2

The British were hastily boarding the SMS Hannover, a former German battleship that had been transformed into a troop transport. With a great clatter of boots and squeaking of wheels, they made their way up the gangplank, their sweaty faces coated with cement dust. A terrible wailing could be heard over the port as the crowd surged and cried out behind the barbed wire that fenced off the pier. Every now and then, the soldiers on the machine-gun towers fired volleys into the air to hold back the crowd, but even that was useless. The British soldiers had to use their rifle butts to knock down those who climbed the fence.

Eddie tried not to look at the Russians. It’s not our fault that we can’t save them, he thought. They’ll trample us to death if we let them through the fence.

The Whites felt that the British behavior toward the Russians showed an icy indifference. What Eddie was feeling now wasn’t indifference but unspeakable shock and shame.

We’re leaving you behind. We promised to help you, and now, we have to leave you to die.

Eddie thought time and time again of Klim Rogov and particularly of the day when they had left him behind in Rostov. But how the hell could he have done anything differently? Should Eddie have stayed with Klim out of solidarity, sick as he was, only to become a burden to him and die somewhere on the frozen steppe?

The Russians are to blame for all this, Eddie kept saying to himself. It made it a little easier to take.

He heard a locomotive whistle from behind the fence.

“Moss, to the gate!” cried Captain Pride.

A small train that had come to fetch the workers from the British mission and take them to the pier came forcing its way through the crowd. There were clouds of steam, a deafening squeal of metal, and dreadful shrieks. Eddie wondered if somebody had fallen under the locomotive.

The Scots Fusiliers closed in on the refugees to stop them forcing their way through the opened gates.

“Get back!” yelled Eddie, waving his gun. “Get back, or I’ll shoot!”

The locomotive came slowly in, pulling four cars behind it. Eddie was about to give the order to close the gate when he noticed a man on a horse making his way through the crowd. Judging by his collar insignia and crimson band on his cap, the man was a British officer with the Royal Army Medical Corps.

“What’s up?” Eddie shouted.

“I have a hospital here!” the officer cried in a muffled voice. It sounded as though he had caught a cold. “I need help bringing in my patients!”

“Where the hell have you been all this time?” Eddie shouted, aghast. “Why aren’t you on the ship yet?”

The officer only waved his hand.

The Fusiliers lined up to make way for eight carts full of wounded soldiers, pale-faced and freshly bandaged.

“Do you belong to our military mission?” Eddie asked them, but no one answered.

The officer dismounted and ordered the medics and nurses to load the wounded onto new stretchers that they had brought with them.

“Faster! Faster! Take them onto the ship!” he shouted in a strange accent.

Russian staff officers were getting out of the railroad cars. According to an agreement with the British command, they had been assigned places on the Hannover. A tall man with a shaven head dragged a young woman out by her arm. She tried to pull away from him, shouting something in Russian. The man slapped her across the face, and the woman cried out and pressed her hand to her cheek.

All of the anger that had been boiling up in Eddie came to a head. Running up to the scoundrel, he put a gun to his chin. “Don’t you dare!” he shouted.

“You not understand! This my wife,” the man protested in broken English.

Eddie grasped the man by the shoulder and pushed him toward the Fusiliers. “Take him out of here!”

Then he approached the weeping woman. “Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked.

She said nothing—it seemed that she didn’t speak English. Eddie could see that she was shaking all over.

“Go to the ship, ma’am. We’re leaving soon.”

Suddenly, the woman caught sight of the R.A.M.C. officer. “Dr. Sablin!” she cried.

The woman rushed to him and started to explain something. Looking at her in confusion, the officer nodded, and Eddie realized that not only the officer but also all of the wounded men with him were Russian. The doctor had changed into British uniform to give himself and his patients a chance to get on the ship.

Should I report them? Eddie thought for a second. His next thought was, Of course, not. Let the captain find out after we set sail.

He went up to the doctor. “Keep your people quiet,” he said in a whisper. “Try not to talk until we’ve boarded the ship. I’ll help you get settled.”

The words of a solemn song kept going around in Eddie’s head:

It’s the only, only way,

It’s the only game to play—

 3

The old countess told Klim that she wanted to go straight to the French quay. “Sorry, but I’m too old for all these adventures. I just want to get onto the ship.”

For an extra twenty francs, Shushunov had promised to take the old countess to the checkpoint.

“You should come with me,” Sofia Karlovna told Klim. “You have documents now, and Fomin will get Nina out.”

Klim looked away from the old countess. “The British will take her to Egypt or somewhere, and I’ll never find her again.”

“You won’t find her again anyway,” said the old countess with the sigh. “Still, I wish you luck.”

They shook hands, and Sofia Karlovna got out of the car. “If by some miracle,” she said, “you manage to get out of here, do write to me care of the Paris central post office. Mr. Shushunov, let’s go.”

Klim had to leave the car behind in the port. It was impossible to get through the endless columns of Don Cossacks. A forest of lances and a sea of horses’ heads stretched as far as the eye could see. The ground was littered with cloth, leather, canned food, and rifles.

Klim made his way, ducking under the bellies of the horses.

The cavalry officer ordered the Cossacks to dismount. “Leave your horses behind!”

The Cossacks unfastened their saddles and bridles. Many of them wept silently, tears coursing down their dusty faces. It was unthinkable to leave behind a horse that meant more than a friend. These horses had saved their riders in battle and shared everything that had come their way.

The Cossacks put their arms around their horses’ necks and stroked their cheeks. One man put a gun in his horse’s ear, but his friends wouldn’t let him pull the trigger.

“Do you want me to give up my girl to the Reds?” he yelled as he struggled in the arms of his friends.

The horses whinnied in fear while the men cursed. In a frenzy, the Cossacks began to throw their saddles into the water. “To hell with it all!”

Hundreds and then thousands of feet stomped up the gangplanks as the regiments boarded the steamers, which began to list under the weight.

“Get back! We’re setting sail! No more space here!” the captain shouted through his megaphone, but nobody paid any attention.

“We still have three rearguard regiments here!”

An artillery shell wailed and exploded on a nearby slope.

“The Reds are already at Hajduk Station!” someone cried. “They might even have gotten as far as Kirillovka.”

“You’ll sink the ship!” yelled the captain. “There’ll be another transport soon to take you on board.”

One by one, the overloaded ships sailed away with clusters of people hanging onto their rigging. Whenever a new vessel sailed toward the quay, the crowd would dash along the side of the water shouting, not knowing where it would berth. Lost children wailed, and women became hysterical.

Klim noticed a Kalmyk with two boys, numb with fear. They were dashing hither and thither among the soldiers, completely lost.

“Where should we go?” the Kalmyk asked Klim. “Where’s our boat?”

Several horses jumped into the sea and swam after the steamers as they left the quay.

4

Klim reached the British pier by evening. A huge crowd was standing in front of the closed gate; however, people were now no longer shouting or panicking but staring silently through the rows of barbed wire, watching a warship sail into the distance.

The fog drifting from the mountains mingled with the smoke of the fires on the streets. Some people decided to go to Gelendzhik, and some went back into town. Klim overheard an officer from the Markov Regiment proposing to take by force the next ship that came in. “It’s every man for himself now,” he said.

“There won’t be another ship,” a familiar voice said.

Turning, Klim saw Fomin, bareheaded in an overcoat with its buttons torn off, standing a few steps away.

Klim rushed up to him. “Where’s Nina?” he asked.

A vague smile appeared on Fomin’s face. “If it isn’t Mr. Argentinean himself! Nina’s gone. Neither you nor I will ever see her again.”

5

Sablin ordered Nina to help him carry the wounded onto the ship. When all of the men were aboard, she rushed onto the upper deck.

Sablin tried to hold her back. “Where’re you going?”

 “Klim’s still there,” Nina said, panting. “I need to go back to town.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Dr. Sablin!” cried the nurse running up to him. “The captain found out that a we’d made our way onto his ship unlawfully.”

Sablin closed his eyes for a moment.