When Filip’s train pulled into Glaskov Station, across the river from Irkutsk, it was already growing dark. Icy temperatures buffeted his skin the moment he left the train. A sizeable group of Japanese soldiers waited, along with a hundred Russian troops and a handful of fighting men from France. They weren’t openly hostile, but they weren’t openly friendly either.
“Yesterday I told some of Kolchak’s entourage that they should take a walk and not return.” Petr climbed from their teplushka to stand beside Filip. “I hope they took my advice. They all look like they want to kill Kolchak and take the gold.” Petr scanned the foreign troops.
Another legionnaire approached them, someone from a different regiment. He asked after a few friends, then looked back at the armed men around the station. “Semenov’s men attacked the station a few days after Christmas. They were driven back but took hostages with them. Thirty men, one woman. They beat them over the heads and dumped them into Lake Baikal. The locals aren’t too happy about it. No trial, and most were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Arrested by Kolchak’s regime. The people blame him.”
While the senior officers consulted, Filip went to the train depot. He searched the notes plastered on the walls for news of his wife but had no success.
Negotiations dragged on, with officers rushing in and out of Kolchak’s train, in and out of the telegraph office. After looking through all the scraps of paper twice, Filip went to find Dalek. No one in Glaskov Station knew where Nadia was, but maybe Dalek would at least know what was happening with the supreme ruler and the gold.
Dalek nodded at Filip when he entered the telegraph office, then handed something to Kral before waving Filip closer.
“What’s happening?” Filip asked.
Dalek frowned. “The Social Revolutionaries control the coal from here east. We can’t get through without their cooperation, and they insist that Kolchak can’t move beyond Irkutsk. They want the gold too.”
“Of course they do.” Who wouldn’t want 650 million rubles in gold? “What are we going to do about the admiral?” Kolchak was under their protection. Handing him over seemed dishonorable, but the alterative—fighting their way east while the Red Army closed in from the west and their trains stalled for lack of fuel—sounded like suicide.
“That’s what they keep going back and forth about.” Dalek crossed his arms. “I don’t like Kolchak, but I hate to turn him over to SRs. I expect they’ll arrest him.” The Social Revolutionaries hadn’t forgiven Kolchak for seizing power from them in Omsk after a coup fourteen months ago.
“Better the SRs than the Bolsheviks.” Filip looked through the window at the swirl of troops outside. “We could force our way through. Take the coal. We just have to get past Lake Baikal, and then the Americans and the Japanese control the stations.”
Dalek snorted. “Yes, and the Japanese have been so friendly with us here. As has their close associate, Ataman Semenov.”
Filip frowned. Dalek was right. Working with the Japanese might not be any easier than working with the Social Revolutionaries. The SRs were reasonable, for the most part. They were opposed to an autocratic tsar and also opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat. Their vision of government wasn’t so different from the Czechoslovakian Republic Filip was so eager to get to. And he’d get there faster if they handed Kolchak over, leaving him to face the consequences of his rule. Why should the legion put themselves at risk to defend a corrupt dictator who’d neglected his fighting men and ignored the atrocities of his underlings?
“What do you suppose our casualties would be if we tried to take the coal mines?” Dalek stamped his feet, trying to stay warm.
“I value the life of the lowest-ranked legionnaire more than I value Kolchak, even if he is the supreme ruler. I wouldn’t ask a single one of them to die for a man like that.” It wasn’t Filip’s choice anyway, but he’d made up his mind. He didn’t want to fight for Admiral Kolchak. Yes, the legion had said they’d protect the man, but he’d tried to stab them in the back by conspiring with Semenov to halt their evacuation—even suggesting the destruction of the Baikal tunnels.
If Kolchak wanted safe passage east, he should have left Omsk before the Red Army had crossed the Irtysh River into Omsk’s outskirts. And he shouldn’t have insisted on seven trains for him and his entourage. He’d complained that the legion’s trains were holding him up, but his own greed had slowed him just as much. The honorable choice might have been to protect the man they’d been ordered to guard, but their higher duty was to each other and their country, not to Kolchak.
Across the room, Kral finished his telephone conversation. He hung up and said something to another officer, who quickly left the office.