David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

Paul hadn’t given it much thought.

‘So they volunteer,’ Karel said, his tone adding an unspoken, ipso facto .

For now , Paul thought to himself. While things go well. If the Reds regroup and advance again he suspected it might be a different matter. No one is keen on joining a beaten army. And if the Omsk government couldn’t get men, he took it for granted they’d revert to type. Like the Reds, they’d use forced conscription, threats and beatings, burning villages and murdering as a last resort…

There had been a lull since the early successes. Gajda was still in Perm building up his forces, waiting for spring, while Voitzekhovsky was operating somewhere to the south of the railway, having left the Legion and rejoined the Russian army. Even further south, Kappel, the man who had persuaded Čeček to turn the Legion west against Samara and Kazan, was attempting to link up with Deniken in the Caucasus. There was talk of a push towards the Allies in Archangel. It had been reported in the Czech newspaper that General Poole had been replaced by General Ironside, and now the hope was that Ironside would resume the descent of the River Dvina and the Kotlas railway. Joining with Gajda, they would catch the Red Army in a pincer movement between Deniken and Kappel in the south.

Karel remained unconvinced. ‘It’ll never happen.’

‘Now who’s the cynic?’ Paul asked.

But he suspected Karel was right. So far, Ironside like his predecessor, had shown little inclination to quit the dubious comforts of Archangel for a winter campaign.

They stopped some distance from the station. A crowd gathered, hopeful of boarding. Paul jumped down, pushed his way through them and walked along the track against the flow of new arrivals. A convoy of trains lined the track ahead and into the railway station. Five, Paul counted as he passed, six including the armoured train — the broněviky at the head of the convoy. Russian troops guarded the trains, forcing back the press of refugees clamouring around them. For all Paul could tell by looking at them they might have been the same people he had seen in Omsk a year earlier. Now more ragged, more hungry, more desperate.

Beyond the station the sheds and railway workshops had been stripped of their timber. Firewood, he supposed. Towards Omsk, pillars of smoke rose into the frozen air as if from a desolate Gomorrah.

There was no transportation to be had into the centre of the city, but he had expected none. By now all the horses would have been eaten. A locomotive shunting boxcars along the spur line was being unloading of its freight for the convoy. Nothing appeared to be going back into Omsk. He supposed there was nothing to go back for.

Kolchak’s ministers had decamped four days earlier, leaving the city ahead of the Supreme Ruler to prepare for his arrival at Irkutsk, his new capital. Kolchak was to travel in the last convoy with his staff, the chancery and his personal guard. The Legion — with Paul in tow — was to bring up the rear in their own armoured train. All that was left behind, between them and the Red Army, were some ragged units of Poles, Ukrainians and some Serbs. They were attempting to move faster than the Red units chasing them.

On top of the chaos and the anarchy of the evacuation, Paul had heard there was an epidemic of typhus in the city. There was really no reason for anyone to go back into Omsk. Except Paul. He still had a reason.

Romanek had tried to dissuade him, but Paul knew that if he didn’t go back he would spend the rest of his life regretting not having tried. He had armed himself with the Russian version of the Smith & Wesson 10.67mm, less cumbersome than his old Mauser although neither gun was particularly reliable. Short of dragooning a detachment of legionnaires to accompany him, he didn’t know what else he could do. That he was wasting his time he didn’t doubt. Mikhail wouldn’t have been fool enough to stay any longer than he had to and, if Paul knew anything about his cousin, he had probably left with the ministers — if not before.

On the other hand Mikhail wouldn’t have wanted to be too far from the seat of power. It was always possible he had a berth on the convoy; after all, where safer to be than next to the Supreme Ruler? Either way, Paul really didn’t give a damn. Not about Mikhail. He was more concerned as to where Sofya might be. Already in Irkutsk, with any luck. If Mikhail had had the decency to send her on ahead. It was true his cousin had left her in Petersburg without a quibble, but then Sofya herself had not wanted to leave the city. Omsk was a different matter. Who in their right mind would want to stay here? She might very well have still insisted on remaining with her brother. She was stubborn enough, but Paul couldn’t imagine that having lived under the Bolsheviks in Petersburg she would have wanted to risk repeating the experience in Omsk. And even if Mikhail had not made arrangements for her to leave, Paul didn’t doubt that Sofya was resourceful enough to make her own.

He tried to resist the worm of suspicion that had been eating into his head for days that Krasilnikov might have made arrangements for her. She had said she detested the man but a lot could have changed in the intervening year. And in a town like Omsk, who could say what had happened?

They had all heard the rumours.

Stories of what it was like in Kolchak’s capital had spread down the line like a tide carrying detritus from a sinking ship. Omsk had become a by-word for corruption. The venality of army officers and of government functionaries was legend. It had tainted their every act. As had happened the year before, war matériel sent by the Allies had ceased to flow to the front and instead lay stuffed in Omsk warehouses, traded to whoever would pay the most. Even civilians, it had been said, dressed in military uniform while the troops at the front were reduced to rags. Everything had its price. While the ordinary citizen went hungry, restaurants burgeoned with expensive food. Night-clubs flowed with champagne, and cocaine was supposedly to be found as readily as tobacco.

Paul had tried not to picture Sofya in this inflamed atmosphere of vice and temptation. He had refused to admit any possibility of her giving in to the detestable Krasilnikov. But what could he know about it, hundreds of miles away chasing some chimera called duty? It might have been upon Sofya’s insistence that he had left, but how did she react in the vacuum?

That these thoughts not only traduced his own good opinion of her but of her own honour as well, made no difference. He couldn’t help himself. His mind kept returning to it time and again. It was as if the depravity that infected Omsk had infected his own thoughts. He was powerless to fight against it. He had promised himself that if he ever got a chance to return he would find her and — irrationally — atone for the damage he felt he had done to her memory.

Taking the same route he had a year earlier, he found the branch line that terminated in Nikólskaya Square had mostly been cleared of trains. The few abandoned carriages and boxcars left had been taken over by refugees. Soldiers no longer guarded the Stavka building and droves of people were passing in and out of its doors at will. Those leaving mostly carried some sort of booty.

There was little sign of the Gomorrah he had expected, though. Then he supposed those with the means to indulge in excess had already departed. Army officers had left with their families; government officials and clerks with their files. If they hadn’t managed to get a berth on one of the hundreds of trains that had already left in the last weeks, they’d gone by cart. Or walked. The host of the fleeing was endless: café owners, restaurateurs, merchants and shopkeepers… the rich hugging bags of money to their chests as mothers hugged their children. Even the prostitutes had gone.