They’d stumbled into a picket. But who did the sentry serve? His sheepskin coat was in tatters, and his feet were covered in birch-bark shoes instead of boots. No insignia, and what was left of his uniform was so faded that she couldn’t tell its origin.
Sokolov raised his hands and stepped closer to Nadia. “I’m Polkovnik Kirill Sokolov. And I want to fight the Bolsheviks.”
The sentry pulled his bayonet away from Nadia. He didn’t lower it, but his lips pulled into a grin. “You’ve come to the right place.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
When the legion’s train pulled into the station, it was met with angry shouts and threatening glares.
“Tcheko-Sobaki!” someone yelled.
Dalek made sure his rifle was conspicuous as he marched to the telegraph office. The population of Siberia had turned against them, but at least the legion was armed. Had the population been like this during the summer of 1918, the legion wouldn’t have made it very far. They’d all be slaves in work camps or conscripts in the Red Army. That still might happen if their trains were delayed too long. The Red Army had grown in size and in power, and they were moving east at a steady rate.
A telegraph clerk looked up when Filip entered. He was Russian, but if he was hostile, he didn’t show it. “If you have official messages to send, I can assist you.”
A snowball splattered against the outside window. Dalek and the clerk both jerked their heads toward it.
The clerk frowned. “I don’t think it’s the legion they hate. It’s Kolchak. He’s surrounded himself with former tsarist officials and made pacts with bandits of the worst sort. Monarchists and murderers. Doesn’t please the peasants.”
“Yes, and since we aren’t openly opposed to him, that hatred spreads to us.” Dalek moved closer to the stove. His fingers were frozen. “Believe me, we would have rather left last year.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because it’s too long of a swim, and we don’t have our own ships. The British, French, and Americans have them, and they wanted us to open up the Eastern Front again.” Dalek shook his head. “We were supposed to be fighting the Germans, not the Bolsheviks.”
“You were pawns.”
Dalek gave a grim chuckle. “I like your candor. Perhaps I can recruit you for our national council. You can tell General Janin and all the rest of the Allies exactly how things sit in Siberia. No more politics. Just straight talk and an immediate exit for the legion.”
Kral dusted snow from his hat as he and a railroad official came into the office. “We don’t need to wait for an engine. Ours is working. Just send us on before our cars freeze to the tracks.” No trains were moving west, leaving both lines available for eastward travel, but every station seemed to bring a delay of one sort or another.
The official adjusted his scarf. “No, your engine has to go back to the last station and bring the next train forward. You’ll have to wait for its return before it can take you farther east. Unless you have mechanics with you who can fix one of the broken engines.”
Dalek looked to the clerk and kept his voice quiet so as not to interrupt the other conversation. “How many broken engines are there?”
“Twenty here. Probably about the same everywhere else. Winter is rough on engines anyway, and they’ve been taking hard use. There aren’t enough mechanics to keep them running.”
Kral finished and caught Dalek’s attention. “Pokorný, stay here until relieved. It seems we won’t be going forward for some time.”
“Yes, Brother Major.”
The telegraph clerk motioned to a chair. Dalek sat, and the clerk promptly turned his focus to a pile of paperwork. Waiting in the telegraph office was boring, but so was patrol duty. At least in the office, Dalek didn’t have to worry about the Bolsheviks shooting him. And he was warm.
The boredom didn’t last. “I’ll get it,” Dalek said when a transmission started coming through. It was in code, so he spent the next hour trying to break it. When he finished, he sat back in his seat.
“You say the people hate Kolchak?” he asked the telegraph clerk.
“Most of them. Maybe not a year ago, but he’s soured his welcome.”
“Well, I officially hate him too.” Dalek grabbed the sheet he’d written the message on and went to find Kral.
“Pokorný? What is it?” Kral’s face was calm; he wasn’t going to chastise Dalek for leaving his post, at least not until after Dalek explained himself.
“I intercepted a telegram from Kolchak to Semenov.”
Semenov’s name brought a frown to Kral’s lips. Semenov was nominally on their side—he opposed the Bolsheviks, and he received a generous stipend from the Japanese. But rumors of massacres performed by Semenov’s men were so common that there had to be some truth to them. “What did it say?”
“It seems Kolchak is unhappy that his train is stuck behind so many legion trains. We’re slowing his escape from the Red Army. He suggested Semenov prevent our movement east, even if he has to blow up bridges and destroy the Baikal tunnels.”