Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“The front is not really my cup of tea,” the older man replied with a curled upper lip. “I’m headed to the capital, where the real news is made. The moment I heard that Admiral Kolchak had anointed himself Supreme Ruler, I knew Omsk would be the right place for me.”

Rather than respond directly, Ned turned to the journalist’s drinking companion and introduced himself.

“Please forgive my lapse,” McCloud broke in. “Allow me to present Jake Sweeney, an officer of the American Red Cross. Jake has been telling me all the good things his outfit is up to in Siberia.”

“Is that so?” Ned asked with little interest, taking the remark for idle puffery. “I thought the Red Cross arrived here only a month or two ago, right after the AEF.”

“Some of us have been here since last winter,” Sweeney corrected in a flat, listless voice.

“Indeed,” Ned answered with rekindled curiosity. “And what exactly is your role here, if I may ask?”

“I’m in charge of setting up a line of evacuation hospitals and quarantine camps in the Urals. While handing over to the Russians tons of things we have no business giving away,” Sweeney replied. “Millions of dollars worth. Though I doubt we’ll ever get any thanks for it.”

“And why would that be, Mr. Sweeney?” McCloud asked, leaning back and smiling in a way calculated to put the Red Cross man at sufficient ease to elicit more detail.

“Don’t ask me. Ask General Graves, or our consul at Omsk,” Sweeney replied grimly before draining what remained in his glass. “It’s all bought with government money, and they’re spending it here like drunken sailors.”

At the sight of the waiter approaching with a tray of fresh drinks, Sweeney rose suddenly and seized a tumbler of whiskey and soda before the waiter could deliver Ned his rye and McCloud his glass of bubbling seltzer.

“I think Jake is being entirely too modest,” McCloud continued once each man had his drink. “On the way to Irkutsk, he told me how the Red Cross has run hospitals, built playgrounds, sponsored boys’ and girls’ clubs, and contrived all manner of ways to support Siberia’s civil authorities. Why, just this summer, Jake single-handedly overcame resistance from Omsk’s Orthodox priests by handing out a thousand New Testaments in Russian.”

“That we did, but the military government still blocks us at every turn,” Sweeney complained. “Behind our backs, they accuse us of ‘Bolshevist tendencies.’ You know, a fellow could bear to stay over here for a while if he felt he was accomplishing something. But it’s a heartbreaking game…”

An awkward silence followed that was broken at last by raucous laughter from the next table. Ned turned his head in time to see a stoutly built Russian woman, nearing fifty, dressed in an ankle-length black gown and a long black Persian lamb coat, who left her table to approach his. Though she was no longer young and had lost her youthful figure, she had a handsome face, with intelligent brown eyes, full lips, a small upturned nose and lustrous dark hair pinned at the nape of her neck in a chignon. Ned imagined she had been a beauty in her youth and, perhaps because she had not needed to seek others’ help until later in life, appeared uncomfortable doing so now. She stopped opposite McCloud and pointed to the white armband he wore above his left elbow with the red letter “C” sewn onto it.

“Good evening, good gentlemen,” she addressed them in English with a drawling Russian accent. “May I be permitted to ask you, sir, what it means, that sign on your arm?”

“Oh, the ‘C,’” McCloud answered, returning her forthright gaze. “That stands for war correspondent, but its true meaning is: ‘sees everything.’”

Sweeney let out an unexpected guffaw, and then withdrew into his whiskey.

“Then I think you and I share something,” the woman replied with a smile that seemed to put the journalist at ease. “You see, I too have the gift of second sight.”

“Now that sounds interesting,” McCloud replied with a wolfish grin. “Won’t you join us, Madame…?

“You may call me Yelena,” she answered, with an informality that surprised Ned, for Russians who had fallen onto hard times were often the greatest sticklers for form.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Madame Yelena. I’m Mark McCloud and I’ve come here to write about your war.”

McCloud rose to draw a chair for Yelena. Ned rose a second later, embarrassed at not having shown her the courtesy sooner. When McCloud had introduced Ned and Sweeney to the woman and all were seated, Ned offered to fetch her a drink, which she declined.

“Being a newsman,” McCloud continued a moment later, “I get to see a lot of things in a lot of places, but the one thing I am always looking for and seldom get a clear view of is the future. Does your second sight permit you to, well, prophesy coming events?”

Yelena lowered her dark eyes briefly then raised them again with an expression of serene confidence.

“Yes, I see them sometimes,” she replied guardedly.