David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

‘Dead letter out east, old man. At least while the Allies and the Japs are there. Semenov will overreach himself, though, sooner or later. He seems more intent on rape and pillage than political power.’

Paul shook his head. ‘It’s all a bit beyond our remit, isn’t it?’

‘Sorry?’

‘What Cumming sent us out to—’

‘ C , old man,’ said Valentine, ‘ C .’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ Paul shouted. ‘Who on earth do you think is listening to us in this God-forsaken place?’

Valentine sat up. ‘Look here, Ross,’ he said, adopting an officious tone for the first time since Paul had known him, ‘rules are rules. It’s like bull in the army. It may seem pointless but it’s there to teach one the right attitude.’

‘Oh? You’ve been in the army, have you?’

‘Well, no…’ Valentine admitted. ‘But the service is not so very different, is it?. One must always be vigilant, regardless of circumstances.’

There was a whole world of difference, Paul felt like saying, but he knew he’d be wasting his breath. He drank his tea, looking at Valentine and his ridiculous beard over his cup.

‘I’m not arguing,’ he said. ‘It’s just that sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here.’

‘Say no more about it, old man,’ Valentine replied, in a conciliatory mood of a sudden. ‘You’ve had a rough time of it these past weeks, I dare say. I can see it might look as if you’ve been blundering about in the dark but things have been achieved. As you said, things are shaping up as London would like.’

‘Are they?’

‘Certainly. And with Kolchak in control, if it come to that, haven’t we got the best chance of defeating the Bolsheviks? Putting the country back on its feet?’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Of course. I thought him a capital chap.’

‘You’ve met him?’

‘They gave a banquet for him when he first arrived. All the government dignitaries, and Stavka of course…’

‘And you as well?’

‘All part of the job,’ Valentine assured him. ‘Keeping one’s ear to the ground, that sort of thing. I admit I steered clear of Knox, though.’

‘That’s all well and good,’ said Paul, ‘but where does it leave us now? The Allies, I mean, now the war is over. And the Legion?’

‘Frankly, old man, in the Service it’s never all over. I suppose you can go back to whatever it was you were doing before you joined up. As for me…’

Valentine let the rest hang in the air. So Paul might draw his own conclusions, he supposed. Actually he didn’t have any. He didn’t care what Valentine did when it was all over; wouldn’t mind a jot if he never laid eyes on the man again. He was more concerned with himself, wanting it all to be over so that he could get back home and at the same time not wanting to leave until certain things had been settled. And things that were nothing to do with Kolchak and the Allies. Or Valentine, for that matter.

‘And the Legion?’ he said again, to get the conversation and his mind off Sofya and back on the matter at hand.

‘The Czechs and Slovaks? I should imagine what they are going to have to do is hold the line while the Whites raise a decent Russian army. That’s what Knox wants. Then I suppose they can either evacuate through Vladivostok as planned or, once the Red Army is rolled up, take the short route home to their new country.’

Paul dunked his bread in what was left of the dripping. It sounded easy. But it wasn’t, of course. He knew for a fact that the Legion was sick of fighting. They might be prepared to do it on their own behalf but not for the sake of the sort of reactionary regime that someone like Kolchak might lead. They had more in common with the revolutionaries than with the sort of government the admiral would head.

‘Ward told me,’ he said to Valentine, ‘that Knox expressed the opinion that he’d be just as happy to see Gajda in control as Kolchak.’

‘The Czech colonel?’

‘He’s a Slovak, actually.’

Valentine waved the distinction aside. ‘Whatever he is, he’s a foreigner. Russian officers won’t take orders from foreigners. Stavka here has a low opinion of the Legion as it is. They regard them as allies of the SRs. More to the point, they’ve persuaded Kolchak of the fact. He’s been heard to say that the sooner they clear out the better.’

‘That’s hardly fair,’ Paul protested. ‘They’ve shouldered the bulk of the fighting since the summer. They’ve been all that’s stood between the Red Army and…’

He stopped. He had said exactly the same thing to Sofya that morning and had just finished up fighting with her. But it was unjust. Without the Legion the Bolsheviks would already have control of Russia and Siberia. They had taken over all the Soviets set up after the February Revolution and it was only the fact of the disruption caused by the Legion controlling the Trans-Siberian line that had stopped them from crushing all opposition. The Legion had suffered reverses since the autumn, it was true, but that was due to the present overwhelming superiority of the Red forces. What they needed was support from a Russian army, but the incompetence and the back-biting Russian Stavka and the machinations of the various local governments had left those Russian soldiers who had been willing to fight — like Kappel and Pepelayev — without the means to do so. He told Valentine about the lack of supplies they were suffering at the front.

‘Exactly the point, old man,’ Valentine replied unmoved. ‘Someone needs to get hold of the whole supply system and shake it up. I’m not saying it’s deliberate on the Directory’s part—’

‘Sofya did,’ said Paul. ‘She blamed it on someone called Avksentiev.’

‘He’s the leader of the SRs here in Omsk and one of the Directory of Five. I daresay she was just parroting her brother and the usual Stavka view. They hate the SR ministers more than they hate the Bolsheviks. They blame them for everything that’s happened since the Revolution. But really it’s nothing but incompetence. It was the same in Petersburg.’ He threw his hands in the air knocking what was left of the bread on the floor. ‘They’re talkers. It’s all they can do. My, if you had sat through as many debates in the Petersburg Soviet as I did! Lord it was boring. And to what end? None! None at all. They used to talk each other to a standstill over points of order and procedure but no one actually did anything! Of course, here it didn’t help when Chernov issued his decree on how the army should be organised—’

‘Who on earth is Chernov?’ Paul asked, lost among this myriad of bickering politicians.

‘The SR leader in Ufa.’

‘I thought that girl, Spiridonova, was supposed to be their leader.’

‘Just the titular head, old man,’ Valentine said. ‘Because of her reputation and what happened to her after the Cossacks arrested her. Anyway, no one seems to know what’s happened to her now. The Bolsheviks arrested her after the SRs pulled that business at the Moscow Congress. They might even have shot her by now.

‘No,’ he said, returning to his point, ‘Chernov and the rest of them want the army run along SR lines. You know the sort of thing, officers elected, committees deciding strategy… I may not have been in the army, old man, but I do know that one can’t fight a war under those conditions. Even Trotsky had to admit that. He’s gone as far as drafting in some of the old tsarist officers again. Although not the kind we’ve got here in Omsk, naturally. Hierarchy and discipline, it’s the only way. That’s what Stavka want here. But of course they want it on the old terms.’