Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“My Voices told me of your distress,” she answered. “And they also revealed to me your visions.”

“Then you’ve seen it? The awful slaughter at Ufa, and the headlong retreat across Siberia?” he answered with a pitiable tremor in his voice. “Our collapse at Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, and Omsk?”

“Yes, and your betrayal at Irkutsk.”

“You saw it, then! That French dog, Janin, delivering me and the tsar’s gold to the Socialist Revolutionaries, merely to guarantee safe passage for his precious Czech Legion!”

“Yes, and the hole in the ice,” Zhanna replied without emotion.

“But how? I was alone!” he insisted, his voice rising in near panic. “I watched, as if from above, as they shot me on the frozen river, sewed my corpse into a sack with heavy stones, and shoved it under the ice![45] I was dead, and yet I saw it all!”

“Just as I did, through God’s eyes. After all, who better than a messenger from our Heavenly Father to help you understand an unearthly vision?” the Maid replied in a gently mocking tone. “And the vision’s meaning amounts to this: everything you saw will happen one day unless you change your course. Don’t you see, Admiral? Don’t you understand that such a vision is truly a blessing in disguise?”

“You call that a blessing?” Kolchak bristled. “I call it a curse of the worst possible kind!”

“It is a blessing because you can still avoid the consequences of your wrong choices!” Zhanna insisted. “Now that you have seen them, you must choose differently!”

“And if I do, I might still save myself?” he asked with doubt in his voice and his eyes opened wide.

“Yes!” the Maid affirmed.

The Admiral didn’t speak for a long while.

“Then let God give me the strength to do it,” he answered at last with a drawn-out sigh. “And I pray, show me how!”

“Good!” she answered, her eyes alight with excitement. “The first thing one must do after making a wrong turn is return to the crossroads. Will you then renounce your regency when its term is over and lead Russia out of her age-old cycle of tyranny?”

Another moment passed before the Admiral replied.

“If I must,” he said weakly. “And if others allow it.”

“What possible power do others have to stop you if God demands it?” Zhanna scolded.

At this, Kolchak let out an unintelligible murmur, for he knew well the fury of his backers, should they feel betrayed. Zhanna knew it, too, and waited for his fear to abate before trying once more to move him to action.

“All people require freedom in order to thrive,” she told him. “Because oppression stands in the way of human thriving, tyranny is the very essence of evil, whether imposed by tsars, commissars, or dictators. Our cause will be worthy of victory only if we renounce monarchy, empire, and the institutions of a dead past. In the same way, we must recognize the freedom of Russia’s neighbors, who have suffered long as captives of the Russian Empire. Dear Admiral, I know how painful it is for you to renounce your ‘Greater Russia, One and Indivisible,’ but it must be done.”

Here Kolchak remained so silent that Zhanna wondered if he might have ceased breathing.

“Is that truly what God requires?” the Admiral asked at length in a small voice.

“Yes.”

“And you believe in your Voices completely?”

“It is not a matter of belief. I accept them,” Zhanna replied flatly. “And then I take my courage in both hands and pray for the wisdom and strength to follow as best I can.”

“But if I accept, I must do so for all of Russia,” Kolchak pointed out. “The responsibility weighs me down like a millstone!”

“If it is any consolation to you, Admiral, I assure you that my mission is no less difficult than yours. For my task is to turn Russian hearts to God. Yet, to do it, I would gladly give up all that I have—even all that I am.”

* * *

Admiral Kolchak recovered from his fever the next day and secluded himself with his most intimate advisors for the rest of the week. Each day when Ned delivered his intelligence reports and wireless messages to the Admiral’s office or residence, he caught not even a glimpse of Kolchak, Guins, or Dieterichs, and he could find no one who knew the reason why. For while Zhanna had revealed to him the broad gist of her recommendations to the Admiral during her bedside visit, she had refused to reveal what the Admiral had told her in return.

When Ned asked Colonel Ward what the British might know about Kolchak’s continued seclusion, Ward answered only that the regent was preparing an important speech on the first anniversary of his rise to power, to be delivered before the national assembly. A second speech was to be given later the same day at the consecration of a new military cemetery at a nearby battlefield, where the People’s Army and Czech Legion had fought the Bolsheviks in 1918.