Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

The colonel rose to greet Ned and offered him a place on a settee near the window. Barrows was a tall man of erect carriage, with broad shoulders and a powerful physique for a man of forty-five. He was also one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable men Ned had ever known.

“So pleased you received my wire in time to meet,” Barrows began, extending his hand. “How are you enjoying the Paris of Siberia?”

“Well enough,” Ned replied as he relaxed into the settee, “though the place appears to have seen better days.”

“Wait till you travel further west,” Barrows replied with a sober look before straightening his papers and stuffing them into a worn leather portfolio. “The stench of decay worsens the closer you get to the front lines. Omsk, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg: they’re enough to break your heart.”

This sort of remark, which showed Barrows’s appreciation of local conditions and his sympathy with indigenous peoples, was what set him apart from many senior Allied officers in Vladivostok and what so endeared him to Ned. In that way, Barrows resembled Ned’s father. He was a true scholar-soldier, an anthropologist who had served in the Philippines as Superintendent of Schools and later as Chief of the Bureau for Non-Christian Tribes before his commission in 1916 as a major in the U.S. Army Reserve Corps. After serving briefly in Europe, Barrows traveled halfway around the world to become an army intelligence officer back in the Philippines, where one of the promising young officers under his command was the newly promoted first lieutenant, Ned du Pont.

Their work together did not last long, however, because in early 1918, Barrows volunteered to inspect the hastily organized anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia who were seeking emergency U.S. military aid. Upon the AEF’s arrival in Vladivostok, Barrows became America’s chief intelligence officer in Siberia, overseeing a network that extended more than five thousand miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Ural Mountains.

“You’re probably wondering how the recent events in Europe and Omsk will affect your assignment here,” the colonel suggested. “As it happens, the November 11^th Armistice in Europe, and Admiral Kolchak’s coup d’état in Omsk a week later, have changed the entire thrust of our mission. With peace in Europe, there is far less urgency to move the Czech Legion out of Russia. The latest word is that the new Czechoslovak National Council has agreed to keep the Legion in Siberia for several more months to guard the Trans-Siberian until Allied ships can carry them home from Vladivostok. But their new orders prohibit the Legion from fighting the Bolsheviks, and that’s a setback for the Whites.”

“Does this mean the AEF has been reduced to sharing railroad guard duty with the Czechs and Japanese?” Ned sniffed. “It hardly seems worthwhile to bring eight thousand American troops all the way to Siberia just for that.”

“I fear that’s how it may look to the American public, as well,” Barrows added with a frown. “So we can expect loud voices at home calling for the AEF’s withdrawal. Even worse, evidence is mounting that our efforts so far to keep five thousand miles of railway open for business are not delivering the economic boost we had hoped for. Nor does our work appear to have advanced the cause of Russian democracy a whit.”

Ned gave Barrows a puzzled look.

“Are you referring to Admiral Kolchak’s coup?”

“That, and the growing strength of the warlords east of Baikal under Japanese sponsorship,” Barrows replied. “The sad truth is that the reasons Washington used to justify America’s intervention in Siberia were a fraud from the start. Intervention was never going to bring Russia back into the Great War. And the Czechs could never have made it back to the Western Front in time to be useful there. Now the defeat of German arms has even further mooted the declared grounds for American intervention.”

Colonel Barrows reached for his pipe and matches and silently coaxed a swirl of dense smoke from its bowl. Sweat broke out on Ned’s brow while contradictory feelings of disappointment and relief swarmed inside his head. In Washington, Colonel Holt had warned him that the European War might be over by Christmas. Could the Russian intervention end just as quickly? Would he be back at his old job in Manila before the New Year? Ned closed his eyes and drank in the room’s stagnant air, tinged with the intricate fragrance of the colonel’s pipe smoke. He felt nauseous.

“So what now? Will they send us home?” he inquired, his voice taking on a nervous edge.