Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

But a pleasant surprise was the relative frankness and openness of the Siberian officials and military men he met during his first few days on the job. Taking Ned aside, they would share with him their private worries for the future, as well as their shared concern that the Red Army might break through the Urals defenses and pour headlong into Siberia. With that fear in mind, several well-placed railway officials signaled their readiness to render any service or divulge any secret that Ned might require in return for American dollars to bankroll their escape. And, given the ample funds at his disposal, Ned began to wonder whether recruiting intelligence sources in Omsk might prove far easier than he had expected.

A week after his meeting with Admiral Kolchak and General Lebedev, Ned took a day off from his railroad duties and set out on horseback with Lieutenant Colonel John Neilson for a ride to an estate along the Irtysh River about a dozen versts north of Omsk. Neilson, whom Ned had met in Verkhne-Udinsk a month earlier, was back in Omsk now, having been cleared of any improper involvement in Admiral Kolchak’s coup d’etat.

Even before Ned’s arrival in the capital, the British Military Mission had foreseen the need for a secure location to house the new Allied wireless site. To this end, Neilson had proposed the Yushnevsky estate, a forested property near the village of Beregovoy, which offered the twin advantages of seclusion and anti-Bolshevik neighbors who farmed the nearby lowlands along the Irtysh.

As Ned was to be responsible for setting up the wireless facility, Neilson had proposed that the American take up residence at Beregovoy for a portion of each week, at least until the place was ready to receive the apparatus and its technical team. The estate contained several outbuildings suitable for this purpose, particularly a one-story lodge where many of the estate’s visiting craftsmen and skilled workers had been quartered during spring maintenance and the autumn harvest.

During their ride to Beregovoy, Neilson described the estate’s widowed owner, Madame Yulia Yekaterinovna Yushnevskaya, as an intelligent, cultured woman, born in England to an English mother and Russian father. She had married a wealthy St. Petersburg trader a few years before the 1917 revolution, and when the Bolsheviks seized power there, her husband fled the imperial capital for Omsk so as to escape the Red Terror and run the family’s remaining properties in Siberia. Yulia followed him there but, after her husband’s death, felt increasingly isolated and out of her depth in managing his business affairs.

To date, Madame Yushnevskaya had held on by improvising from day to day and selling off whatever assets she could. But she still faced painful decisions about the remaining properties, including her estate at Beregovoy. For while these, if soundly managed, might support her in relative comfort, that was only possible if she remained at Beregovoy to run them, for she had no close relations in Omsk and knew enough to be careful about any to whom she might entrust her wealth.

“At any event, a young widow in such circumstances ought to have no difficulty remarrying,” Ned opined to Neilson. “Omsk appears full of strong and enterprising men, many of wealth and good birth, who could offer her just the sort of partnership she needs. Is she attractive?”

“More than a little, I should say,” Neilson replied, squinting into the low morning sun. “But she is a very private woman, quite proud, and, frankly, a terrible snob.”

“Time and the animal instincts have a way of lowering one’s standards,” Ned remarked, looking away absently, “especially in times like these.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” the colonel conceded, “but to my knowledge, the lady keeps no lovers and has held all her suitors at arm’s length. In truth, I rather admire her for that, as Omsk these days is teeming with rogues, cads, and ne’er-do-wells of the highest pedigree. One can’t be too careful in such matters.”

Not long after, the two riders left the main road and followed a rutted track up a rise to a set of low wooden outbuildings and a two-story wood-frame house in a style that mixed traditional Russian woodcraft with a neoclassical gabled roof and linteled windows. While the main house seemed in good repair, the bunkhouse, stables, granaries, hen houses, and pig corrals showed signs of neglect. In particular, the one-story lodge made of wood and stone would need a new roof and new windows before it was habitable.

Neilson led Ned to the stables, where they left their horses in two of the many vacant stalls and set out fresh hay for them before crossing the yard to mount the steps to the main house.