Archive 17 (30 page)

Within minutes, they were on the move again.

The sun was out now, blazing so harshly off the snow that the men placed their hands over their eyes, peeping like terrified children through the cracks between their fingers.

Whirlwinds of snow, solemn and graceful, wandered across their path.

Not long afterwards, they found themselves in the shadow of a cliff. Beyond it, on the other side of the tracks, lay the frozen pond Tarnowski had been searching for the previous night.

“This is the place!” shouted Tarnowski. “I told you it was here.”

All of them broke into a run, floundering out across the pond. After crashing through a forest of tall reeds, they entered a clearing where Tarnowski and Lavrenov immediately kicked aside the covering of snow and began scraping at the ground. But the soil was frozen solid. The crates might as well have been encased in stone.

Tarnowski sat back, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “It’s no use. We’ll have to make a fire to soften the ground. We buried shovels on top of the crates. If we can get to those, it won’t take long to get the gold out of the ground.”

“The smoke will be visible,” said Pekkala.

“We can’t afford to wait for dark,” replied Kolchak. “Everything must happen now.”

After gathering fallen branches, they heaped the deadfall over the place where the crates had been buried. Using scrolls of birch bark peeled from the nearby trees, they soon had a fire burning. Then they stood back, watching nervously as the smoke climbed up into the sky.

L
OOKING LIKE A CREATURE
sculpted from ice and soot, Gramotin wandered through the forest. The trees seemed to be closing in on him. I’ve been out here too long, he thought. I think I am losing my mind.

In the distance, Gramotin saw what he thought at first was a cloud drifting in from the east, but soon he realized it was smoke. Why they would have stopped and made a new camp again so soon after leaving the old one, Gramotin had no idea. They must think no one is following them, he told himself. And to light a fire in broad daylight struck him as an arrogance which could not go unpunished. Encouraged, Gramotin pressed on, the weight of his rifle and ammunition bandolier dragging on his shoulder blades.

Later, when he paused to catch his breath, he noticed a pack of wolves skulking among the trees, their fur a grayish-purple haze against the maze of birches. A jolt of fear passed through him, but he choked it down. Hoping they would keep their distance, he quickened his pace. After that, whenever Gramotin stopped, the wolves stopped. When he moved on, they followed. Each time, the gap between him and the wolves grew smaller.

An image barged into Gramotin’s head of his old platoon, lying strewn and half devoured on the ground. A blinding anger flared inside him. He unshouldered his rifle, hooked his left arm through the leather strap, and braced his hand against the forward stock. Closing
his left eye, he squinted down the notches of the gun sight and picked out the lead wolf. At this range, he thought, even a lousy shot like me can’t miss. To calm himself before pulling the trigger, Gramotin breathed in the comforting smell of armory oil sunk into the wooden stock and the familiar metallic reek of gunpowder from the breech of the Mosin-Nagant.

But then Gramotin hesitated, knowing that the men he was pursuing would be close enough to hear the gunfire. Even though the group had split up, they still outnumbered him. His only chance would be to catch them by surprise. Slowly, he lowered the gun. When the notched sights of the rifle slid away from the wolf’s face, Gramotin realized the animal was staring right at him. It seemed to be mocking the sergeant’s presence, as if daring him to pull the trigger.

Gramotin reshouldered his gun and moved on.

Soon afterwards, as he rounded a bend in the tracks, a cliff rose up to his left. To his right, across a frozen pond, the smoke he had seen earlier was rising through the forest canopy. Leaving the path of the railroad, Gramotin scrabbled up the sloping ground beside the cliff until he reached a clearing near the precipice. Then he got down on his belly and crawled the rest of the way, dragging his rifle by its strap. From here, the footprints of the Comitati were clearly visible crossing the snow-covered pond. In the trees on the other side, Gramotin could just make out a group of men standing beside a fire.

As quietly as he could, Gramotin slid back the bolt of his gun.

U
NABLE TO WAIT
any longer, Tarnowski waded into the flames, scattering the burning branches and emerging seconds later with two shovels. In their years beneath the ground, roots had taken hold of the handles. Now they clung like skeletal hands to the wood.

Kolchak reached out for one of the shovels.

With a smile, Tarnowski held it out of reach. “Allow us, Colonel.”

“By all means, gentlemen!” Kolchak stepped aside.

Tarnowski and Lavrenov, each now armed with a shovel, marched into the smoke and began chiseling out clods of earth still crystallized with frost. Lavrenov’s shovel, weakened by its years under the earth, broke almost immediately. But this did not slow him down. Grasping the metal blade of the shovel, he dropped to his knees and attacked the frozen ground.

Now that the two men were occupied with digging, Kolchak turned to Pekkala. “Walk with me,” he said.

They strolled out onto the surface of the frozen pond.

“How does it feel to be free?” asked Kolchak.

“I’ll tell you when I know,” said Pekkala.

“There is something else I wanted you to know as well. Even though that gold is almost in our grasp, our work is not yet done.”

“Yes. We have to get across the border.”

“I am talking about more than that. What I mean is that you and I still have important roles to play in the shaping of our country’s future.”

“Once we cross the border, this will not be our country anymore.”

“That is precisely why we will be staying only as long as it takes to acquire weapons. We will then be returning to Russia and, within six months, my uncle’s dream of an independent Siberia, which he died trying to fulfill, will be a reality.”

Pekkala was thunderstruck. Kolchak had gone completely mad. “An independent Siberia? With what ghost army are you planning this invasion? Or are we to manage this just by ourselves?”

“Not ghosts, Pekkala. Refugees.” Kolchak’s voice was trembling with energy. “Just across that border there are more than two hundred thousand men who fled Stalin’s Russia. They are soldiers and civilians who had made lives for themselves in Siberia, but who were
forced to flee into China during the Revolution rather than surrender to the Reds. I am talking about the Izhevsk Rifle Brigade, the Votkinsk Rifle Division, the Komuch People’s Army, and my uncle’s own Siberian Provisional Government troops. Some of them took their families with them.”

“And haven’t they made new lives for themselves?”

“Of course, but they have kept alive the dream of returning to their native country. They all want the same thing, Pekkala—to return home to the richest land in all of Russia.”

“Even if what you say is true,” replied Pekkala, “and these refugees were prepared to fight, what makes you think you could defeat the Red Army?”

“The Russian military is busy in Poland. Soon, if the rumors in Shanghai are true, it will be defending its borders against Germany. They will have neither the time nor the resources to stand up to us.”

“And suppose you did take Siberia? What then?”

“Then we form an alliance with Germany. The land west of the Ural Mountains will belong to them, and everything to the east will belong to us.”

“What makes you think the Germans would agree to this?”

“They already have,” explained Kolchak. “Their diplomatic representatives in China have promised to recognize us as a legitimate government as long as we can reclaim Siberia, which means that Japan will automatically recognize our new frontier as well.”

“And which country is providing the weapons for this adventure?”

“The men I’m speaking of are not concerned with politics.”

“You mean you are dealing with gunrunners.”

“Call them whatever you want, Pekkala. Even as we speak, there are two ships moored in a cove in the Sea of Okhotsk, loaded with rifles, machine guns, even a few pieces of artillery. All we have to do is pay for them. And when we get across the border into Russia,
what we do not have—more guns, food, horses, whatever the gold has not bought—we’ll take from those who try to stop us.”

Even though Pekkala had now recovered from his initial shock, he was still astounded at the audacity of Kolchak’s plan. Under any other circumstances, such an insurrection could not stand a chance against the massed forces of the Soviet military, which Stalin would not hesitate to use if he felt that his power was threatened. But Kolchak’s timing had placed him in the center of a chain of events which might soon engulf the whole world. If his prediction of a German invasion was correct, Stalin might not be able to prevent a determined opponent from occupying Siberia. No one would understand this better than Stalin himself, whose own party had come to power in the closing stages of the Great War, when the Tsar’s army was crippled by defeats against Germany. Had the Bolsheviks chosen any other moment, their own uprising might never have succeeded, but with a combination of ruthlessness and popular support, they had taken over the whole country.

“I was right about you,” said Pekkala. “You didn’t come back for these men. You came back for the gold, and the reason they are free is because they are the only ones who knew where to find it. They believed in the oath you swore to them.”

“The oath was to the
mission
!” Kolchak howled.

“The mission failed. It’s over.”

“Not yet, Pekkala. I know I can’t bring back the Tsar, but I can use his treasure to build a new country, one that is not founded on the values of his enemies.”

“With yourself as emperor?” Before Kolchak had time to answer, Pekkala continued. “You may have calculated the cost of this new country in gold bullion, but what about the cost in human life?”

“I will not lie to you,” Kolchak replied. “We have many scores to settle with those who fought against my uncle in the winter of 1918 when he was trying to liberate this country. Even those who
stood by and did nothing will receive the punishment they deserve. Thousands will die. Maybe tens of thousands. Numbers do not matter. What matters is that they are swept aside until all that remains of them is a footnote in the history books.” He gripped Pekkala’s arm. “Blood for blood! Those are the words on which the new Siberia will be founded.”

Pekkala pointed at the trees, where Lavrenov and Tarnowski were still digging. “What about those two men who have remained loyal to you? Have they learned about this plan of yours? All I heard them talk about was building mansions for themselves in China. Do they know you are leading them straight back into another war?”

“Not yet,” admitted Kolchak. “After what happened when I tried to explain things to Ryabov—”

“You mean you
told
Ryabov?”

“I tried to!” Kolchak’s voice rose in frustration. “He was the senior officer among the Comitati. I thought I owed it to the man to tell him first. I had imagined that after so many years in captivity, he would be glad to learn that the thieves who had stolen his freedom would pay for that crime with their lives.”

“What happened instead?”

“He told me he wouldn’t go through with it. He didn’t even hesitate. I explained that he could stay behind in China. I said I didn’t care whether he came or not. But that wasn’t enough for Ryabov. He insisted that enough lives had been lost on account of the gold. I told him it was about more than treasure. It was about eliminating Stalin and the Communists. If there is one thing I have learned in my years of exile it is that the only way to get rid of a monster is to create an even bigger monster. After that, it’s just a matter of seeing who bleeds to death first.”

“And what did Ryabov say to that?”

“He said he would refuse to give up the location of the gold.
After all, the Comitati were the only ones who knew where it was, since I had left before they buried it. Ryabov told me that the men in Borodok had learned to trust him. Everything they had lived through, he had also endured. Ryabov was certain they would listen to him before they listened to me.”

“And you believed him?”

“I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t take the chance that he was right. That night, when he came to the mine, I thought he had come to speak with me, perhaps to try and talk me out of it. I didn’t realize that he was there to meet Klenovkin. He didn’t expect to find me outside that cave where I’d been hiding, deep inside the mine. Tarnowski and the others had warned me to stay put, but I couldn’t stand it, cooped up in there like some animal in a cage made out of stone. So I had taken to wandering those tunnels at night, anything but stay holed up in that cave. That’s when I discovered Ryabov. I could tell he was surprised to see me. I tried again to reason with him, but he told me his mind was made up. He was putting a stop to the escape. I reminded him of how long he had struggled to ensure the survival of our men so that one day they might find their way out of this camp.”

“And what was his reply?”

“He said their freedom, and his own, would not be worth the countless thousands we’d leave butchered in our path.”

At last, the mystery of Ryabov’s death became clear to Pekkala. He realized he had misjudged the murdered officer.

“Pekkala, I did not want to kill him, but when he told me that Klenovkin would be there any minute, thinking perhaps that I would see the situation as hopeless and surrender, I knew I didn’t have any choice except to silence him for good.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a shout from the men who were digging. An arm rose from the smoke, the fist clutching a
bar of gold. Tarnowski staggered out, half blinded, and laid the ingot down at Kolchak’s feet. Then he turned and went back to his digging.

Slowly, Kolchak bent down and picked up the bar, whose surface was hidden by a residue of dirt which had leached through the wooden crate over time. Kolchak rubbed it away with his thumb, revealing the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs. Then he glanced at Pekkala and smiled.