David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

There was something almost oriental about Čeček, with his thin moustache and round face, bundled as he was in his rumpled grey uniform. But then Paul was willing to conceded that his euphoria at reaching Kazan, the city’s history and Tartar heritage, his exhaustion through lack of sleep and hunger, may all have combined to induce a confusion that bordered upon hallucination.

He gave the colonel a smart salute — his due, Paul had thought despite his own civilian dress — and had recited his rank and regiment, before attempting to explain his mission. This he did without direct reference to Cumming and the Foreign Service and made, he couldn’t help thinking, something of a hash of it. Čeček listened attentively, gripping Masaryk’s letter in his fist as if it were a tangible link to his Czech homeland.

‘You have come from General Poole? How close to Petersburg are they?’

Paul had to explain that he had not actually come through Archangel and had no current news of Poole’s whereabouts but believed him still to be in the northern port. Čeček looked crestfallen. ‘I’m here to liaise with Admiral Kolchak,’ Paul said. ‘Where can I find him?’

‘In Japan,’ said Čeček.

‘Still?’ It had been weeks since Cumming had said Kolchak would be arriving.

‘Of course,’ Čeček added, his voice heavy with irony, ‘the Russians might know more, if you can find any officers still left in Kazan to ask, that is.’

Čeček then questioned Paul as to how they had managed to get through the Red Army lines, and had an aide take notes on the Red Army positions. Then he had excused himself, delegating the aide to see to the needs of Paul and his companions.

They were found rooms close to the railway station. The evacuation of Kazan following the failure of Komuch to take Sviyázhsk and the reinforcement of the Red Army had left no shortage of accommodation in the city.

Valentine immediately hurried away to find out what he could about the gold reserves. Sofya went with him. She needed clothes, she said, to replace her sarafan , now stained with Malinovsky’s blood in addition to the rest of the dirt it had picked up on the journey. Paul, left alone, returned to Čeček’s headquarters. He managed to persuade the Czech adjutant to put him on temporary attachment to Čeček’s command with the rank of podkapitan — the equivalent of staff captain — and, to his relief, was at last able to swap his proletarian disguise for a Czech uniform.

Although the uniform boosted Paul’s own morale he soon discovered the Legion to be dispirited. They had been led to believe by the French liaison officer to the Legion, Major Guinet, that the arrival of the Allies in Archangel would open a route home for them to the west. They had taken Simbirsk and Kazan on this understanding. That Poole had made little or no progress towards them to form a unified front left them feeling betrayed.

With Čeček’s permission Paul had toured Kazan’s defences and talked to the men. News of his arrival had preceded him and the first question he had to answer was always ‘When are the allies arriving?’ Paul had never been much good at prevaricating in English and his attempts at evasion in Russian were as transparent as glass. His Czech, of course, was non-existent. He wondered if the other Paul Ross, the Czech speaker, might have handled himself better, although suspected the man was as likely as not to have taken advantage of the situation, sat the depressed Legion officers down to a game of cards and relieved them of their pay.

What was clear whatever language was used was that the men were sick of fighting other people’s battles. Their enemy was the Austro-Hungarian empire. Russians were regarded as fellow Slavs — peasants and proletarians like themselves. Fighting alongside them on the eastern front, the Czechs and Slovaks had been as open to Bolshevik propaganda as their Russian comrades. They believed revolution was an idea worth fighting for; hadn’t they all had enough of emperors and autocracies? Now they were beginning to wonder if the agitators had not been right. How had it happened that they were required to fight for European allies whose only assistance came in the form of dubious promises? And fight alongside many Russian officers who had served the former tsar and wanted nothing more than to replace him with whatever Romanov grand duke might be found who had survived the Bolshevik purge… The ordinary Russian soldier conscripted by Komuch to fight beside them had deserted at the first opportunity. They had disappeared either to get back to the land (it was harvest time, after all) or to go over to the Reds.

Paul had had no answers for them. Corporal Jacobs, his companion in the shell-hole, might have had some although Paul suspected even he might have had second thoughts had he seen what Paul had in Petersburg. So all Paul could do was make the best of it. Like Čeček, and do his duty. If there was no longer a need to contact Sofya’s brother, and he was in no position to liaise with the tardy Poole, then Paul thought the least he could do was stay with the Czechs until the equally tardy Kolchak arrived. As for the gold reserves, Komuch had already decided that they would be safer back in Samara once again — the city from whence they had been removed to prevent them from falling into Czech hands. Now the gold wagons were moving east once more, Paul was quite happy to let Mikhail and Valentine worry about them. That seemed to free him of all his obligations.

Except for the one he had placed upon himself.

He had Sofya to consider. And, to his surprise, he found he was considering Sofya most of the time.

Their rooms were shabby. Empty, yet full of an aura of having been left in a hurry. Some food remained in cupboards and unwashed plates and a few cooking utensils in the sink. Abandoned clothes lay scattered about the flat. Sofya sorted through them with her new-found pragmatism for salvaging anything that might be of use. She saved a winter coat thoughtlessly discarded in a summer panic, and some worn but still serviceable underwear for Paul. Valentine, she said, could forage for himself.

Which was just what he had been doing. Discovering that Mikhail was now with the gold reserves had altered Valentine’s attitude to Sofya. It seemed to Paul that Valentine now thought he needed to cultivate Sofya as a means of being introduced to Mikhail. He had already introduced himself to what remained of the Komuch administration in Kazan — which wasn’t much as most of government officials who had travelled from Samara following Kazan’s capture had promptly decamped again with the White officers and their army. Borrowing Masaryk’s letter, Valentine had managed to acquire some sort of accreditation as an ad hoc emissary of the Allies.

‘We need to get to Samara,’ Valentine had said in much the same way as he had declared the need to get out of Petersburg. They were sharing a meal made from the few provisions Sofya had been able to buy in the increasingly chaotic city. ‘There are no trains. Azin has taken the villages to the north-east and cut the line. The river is the only way out. We ought to find Malinovsky.’

‘He’s gone,’ Sofya said. ‘He collected his wife and son as soon as we arrived and left.’

‘It’s too late for any boat that’s still up the Kazanka anyway,’ Paul added. ‘They won’t get past the mouth of the river now. If the artillery on Uslan Hill doesn’t sink them, Raskolnikov’s flotilla will machinegun them before they get to the pier. All that’s left are the barges moored lower down the Volga, for the Czech retreat.’

‘How long can they hold out?’ Sofya asked.

‘A day or two, no more.’