Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“As it happens, we were about to discuss that very proposal,” Tolstov offered, gesturing casually toward a vacant chair. “Would you care to join us?”

Ned found the general’s suggestion disingenuous, at best, since Tolstov had clearly taken pains to convene the meeting without the Maid. Yet Zhanna accepted Tolstov’s invitation to take a seat without hesitation and motioned for Ned and Ivashov to sit beside her. Thereupon the lanky Colonel Denisov bowed to the Maid and resumed his briefing on the enemy defenses at Uralsk.

“The Bolsheviks defend Uralsk on three sides, with a garrison numbering about 2,500 bayonets, some local auxiliaries, and sufficient artillery and machine guns to make any frontal assault very costly indeed. They have erected earthworks around the center city and other key positions, with trenches behind them. The Reds also occupy the riverine heights. While their positions are not impregnable, they will be decidedly difficult to take.”

“But we have more men than before,” Zhanna interrupted. “Is our number not enough?”

“That remains the question,” Denisov answered. “For while we have superiority over the enemy in troop strength, we lack superiority in artillery and machine guns, and our supply of ammunition and shells is low. Simply stated, our men cannot be expected to breach the Red defenses without added heavy weapons.”

“You say a frontal assault would be costly. What other lines of attack have you considered?” Zhanna inquired.

“Before you arrived, we attacked the city from the north, from the south, and across the Chagan River from the southwest,” Denisov answered. “The fortifications are too strong. We were outgunned wherever we made our move.”

“Why don’t we have more heavy weapons, then, as the Reds do?” Zhanna asked with a naiveté that prompted several of the officers to roll their eyes. But Tolstov was not among them. By now he had learned not to dismiss Zhanna’s questions prematurely, for often they showed an unusual sagacity.

“Because the Bolsheviks took Russia’s arsenals and armaments factories when they seized power last October,” the general explained. “Nearly all these were located in Western Russia. What’s more, the Red Army commands a complex railway network to convey these weapons wherever they want, and to move them again when conditions change.”

“Where do our arms come from, then?” Zhanna inquired. The same officers who before had rolled their eyes now exchanged looks bordering on contempt.

“We capture them from our enemies,” Tolstov replied. “Or we rely on our foreign allies for them. But the arms that the British and Americans send from Vladivostok rarely make it to us. Instead, they are diverted north to Yekaterinburg, Ufa, and Perm. We Cossacks are left to our own devices.”

“What about resupply from the British at Novo-Rossiysk, across the Caspian Sea?” Ned asked, recalling his conversations with Colonel Ward in late March about the possibility of arming the Ural Cossacks from stores in place at the Black Sea base. As agreed, he had passed Colonel Ward’s recommendation to the British Military Mission during his April visit to Novo-Rossiysk and was told that the concept was sound in principle and would be reviewed. But he had received no further word on it by the time he left for Iletsk.

“From time to time, some British arms have indeed reached us from the Caspian,” General Tolstov observed, “but General Denikin claims most of these for himself.”

“Last month I delivered a special request to Denikin from the British Military Mission at Omsk to send you some of his surplus weaponry,” Ned pointed out. “Have you received no arms at all across the Caspian since then?”

“The British promise much but deliver little,” Tolstov observed in a dry tone of voice while pulling a silver cigarette case from his tunic pocket and flipping it open with one hand.

“When was the last time you checked the Guryev port for deliveries from the Caspian Fleet?” Ned persisted.

Tolstov lit his cigarette and ground the flaming match under his heel before taking a couple of leisurely puffs. When he looked up again, he cast an annoyed look toward Colonel Denisov and ordered him to wire the commander at Guryev to see if anything had come.

“Aye, sir,” Denisov responded before sending one of his subordinates away to dispatch the cable.

The remainder of the meeting was taken up with detailed technical discussions regarding every possible avenue of attack upon Uralsk and the relative prospects for each. In every case, discussion ended with an acknowledgement of the need for heavy weapons, particularly armored cars or tanks, to penetrate the fortified northern sector, which was the only approach not guarded by a river or rugged highlands. But the Cossacks possessed no more than two armored cars, both of them inoperable for lack of spare parts. The meeting adjourned on a low note, for by then nearly all participants felt the urgency of retaking the city without delay, but none knew how to accomplish it.

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