Chapter Three
Major Brinkmann, Left, and Major General Hoffmann, Right
En Route to Fort IX, Ingolstadt, Bavaria
Max had tried, he really had, to get word to Ludendorff before the latter walked into an ambush at the Privy Council meeting that had shortly followed his own lunch with the kaiser. He’d failed, and now both Ludendorff and Hindenburg were threatening to resign if the kaiser didn’t knuckle under and back off of his doubts on the Polish Question. Worse, they were demanding that Wilhelm relieve Max as Chief of Staff at Ober Ost, which would be potentially devastating to German fortunes, in the east.
Great men can also be very small sometimes, Hoffmann thought, as he headed south to Ingolstadt. On the other hand, clever ones, like myself, can be very naïve.
I wonder why I haven’t been stopped from beginning with my little scheme. I suppose . . . no, I am almost certain . . . the kaiser is simply keeping quiet so as not to provoke another row in Berlin. That said, it’s at least possible he’s trying to maintain a small measure of self-respect over the true ruler of Germany having become the quartermaster general, whom the kaiser dare not overrule.
Oh, well, on the plus side he’s at least stood up for me; here I remain at Ober Ost. I am not an especially humble man, and I know I am not, but it’s not arrogance to know that here I am irreplaceable.
Max walked through the northern gate of the fort, over which proclaimed the year, “1870.”
Odd timing, Hoffmann thought; they built a huge and hugely expensive set of forts precisely when Germany unified to the point where invading it had become very difficult. Oh, well; Bavarians.
No guard searched him, of course.
The commandant of the fort, Hoffmann decided, was not so much incompetent as excitable and lacking in self-discipline. He was also rather fawning, which made him both distasteful and cooperative, extremely so in both cases.
“We don’t have as many Russians as we used to, Herr General,” the commandant explained. “We used to be mostly Russian, but they’ve been getting moved out for a while now.”
“Moved to where?” Shit.
“Different camps, sir,” the commandant answered. “No particular pattern, but most went to Zittau. Where they may have been sent from there, I have no clue of.”
“Well, what do you have here?” Hoffmann demanded.
“Two partial cells of Russians, mixed in with British and French, only,” the commandant replied, “six men, of whom one is on a charge, and in solitary confinement for two months, for attempted escape.”
“Indeed? How far did he get?”
“Farther than most,” the commandant admitted, then beamed, “but we still caught him within ten kilometers of the fort. He—Captain Kostyshakov—is the senior Russian prisoner at the moment.”
Kostyshakov attempted to rise to attention when Hoffmann and the commandant entered the cell where he was recovering from the bayonet wound to his posterior. It should have been healed, but infection had set in, an infection his body was only slowly coming to grips with, with the aid of the German medical staff. He couldn’t quite make it though he didn’t give up on the attempt.
Hoffmann noticed a particular postcard on a small table facing the bed. Interesting, he thought, the subjects of that photo. Under the postcard was a series of journals, most of which appeared to be German military. Also interesting, and commendably optimistic, that’s he’s keeping up with modern doctrine.
“You can leave now,” Hoffmann told the commandant. “My business with the Russian doesn’t concern you.”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. If you need anything . . .”
“I’m sure we shall be fine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and give me the Captain’s file before you leave.”
Once the door to the cell had shut, Hoffmann made a patting motion, urging Kostyshakov to lie back down on his bed and relax. This was something less than ideal, as his new wound insisted he lie on his stomach. Stubborn to a fault, as his file said he was, Kostyshakov lay on his back, infection, stitches, pus, and blood be damned.
Hoffmann took a seat that groaned under his weight. Satisfied it would hold him, at least for a while, he opened up the file. He began to read it through, quickly but carefully. Occasionally, the German would tsk or hmmm or chuckle. Once he muttered, “Clever.” At several points, he read aloud, for effect.
“. . . mmm . . . A less than model prisoner . . . numerous escape attempts. Tsk . . . scorning our lavish welcome. Captured, July fifteenth, 1916, near the village of Trysten . . . Battle of the Stokhid . . . acting commander of a Guards battalion as a senior captain . . . hmmm. . . . Guards captain and lieutenant colonel are the same . . . both K7, if I recall correctly . . . before that . . . company command, Second Company, Kexholm Guards regiment . . . machine gun detachment commander before that . . . wounded at Tannenburg . . . joined Guards 1910 . . . 1906 graduate of Pavlov Military Academy . . . First Cadet Corps before that . . . Order of Saint Anne, 4th Class . . . Stalislaw, Third Class . . . Saint Vladimir . . . Saint George . . .”
Two or three times—Kostyshakov lost count—the German stopped reading and looked at the curved ceiling contemplatively. Finally, reaching the end of the file, he closed it and turned his attention back to the Russian.
That study went on a long, intense, and uncomfortable time, before Kostyshakov lost his patience and asked, “Is there something I can do for you, General? And how do you—how does that file—know these things?”
Good, thought Hoffmann, he is patient but not too patient. Also not dull-witted.
“Ah, my apologies, Captain,” said the German in flawless Russian. “I’m Major General Max Hoffmann. You have, perhaps, heard of me.”
“Chief of Staff, Ober Ost?” Kostyshakov asked, a little incredulously. He knew the German staff system reasonably well.
“That would be me, yes. As to your file; I suspect it was captured in the same battle you were in, or shortly thereafter, and made part of your file for our purposes. It’s in Russian, which I doubt anyone—well, anyone German—before me has thought to read. If they had, you would have been in this place a lot sooner, long before so many escape attempts.”
“Well now I really am intrigued,” Kostyshakov said. “This is a signal honor, sir. But, more to the point, to what do I owe this signal honor?”
Again, Hoffmann reverted to quiet study, not answering the question.
For his part, sensing a sort of mental game in progress, Daniil simply folded his arms and proceeded to stare back.
And very quick on the uptake, too. I think I can make use of this young man.
“Tell me, Captain,” Hoffmann said, “you have shown yourself resourceful at breaking out of places; six distinct escapes that got you outside the walls of whatever camp you were in, if I didn’t lose count.”
“Six? I think that’s probably right, sir.”
“So you can break out . . . how do you think you would be at breaking in?”
Kostyshakov unfolded his arms in a painful attempt to sit more upright. “Sir, I . . .”
“I have a proposition for you, young man. But first, tell me what you know of circumstances in Russia.”
“Not that much, sir. I know the tsar abdicated, and that Kerensky has formed a government.”
Something about the tone in Daniil’s voice when he said, “Kerensky,” prompted Hoffmann to ask if he knew him.
“We’ve never met, sir, no, but I know of him. I’ve read some of his work, notably his exposure and treatment of the Lena Massacre was important. But . . . although Russia needs to modernize and even liberalize, I don’t think Kerensky is the man to do it.”
“Why not?”
“His heart’s in the right place, but he’s far too left wing, and even too innocent, for the job.”
“I see,” said Hoffmann. “Well, you will be pleased to note that Kerensky is no longer in charge of the Provisional Government. His place has been taken by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin . . .”
“The Bolshevik?” Daniil asked, distress in his voice. “The Bolsheviks are in charge of Russia?” He let his compact torso fall back upon his medical cot, then covered his face in the crook of one arm. “I should have known, except that here part of my sentence was to be deprived of Red Cross parcels and newspapers.”
“It gets worse,” Hoffmann said.
“How can it be worse? How can it possibly be worse than that godless Bolshevik, Lenin, ruling Russia?”
“Russia’s dropped out of the war.”
“Still not as bad as Tsar Lenin,” Daniil said. “For he’ll be the tsar, even if he scorns the title.”
Hoffmann continued, trying to shake the Russian, “The imperial army has mostly disintegrated.”
“Of course, it did,” Kostyshakov agreed. “How could it not with the Bolsheviks at the helm?”
“Germany is stripping away, which is to say guaranteeing the independence of, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. That’s about one third of the Empire’s population, just under ninety percent of its coal, perhaps half of Russia’s industrial base, and about a quarter of the rail system.
“It didn’t have to be,” Hoffmann continued, not necessarily with perfect honesty. “With the tsar or even with Kerensky we could have made a far more generous peace. But with the Bolsheviks in charge? Germany has to secure itself against them.”
“No doubt,” Daniil replied. And I even do understand it, at least to some degree.
“So how do you feel about your royal family,” Hoffmann asked, “or, rather, your former royal family?”
“While I breathe,” Daniil replied, “and they do, they remain my royal family and . . .”
“Yes?” Max prodded.
“Nothing, sir. Nothing important.”
Hoffmann stood, again causing the chair to groan in relief, and took the two steps to the night table next to Kostyshakov’s bed. He picked up the postcard, saying, “Beautiful girls. German girls, really, for the most part, which is a good deal of why I’m here to see you. I’ve never met either one, though I saw them from a distance once when they were little above babies.”
Kostyshakov’s eyes took on a sort of dreamy look, as if they were piercing the veil of time to look back. “I was wounded again,” he said, distantly, “in nineteen fifteen. It was a fairly heavy dose of shrapnel. It looked touch and go for a while. I was evacuated to a hospital at Tsarskoe Selo to recover. My nurse was . . . the one on the right, Tatiana Romanova. Wonderful, wonderful girl. The other, Olga, is sweet but not strong. Tatiana is strong.
“Beyond my station, of course; even leaving aside that I am a probably a little too old for her; my family wasn’t ennobled until my grandfather was awarded the Order of Saint George, Fourth Class, for fighting on the frontier.”
“Yes, and I’m not even a ‘von,’ ” Max said. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, you feel you do have obligations both to the tsar and the royal family, professionally and morally, and to this girl, personally?”
“Yes. And as for the girl, still, a man can dream.”
“That may prove unfortunate and your dream a nightmare,” Hoffmann said. “The Bolsheviks cannot possibly let the tsar and his family live. At some point in time, the decision will be made—it is part of the inescapable logic of revolution—that they must die before they can become so much as figureheads for the enemies of the revolution.”
“I don’t believe it,” Kostyshakov replied. “Even the Bolsheviks—”
“Are you at all familiar with the French Revolution?” Hoffmann interrupted. “Does the name Marie Antoinette not ring a bell? The Princess de Lamballe? How many hundreds, how many thousands, of others?
“Don’t delude yourself, Captain Kostyshakov; the tsar and his family are as good as dead.”
Daniil grew very silent then, staying that way for what seemed a long time. When he finally spoke, it was to say, “You didn’t come here to tell me all this just to torture me, General Hoffmann. What is it that you want?”
“I mentioned—well, suggested, at least—a proposition, I think,” Hoffmann said. “Put simply, it is this: I want you to select a few dozen trustworthy officers and noncoms, then that . . . committee to select several hundred others, of all ranks. And then the lot of you are going to go and save your royal family.”
Kostyshakov looked stunned. He barely managed to croak out, “We’re going to—”
“It has to be you, you see,” Max interrupted, “you Russians that do it. Any German attempt to save them, barring some support not arising to direct combat, would simply contaminate them and take away what little legitimacy remains to the Romanovs.”
“But how do we . . . ?”
“I’m not sure. I have a rudimentary sketch of a plan, no more than that. The short version is that you will select your force. Meanwhile, a small team of yours, quartermaster types, will be given free reign over captured stocks from your own army and the western allies, and perhaps some of Germany’s arms, if they’re ubiquitous enough or unknown enough. Another small team— with carrier pigeons, I think, if we can find some champions with the necessary range—will set out early, perhaps on horseback, to determine exactly where the tsar’s family is being held. This is a one-time possibility; we cannot launch our effort without that knowledge.
“While the arms are being collected, and the patrol is out hunting, you will organize and train your force.”
“How . . . mmm . . . how big a force are we talking about?” Daniil asked.
Hoffmann didn’t need to consult any notes. “Call it ‘six hundred’ of which you can take perhaps five hundred with you, if my understanding of some things is accurate. Nice round numbers, no? They’re not absolutely fixed, either.”
“There’s no way for me to sneak ‘several hundred’ men through the lines, through a country that is rapidly disintegrating, into close proximity to the tsar, without being seen and thus triggering the murders you suggest are inevitable anyway. It just cannot be done.”
“Oh, certainly not,” Hoffmann agreed. There was a heavy admixture of good-natured laughter in his next words. “That’s why you’re not going to march across country, except for that forward patrol. Oh, no, my fine Russian Guards Captain; you and your men are going to go to your target in the highest style you can imagine.
“We’ll discuss that, however, later. First we have to get you out of here.”
Since Kostyshakov continued to sit, unmoving, Hoffmann asked, querulously, “What? You have another objection?”
“Yes, General; how in the name of God do you propose that one of my men is going to be allowed to ransack your dumps of captured arms, ammunition, and other supplies and equipment?”
“Don’t be a fool, Kostyshakov, or, at least, give me credit for not being one. I’m going to assign to you my own Major Brinkmann, a genuinely brilliant general staff officer, and he’ll have a small staff to assist, as well as a company of our own plus one of locals to guard your camp. The staff will include a paymaster to continue payment of camp currency. Best I can do, there. Well . . . and we can arrange better food, at least as good as our own frontline fighters get, and a commissary with a few luxuries.”
“There is still one objection, General Hoffmann, a final one, security. One word of this leaking out and . . .”
“Ah, that quintessential Russian paranoia. No, not just one word, Kostyshakov. It would take, it almost always takes, a pattern of facts that fit together to lead to a conclusion. We cannot hide your existence completely, so we’ll put out two mutually contradictory stories. One is that, since Russia is out of the war, we’re recruiting volunteers—mercenaries, in effect— for the western front. The other will be that we need a police force for the portion of Poland we will surely, and against my very strong advice, steal.
“We’re also going to vociferously deny any such scheme as Polish police and western front trench fodder, which should go a long way toward confirming in people’s minds that both are absolutely true. Add to that that you’re going someplace fairly desolate and rather miserable for your training, the kind of place no one is likely to stumble upon inadvertently. And, except for things like rifle ranges and rehearsal areas—and those can be explained away, if necessary, as being for the guards—there won’t be anything to raise suspicion.”
Hoffmann took off his Pince-Nez glasses, to clean. “There is one matter; I’ll need your parole, yours, and the paroles of those officers and men whom you recruit, that for as long as we’re engaged in this enterprise you will not try to escape and will prevent any one of the men from escaping.”
“Done,” Kostyshakov said, without a moment’s hesitation. There was no hesitation in the first place, because there had already been an agreement between Germany and Imperial Russia to allow officers to give their parole, their word, which agreement and word allowed them to leave the confines of their prison camps and stroll around a bit. There was no hesitation in the second place, because, “I will do anything, put up with anything, endure anything, to be the hand that frees my tsar and his family from the Reds.”
“Good,” Hoffmann nodded. “Now come on; I need to browbeat the commandant to get you out of here and put you together with Brinkmann to get this circus on the road.
“By the way, how’s your German?”
Now it was Kostyshakov’s turn to laugh. He answered in perfect Bavarian-accented German, “I learned it in high school. I have since had a year and a half to perfect it, here, and good reason to do so.”
“Excellent,” said Hoffmann. “And we’ll have to get you outfitted with a proper—Russian—uniform. Speaking of which, where are your medals?”
“I left them with one of the French officers, sir, a Captain de Gaulle. He was captured at Verdun. Were it possible—yes, I know it’s not—I’d put him in the battalion and take him along.”
“Well—can you walk? With difficulty? Good. Let’s go get your medals and anything else you’ve left behind.”
Hoffmann and Kostyshakov found the tall, lanky Frenchman sitting at a table, reading a hand-written manuscript and making notes from it. He looked up at the disturbance and, in one great motion stood, picked up Daniil, and twirled him about the cell like a child.
“Put me down, Charles, you bloody great frog!”
“Daniil, I’d heard—we’d all heard—that you had been wounded and captured. It’s good to see you, my old friend, back on your feet.”
“I can’t stay, Charles; I have to go with this gentleman.”
De Gaulle studied the German, briefly, then pronounced, “General Hoffmann; sir, I am honored.”
“Captain de Gaulle, is it?”
The French officer preened that so important a German knew his name. Kostyshakov thought, Now that was a generous and decent thing to do, making an obscure foreign captain feel important.
“Yes, sir.”
“What are you reading, de Gaulle?” asked Max, pointing at the neat pile of paper on the table.
“Not so much reading, sir, as re-reading. They’re the notes for one of the Russians who used to be here, one Mikhail Tukhachevsky. I promised to safeguard it and return it to him after the war.”
“Why didn’t he . . .” Hoffmann began to ask, before dawning realization hit. “He escaped, didn’t he?”
“Yes, sir,” De Gaulle replied. “I still don’t know how he managed it.”
“Ah, Tukhachevsky,” Daniil mused; “he’s an interesting mix of brilliance and madness, fair mindedness and fanaticism, all tied up in a neat little bundle wrapped with infinite personal ambition. A hell of an officer, in many ways. I’m going home, soon, Charles; I can see it to him if you wish and sooner than you are likely to.”
“Would you? I’d feel terrible to die in this miserable place”—de Gaulle let his eyes roam over the damp walls for a bit—“with my promise unfulfilled.”
“You’ll be wanting your medals, too, I suppose, and your other personal things?”
“Please.”
“I’ll get them, along with a satchel for Tukhachevsky’s manuscript.”
Asked Hoffmann, “So what, my good Captains, is Tukhachevsky’s vision?”
“He sees a maelstrom,” said de Gaulle, “with columns of armored cavalry ignoring their flanks, their own rear, everything, to get at and destroy the enemy’s rear . . . or at least to force them to keep displacing.”
“Do you agree?”
“Not really,” Kostyshakov answered. “He’s never read your Clausewitz, so never grasped the idea of the culminating point. Unlike the cavalry of Tukhachevky’s vision, cavalry reliant on its sabers and able to feed its horses off the land, modern mechanized cavalry, as Tukhachevsky sees it, needs a mass of everything from ammunition to spare parts to fuel to replacement personnel if they’re to keep going. That’s the part he refuses to see. You can take some risks with your flanks, yes, but you ignore your enemy, and his independent will, at your peril.”
“So where do you see the future heading?”
“From what I’ve read in your journals, Herr General, I see the future being the infantry squad or platoon, built around the light machine gun, supported by masses of artillery with which it maintains continuous contact, via radio, with tanks leading, and led by a man full of willpower and determination.”
“Hmmm . . . interesting,” said Hoffmann.
It’s almost worth it, thought Daniil, as he passed out of the camp under the glaring eyes of Abel and Blue Boy, to have taken a stab to the buttocks to see the faces of those two as I leave, accompanied by one of their generals, with my medals on my chest. Almost worth it . . .
Zittau POW Camp, Zittau, Germany
The walls of the office were painted revolutionary red. From them hung banners proclaiming, “Death to the Tsar,” “Long live the rule of the Soviets,” “Lenin, Lead us into the Future,” and “Down with the Opiate of the Masses.”
Kostyshakov, now sans medals, likewise epaulettes, who had come up with the slogans and arranged for the room to be painted red, sat at a long table, flanked by six other pro-Tsarist officers and a like number of noncommissioned officers he’d hand selected and personally interviewed the day before. There were a few others, but they were off with Brinkmann and his assistants rounding up materiel.
The day promised to be a long and exhausting one. The Soviet, for thus they chose to call themselves for the nonce, had to interview, after all, some sixty-seven noncommissioned and enlisted candidates, today, and more in a different camp, on the morrow. These had been chosen by the commandant of the camp, working with one of Brinkmann’s underlings.
“Bring in the first one,” Kostyshakov ordered. Immediately the German Unteroffizier at the door called out, “Dragomirov; report to the Committee.”
From left to right, as they faced, the officers of the board consisted of Lieutenant Boris Baluyev, sporting a remarkably fierce moustache, Lieutenant Georgy Lesh, Captain Mikhail Basanets, Captain Daniil Kostyshakov, Captain Ivan Dratvin, Captain Pyotr Cherimisov, and Lieutenant Vilho Collan, a monarchist Finn, and thoroughly pale and blond as Finns are wont to be. Each man wore a clean Russian uniform with no rank insignia and no indicator of regiment, though all but the Finnish officer had come from the Guards. Only one had been known to Kostyshakov from his own regiment, Basanets. But Basanets had known Collan and Dratvin, Collan had known and vouched for Cherimisov, while Dratvin stood for Baluyev and Lesh. After personal interviews with Daniil, they’d been accepted, “with reservations.”
To the right of the Finn were one sergeant and two Zauryad-Praporshchiki, those being Sergeants Major Nenonen, another Finn, much taller than Collan but otherwise much alike, and Sergeant Major Pavel Blagov, who was missing a piece of his right ear, plus Podpraporshchik Mayevsky, wearing a piratical eyepatch. To the left of Lieutenant Baluyev sat Podpraporshchik Gorbachyov, as well as Sergeants Berens and Kaledin. The latter was a Don Cossack, dark of hair and eye, answering to “Filip,” and the only Cossack present on the board.
None of them wore any rank. They all looked terribly serious, too, enough so to make Dragomirov pause and stutter in his reporting. And then there were the slogans on the banners hung on the walls. Dragomirov almost missed that there was a chair awaiting him.
Well, what the fuck do I care about the tsar, after all? Dragomirov asked himself. If it gets me out of here, I’ll kiss Lenin’s figurative ass.
The interviewee saluted more or less properly, which the others ignored, announcing, “Mladshy unter-ofitser Dragomirov, reporting as ordered.” Mladshy unter-ofitser was a rank somewhere in the range of corporal or junior sergeant.
Kostyshakov said, “Saluting is a relic of the oppressive past, Comrade. We don’t indulge in it.” He then ordered Dragomirov to take the chair to his own right.
“Tell us, Comrade,” Daniil began, “How do you feel about the glorious workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ revolution now underway in the Motherland?”
“I’m all for it, Comrade,” Dragomirov answered. “Down with the blood-sucking tsar and all his evil brood.”
Kostyshakov pursed his lips and gave a serious and approving nod. Then he turned his head to his left, asking, “Comrade Basanets?”
Captain Mikhail Mikhailovich Basanets, easily the tallest man on the board, with dirty-blond hair and bright blue eyes, said, “Who was the greatest enemy of the people in your village, Comrade?”
That was a toughie for Dragomirov, since it was his family that owned most of the land and most exploited the peasants. But, needs must and all.
“My father, the swine. He squeezes the peasants like they were sponges!”
Basanets twisted his head to the left even as he nodded in approval. “Very good, Comrade. I have no other questions, Commissar Kostyshakov.”
Daniil looked to his right, inviting Captain Ivan Mikhailovich Dratvin to speak.
“Tell me, Comrade,” asked Dratvin, short, and dark, and built like a fireplug, “who here in the camp is most likely to support the revolution, and who remains a puppet of the tsar? Think hard, now, for this is important.”
After Dragomirov had given a dozen names of people he considered reliable to the revolution, and a couple who he claimed were “Tsarist hyenas,” Kostyshakov let two more of the board question him, which questioning went to his military record. Then he said, “I think we’ve all heard enough,” and asked for a consensus. Everyone on the board gave a literal thumbs up.
“Very good, Comrade Dragomirov,” Kostyshakov said. “It will be some time before all is in readiness—peace is being negotiated between the Germans and ourselves, even as we speak—so keep your health, don’t try to escape and risk being killed, and wait for the call to come to the defense of the revolution. Why, in a gesture of internationalist good spirits, the Germans are even segregating the Tsarists, the better to keep them from hindering the revolution.”
Pointing to the door on the left, Kostyshakov said, “Please go through that door and wait until our business is finished here. Don’t wander; there is a German guard and, to me, he looked a little trigger happy.”
After Dragomirov had left, Kostyshakov called for the next interviewee. The German at the door bellowed out, “Mokrenko? Rostislav Alexandrovich Mokrenko, report! Podkhorunzhy Rostislav Alexandrovich Mokrenko, report!”
Mokrenko entered, then stopped short as he took in the red walls and redder slogans. Drawing himself to his full height of five feet, eleven inches, Mokrenko cast a disgusted eye in the direction of Kaledin and spat, then demanded, “What is this shit?” he asked. “I’ll have nothing to do with it!”
Kostyshakov pointed to the other door and said, “Get out, then, Tsarist swine, and wait.”
“He was one of the ones mentioned by Dragomirov as being an incorrigible Tsarist,” said Sergeant Berens, after the door had slammed behind Mokrenko. Berens was the one who had been detailed to act as secretary.
“I wish they would all be as easy as these two but, of course, they won’t.”
“I know Mokrenko,” said Kaledin, wearing the good-natured grin that rarely left his face. “Good man. I can hardly wait until we tell him the truth.”
“He looks rather thin,” said Basanets, himself half emaciated.
“We’ll put some meat on their bones with a better diet and some exercise,” Kostyshakov answered.
Corporal Vasenkov, young, slender, and prematurely balding, was by no means an idiot. He knew one of the officers of the supposed Soviet, Captain Cherimisov, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no possible universe in which the captain could ever be anything but a fanatical Tsarist.
As he walked to report to the “Soviet,” Vasenkov also thought, And Cherimisov is also not sneaky enough to infiltrate anything like this supposed “soviet.” That means this is all bullshit; they’re looking only to separate out revolutionaries from reactionaries. So where would a good communist like myself belong? In with the reactionaries, to sabotage them. Therefore:
“Corporal Vasenkov reports, Sir. But save your breath; I want nothing to do with you stinking communist scum.”
It was a weary group of Russians, Cossacks, and Finns who finally repaired themselves to the quarters the Germans had set aside for them. Of the sixty-seven interviews they’d conducted they’d had to reject forty-six. The twenty-one they’d accepted—Mokrenko plus all those sent after him through the door on the right—had identified between them another forty-one reliable enlisted men, and all of those were, even now, on their way to a tented holding camp before being moved, en masse, to their penultimate destination, a camp—code named “Budapest”—being put together in the hills about seven miles west-northwest of Jambol, Bulgaria.
And, thought Kostyshakov, with something analogous to weary despair, we’ve still got to hit the camps at Doeberitz, Skalmierschustz, Stalkovo, Hammerstein, Muenster, Tuchel, Koenigstein, and Czersk. There’s no way to do this with one board. I’m going to have to split the board into three and trust Basanets, Cherimisov, and Dratvin. They can hit three each over the next four or five days. But I’ve got to get to Camp Budapest and come up with a table of organization and a doctrine. I can only hope that my quartermaster and his German escort are taking everything that isn’t nailed down.
Railroad, between Ingolstadt and Munich
In a happier time, in a higher-class carriage, it would have been called “The Orient Express.” As it was, it was just another second-class carriage on overworked rail lines. Brinkmann, having left Kostyshakov’s rat-faced quartermaster, Romeyko, in the care of an experienced Feldwebel of supply, along with half a dozen armed guards and a corporal to oversee them, was travelling with Kostyshakov to Camp Budapest. It was about a sixty-hour journey, normally, but closer to seventy-two or even ninety-six, now, what with the exigencies of war. The steady clacking of the wheels might have put either man to sleep, but they had both resisted that siren’s call, so far.
Kostyshakov noticed that Brinkmann had a cane trapped between one leg and the wall of the carriage they rode in. He considered asking about it, but some people were sensitive to reminders that they’d lost something with their wounds, so Daniil decided to let it be.
While fighting off that call to sleep, Daniil still closed his eyes, tightly, picturing a group of soldiers bursting in with single shot, bolt action rifles, bayonets fixed, having their one shot at something—Ah, but it’s probably too dark even to tell—and then going forward with cold steel, even while the enemy shot down their prisoners whom they knew the positions of better than did the rescuers.
All right, we need a way to both temporarily blind the guards, while not blinding ourselves, then a way to light up the scene for ourselves, after they’re blinded.
“It’s never been done before, you know,” Brinkmann said to Kostyshakov. “Everyone by now knows how to go into a tight space and kill everything that moves, but I can’t recall any serious instance where anyone went into a tight space and tried to avoid killing the bulk of the people that were in there, unarmed, while killing a few of those who were armed.”
“I know,” Daniil agreed, looking up from a notepad on which he’d been scribbling intermittently but furiously. “And I’m trying to puzzle through it from the perspective of organization, doctrine, training to execute the doctrine, weapons, communications . . .
“And I don’t really know what I’m doing, just as you suggest.
“I don’t even know how I’m getting there.”
“All will be made clear soon,” Brinkmann assured him. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got? I may be of use.”
Kostyshakov agreed, “Indeed, why not?”
With a sigh, he began to lay out what he’d figured out of the problem, so far. “In the first place, while they could be on a boat, or a train, or a tent, or in a series of caves, the odds are overwhelming that, when we find them, they will be in a guarded building.”
The German nodded sagely. “Correct, so far, I think. A guarded building—or maybe a compound—would be the way I would bet it.”
Daniil continued, “Okay . . . good . . . the building, it will be either lit or it will be dark. If at all possible, we’d probably prefer it to be dark, or, at least, we would if we could see and the guards could not.
“I think I have a way to do that. We can use photographer’s flash powder and replace most of the explosive in hand grenades with it. Might even want to use our army’s tear gas grenades, as being better for dispensing powder. We’ll know the grenades are going to go off—at least after it’s announced, we will—and can shield our eyes. That however . . .”
“Still leaves the problem,” Brinkmann said, “of how you see to shoot after the flash is gone. Even if you’ve flash-blinded their eyes, you are just as blind as they are. I may have a way.”
“Really?”
“Yes. We make a kind of electric torch—it’s a flattened cylinder with a dynamo in it—that you wear on your chest. It has a ring on a chain that you pull and get, oh, maybe five seconds of fair directional light. Five seconds in combat is a long time.”
“Can we . . . ?”
“I’ll wire my Feldwebel escorting your Captain Romeyko to lay in a supply. But how many do you need?”
Kostyshakov considered a number, cut that in half, and then cut it in half again and yet again. “Sixty? Eighty? I wouldn’t refuse two or three times that number.”
“Sixty should be possible,” Brinkmann agreed. “Maybe more but with the war on . . .”
“And the grenades and flash powder?”
Brinkmann waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, those are easy.”
“Wonderful. But then we have the problem of getting through doors. Some, of course, can be broken down by main effort, but some are going to be stout enough that a steel lock is weaker.”
“I cannot help you there,” the German replied. “I have no idea how to do it myself. Explosives?”
Daniil frowned, then said, “Would be fine except for the possibility of the odd tsar, grand duchess or crown prince on the other side.” He didn’t mention the tsarina because in both his opinion and the opinion of most Russians, putting her on the other side of an explosion could only be to the good. Okay, that was both unkind and unfair. Based on what I saw of her at the hospital, she’s mostly just out of place and shy.
“I can see that,” agreed Brinkmann. “And even if you had trained lockpicks, it would be very slow.”
“Too slow. And then we have the problem,” Kostyshakov continued, “of needing more and handier firepower in very close quarters.”
“Shotguns to simply blow locks apart and . . . well, I make no promise that I can get any, let alone many, but we have a new machine gun . . . a machine pistol, really . . . that’s very nice. It’s not light, mind you, and the range is quite limited, but it is handy and is excellent for taking someone down in a hurry at close range.”
“Limited range, for our purposes, would be fine,” Kostyshakov said.
“I’ll tell my man escorting Captain Romeyko about those then, too; that, and to order some.”
“There’s one other thing,” Kostyshakov asked, “Do we know for a certainty where the royal family is being held?”
“They were moved,” Brinkmann said, “from Tsarskoe Selo to possibly Tobolsk, arriving sometime in August of last year. The last we’ve heard, they’re still there. But we have also heard of other Romanovs being held in Yekaterinburg. It is possible that they’ve been moved. It is possible they will be moved.
“Have you thought about organization?” Brinkmann asked.
“Yes,” Kostyshakov nodded, “at least tentatively. Wherever they are, there’s going to have to be a super elite force to go in and rescue them. I am thinking somewhere between seventy and ninety men. Wherever that is, the odds are good there will be a substantial guard force or relief force nearby. For that I am thinking two companies, but heavily reinforced with all the firepower we can come up with. Any force needs an organization for support, both combat and more mundane matters like medical, mess, and transport.”
“Can you do all that with the limits General Hoffmann set you?”
“I think so. I hope so, anyway.”
Citadel, Warsaw, Poland
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Warsaw’s central location not only meant it was a key rail center, it also meant it was the location for one of the German Army’s salvage companies1, of which there were thirty-nine, that took enemy equipment, secured it, repaired it, organized it, and re-issued it when called to do so.
Those supplies and equipment could be anything from medical supplies to mess kits, artillery to rifles and machine guns, uniforms to Gulaschkanonen, to whatever the mind can imagine an army using. Some of it could even be one’s own equipment, captured by an enemy and then recaptured by one’s own forces. The Germans, being both tidy by nature and also having to fight most of the civilized world on a relative shoestring, were more thorough about combing a battlefield for Beute, loot, than most.
This particular dump was staggeringly large.
“Rifles, seven hundred,” said Captain Romeyko, Kostyshakov’s ugly quartermaster. He was accompanied by a tall German noncom, Feldwebel Weber, dark blond, mustached, and slightly stooped.
“What kind?” asked the supply clerk through Weber. “We’ve got thousands of standard rifles, plus some of our own sniper rifles, plus a modest number of shorter carbines in your caliber.”
“Four sniper,” Romeyko replied. “Are those Model 1907s over there? Yes? I’ll take twenty. Can we have those over and above the seven hundred? I’d hate to run short, you know?”
“No problem,” Weber said.
“Water-cooled machine guns, six. Uniforms, large, three hundred and eighty. Also four hundred and eighty, each, uniforms medium and small. Rank insignia; I’ll write down a list. One thousand, four hundred blankets. Packs and load carrying equipment, ammo pouches and canteens, seven hundred sets. Hats, oh, seventy-five each of every size, up to nine hundred. Gloves, same. Boots . . . boots are harder to guess at . . . let’s say, one hundred and eighty pair each, from sizes thirty-eight through forty-two. Woolen footwraps . . . one thousand, four hundred pair.”
The Feldwebel translated, got an answer from the clerk behind the counter, laughed, and conveyed the answer to Romeyko.
“ ‘Rifles are easy,’ he says, though he may have to send to the depot at Kuestrin for that many. Machine guns have been mostly taken already; he has four of your own Model 1910. Ammunition is plentiful, too. The uniforms and hats are easy. Insignia and field gear are easy. He says you can have a hundred times that many if you want them. But German soldiers like your boots for the winter, and your gloves as well. Same for your blankets. Also, we use the same general kind of footwraps, when we can’t get socks.”
“But Feldwebel Weber . . .”
“Don’t worry, sir,” said Weber. “We can get all those from German stocks. May not be what you want. May not be the highest quality, not what you might have expected of us three or four years ago, but they’ll do.”
The clerk at the counter said something else which definitely piqued Weber’s attention. The Feldwebel said something to the clerk, which sent the latter scampering off into one of the back bins.
He came back bearing something that nearly made Romeyko’s beady eyes water.
“A Lewis gun? Here? My God . . .”
“He tells me,” said Weber, “that he’s got twenty-seven of them. He thinks they all work. But they’re in your caliber and not worth converting to ours, while supplying your ammunition to them would be such a confusing pain that nobody wants them. With as many magazines as . . . no, ‘four hundred and eighty-one magazines,’ he says.”
“If I can have them, I’ll take them all. And, shall we say, two million rounds of ammunition.”
“He says the ammo is no problem, either,” Weber said, “though he doesn’t have that much here. Three or four million rounds if you want it. But we might have a problem shipping it.”
“How about two thousand hand grenades? And, yes, four million rounds would be very nice.”
“He says he has that some of your kind of grenade, but if you want our kind . . .”
“Both? Both would be good. As many of both?”
“We can get ours, yes.”
“Cots? Mattresses?”
Weber asked. “No,” he translated, “but I am sure we can find some straw ticks, lumber, and nails.”
“Well . . . at least the tents should be set up by then,” said Romeyko. “Pistols?”
Weber checked. “Yes, he has a great many of your pistols. ‘All you could possibly want,’ he says. But he adds, ‘But why would you want them?’ ”
“Because it’s on my list,” Romeyko replied. “Strikes me as a pretty good reason.”
“No reason is good enough to saddle your men with Nagant 1895s,” Weber countered. “Let me check something.”
A fairly lengthy bout of German followed, which Romeyko could not follow. When it was done, the Feldwebel said to the Russian, “He’s got a fairly esoteric collection of pistols, ranging from the Nagant, to some almost fifty-year-old American Smith and Wesson single action revolvers, to some Lugers captured from us and then recaptured by us, to a couple of dozen Mauser C96s, unfortunately not in nine millimeter, to . . . well, the most interesting are the American ones, the newer kind. In eleven and a half millimeter? Real manstoppers.”
Romeyko interrupted, “How many of the Amerikanski ones does he have?”
“A hundred and forty-seven,” the German answered. “Ammunition can be gotten for them, too. They’re still here, he says, because, again, the ammunition is non-standard now.”
“How about a round hundred and twenty of those? With maybe five hundred rounds each? A thousand would be better.”
“He says he can do that . . . and that you might as well take all the ammunition he has, about eighty thousand rounds.”
“Great! Compasses?”
“Would those wrist-mounted jobbies work?”
“Adrianovs? Splendidly.”
“He says he has about fifty of those.”
* * *
1 We’re guessing here. There were, in fact, thirty-nine salvage companies that operated along the main lines of communication of the German Army, east and west. Where they were at any given time is a mystery. Warsaw seems a likely spot for some kind of huge dump of captured material, following the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive in 1915. Nor is it likely that the Polish Legion would have used any of the Russian uniforms; theirs seem to have been closely based on German, with the addition of red piping to the collars and pockets, for example.