“What?”
“I mean, good that he’s better.” Daniel countered. “I suppose they’ll put him back on the line.”
“I hate to even think about it.” Mariana quickly changed the subject. “What have you been doing since I last saw you, Daniel? I know you can’t have been idle, even if you must be in hiding.”
“It doesn’t bother you that I’d use my time here to work, besides seeing you?”
“Of course not. I couldn’t be absorbed in my own work and yet expect you to wait around for me. At any rate, I know that would be asking too much of you—to pass up what I am sure is a prime opportunity for reporting.”
“There are some dandy stories itching to be told here,” Daniel replied with enthusiasm. “The problem is getting them out. Stoessel has declared war on all correspondents, so there’s little hope of aid from that quarter. I’ve heard rumors he’s threatening to close down Novy Krai, saying the enemy gets copies too easily, that they know better than he does what’s going on inside Port Arthur. That may be true to an extent, but it’s not the newspaper’s fault that Stoessel’s security is so poor around here. The citizens of Port Arthur have a right to know what’s going on.”
“But if it jeopardizes people, and our men—”
“It’s hardly a significant effect.”
“If even one person is hurt because of leaked information . . . ?”
“Hey, whose side are you on, anyway?”
“I’m on the side of the wounded and suffering men, Daniel,” Mariana replied curtly. “There are so many, and sometimes I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand the arrival of another single one.”
“I guess there is another perspective besides mine,” Daniel conceded.
They paused in their walking as Mariana tried to compose herself. For a moment she thought he was about to embrace her, but then he drew back. Mariana found herself disappointed—she desperately needed the comfort of a tender hug. They continued walking and soon reached the front door of the hospital.
Daniel paused at the doorway. “Mariana, take the evening off tonight and spend some time with me. You need to get away from here for a while.”
For a brief moment Mariana was tempted. The misery she encountered every day, the blood, the stench, the hopeless death—it was beginning to get to her, wearing her down, sapping the strength that had so astonished her when she had first arrived in Manchuria. Even her faith was hard-pressed to help her face each new day. But Mariana managed a halfhearted smile—it wouldn’t help to worry Daniel. “So does everyone else around here,” she answered, her voice sounding a lot tougher than she felt inside. “But I’m sure we’ll be given time off soon. When that happens, you’ll be the first person I call.”
“Mariana—” But he stopped, and she never would know what he was about to say. He just took her hand, squeezed it, and offered her the encouragement of an especially endearing smile.
26
Daniel had plenty to keep him occupied when he couldn’t be with Mariana, which seemed to be most of the time. His presence in Port Arthur might have given the city another mouth to feed, but it also provided another strong back. Many of the male civilians were conscripted into service by performing duties that would free up soldiers for the battle lines. Daniel found himself carrying wounded, digging trenches, delivering supplies, and doing any other non-battle task that was needed. No one asked any questions about his presence in the port, and no one cared as long as he worked hard. And always—despite Stoessel’s ban on cameras in the city—Daniel carried his new Kodak snapshot camera with him, hidden in his knapsack. He was, first and foremost, a reporter, and he was determined to be prepared.
One day Daniel was on the front lines, running supplies out to the men in the trenches, when he paused to view the fighting and talk with some soldiers. After several failures, the Japanese were again trying to capture the strategic 203 Metre Hill. The fighting had been intense for several days. Twice the Japanese had captured different sectors, but they had been desperately driven back by the Russians.
Japanese loss of life was phenomenal. Corpses lay piled in heaps at the foot of the hill, impairing their maneuverability. Finally, a Red Cross flag, paired with a white flag of truce, rose above the Japanese trenches.
When the shooting died down in response to the flags, two Japanese officers carefully stepped out into the open. A moment later, two Russian officers did the same. Daniel hastened to join the Russians. Other soldiers, encouraged by the safe reception of the officers, began to emerge from their trenches. Like cautious but curious rabbits, Japanese and Russians began appearing out in the open.
Through an interpreter, the Japanese officer requested a temporary cease-fire so they could clear away their dead, of which there were more than fifteen hundred. He was very polite—in fact, Daniel was impressed by the cordiality shown by both sides.
This was his big chance—if he dared to take the risk. He retrieved the camera from his bag and held it up in a gesture that requested permission from the Japanese officer. The man bowed graciously to him, and as the Russian soldiers stood by, Daniel snapped pictures of the historic face-to-face meeting.
After a cease-fire of two hours had been granted, one of the Japanese brought out an earthenware bottle of sake, as if to seal the bargain.
“Please drink with us,” said the Japanese officer through his interpreter.
When the Russians hesitated, the enemy officer bowed decorously, then drank a glass of the sake himself. “See, not poisoned.”
The Russians accepted the wine, and before long they produced bottles of vodka—one commodity there seemed to be plenty of in the besieged city.
Then the gruesome task of clearing the bodies began. Because of the staggering number of dead, the Russians helped the Japanese with the removal. Daniel caught on film a shot he knew would make the front page of the Register—a Russian holding the torso and a Japanese grasping the legs of a dead Japanese lieutenant. What the photo did not show was the men trying to make friendly conversation in two different languages!
After exactly two hours, the soldiers of both sides crawled back into their trenches, and the shooting resumed.
With bullets flying overhead and artillery exploding all around, Daniel hunkered down in his trench and recorded on paper the entire bizarre scene. This was the kind of action that made newspaper work so glorious. It was also the stuff that sold newspapers. His editor at the Register would kill for such a report. And Daniel had not only the story, but photographs as well. Now he only needed a means to get it and several other dispatches out of Port Arthur.
Under cover of darkness, he returned to the city and went to Saratov’s, one of the few restaurants still open in Port Arthur. Saratov’s was also a good place to make contacts, and Daniel went there frequently in hopes of running into a smuggler willing to carry out his dispatches.
While waiting for his food, he thought about Mariana. He was worried about her. Every time he saw her, she looked more and more on edge. Her nerves were frayed; she jumped at the merest sounds and cried at the least provocation. She looked terrible, too, as if she’d been refusing meals so her patients could have more food. She wouldn’t talk much about what the siege was doing to her. Once she let slip how worried she was about Captain Barsukov. He had been returned to duty, and though he was assigned to the adjutant’s office, she feared he would request a frontline assignment long before he was ready.
No wonder she was so worn out, if she worried so about all her patients. Or was Barsukov special?
Daniel had a sickening feeling it was the latter. He had interviewed Barsukov as he had promised, and although he had to all but pry personal information out of the man, the captain was quite free with his praise of Mariana. He spoke of her with open admiration—no, rather with open affection.
How could Mariana not be drawn to this man, a handsome aristocrat, a war hero? Even Daniel’s buoyant self-confidence wavered in the face of Prince Barsukov’s obvious m
erits. Well, at least Daniel and Philip were now on equal footing. Had Barsukov remained in the hospital and in such close reach of Mariana, Daniel would have really worried. He did wonder if he’d always be in competition with someone for Mariana’s affections.
That shouldn’t surprise him. She was a beautiful woman, charming, kind, and gentle. It was a pure miracle she had remained available all these years. Daniel knew it couldn’t last much longer, especially with a catch like Philip Barsukov plying Mariana with his winning charms.
Again Daniel asked himself, as he had on many occasions, just what he wanted from a relationship with Mariana. Marriage? Certainly a woman like Mariana would want nothing less.
But even the pleasures and the joy of being with a dear woman like Mariana brought certain sacrifices. Daniel liked his globe-trotting life, from one war to the next, one international crisis to the next. And how could his job mesh with a normal family life? The news didn’t run on an eight to five schedule. Even when he had worked on the city desk, he had kept outrageous hours, sometimes working eighteen or twenty hours at a stretch.
No woman was going to want that kind of life. He couldn’t count how many dates he had broken, how many women he had been forced to stand up because of work. He had never been able to sustain a relationship longer than a couple of weeks.
Daniel cared about Mariana too much to risk hurting her the way he had other girls. And what if they had children? What kind of father would he make?
Wasn’t it better just to leave Mariana to someone like Barsukov? He was a steady fellow whose home and family were extremely important to him.
But he couldn’t let go of her that easily.
“You are just a selfish, spoiled brat,” Daniel mumbled to himself. He stared at the dinner before him—a thin slice of roast horsemeat and rice with a spoonful of rancid butter on the side. The only thing there was enough of was tea.
“Talking to yourself, old boy?”
Daniel looked up to see his friend Nojine standing before him.
“I can’t believe I’m the only one in this pathetic town reduced to that malady,” Daniel said morosely.
Nojine laughed, then swung his lanky frame into a chair opposite Daniel’s. “I thought you’d want to know, Stoessel’s gone and done it.”
“Shot himself?”
“We should be so lucky. No, he’s closed down the Novy Krai. I’m officially unemployed.”
“That’s rotten, Nojine. But don’t fear being idle—there are plenty of trenches to be dug.”
“For the time being, I’m quite busy trying to find ways to smuggle news out. And you might be interested in learning that I’ve found a blockade runner who is leaving tonight.”
Daniel sat upright, suddenly alert and very interested. “He’ll take our dispatches? You’re a magician!”
“It’ll cost.”
“Doesn’t everything? Let’s go. It’ll just take me a few minutes to get things in order.”
Within half an hour they met with a Chinese smuggler in a small inn on the other side of town. The man took all their precious dispatches for two hundred dollars. In spite of his shrinking supply of cash, Daniel thought it was a bargain.
“This is my last run,” the man informed them. “A German blockade runner and a Chinese junk were sunk in the last three days, and another German boat was detained by the Japs. This business is no longer healthy.”
Daniel thanked the man so effusively that the fellow probably wished he had charged more. It helped lift Daniel’s spirits enormously and almost made him forget about his confusion over Mariana. Almost, but not quite.
As the Chinese smuggler disappeared into the darkness, Daniel remembered that among his dispatches was one that mage to a Russian war hero. That story would make Barsukov appear more appealing than ever to Mariana.
“Good work, Trent,” he mumbled sourly to himself. “Oops, there I go, talking to myself again.”
27
Nicholas paced outside the nursery door. He could not stand the terrible uncertainty of not knowing what was going on inside, but neither could he bear the pain of watching Dr. Fedorov’s examination of his beautiful infant son.
The child was almost two months old. He was such a chubby, pink-cheeked, happy little baby. And why not, with four big sisters to dote over him almost constantly and two parents who practically idolized him? They were such a happy family, loving and close. Nicholas had tried to comfort his daughters because they felt so bad about what had happened. But no one could say if it had been their fault from handling Alexis too roughly. Perhaps even he or Alix had somehow jostled the boy—
“Oh, God, all that matters now is Alexis. Please, God, don’t let anything be wrong.”
Two days ago the child had begun to bleed from his navel. It had been almost continuous the entire time. What a pitiful sight it had been, especially when Alexis had smiled and cooed through the ordeal. They had to change the little bandage several times. How much blood loss could a baby take? Nicholas had been afraid to ask the doctor that ominous question.
The nursery door opened and Alix joined her husband. She had been awake and by the baby’s bedside the entire time. She looked terrible—worse, in fact, than the ailing child.
“How is he?”
“If it doesn’t stop, the doctor may try to cauterize the area tomorrow.”
“Alix, how ghastly!”
“We can only pray it will stop on its own.”
“What could have caused this?”
Alix shook her head. The doctors were cautious in saying.
But the next day the bleeding did stop and Alexis seemed hardly worse for the ordeal. The family was relieved, of course, but the two concerned parents could not forget that the cause had not been determined. It could happen again without warning.
The only thing they could do was place the child in God’s hands.
Alexandra prayed nightly to Saint Seraphim. Surely this holy man, known for his healings and prophecies, would protect her son. Hadn’t she conceived the child after bathing in Seraphim’s healing spring? Alexis was born with the saint’s blessing upon him.
But Alexandra still thought about her uncle Leopold, Queen Victoria’s youngest son, who had died of a brain hemorrhage when Alexandra was twelve years old. She also remembered her own brother who, at the age of three, fell, bumped his head, and died within hours of a brain hemorrhage. Her sister Irene’s children also seemed to be plagued with this terrible bleeding infirmity. The baby, Henry, had bled to death at age four, not long before Alexis was born.
But why did such tragedy strike in Alexandra’s family? It was not possible that her own child would fall victim to this bleeding malady. Alexis was so healthy. This thing was likely just a fluke, probably because at birth the doctor had failed to cut the umbilical cord properly.
In the months that followed, as bumps and bruises began to appear on the increasingly active boy, it became harder and harder for the tsar and tsaritsa to brush aside their fears. But except for the immediate family, no one knew. No one must ever know that something was wrong with the heir to all Russia.
28
A new demigod was on the rise in St. Petersburg. And Cyril Vlasenko felt utterly helpless to do anything about it.
Father George Gapon had appeared on the scene quietly a few years ago. As a religious zealot, an idealist doing missionary work in St. Petersburg’s poorest working-class districts, he would have doubtless remained obscure. Then Zubatov, a former police officer who rose to head the political section of the Okhrana, had come up with his stupid idea of government-sanctioned trade unions. The intent of the plan was to mollify the workers into thinking they were getting a great concession—when, in fact, the government was in complete control, permitting no reforms without official approval. Gapon, a favorite of the workers and an ardent supporter of the tsar, had seemed to Zubatov a perfect choice—or, more correctly, puppet—to lead the experimental St. Petersburg union.
Cyril had opposed t
he idea from its inception, but Interior Minister Plehve viewed trade unions as a means to counter revolutionary activity among workers, and thus not only gave Zubatov his approval, but promoted the man.
In the two years since then, Gapon had worked tirelessly to build the unions and make them work. Gapon had recently decided it was time to establish similar unions in other parts of Russia and began to travel the country toward that end. In Moscow, however, his activities ran afoul of its governor-general, the grand duke Sergei, a favorite uncle of the tsar. The grand duke dashed off a strong letter of complaint to Plehve. The last thing Plehve wished to do was argue with the tsar’s uncle, so he began to back off from his support of the unions.
Cyril had taken the opportunity to alert certain friends in the Okhrana, asking them to scrutinize Gapon’s activities and take necessary action if he should get out of line. Vlasenko was certain it wouldn’t be long before the sanctimonious union leader’s career came to an end.
But when an assassin’s bomb ended Plehve’s life, it also spared Gapon’s. In the rising political unrest that accompanied—and no doubt caused—the Minister of Interior’s demise, Cyril was forced to stay his own hand against Gapon. The man’s death could all too easily become a catalyst for demonstrations and even riots.
Making matters worse was the appointment by the tsar of Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky as Minister of the Interior. That defeat stung Cyril tremendously, and he had been despondent for days afterward. He had been close enough to taste the sweet flavor of power! For a fleeting moment he even considered retiring from government service altogether. He had worked his entire life to achieve prominence in government, only to have his work suffer at the whim of a nincompoop who couldn’t lead a pack of schoolboys, much less a mighty nation. The crushing blow had come close to making a revolutionary even out of a diehard reactionary like Cyril.
But there was more to be considered than his bruised image. Financial struggles made it imperative that he maintain his government position and contacts. There was money to be made in government, and he needed to keep his options open. Moreover, Cyril simply was not a quitter at heart. Greed might have been his primary motivator, but his political agenda was nevertheless important to him, and he wasn’t ready to allow the moderates and revolutionaries a free hand in Russia, if he could possibly help it.
The Russians Collection Page 166