Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

The local inhabitants whom Ned passed on the street seemed even more shabbily dressed than the bedraggled refugees at Omsk. Few made eye contact, perhaps as a survival mechanism left over from the Red Terror. Fortunately, the Grand Zhiguli was well supplied with food and drink, for the British paid in pounds sterling and Ned paid with dollars. Ned’s technicians lost no time in stringing antenna wires from the hotel’s roof and setting up their wireless apparatus in a suite shared by the two technicians.

To maintain his cover as an official of the Russian Railway Service Corps and to deflect unwanted scrutiny away from the wireless installation, Ned spent several hours each morning shuttling between the railway station, the telegraph office, and local government offices. He made it clear that, though he wore an American military uniform, he was an expert on telegraphy and not a combat officer. Nonetheless, by virtue of being the sole American official at Samara, various Russian military officers, politicians, and businessmen approached him at all hours of the day and night with information or propositions that they wished him to convey to the American government.

For this reason, it didn’t surprise Ned when, one morning toward the end of his first week in Samara, a tall, vigorous-looking Russian of about thirty accosted him in the stairwell on his way to the hotel lobby. Though the man was shabbily dressed and wore a workman’s cap over his closely cropped black hair, his clothes were freshly pressed, his face closely shaved and there was something striking about the brooding look in the man’s deep cobalt eyes that made Ned feel he had met the man before.

“Don’t you remember me, Captain du Pont?” the man greeted him with an amused smile.

“Perhaps if you would tell me your name,” Ned answered coolly, unwilling to hazard a guess lest he reveal too much.

“In Samara, I go by the name of Subbotin, but in Irkutsk you knew me by a different name.”

At once Ned made the connection, recalling how Father Timofey Ryumin had appeared to him at the Irkutsk worker’s café in January, dressed similarly in laborer’s garb.

“Forgive me, Timofey. I didn’t know you without your beard. But what are you doing here in Samara?” Ned demanded, drawing closer to the man and lowering his voice. “Wait,” he told the Russian, and held a finger to his lips while listening for anyone else who might be above or below on the stairway. “Come outside with me. We’ll speak as we go.”

Timofey nodded his assent.

“Did you succeed in setting up your new church organization on the Volga as you once planned?” Ned asked in a near-whisper as they began their descent down three flights of stairs.

Timofey let out a soft laugh.

“Church, no; organization, yes. Since the Red Terror began, the Cheka has driven all Christian worship underground, except for a few churches where they permit old women to pray for the souls of the departed. The more urgent task has been to overthrow Bolshevik rule. And to that end, I have been active with the Socialist Revolutionary partisans, whether they worship God or not”

“Was it you, then, who made contact with Zhanna outside Samara to organize the S-R uprisings that put the Red garrison to flight?” Ned asked, taking a wild guess.

“I wasn’t the first to reach her,” Timofey answered, “but once I did, her trust in me allowed us to save many lives by avoiding a pitched battle.”

“Excellent work, Timofey. So your relations with Zhanna and Baron Wrangel are close?”

“For the moment,” the Russian answered, knitting his brow and letting out a deep breath. “They know how badly they need us, since the S-R Party enjoys overwhelming popular support all along the Volga. And unless Kolchak’s henchmen move in here and seek to impose their hard-fisted rule, we shall be happy to continue supporting Zhanna and the Baron against the Bolsheviks.”

“Fortunately for you, the Admiral shows little interest in ruling the Lower Volga for now,” Ned observed. “His sights are set on Moscow and he prefers to approach it from the north, through Perm, once he gathers enough troops to make his move. I doubt you will see him or anyone from the Stavka in Samara to support the Maid’s offensive.”

“Then so be it,” Timofey said with a shrug as they reached a landing and stepped down onto to the next flight. “At the moment, Denikin and Wrangel seem far more cooperative than the Admiral and, to his credit, Denikin has never favored permanent military dictatorship. Though many of the Don and Kuban Cossacks under his command hold autocratic views, Denikin manages to hold them in check and now calls openly for a new national assembly to be convened here at Samara.”

“At Samara, you say?” Ned asked, trying to show a degree of surprise. “Is Denikin aware that Zhanna predicted the same thing months ago?”

“He was not aware—until we informed him,” the Russian answered with a sly look.

“And does the general endorse the idea?”