Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“You can’t possibly believe that,” Ned scoffed, letting the bread drop from his hand. “Certainly not after all you’ve seen. Why, you’ve proclaimed time and time again that this war is a ‘Hobbesian battle of all against all’ and won’t end until one side has totally crushed the other.”

“Perhaps I did say that once or twice,” McCloud conceded with a shrug, “but things have changed. Today the money men in New York are laying bets that Wilson and Lloyd George will find a way to pull Lenin into a negotiated peace. So I expect Paris is where the game will play out. Would you disagree?”

“Of course I would. How can such a thing happen if no Russians are allowed to even set foot in Versailles?” Ned challenged.

“That may soon change,” McCloud offered, lifting an unruly eyebrow. “In any case, there will be plenty of high intrigue at the peace conference, and that is precisely what sells newspapers, my boy.”

“Those money men you refer to wouldn’t happen to include my cousin Pierre du Pont and our mutual friend, Ed Buckner, would they?”

McCloud let out a raucous laugh that Ned took to be insincere.

“They’re all birds of a feather,” the journalist replied before picking up his bread and slathering it with lard.

“And Buckner is willing to pony up the cost of your covering the Russian war from the fleshpots of Paris?”

“I won’t dignify that with an answer,” McCloud replied with another laugh, though less convincing than the last. “The matter is this: I hanker for a change. If Paris is a bust, I’ll make my way back to Russia, maybe to General Denikin’s headquarters at Novo-Rossiysk, for a fresh point of view.”

“I doubt you’ll find much different there,” Ned remarked, “except that Denikin’s officers will be diverting British arms instead of American ones.”

“As I said, I need a change, and that’s the end of it,” McCloud answered impatiently, tipping back in his chair and casting a careless glance around the room. “My writing has gone stale. The stories I write now all sound the same and are too depressing for words. Even a satire upon the situation here is impossible, because Bolshevism has become a lampoon of socialism, Kolchak a lampoon of a dictator, and the Russian conflict an operetta of a war.”

McCloud’s airy dismissal of Russia’s suffering rubbed Ned the wrong way. At bottom, McCloud seemed the kind of journalist who would stoop to anything for a juicy story. And then it dawned on Ned that, just moments ago, McCloud had tried to pump him for details about American arms transfers to the Siberian Army.

“Mark, a while ago you asked me about arms diversions. Was that for one of your news stories? Or did Buckner put you up to it?”

“Nice try,” McCloud answered. “But the question was entirely mine.”

“In either case, I want to make something very clear,” Ned continued, drilling his forefinger on the table for emphasis. “I serve the U.S. Government. Our policy is to put Russia together again, not to play favorites with arms merchants. If I were to show favor to the DuPont Company over its competitors, I would badly compromise my position here. Do you understand me?”

Though Ned had meant to chastise McCloud, the journalist showed no sign of remorse.

“Actually, I didn’t have DuPont in mind when I asked,” the older man replied blandly, pausing to wave his empty vodka glass at a nearby waiter. “Though you may not be aware, Mr. Buckner owns quite a few shares in Remington Arms, which is overextended at the moment, selling rifles and cartridges to the Whites on credit. Since you were the one to raise his name, I thought you might want to know that. Now, then, how about another round of vodka, eh?”

Though Ned had never liked the idea of Corinne’s father watching him from afar, whether for his daughter’s benefit or that of the DuPont Company, he enjoyed even less being pumped for information to prop up Buckner’s personal fortunes. But, while cutting off information to McCloud might help, alienating the journalist’s patron might raise other problems for Ned at home. So when McCloud refilled their glasses from a fresh carafe of vodka and served up a farewell toast, Ned breathed a sigh of relief.

“To Versailles!” McCloud announced with a grin from behind his bushy whiskers. “And may the stories in Paris flow like champagne!”

Chapter 6: Paris of Siberia

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.

Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”

—William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

, Act 4, Scene 3