David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

He stared them down then spun around and took Paul’s arm. He steered him across the street towards the square, passing him his papers.

Paul slipped them back beneath his coat.

‘Brisk pace, old man, but not too quick.

At the corner Paul glanced back over his shoulder. The NCO was still looking at the list.

‘Your name is on that paper for some reason,’ Valentine said as they entered the square. ‘It won’t take long to identify you as Rostov as soon as those oafs speak to someone with half a brain. That’s Ward’s train, isn’t it?’ he asked, pointing to where Ward had set up his cantonment near the Stavka building. ‘Best stay there until things settle down a bit.’ He squeezed Paul’s bicep and grinned at him. ‘For the time being it’s as well if we didn’t meet, what do you say?’

Paul didn’t have time to say anything. Valentine turned away and ducked into a side street, leaving Paul staring after him.

Behind him he saw the Cossacks enter the square. Now an officer was with them and the NCO was pointing at Paul. The officer called out. Paul quickened his step, crossing the square towards the Middlesex cantonment.

A line of men guarded the perimeter, machineguns set up at intervals covering the approaches to Ward’s train. Across the square a group of Russian troops stood outside the entrance to the Stavka building. All the refugees he had seen the previous day had disappeared. He saw a Middlesex bandsmen he recognised on the perimeter, having exchanged his cornet for a rifle and fixed bayonet. Paul reached him as two of the Cossacks who had stopped him began running across the square.

‘What’s going on?’ Paul asked, slipping inside the perimeter.

‘Haven’t you heard, sir? The government’s been arrested.’

‘Arrested? By whom?’

‘There’s been a coop, sir’ he said, making it sound as if chickens might have been responsible.

The Cossacks stopped thirty yards away and were watching him.

‘Those men over there demanded to see my papers.’

‘Cossacks, sir. They grabbed the ministers in the middle of the night, so Captain Steveni said. The captain was over here with the colonel earlier.’

The Cossack officer detached himself from the other three and hurried towards the Stavka building.

‘Well if they come asking for me,’ Paul told the bandsman, ‘tell them to bugger off.’

The man grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’

Paul climbed onto the train and knocked on the door of Ward’s carriage. Inside, the colonel was consulting with his staff.

‘Ross,’ he said, looking up from a map of Omsk laid out on the table, ‘there you are. I’ve had a man looking for you.’ He looked pale, stony-faced.

‘I stayed the night with friends, Colonel.’

‘Friends?’ he repeated, sounding mystified. ‘In Omsk? Well, never mind that. You’ve heard, I suppose?’

‘That there’s been a coup d’état? Yes, sir. One of the men said it was the Cossacks.’

‘In the early hours. A Colonel Krasilnikov. He took a detachment of men to the quarters of the Assistant Minister of the Interior, someone named Rogovski, and arrested him and two Directory members, Avksentiev and Zenzinov. Some other fellow, too. All SRs, of course.’

Krasilnikov again.

‘Are they alive?’ Paul asked.

‘No one’s sure. It seems this Krasilnikov dragged them off to the Cossacks’ barracks, some Agricultural Institute outside the city.’

Then Paul remembered. It had been Mikhail at the Rossiya Hotel, just before he left. He’d told Sofya to tell Krasilnikov that he was already on his way.

‘Who is this Krasilnikov?’

‘No idea,’ said Ward. ‘Some firebrand. It’s unlikely he’s behind it. Stavka officers, more like. The Council of Ministers is in a meeting to discuss the situation. I doubt they’ll do anything other than rubber-stamp the decisions of the men holding the guns, though. More to the point, is Admiral Kolchak involved?’

‘I wouldn’t know, sir,’ said Paul.

‘I wasn’t asking, Ross, merely surmising.’

‘Of course, Colonel. What do you think will happen now?’

‘I think a lot will depend on how the Legion reacts. That’s why I was looking for you. I want you to sound them out and report back. In the meantime my men have the square covered. If there’s any move on us, or towards the Stavka headquarters, no matter who makes it, we can deal with it. General Knox’s men, Colonel Nielson and Captain Steveni, are with Stavka at this minute. Their opinion is that the local SRs won’t take this lying down. There are also a lot of Bolshevik sympathisers among the working classes here. They might see this as an opportunity to stir the pot.’ He fell silent and gazed down at the map. ‘As the ranking representative of the British Government here I don’t think we can sit idly by while Russian Ministers are murdered in cold blood. How would the British electorate react if they thought we’d just sat on our hands?’

Ward stared at Paul. Paul stared back before realising that this time the question was not rhetorical.

‘Not favourably, sir?’ he hazarded.

‘Not favourably at all, Ross. That’s why I’ve sent a note to Stavka asking them for assurances as to the Ministers’ safety.’

Although Ward still watched him, Paul decided a reply wasn’t necessary this time and kept silent.

Ward sighed impatiently. ‘Well, get along Ross,’ he said, ‘get along.’

The Legion in Omsk was quartered in sidings at the main railway station. They kept an armoured train and sufficient men to defend the station with reserves in close contact along the line at outlying stations. Back in the summer Syrový had been in command of the échelons holding the line from Ekaterinburg to Omsk although, following his promotion his deputy, the Russian Voitzekhovsky, had succeeded him. But then Voitzekhovsky had taken over the 1st Czech Division based in the Urals when Čeček had been recalled to Vladivostok. Syrový and Diterikhs were based in Chelyabinsk now so Paul had no idea who was presently in charge in Omsk. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t likely that whoever was in charge would be inclined to consult with a junior English officer as to the Legion’s tactical thinking. He still had his letter from Masaryk, of course, quite worn and crumpled now from the many hands through which it had passed, but he wasn’t sure how much weight that now carried. The Czech National Council’s volt-face over the Legion forming a front against the Bolsheviks had lost it support. Even more so now the war in Europe was over and Czechoslovakia had been born. All anyone in the Legion wanted was to get home. Those whose political sympathies had tempted them to make common cause with either the Bolsheviks or the SRs had already left to join them. It was only loyalty to their immediate superiors that kept the remainder of the Legion fighting and, in some places along the Trans-Siberian, this loyalty had begun to wear dangerously thin.

After consulting Ward’s map, Paul decided that both the safest and most direct route back to the main station was the one he had used to walk into town — along the spur line. No locomotives were running, Ward presently allowing nothing to either leave the centre of Omsk or to approach his cantonment. Paul thought he might have found a droshky , always assuming that there were still some cab horses in Omsk that hadn’t been eaten, but he didn’t want to run into another detachment of Cossacks and decided to travel on foot. That way he had the best chance of avoiding them.

It hadn’t surprised him in the least that Mikhail was acquainted with Krasilnikov, the presumed leader of the coup. It would also mean there was a very good chance that Kolchak had been involved, too. That was neither here nor there though; what was more disturbing to Paul was the thought that his name had been on a list the Cossacks were carrying. He couldn’t help but think of the Shakespeare he had read in school, of Julius Caesar and of the lists Octavian and Mark Anthony had drawn up following their war with Brutus and the conspirators. They had calmly traded names of those to be proscribed following their victory. Proscribed , of course, had been a euphemism for killing, just as the Russians preferred the word liquidated . He, it seemed, was to be liquidated. But on whose orders, and why?