A Waltz with Traitors полностью

The Tatarsk Bolsheviks didn’t reply. Kral’s group wouldn’t be there yet, but maybe the legionnaires moving west had taken over. The other clerk stood in front of the map, as if he could see the battle being played out.

“You’ve known Filip since you were boys?” Nadia made the question sound casual, but he didn’t think she would have spoken without purpose.

“Yes. We met in the Sokol clubs.”

“Was he a happy child? From what I’ve heard of his father, his childhood sounds a bit complicated.”

Dalek nodded. “Mr. Sedlák was . . .” Dalek paused to think of the right description. Blue? Drunk? A shell of a man? “He was hard to predict. I think that’s why Filip spent so much time at the Sokol. He couldn’t control what was going on at home, but he could practice the same spindle or flare over and over again until he could control that.”

“It sounds lonely.”

“His grandparents were devoted. He and Eliška weren’t neglected.”

She nodded. “It’s very soon to send him out again. Are things really so desperate?”

Desperate? Yes. They’d had successes, but they were four thousand miles from Vladivostok, and there were a lot of Bolsheviks in their way. “Filip and Kral have worked together for a long time. Kral depends on him. And given our current circumstances, we need scouts like Filip more than we need just about anyone else. He told Kral he was well enough to go.”

“He’s good, then, at what he does?”

Dalek turned to his friend’s pseudo-wife. “The best. And I don’t say that lightly.”

“We have Omsk. They have Tatarsk. Do we have anything else?”

Dalek stood and went to another set of maps, ones pieced together to show the entire Russian Empire, from its old border with the Austro-Hungarian Empire all the way to the Pacific Ocean. He walked along from west to east, pointing out the stations legionnaires now held. “In addition to Omsk, we have control of Penza, Syzran, Chelyabinsk, Novonikolayevsk, and Tomsk. A few places in between. When the Bolsheviks split us up, they spread us all across Siberia. Now they have to fight us everywhere at once.” Dalek sat again. “Of course, we have to fight them all at once too, but I think we’re better organized than they are.”

Another message tapped its way through. Czech counterrevolutionaries have taken the station stop annihilate them at once.

Dalek grinned. “The legion has taken the Tatarsk Station. One more city we can add to our list.” Dalek turned to the other clerk. “You’d best tell the rest of the group, whoever Kral left in charge.”

“It’s more a hovel than a city. But it puts us closer to Vladivostok.” Nadia smiled, then it faded.

“Aren’t you eager to get there?”

“It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to remember there was ever a time before the war. Peace—I’m not sure I’ll remember what to do with it. And even then, I think life will be far different than it was before the war.”

“Not so many emperors and kaisers, I imagine. And not so many men of military age.” For a moment, memory of the battles Dalek had fought in haunted him. Waves of men cut to the ground, never to rise again. The emperor had considered them as expendable as the horses that pulled supplies or the shells that plowed into enemy soldiers. But this war had made even empires expendable. “The world will be different now.” Different, but would it be better? Filip would argue yes, as long as the Czechs and Slovaks were given their own country. And Dalek would never admit it out loud, but Filip was usually right.

Tap. Dash dash dash. Still awaiting artillery barrage stop reinforcements needed at once.

Dalek replied quickly. Track torn up by bandits stop attempting to repair.

Then another message clicked through. Counterrevolutionaries now attacking from west stop reinforcements and artillery needed immediately.

“I think our game is over, and we managed to take everything at the Tatarsk Depot except the telegraph office. I suppose we might as well let them know who we are now that we can’t fool them any longer.”

His next message needed no translation. Thank you for Tatarsk Depot stop Nazdar.

Nadia glanced at the message he’d just sent. “What does nazdar mean?”

“Hello. Goodbye. Good luck. Good health. Stand firm. For success—ours of course. That sort of thing. You’ve been with us since March. Haven’t you heard it before?”

“I have. I just wasn’t sure what it meant, and no one’s used it with me. Requesting a definition seemed like admitting to eavesdropping.”

“You should use it on Filip sometime. Nazdar, and polib mĕ.”

“What does polib mĕ mean?”

The other telegraph clerk chose that moment to return. He gave the two of them a look of surprise, then chuckled as he walked to his desk.

“Ask Filip when he gets back.”