David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

It was a tenuous lifeline but Paul grabbed it.

‘If you recall, sir, I was sent to liaise between Admiral Kolchak, the Czech Legion, and General Poole in Archangel. Given the present state of trust between the admiral and the Legion, I believe it only my duty to remain and attempt to resolve any differences there may be.’

Ward’s eye had turned from sardonic to jaundiced. He made an open-handed gesture to Sofya — paradoxically, Paul thought, as Ward was suggesting his hands were tied. Sofya, who had been listening to the exchange with a growing air of exasperation that Paul recognised from past association, picked up her fur coat and started for the door.

‘Thank you Colonel Ward. If the car is ready?’

‘Sofya…’ Paul said, starting after her. But she didn’t stop. On the edge of the Middlesex perimeter a black vehicle waited, a soldier at the wheel, its engine running. The man got out and opened the door for her. She paused a moment and looked back to where Paul was standing. Then she climbed into the car. Paul watched it drive away.

‘Why did we draw the short straw?’

‘Someone had to.’

Paul’s reply, meant as an expression of stoical acceptance, instead sounded almost callous. Nevertheless it was true. Someone had to draw the short straw.

He was squashed into the teplushka with a couple of dozen other men. The smoke from pipe tobacco, cigarettes and the leaky burhzuika made the atmosphere thick enough to bite and chew. He lit another cigarette. If he was going to smoke he might as well do it first-hand.

They were moving along the line slowly, like an elderly snail. Behind them was the Red Army. In front lay Omsk. They had heard the town had been evacuated for the most part although Paul suspected that those who had vouchsafed the information had meant evacuated by people who mattered and that they numbered themselves among them. All along the railway line they had passed refugees who hadn’t yet even reached Omsk. But, Paul supposed, these were the kind of people who didn’t matter. The strong among them were almost managing to match the crawling pace of the train; the weak were losing ground. Many had dropped from exhaustion in the snow. Paul noticed that the flow of refugees was unceasing and that attrition never seemed to effect their numbers. It was as if, somewhere out in the Ural mountains, a machine continued to churn out the homeless and the destitute in some never-ending cycle. Ragged, they carried what they could on their backs. Most wouldn’t reach Omsk, never mind evacuate out the other side. Those that fell rarely moved again. They lay in the snow like discarded dolls frozen in grotesque attitudes.

The ‘short straw’ they had drawn, to Karel Romanek’s disgust, was to have been chosen to defend the rear of the retreating army as Kolchak evacuated his capital. His generals, undecided whether to attempt to defend the capital or abandon it, had vacillated between the two so long and done neither that it was now too late. The retreat had become precipitous.

There was an irony not lost on Paul in the fact that the Legion had been elected to defend Kolchak’s rear. The irony lay in the fact that Kolchak despised the Legion, and yet the Supreme Governor had, through necessity, had to accept being defended by them. He had invested all his faith in his new army which had now, except for a few units, disintegrated. The Legion was all he had left. Had he known how things would turn out, Paul supposed the admiral might have acted differently. And not only the admiral. There were certain matters in which Paul would have liked to have acted differently, too. But a year had passed since he had last been in Omsk. Only a year, but it seemed so much longer.

Paul hadn’t seen Kolchak since the admiral had visited Ward in his train on the evening of the coup. Ward had wasted no time in conveying to Kolchak Paul’s determination to resume his work as a liaison officer with the Legion but the admiral had made it plain that if Paul did, he would be liaising along a one-way street; Paul would not be granted access to the Supreme Governor’s staff.

Giving Paul the news, it was not without some obvious satisfaction that Ward informed Paul he would have to travel to Ekaterinburg in order to report to Syrový, effectively getting him out of Omsk as Sofya had wished.

The evening of the coup, Paul had been present at a meeting with Kolchak and Ward, along with a Russian colonel named Frank, Kolchak’s liaison officer from Stavka . The representatives from Knox’s staff, Nielson and Steveni were there too, as well as a Times correspondent called Frazer. Kolchak had been dressed in the full uniform of a Russian admiral, imperial epaulettes and all, and it had seemed to Paul that those present were in some way conscious of the importance of the meeting. It was an awareness lost on Paul himself. He still felt morose following his meeting with Sofya — and the realisation of the probable consequences of what he had decided to do.

When Paul and Ward had watched Kolchak and Lieutenant-colonel Nielson drive away together earlier that afternoon, the admiral had been on his way to visit the French High Commissioner, M.Regnault, whose train was parked in a siding at the main railway station. Nielson — with an excuse that apparently satisfied neither Ward nor the man from The Times — said later that he had been offered a lift by the admiral by chance, and he had just happened to be carrying a bottle of champagne. His account certainly didn’t fool the French. As far as they were concerned the only possible explanation for the coup, for Nielson’s presence and for the champagne, was British perfidy.

The meeting in Ward’s train on Kolchak’s return was supposedly a courtesy to Ward as the ranking British officer in the town. Paul suspected that without the meeting, had it not been for a cut in telegraphic communication with the east overnight, the Middlesex colonel would have found himself reading Kolchak’s justification for the coup in a telegram from Knox. As it was, the admiral’s reasoning sounded to Paul little more than a veneer of excuses, barely covering Stavka’s fait accompli and the admiral’s own egotism.

Not that Ward was in any position to do much about it. Although, being temporarily freed from Knox’s oversight by the cut telegraph, he did take the opportunity to impress upon Kolchak his view that the British people would not stand for members of a legitimate government being kidnapped. All he was able to do in practise though was to reiterated an earlier request for guarantees of their safety.

‘Since,’ he had intoned in what Paul supposed to be Ward’s best parliamentary manner, ‘I have received no information regarding my enquiries concerning their safety, nor to the note I sent in the care of Colonel Nielson to the relevant Russian authorities…’ and he had paused at this point to look significantly in Nielson’s direction, as if not entirely sure that the note had actually been delivered. This had discomforted Nielson sufficiently to make him shift awkwardly in his seat while Ward turned back to Kolchak and concluded, ‘…I will be writing direct to Your Excellency care of Colonel Frank after this meeting.’

Kolchak, sitting stiffly on the same sofa he had occupied during Paul’s interview several days earlier, inclined his head in acknowledgement but chose not to reply.

‘And on a connected matter,’ Ward added while holding the floor, ‘I must inform you that it has been brought to my attention that certain threats have been made to a British officer temporarily under my command by a Russian officer said to have been involved in this very kidnapping of the Directory members.’