“Do you think they’ll agree?”
Sokolov shook his head. “I doubt it. The Red Army is right behind us. They’ll be in Irkutsk soon. If Revkom makes an agreement with us, they’ll face reprisals from the Red Army.”
“Revkom?”
“A Bolshevik revolutionary committee. Took over from the Political Centre the end of January.”
“So they have Kolchak?” Nadia remembered Filip’s reservations about Kolchak, but Gajda had liked him, and Filip thought Gajda the best officer in all the legion. But that had been a long time ago, and things changed swiftly during civil wars.
“Yes.”
Kolchak in the hands of the SRs of the Political Centre had been bad. Kolchak in the hands of the Bolsheviks of Revkom sounded far worse. “What would you do if they released Kolchak to you?”
Sokolov pulled a blanket around his shoulders. “I suppose we’d bring him with us. Maybe on the other side of Baikal, we can regroup. Block the tunnels and hold off the Red Army. There are plenty of supplies in Vladivostok. If we could get those and convince the peasants to rally to our cause, maybe we could negotiate a peace with the Reds.”
Peasants could take hardships. Nadia had seen that in the hospital. But they’d been at war for years. They wanted to plant and grow, not fight and flee. “Few Siberian peasants have reason to support Kolchak.”
“Well, he’s better than the Bolsheviks.”
No one wanted to risk their life for someone who wasn’t quite as bad as the other option. They wanted to fight for someone they supported wholeheartedly.
“Any word on your husband?” Sokolov asked.
“His regiment left, and the mail isn’t moving much faster than the men. I might have to chase him all the way to Vladivostok.” She would follow Filip until she couldn’t take another step forward, but she was beginning to think her last step would come long before she found him again.
Chapter Forty-Two
Another train depot, another thousand notes stuck to the walls of the station, and none of them from Nadia.
Filip headed back to his teplushka. He paused when he spotted a pile of corpses stacked like logs on the side of the train depot. They couldn’t be buried until the ground thawed in the spring. Filip bent to examine them. Unlike his efforts in the station, here he hoped he wouldn’t find sign of his wife.
He finished with the frozen bodies and straightened. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stomach looking at piles of dead Russians, especially when some of the bodies were children. But what if he passed Nadia’s body and never learned the truth?
Dalek practically barreled into Filip as he turned from the deceased refugees. Dalek was breathing hard, as though he’d been running. In his hand, he held a piece of paper. “It’s from her.”
Filip grabbed the letter. The words were mostly German, and the ink was so smudged he could barely read it.
“She’s alive,” were the first words that escaped Filip’s mouth.
“I would assume so, if she’s writing a letter.”
Nadia was alive. Powerful emotion made his throat feel raspy. Relief, regret, and for the first time in months, hope. He couldn’t cry, not in front of Dalek, but he closed his eyes and said a silent prayer of gratitude. She was out there waiting for him, and now he had a place to begin his search.
He wanted to march back to the Fifth Regiment and give them a serious reprimand for turning his wife away, but the Sixth Regiment was under similar orders. No refugees could be taken on the trains. There were barely spots for the legionnaires. Filip read the words again. “Voitsekhovsky? The Russian colonel with us in Chelyabinsk?”
“He’s a White general now, took over after Kappel died.”
If she was with the White Army, Filip could get to her in a matter of days. No trains moved west now, but with a horse or a sleigh . . .
He ran all the way to Kral’s quarters, and Dalek followed. Filip burst into the office and held the letter up. “I know where my wife is.”
Kral took the letter and read it through. “It might be best to telegraph Fifth Regiment, and you can wait for her here.”
Filip shook his head. “You know what a mess the rails are. I need to go to her.”
“By yourself?”
By himself, across Siberia, in the winter. It wasn’t the wisest course of action, but he was desperate to reach his wife. “Yes.”
“I’ll go with him,” Dalek said.