
“No. She wanted to stay with her husband. I haven’t seen her since.”
Dalek’s face turned pale. Anton felt sick to his stomach. If Nadia hadn’t run off with her former fiancé, where had she gone? They handed the stretcher up into a truck and assisted a few more patients from the boxcar.
“Do you think he told us the truth?” Anton asked.
Dalek ran a finger over his mustache. “Why would he lie? If he had her somewhere safe, there wouldn’t be any point. And I heard his plan—if she joined him, he planned to desert.” Dalek shook his head. “I’ve got to tell Filip.”
***
Filip rummaged through a pile of thick wool coats. Kral pried open a crate to reveal new boots. A pair of Czech patrolmen had reported a black-market cache in a local warehouse, and Filip and Kral had gone to check on it. The more they searched, the more they found.
“I thought Semenov was holding up supplies,” Filip said. The warlord, nominally in charge of the rail to the east of Lake Baikal, was notoriously crooked. The constant shortages were maddening. Filip’s own coat and boots were full of holes, but at least he had somewhere warm to sleep. These supplies had been meant for men at the front. “Why are these here?”
Kral frowned. “Because someone thought they could make money from them.”
“Maybe if Kolchak weren’t so corrupt, the Red Army wouldn’t be advancing on Omsk.”