“I don’t think Kolchak is crooked, but all his friends are, and the cocaine he uses dulls his brain.” Kral let the lid to the crate drop. “These aren’t ours, so we can’t take them. The White Army will be here soon enough. Maybe if we mention what we found to a few of them, this equipment will end up in the right hands.”
Filip nodded. He hoped Kral was right, because the army retreating before the Reds fought in rags.
He followed Kral back to the legion’s Omsk headquarters. A long line of supplicants waited outside the two-story brick building. The legion was pulling out, and the refugees didn’t want to be left behind.
Kral sighed as he examined the long queue. “They all want the legion to evacuate them. I wish we could help, but we barely have enough room for our own men. Better make sure the regiment is prepared.”
“Yes, Brother Major.” Filip took his leave, grateful that he wasn’t the one who had to turn down the mass of desperate people seeking an escape. The city’s population had swollen fivefold. Refugees crowded into homes or lived in earthen dugouts with thatched roofs, but few of them wanted to stay, not with the Red Army driving the White Army east at an alarming speed.
He remembered another refugee, desperate to escape the Bolsheviks. He hoped Nadia was somewhere safe. She should have been waiting for him in Vladivostok. But at least she wasn’t lying beside the train track in a pile with a dozen other corpses. She’d betrayed him, and that had left him confused and miserable and cold inside. But he couldn’t wish hardship on her, not when he still loved her.
Maybe it was his fault anyway. He’d hidden the truth, and he’d made the arrogant mistake of thinking a former aristocrat could be happy with him. He’d been wrong, and now he was suffering the consequences.
Dalek and Anton found him midway between headquarters and their boxcars. Something was wrong. Their faces were pale, and though he had the impression they’d come looking for him, neither spoke.
“What is it?” Maybe the engine that was supposed to take them east had broken down. Or maybe the Reds had bypassed Omsk and taken the rail line behind them, cutting off their escape. He hadn’t thought the Reds were close enough for a flanking maneuver, but Gajda had managed feats like that. The right commander could make it happen.
Dalek swallowed. “Filip . . . when I told you that your wife ran off with Petrov, I thought I was right. Based on what I’d heard and the fact that she was gone . . .”
Filip held his breath. His friends normally tiptoed around the subject of his wife’s desertion. “And?”
Anton spoke. “And we just found Petrov among the White Army’s wounded. He said she turned him down. She didn’t run off with him.”
“She didn’t?” He paused. “I don’t understand. She was gone.”
Dalek nodded. “Yes. But she didn’t leave you for Petrov.”
“Then where did she go?” She wouldn’t have run off by herself, and the village was isolated other than the rail line. “There were partisans out that day, but we chased them away. There weren’t reports of anyone else, were there?”
Dalek shook his head. “No. But that doesn’t mean no one else was about. Criminals, freed war prisoners, bandits. Filip, I think maybe she didn’t leave voluntarily.”
Nadia hadn’t left him. His mind seized that thought and held it fast. She hadn’t abandoned him, hadn’t turned her back on all their plans. But where was she? “I have to find her.” The village where they’d lived was six hundred miles west, and the Reds were in the way, but maybe he could get through by sleigh.
As Filip turned toward the train station, Dalek grabbed his arm. “Yekaterinburg fell to the Reds in August. You can’t go back. But she knows where to go. If she’s alive, she’ll head for Vladivostok.”
“What if she can’t? Dalek, I didn’t even look for her. She might have been abducted, and I did nothing to help.” He’d promised to protect her, but he hadn’t even asked the villagers if they’d seen something suspicious.
“You wouldn’t find anything now. It’s been ten months. There won’t be any clues. No trail to follow.”
Dalek was right, but how could Filip not go looking for her? She might need him. And she might still love him. He couldn’t go to Yekaterinburg, but he still went to the station, with Dalek and Anton on his heels. He stepped over the crowds of refugees huddling on the floor and went to the walls plastered with little notes.