Synopsis: An alternate history of the great United States of America with Communist comrade Lenin in a unique role – flashback to a new past, move forward to a different future.
About the Author: Sam Kepfield is a writer who is forced to earn a living as a criminal defense attorney in Hutchinson, Kansas. He has a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University (B.A. 1986), a law degree and an M.A. in History from the University of Nebraska (’89, ‘94), as well as doctoral work at the University of Oklahoma. He has been an avid reader of science fiction since childhood, and several years ago decided he’d try his hand at it. So far, his stories have appeared in Revolutions SF, Jupiter SF, Science Fiction Trails, The Future Fire, Cemetery Moon, and Atomjack, among others.
In this epic historical adventure, the Confederate glory is revisited.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Vanguard
by Sam S. Kepfield
“To Southern Independence!” A hundred glasses were raised in a toast, tinkling as the crystal filled with the blood-colored California wine echoed through the dining hall, and the voices echoed Col. Jesse Donaldson’s sentiments. The voices were male and female, the dulcet tones of the Virginia Tidewater to the broad nasality of Arizona and the accented English of Oaxaca, even a few Gallic notes in the chord. The small wooden Commanding Officer’s quarters could barely contain the crowd.
“Fifty years, and five hundred more!” came the enthusiastic, tipsy voice of Melinda Harper, wife of Richard Harper, the Confederate ambassador to Novya Rossiya. She, like all the wives gathered, was decked out in a satin gown, gloves and bejeweled in a manner that would befit Richmond society more than a frontier outpost. She took a healthy swig of the local wine, an ’05 vintage that was one of the best in memory.
“Hear, hear,” added Col. Henri Ducrot, the French military attache’ in California. “His Majesty Napoleon V extends his congratulations and greetings on this occasion for celebration.” As well he might, Donaldson thought, smiling and returning the toast. Without the Lafayette Brigade – a Confederate cavalry unit on loan to the French Army – wreaking havoc in the Prussian rear at Sedan, Ducrot would be goose-stepping and eating bratwurst, married to some plump Teutonic woman straight out of Wagner, rather than the bewitching svelte olive-skinned Gallic creature at his side.
Scenes of Confederate glory done in oils looked down upon the crowd. Longstreet and Hill’s final charge at Sharpsburg that had rolled up and shattered the Army of the Potomac. The signing of the Treaty of Annapolis, fifty years ago this day, that had ended the Second Revolution; Lee, Longstreet, Benjamin and Seddon for the South, Seward, Meade, Scott and President Hamlin (Lincoln having resigned in disgrace after the cease-fire) for the Northern States. An apocryphal rendition of Lee’s Emancipation Declaration being read to grateful, even worshipful, slaves, certainly the least accurate of the paintings on the wall, left by Donaldson’s predecessor.
The well-wishing ensued throughout the crowded parlor, and then spilled out into the rear porch that gave a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean, carrying Donaldson along. As commanding officer of Fort Stuart, California, Donaldson had plenty of perks, but this was perhaps the most satisfying.
Donaldson had been born in Sequoyah forty-seven years ago, when it was still Indian Territory, suffered through dusty hot summers and never saw more water than the occasional muddy creek. His first posting out of the C.S. Military Academy had been to Fort Marion on the Golden Isles of Georgia, and there he had fallen in love with the sea. More than once he wondered if he hadn’t joined the wrong branch of the service.
In the quarter-century since, he’d been posted to Fort Bowie in Galveston Bay, and to Fort Tyler in Veracruz. But California – there was something here, in the salt air, that drew him. The gentle basso heartbeat thump of the waves crashing onto the beach several hundred feet below lulled him to sleep every night. He already planned to retire here when he put in his thirty years and mustered out.
Donaldson stood at the rail, took a cigar from a silver holder in his tunic, and lit it, took a deep draw on it.
“Marvelous,” said a cultured voice at his elbow, carrying the overtones of Eton and Oxford. “Cuban, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Donaldson said.
“Thought so. I can always tell. Marvelous tobacco, that. Do you have more?”
“I just got a shipment in last month,” Donaldson said. The battleship C.S.S. Mallory had sailed from Havana through the Canal and resupplied in San Francisco. Her skipper had been an ensign when Donaldson had been posted to Fort Marion, and the interservice rivalry had been trumped by the gripes about superiors common to all newly-commissioned officers. He’d kept in touch with Capt. Harley Stebbins since, and they arranged mutual trades. The price for a crate of Cuban cigars had been three crates of California wine.
Donaldson handed a cigar from the case to Stephen Hyde-Sandys, His Majesty’s Deputy Consul to America, in Los Angeles. Sandys was tall, thin, horse-faced with a pronounced overbite, with wavy but thinning sandy hair. He wore a morning coat, since the celebration merited dress grays for the post’s officer. Sandys took a match from a small silver holder, struck it, and lit the cigar.
“Superb,” he whispered, shutting his eyes. “Better than Turkish. Better, dare I say it, than your Virginia tobacco,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
“Sir,” Donaldson summoned mock outrage, “wars have begun over lesser insults.” Donaldson took another puff of the cigar. “But, between you and me and the flagpole yonder, I might agree with you – to a point.” The Virginians got a bit full of themselves sometimes.
They stood enjoying their cigars, gazing into the western horizon that had turned from orange to azure and was approaching velvet. A poof sounded over the gay conversation, and a second later the sky erupted in blue and red light.
“Enjoy the fireworks,” Donaldson said. “Got ‘em all the way from China.”
“My,” Sandys said, admiring the sky as a second shell burst in green and gold. “I wonder what our Russian friends will think.” He nodded his head north, towards Fort Ross. “Knowing them, they’ll think they’re under attack.”
“Hardly,” Donaldson said. “They had a big shindig a few days ago, celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. And they’re a ways off. All is quiet on the Western front, Mr. Sandys.”
“Mmmm,” Sandys replied. The cigar glowed red as he inhaled again. “For how long, I wonder?”
“As long as I can keep it that way.”
“Might not be long, from what’s come across the cables.”
“Oh?” Donaldson pricked his ears up.
Another inhale and a bluish puff of aromatic smoke, and Sandys began speaking in a low voice. “The Russians are moving troops into the border regions with the Ottomans, along with the Austrians and Hungarians.”
“It’s a territorial grab,” Donaldson said dismissively. “Same thing they did back in ‘78.”
“More than that. The Ottoman Empire is not well –“
“Hasn’t been for decades. That’s hardly news.”
“One more push might be all it takes for a collapse. And when that happens, the Russians get dominance in the region, plus a warm-water port or several, putting their Navy on an equal footing with ours.”
“So what’s that got to do with us out here in Indian Country? Seems too far away to matter.” He could guess, but he was drawing Sandys out.
“Colonel, you’ve studied your history. Think strategically. European conflicts have a way of spilling over into your corner of the world. And vice versa, I might add. Wolfe’s victory over Montcalm ended the Seven Year’s War, and paying for that war led to your first Revolution.” Donaldson shrugged and conceded the point. “And of course British and French recognition of the Confederacy after the disaster at Sharpsburg – what the North calls Antietam – in the fall of 1862 successfully concluded your rebellion, although it took six months for the Union to face reality and negotiate the treaty.”
“So you’re worried that the Russians could move on California?”
“Yes, and not without assistance. The United States have never reconciled themselves to the Rebellion. We believe they may be plotting some sort of concerted action.” Which was logical, when he thought about it. Nicholas II, Tsar of all Russia, was one of the few European allies of note that the United States possessed, having lost the French Empire by default in ’62.
“From where? Deseret? They’d have to get through the Mormons first.” The sundering of the Union and the need to protect a new boundary had lowered resistance to the Saints’ more notorious practices, and Brigham Young’s mini-empire had come into the Union, along with six other western states, in 1876, partly lifting spirits in an otherwise gloomy Centennial. But Deseret was still a nation within a nation, the joining to the Union more a matter of necessity, an insurance policy against Russian or British adventurism for the Union and for the Mormons.
“I wouldn’t rule it out. Washington has been looking for an outlet to the Pacific for over a century. Lewis and Clark found the way, but the gold strikes at Fort Ross in 1839 kept the Russians in California and the Oregon Territory, just as they were thinking of giving it up and your people were thinking of moving west. After your army took New Mexico in ‘48, the North lost California in the Rebellion. Manifest Destiny has never gone away. It’s just been bottled up for a half century.” Sandys lifted the snifter of brandy from the railing. “It looks peaceful now. But I fear that will change.”
“I hope not,” Donaldson murmured. “I’ve grown too fond of this country. I’d hate to see a war here.” But, as commander of the northernmost outpost of the Confederate States of America, forty miles south of Fort Ross, fifty from Novya Muscovy, even in the Year of Our Lord 1913, it was his job to be ready for just that.
&&&
“This makes a fine defensive position,” Laurent said, putting the binoculars to his eyes. “I can almost hear them whispering their plans to one another.” Fort Ross stood twenty miles north, home to the largest Russian military force south of Sitka, Alaska, five regiments of infantry, two cavalry, and assorted artillery.
Laurent was a tall dapper man with a thin mustache who hailed from New Orleans. The relaxed attitude that permeated the city seeped into its resident’s genes. His polyglot upbringing meant Laurent lacked the vicious racism that characterized the poor piedmont whites. He was also free of the condescending paternalism of the rich Tidewater set, treating the troops as more or less equals. “Black or white, they still bleed red, non?” he’d told Donaldson one evening over a bourbon three months ago after his unit had arrived on horseback at their new posting. The 8th would be accompanying him on his reconnoiter today.
The huge fort had initially begun as a small mission north of San Francisco Bay, at Bodega Bay (renamed Rumyantzev) in 1812. The Russians relocated it south of the Bay in the early 1840s as a guard against American and British encroachment upon one of the most highly sought ports on the Pacific Coast of North America.
The border between the two nations was a frontier in the European sense, noted by concrete markers set on roads or trails, with guards posted only on major thoroughfares. It was wholly unlike the fortifications that demarcated Virginia from Maryland, or the breastworks and constant armed patrols that separated Kansas from Sequoyah.
“Too far forward,” Donaldson said. “We’d be a bump in the road, leaving the rest of the coast open.”
“Possibly suitable for a harassing force,” said the senior sergeant who had joined them. Julius Tanner’s bloodlines hadn’t been corrupted by any Virginia planter tomcatting around the slave quarters in the dead of night; his skin was almost blue-black in the sun. “Maybe a squad or two with a Maxim gun, a few claymore mines, a mortar. Take a few out, then run. They drain off more men to search and secure the hill.”
“Workable, if your horses are faster than theirs, and if you don’t get encircled.”
“Our horses are plenty fast, Colonel,” Tanner said, his teeth a white contrast to the black skin. “Wild mustangs that we broke ourselves. They know the land, can live off it. And that ravine down there is a natural path. They have to come through here. No other workable routes for mass movement within twenty miles.”
“Long as you’re willing to take the chance, Sergeant.”
“I’d insist on it, sir,” Tanner said firmly. He was a damned good soldier, and would make a superior officer, if only the C.S. Army would permit it. And therein lay the rub. Limited emancipation had come in ’73, transforming slavery into a form of serfdom. Filibustering in 1894-95 added Cuba, Puerto Rico and smaller Caribbean islands. Confederate assistance in assisting Maximilian I, the French puppet emperor of Mexico, had added the northern part of Mexico even after Maximilian had been driven from the throne.
The nation devoted to white supremacy thus quickly found itself a polyglot multiracial empire forced by reality and sheer numbers to make certain concessions that were never too closely examined nor debated. To permit blacks in the ranks was a concession to the reality that the Confederacy had swallowed up an enormous swath of territory running from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the War of Secession, and that the birthrate among Southern womanhood was far from sufficient to provide a police force. Colored troops were better suited to the tropics, seemed to fare better as new masters, and so the old inhibitions against darker skins had begun to slowly melt away among certain of the upper classes. The lower classes, most threatened economically, were another matter, and they tended to congregate in the American Party which had sprung up in the 1870s to end the Democratic party’s monopoly. But letting them into the brotherhood of officers was in the future.
They rode along the border, through a couple of small dusty towns that afternoon. Donaldson and Laurent took notes on the villages, relics of the Spanish occupation that had ended in 1848, not much more than a cluster of adobe hovels erected around a whitewashed adobe church, and not a word of English to be heard. Donaldson’s Spanish was passable, from his time in Veracruz, but Laurent spoke it fluently, along with French and Italian, as well he might, given his birth in New Orleans. They sized up the towns as defensive positions – not promising – and as supply depots – again not promising. The natives, Indian and mestizo alike were all too poor to do more than subsist day to day. That state of affairs suited the Confederate government in Los Angeles just fine, as a safeguard against uprisings.
He’d planned on the scouting expedition taking several days, and they made camp at the top of a hill near another village in the afternoon, as the sun was dipping toward the Pacific.
“We’ll bivouac here,” he told Tanner. “Post a guard. Captain Laurent and I are riding into town.” The campsite was out of the line of sight of the village.
“Yessir,” Tanner said, and turned to his task without saluting, a standard field maneuver. The man everyone salutes becomes the first target for a sniper.
“Reconnoitering?” Laurent asked as Donaldson opened up a saddlebag and pulled out a set of rough linen clothing, began stripping off his butternut field uniform.
“Of a sort,” Donaldson said. “Surveying the human terrain. Gathering intelligence.”
“No problem. You can sure enough pass for a Mex,” Laurent said. His Cherokee mother had given Donaldson the thick dark shock of hair and the dark complexion and chiseled features of an indio.
“You’re close enough, too,” Donaldson said, pulling a second set of clothing from the saddlebag, and threw it to Laurent. “And your Spanish is better’n mine.”
“A matter of necessity, Colonel. Without it, I deprive myself of the company of the senoritas in the French Quarter.”
Donaldson shook his head. Laurent was a womanizer, oozing Gallic charm, sliding from one beauty to another with ease. Donaldson had been a one-woman man, and ever since Miriam’s death seven years ago, a no-woman man. “Change over, and we’ll ride in.” After donning the linen clothes, they removed all of the government-issue gear from the horses, leaving only the saddles, and slung their rifles over their shoulders.
The village was like any other Mexican-turned-American settlement, adobe huts around a church, dogs and children playing in the dusty streets, and a few signs of life now that the siesta was over. A line of adobe and timber buildings formed the nearest thing to Main Street to be found. Donaldson and Laurent tied their mounts to a post in front of a blacksmith shop. He could feel the heat from the door, and hear the hammering of steel on steel.
Next door stood a cantina, with a rough-hewn timber awning and swinging doors. Clusters of large red peppers hanging from the rafters gave off a pungent odor that almost forced a sneeze. “In here,” Donaldson said. Watering holes were, by definition, the best sources of gossip and information to be found anywhere, populated by shadowy characters who dealt in secrets that he needed, their tongues loosened by liquor or sudden monetary losses at games of chance.
This establishment offered no such opportunity. The interior was plain, more adobe with a crude wooden bar at one end, unpainted shelving holding a variety of clear bottles with a variety of poisons, all lit by smoky kerosene lamps and obscured by a haze of smoke, some tobacco and a biting odor of cannabis. It was also empty of customers.
The bartender was a heavyset man with a thick mustache, dressed in a white tunic and dark trousers. “You order?” he asked.
“Whiskey, straight,” Donaldson said in Spanish. “Two.” He laid down a Confederate silver dollar. The bartender produced a bottle and two glasses that were, to his surprise, clean, and a silver half dollar. Donaldson poured two fingers for himself and Laurent and downed it. The whiskey was surprisingly smooth, not some locally made rotgut.
“A donde va?” the bartender asked.
“San Diego,” Donaldson said.
“Passing through?”
“To Novya Muscovy,” he said. “Business,” he said in a lowered voice, implying the “business” wasn’t exactly above-board. “Where is the best place to cross the border, without too much trouble?” Meaning away from the eyes of Confederate and Russian sentries.
“You’ll want to avoid the gringo fort,” the bartender said, “though most of them couldn’t find their own asses with both hands.” Donaldson repressed a smile at that, saw Laurent briefly bristle out of the corner of his eye. “There’s a narrow road ten miles east of here, that’s not too heavily traveled. The border guards are lazy –“
“Which ones?”
“Both the anglos and the oso,” he said, using the Spanish term for bear for the Russians. “They can be bribed easily. Or they’re too lazy to send out patrols to look for illegals.”
“Really?” Donaldson asked, a smile on his face.
“Si. And when you get there, tell them to stop sending those fucking Communistas. They’re a pain in the ass.”
“Communists?” An exotic, European ideology that had gained some purchase in the North, with its industrialization creating huge gaps in wealth and envy among the urban lower classes, but it had withered and died south of the border.
“Idiots.” He reached under the bar, pulled out a stack of newspapers and pamphlets. “I can’t even read half of these, they’re in Russian. And most of the people here can’t even read Spanish.”
“Why do you keep them?” Donaldson asked, staring at the indecipherable front page of a paper done in Cyrillic.
“My customers use them to wipe their asses in the outhouse,” the bartender snorted. Donaldson flipped through a few, while he finished his whiskey. He pulled out a few pamphlets in Spanish, a couple more in Russian, one almost a book.
“Where did they come from?”
“Some loco oso comes riding through here two Saturdays ago. Stands on the steps of la iglesia here, shouting about fighting our oppressors, starts handing these out all across town, leaves some here.”
“What did he look like?”
“Short, bald, funny little beard,” the bartender said. “Dressed like he was heading for a funeral. Very strange.”
“Mind if I take a few of these?” he asked. “It’s going to be a long journey north. Hate to use poison ivy.”
“Be my guest,” the bartender said with a wave of a ham-sized hand.
They finished their whiskey, and left the cantina as velvet night was falling. “Interesting,” Laurent said. “Now what?”
“We take these back to be translated,” Donaldson said, getting a hard look in his eyes. “And I do a surprise inspection on the border guards.”
Five days later, the border guards had been given proper re-motivation, taken off duty and assigned to a forced march/reconnaissance of some fifty miles in three days. Half of them had fallen out, and were promptly replaced. The other half had been given light duty by the camp doctor for severe blisters, sprains, shin splints, and other ailments that told Donaldson they’d gotten little too used to the easy duty.
On a Tuesday morning, then, Donaldson did morning formation and inspection after sunrise and morning reveille. He then motioned Laurent to follow him, and they walked to a door hidden away in an alcove in the northwest corner of the fort. 37th SIGNAL read a small wooden placard nailed to the door. Donaldson knocked, then entered.
A tall, horse-faced man with spectacles looked up over a stack of files and dispatches at his visitors. He stood and saluted, and Donaldson waved it away. “At ease, Harman. Where’s the rest of your crew?”
“Laying new cables north of here, at the forward positions you marked for me. If we’re attacked, it’ll give us plenty of advance warning.”
“Outstanding,” Donaldson said. “How long will it take?”
“Ought to be done day after tomorrow, sir,” Harman said, in his soft Virginia accent, sitting down. “You didn’t come here for that, though.”
“I didn’t. You translated what we brought back?”
“Almost all of it, except for a couple of the broadsheets. Spent every night here deciphering this stuff. And it ain’t easy, that’s for sure. Reading Chekov or Tolstoy in the original Russian is one thing, but this Ulyanov character has them beat. The prose is almost incomprehensible in places.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Laurent said. “It doesn’t translate well into Spanish, from what I read on the way back in the saddle. Who is this fellow, anyhow?”
Harman shuffled some files, searching for something. His brow furrowed, and then lightened. “Ah. Here it is, right from Richmond yesterday. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Russian citizen, goes by the name ‘Lenin.’”
“Never heard of him,” Donaldson said.
“Not surprising. He’s largely unknown outside certain radical circles. Here’s what the Okhrana has on him. Born 1870, Simbirsk, Russia. Older brother hanged for assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III in 1887. Expelled from Kazan University same year for causing a riot. Law degree from St. Petersburg University in 1892. Under constant surveillance first as the brother of a terrorist, then as a terrorist himself. Practiced law, but exiled to Siberia in 1897 for trying to finish his brother’s work with the current Tsar.”
“An anarchist?” Donaldson spat out the word. Anarchists had been around for years, but not until the assassination of President Gordon in Houston in 1891 had they been considered a threat.
“No,” Harman shook his head. “A Communist.” He held up a pamphlet, the red paper cover dog-eared, the writing in Spanish. “This is their Bible, so to speak. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. Written in 1848. Another one,” another pamphlet with a green cover, “Essential principles of Das Kapital, 3000 pages boiled down to fifty by our friend Ulyanov. Pretty dense stuff. I took economics at Ole Miss, and hell, I can’t understand half of it myself. Simply put, it gets down to the struggle between the exploited classes – laborers – and the exploiters – businessmen. It ends with the proletariat overthrowing the established order.”
“I’ve read some of this,” Laurent said. Donaldson looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Studied at Tulane, sir. Had some political science classes there, professor made us read it. Ol’ Woody Wilson had some pretty queer ideas on good government. I never believed a word of it. My question is,” he turned to Harman, “how does this fellow Ulyanov think he’s gonna start a revolution out here with a bunch illiterate peasants?”
“That’s not the real danger, and you know it,” Donaldson said, and left it there. All three men knew what he meant. Emancipation had been forced upon the Confederacy in 1873, one of President Lee’s last acts in office, and one that only the architect of military victory and independence could make the nation accept.
Forty years later, the slaves were free but most still lived on the plantations as heavily indebted tenant farmers or hired workers. Southern leaders could point with pride to the condition of the freed slaves versus the squalid conditions that most wage laborers endured in the sprawling cities of the North. But the resentment was there, the economic deprivation and the denial of political participation was a pile of dry kindling waiting for a spark. “Is the Tsar sponsoring him?”
Harman spread his hands wide. “Damned if I know. All I can say is what we get through the channels from Fort Ross and Novya Muscovy is that the officials there are getting a bit concerned about him and his friends.”
“If that’s so, how did he get over here?”
“Like I said, he was exiled to Siberia in 1897, but didn’t stay put. Kept winding up at all these Socialist conferences, London, Zurich, making speeches and accomplishing damned little. He got in on their little failed revolt back in ’05, and the Tsar kicked his ass out of the world but good that time, sent him over here. Originally to Sitka, but he got in trouble by trying to rouse the rabble in the gold fields there. So he got sent down to Khlebnikov, just north of Novya Muscovy. They got Okhrana officers there keeping tabs on him. He began publishing a newspaper,” Harman held up a ragged copy of a paper. “Iskra, or ‘The Spark.’ And penning these political and economic shinplasters. But he slipped away a few months ago.”
“Any pictures?” Donaldson asked.
“One. It’s old, but it’s all we could get.” Harman held out a fuzzy photograph, showing a balding man with a vandyke beard. Donaldson and Laurent looked at one another.
“Sounds like he’s been riding the range out here,” Laurent said, “trying to start a revolution.”
“We could let him keep it up,” Donaldson said. “Doesn’t seem to be making much impact.” He told Harman of the bartender’s assessment.
“Too dangerous,” Harman replied. “Richmond wants this man stopped.” Donaldson had sent off a report on the matter the day after his return, and the reply had arrived by wire late last night, from the Secretary of War himself. With trouble brewing in Europe and the danger of a Russian grab for California, all fifth columns were to be eradicated in advance of hostilities.
“How you plan on doing that?” Laurent asked.
“Don’t rightly know yet. But you’re going to come with me.”
&&&
The next day, Donaldson left his XO, Major Braxton Connelly, in charge of the fort. He and Laurent, dressed in homespun clothing, saddled up and rode out just after sunrise, heading north. Their saddlebags held rations of salt pork and flour for a week – in non-military tins and sacks. They carried civilian-design Richmond .30-06 rifles with Colt revolvers. They kept to the less-traveled trails inaccessible to motorcars, heading north.
“You got a plan for finding this fella?” Laurent asked around noon, as they broke for a lunch of canned salt pork and pinto beans; Laurent splashed his liberally with Tabasco sauce. The horses were watering in a small stream.
“Nope,” Donaldson said. “We ride until we find him. Follow a trail of badly written flyers, I reckon.”
“Maybe he’s out stirring up the Indians,” Laurent said. “They might attack travelers out in the open.”
“I’m not worried,” Donaldson said with mock severity. “Your skin might be dark back in New Orleans, but around here you’re just another paleface.” That got a laugh out of Laurent. “Way things are going, I reckon Ulyanov is riding these same trails, figuring if a war comes St. Petersburg is too far away to deal with him here.”
“So why are we heading to Fort Ross?”
“I think his main game isn’t grabbing more territory, I think it’s setting up his own little socialist paradise here. The stuff with the locals is just a diversion, Maybe the Tsar thinks Ulyanov’s trying to stir up some unrest on Confederate soil the Okhrana will leave him alone. If he succeeds, they get some more turf. He fails, they can disown him.”
“So how’s your Russian?” Laurent asked.
“Passable. Enough to get us around.” The academy required two foreign languages, preferably ones spoken on the Continent.
“Enough to keep us out of a jail?”
“Colonel Colt speaks all languages,” Donaldson said. They finished and mounted up again.
They were a few miles from the border when a rifle shot split the air. Dirt puffed in front of Donaldson’s horse, and he fought to bring it under control, finally succeeding. Laurent had his rifle at the ready, dismounting and seeking cover behind a rock, pointing to a low rocky ridge to the east. Donaldson slid off his mount, took the rifle from its scabbard and joined Laurent.
“See the shooter?”
“Just part of ‘im, sir.”
“Mex?”
“Or Indian. Hard to tell at this distance. We could be surrounded.”
“What this ‘we,’ paleface?” Donaldson said, showing a rare broad smile and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. Laurent took it in stride.
They waited for several minutes. “They may have moved on,” Laurent said. He took off his hat, put it on a stick and raised it slightly above the level of the rock, visible to the sniper. No shots followed the first.
“They’ve moved on,” Donaldson said. “Standard tactic.”
“Or they’re very, very patient,” Laurent countered.
“We’ll see,” Donaldson said, and crept around the rock, and tossed a small stone which landed fifty feet away. No shots, so Donaldson rose to his feet and ran to his mount. Again, silence. Laurent followed, and they headed off at a gallop to the ridge. The horses handled the grade with little difficulty, and they crested the ridge, halted. There were no other humans to be seen.
“Over there,” Laurent said, pointing to the north. “Grass there is crushed, maybe two men.” He dismounted, walked over to the area where the grass lay flat, got to his knees, searched around for a moment. His face brightened, and he held up a brass cartridge.
“It’s not our Russian friends,” he said. “The lettering is in English. A 30.06 caliber round.” He raised his eyebrow.
“Standard caliber for U.S. government-issue Springfields,” Donaldson finished. “A Northern patrol doing reconnaissance?”
“Wouldn’t firing on us give them away?” Laurent asked. “They may be grasping, greedy self-righteous moralizers, but stupid they are not. Such would be considered an act of war.”
“Right now there’s people spoiling for a war. Maybe whoever it is wants to start one.”
“Then perhaps they should send better marksmen, eh?” Laurent asked with a laugh.
“Or someone wants us to think it’s Northern soldiers.”
“Who? The Saints? Or maybe the Russians?”
“The Saints have a good deal, getting protection from Washington. As for the Russians, why would they invite an attack on themselves, have to fight a two-front war?”
“Who can tell with politicians and diplomats?”
Donaldson thought for a moment. “Someone is playing a different game here, for their own ends. And we won’t find out who it is standing here and jawboning. Saddle up.”
As they rode, Donaldson tried to puzzle out the political maze that was the border between Russian America and the Confederate States of America. He quickly concluded he much preferred the simple life of a soldier.
The Confederate States of America, upon the conclusion of the War for Secession in March 1863, had acquired all territory south of the 37th Parallel, from Indian Territory to the Pacific. The CSA had claimed areas south of the 35th Parallel in 1861, but after the victory at Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, in March 1862 and the smashing of McClellan’s Army of the Potomac at Sharpsburg that September, the peace negotiators pushed and got the whole of New Mexico and Arizona territories; a separate treaty with Russia in 1869 formally set the boundary. The Confederacy thus acquired California, an underdeveloped coastal area that had escaped the rapid development of Russian America to the north. California was an agricultural area, and the lush Central Valley had taken well to the cultivation of fruits and vegetables by plantation owners who had migrated westward, seeking new lands to replace the worn-out soil of Alabama and Mississippi.
The Confederacy had relied upon the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory (later renamed Sequoyah upon its admission as a state in 1885), and as such had a slightly more enlightened Indian Policy than the old Union. The climate in the Southwest prevented large-scale agricultural settlement, as in the more hospitable lands to the east and north, and so the tribes in Arizona and New Mexico were largely left to their own devices.
Exchanging one foreign power, the Union, for another, the Confederacy, hadn’t ameliorated the ill will that the Southwestern tribes felt after three hundred years of domination. And the idea of some agent provocateur stirring up domestic rebellion in the West while the two American nations were distracted with larger problems was not, the more he thought about it, in the least farfetched. It was, the more he thought about it, the most likely scenario.
They crossed the border early the next day on the narrow dusty path that barely merited the designation as a road. Up ahead, Donaldson spied a cloud of dust. He pulled his rifle from the scabbard, his Colt from the holster at his hip; Laurent did the same, and they slowed their mounts.
Over the hill came half a dozen riders. They were Indians, and clearly armed with rifles.
“Any idea what tribe they belong to?” Laurent asked.
“Nope,” Donaldson said. “And if they don’t speak Cherokee, we’re clean out of luck.” They halted their horses as the Indians drew near and halted their mounts twenty yards away. The riders were dressed in a mix of native and anglo garb, beaded shirts over denim trousers and boots. The rifles they held were new, the blued steel gleaming in the sun.
“Good morning,” Donaldson said quietly but pleasantly.
One of the riders advanced warily, rifle held in one hand, the butt resting on his saddle. He was a large man, broad-shouldered, long graying dark hair tied back behind his head that spoke of Indian heritage. But his skin was lighter, and he sported a mustache, the result of the not infrequent intermarriage between Russian men exiled from home by edict or opportunity, and native women.
The Russians were not unlike the French in Canada, who had mixed with the natives and in some cases become members of tribes who had fully accepted the children of such unions. By contrast, the English colonists discouraged such unions, considered them badges of shame and shunned the children – this much Donaldson knew from personal experience. His Cherokee half had given him no end of trouble, and he’d had to prove himself with his fists more often than he wanted.
It all came down to what the colonists wanted. The Russians and French were interested in trade. The Spanish and then the English were interested in land. When you didn’t have the predisposition to displace natives by any means possible – war or disease – then relations tended to be more harmonious. God only knew what California would look like had the Spanish remained here. Or, he thought grimly, had the Union and its grubby industrial hordes taken hold of it.
Their laissez-faire attitude had allowed the Russians to triumph over the British for control of the Pacific coast in the 1840s and 1850s. While The Great Game played out in central Asia, the two powers grappling over Turkey and the Balkans, the Russians had allied with enough tribes to push John Bull and the Canadian border back to the Rocky Mountains.
“What business do you have here?” he asked severely.
“None here,” Donaldson replied. “Further north. Novya Muscovy.”
“What business?”
“I own a plantation near Los Angeles,” Donaldson said smoothly. “We have a vineyard there. I’m looking for opportunities to export. Novya Muscovy is the largest settlement in these parts.” At fifty thousand people, it was smaller than Los Angeles’ two hundred thousand, but it was the gateway to parts north.
“Hmm,” the Indian snorted. “Los osos won’t have anything to do with it. They have vodka.”
“I brought some samples,” Donaldson said. He’d packed a couple bottles of a wine ordered from a plantation down near LA and steamed the labels off. “You’re welcome to try some –“
“No.” The man sounded offended. The Russians hadn’t sought to ply the local tribes with alcohol the way the Americans had for three hundred years in an effort to break them and take their land. Novya Rossiya was more sparsely settled, and the settlers there were largely involuntary and content with small plots. “Why aren’t you traveling by boat?”
“This is cheaper.”
“Why aren’t you taking the main road?”
“This is more convenient.”
“Ah. I see.” The man nodded. “My name is Nikolai Charkov. You’re comin’ with us.” Six rifles were leveled in his direction, leaving the two officers with no choice in the matter.
Charkov’s small village hugged the coast, a small semicircular inlet dubbed Half Moon Bay. An old Spanish mission sat at the center of the village, a relic of the former occupiers who had been pressured first by the Russian-American companies and then dethroned by the Treaties of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and Los Angeles in 1869. Tilled fields surrounded the several dozen wooden lodges, and from the beach several docks with fishing boats moored to them stretched into the waters.
Charkov led them to the mission, where they tied their horses to a wooden railing. “In here,” Charkov said, motioning them to the door with his rifle. “We got orders to bring in suspicious characters and trespassers.”
“We’re traders, I told you.”
“Mmm,” Charkov said. “And on Russian territory, to boot. You look too good for traders riding up from Los Angeles. Only seen Army officers ride the way you do. Posture like you got a board in the back of your shirt, scouting the land, looking for things traders don’t know or care about.” He smiled. “That, and your hair’s too short. Now get in.”
The mission was dark and cool inside, and Charkov showed them to a small office in the back. He knocked, and received a muffled reply. He opened the door, poked his head in, said something in Russian. The voice replied in Russian, and Charkov swung the door open. Donaldson and Laurent entered the small office, lit by a kerosene lamp. Antique bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound volumes covered one wall. On the far wall hung a red flag with a yellow design. It took Donaldson a moment to identify it as a hammer imposed over a sickle, two tools he was intimate with from his boyhood in Sequoyah.
“Vladimir Lenin, I presume,” he said in what he hoped was correct Russian to the short man seated behind the desk.
The man stood up. “You are correct. And by your accents, and direction, I assume you are both Confederate army officers sent to spy on us.” He wore, incongruously, a three-piece suit with a red silk tie knotted perfectly, a gold watch chain dangling from his vest and a white silk handkerchief in his coat pocket.
Donaldson decided there was no point in continuing; he was disappointed that their ruse had been so quickly discovered. “We’re officers. But we’re doing a simple reconnaissance, and wandered over the border.” As he said it, Donaldson knew it sounded weak.
Lenin barked out a short expletive that showed what he thought of Donaldson’s explanation. “Then you are the enemy, or soon will be,” Lenin said. “No doubt you were infiltrating behind Russian lines, to sabotage communications and transportation lines. Where are the rest of your forces?”
“None. Just us,” Donaldson answered.
“Hah. Then they are in the saddle and heading this way even now,” Lenin said, his eyes narrowing and glinting.
“Hardly. Nice little operation you have here,” Donaldson said. “Planning on setting up your own country, do you?”
“I am the vanguard of a socialist revolution that will sweep away the imperialist capitalist forces in this land, and replace it with a true worker’s state.”
“Alone?”
“There are others who have gone forth to the masses to spread the word of the coming revolution,” Lenin said confidently. “We coordinate our efforts.”
“Looks kinda lonely to me,” Laurent said in English, looking about the office.
Lenin’s eyes flashed, a vein on his temple throbbed. “Charkov!” he bellowed, and their captor appeared at the door. “Take these two to the jail and secure them at once.” Apparently he’d picked up enough English in his years here to understand Laurent.
Charkov motioned again with his rifle, and the two officers filed from Lenin’s office. Charkov led them across the large courtyard of the village, across the dusty square to a low adobe building with bars in the windows. The rest of Charkov’s party were inside.
“Touchy fellow,” Donaldson said. “I think he is planning to set up his own little kingdom here.”
“And they must be old Baldy’s own police force,” Laurent muttered, nodding his head towards Charkov and his comrades.
“Quiet,” Charkov warned. The two officers went inside the jail. The interior was dark, and as soon as their eyes adjusted they saw a crude setup, rough unvarnished wooden tables and chairs, and three cells at the back of the building. One cell held three locals who were sleeping off a drunk, from their prone boneless posture; the other held a man in a blue army uniform that Donaldson recognized as Russian. They were shoved into the middle cell, and the door clanked shut behind them.
Donaldson waited until Charkov left and only one of his crew remained, sporting a new Springfield rifle, bandoleros and a Colt at his hip. The guard put his feet on the rude desk, leaned back in the chair, and crossed his arms over his chest.
“How secure do these bars look?” Laurent asked.
“Don’t let it fool you,” Donaldson said. “There’s adobe buildings been around longer than you or me.” Donaldson kicked at the wall with no effect. “We had a pickax, that might do it.”
“I got a pocketknife in my boot,” Laurent said.
“Wait til he goes to sleep,” Donaldson replied, nodding at the guard.
“Excuse me,” said a voice in heavily accented English. It was the uniformed prisoner in the next cell. “You are American?”
“Of a sort,” Laurent said. “The Confederate variety.”
“Ah,” the prisoner said. He was younger, perhaps thirty, with dark hair and a large mustache. He was standing against the bars, and was slightly taller than Donaldson’s six-one, with a muscular build. “I am Captain Nikolai Yevgenevich Pomarov, with his Majesty the Tsar’s Army.”
“You were out scouting enemy positions, too?” Laurent asked.
Pomarov didn’t take the bait, though he did raise an eyebrow at Laurent. “I was traveling through this village, on my way to inspect border and coastal fortifications, when those Cossacks seized me and threw me in jail. When this report is transmitted to St. Petersburg –“
“It won’t be,” Donaldson said.
Pomarov deflated slightly. “I think Lenin is planning some kind of Revolution of his own.”
“That’s what we figured, too,” Donaldson said, choosing his words carefully. Fellow prisoner or not, Pomarov was still on the other side. And Donaldson was fairly sure that Pomarov hadn’t been out scouting fortifications, but was attached to the Okhrana and had been looking for Lenin. “Makes sense he wouldn’t want the Tsar to know what’s brewing out here.”
“That’s old Nick’s problem,” Laurent said dismissively, referring to the Tsar. “Any trouble here helps us.”
“You think Lenin is going to be stopped by an imaginary line?” Pomarov said. “The man’s talking about world revolution. He’ll start here, but California will be next.”
“He’s right,” Donaldson said; the wire from Richmond had reached the same conclusions. Tsarist forces might be able to crush Lenin’s uprising. But the truth was that even in this supposedly enlightened time, of limited emancipation, that the Confederacy remained vigilant against possible insurrections. Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner and the Stono River rebels back in the 1700s had etched a fear of the servile classes in the hearts of the plantation-born and bred who still ruled the South.
“So what do we do?” Laurent asked.
“For now, as long as he’s awake,” Donaldson said, indicating the guard, “nothing. Wait until night. Then we find a way out.”
“And that would be?”
“We have plenty of time to figure that out. Until then, we amuse ourselves the best we can.”
“Usually I read,” Pomarov said. “But Lenin took my Pushkin volumes away. Called it ‘reactionary and bourgeois romantic crap.’”
“Some people have no taste,” Laurent said sympathetically, and then reached into one of the pockets in his shirt, produced a deck of cards. “Y’all play poker over in Russia?”
“I have heard of it,” Pomarov said guardedly. An experienced card-player like Donaldson immediately sensed that Pomarov knew far more than he was letting on. “Perhaps you could teach me.”
“Yeah, go easy on him,” said Donaldson. “They don’t pay their officers as well as we do.”
“I will endeavor to show restraint, mon colonel,” Laurent said.
Several hours later, Pomarov was in possession of a nice pile of Confederate paper money. Staid portraits of Jeff Davis and Lee and Longstreet mixed with tsars and empresses.
“I’m startin’ to think maybe you’ve played this game before,” Laurent said despairingly.
“Once or twice,” Pomarov deadpanned. He began folding the money to tuck it into his tunic.
“You gotta give me a chance to win it back,” Laurent said, pleading with Pomarov.
“You’re in deep enough,” Donaldson warned him off. “Face it, Jean, you’ve been had. Now give me that knife of yours.” Laurent frowned, dug into his boot and withdrew a small bone-handled knife. He handed it to Donaldson, who began chipping away at the adobe while the guard dozed.
Fifteen minutes in, he had a small dent in the windowsill near the bars. If he kept at it, Donaldson figured, they might have one bar out by midnight.
“Slow going,” Laurent observed.
“It might help –“ Donaldson’s voice was cut off by a distant crump and a whistling noise. “Take cover! Incoming!” he shouted, and the men dove against the walls. A moment later an explosion rocked the building, dust and pieces of adobe rained down on them. Another crump and whistling noise, and the cell next to them disappeared in a roar of fire and shards of clay and timber splinters.
“That’s naval artillery,” Laurent shouted, but Donaldson could barely hear him. Laurent shoved against the fractured wall, causing a four-foot wide chunk to fall outward, and he climbed over the debris, through the adjacent cell, and back into the jail through the twisted and broken steel bars. The guard had been knocked unconscious or dead by the blast; Laurent took the keys and opened Pomarov’s cell.
Donaldson followed, took the guard’s rifle and ammunition, tossed the pistol to Laurent. Pomarov grabbed the keys from Laurent and unlocked the gun cabinet in the corner. He retrieved a rifle and cartridge case, as well as a pistol. “These are mine,” he shouted as another shell exploded outside, nearly knocking him to his feet. “Help yourself.” Laurent ducked in and took a Springfield from the cabinet, along with two boxes of shells. The three men ran out of the jail into utter chaos.
A crater marked the spot where the village well had stood in the square. Villagers were scurrying for cover, heading out of the town to the surrounding countryside. Charkov and his gang spilled out of the mission, weapons drawn. Pomarov skidded to a halt, took aim with his Mosin-Nagant, and hit three of men, Donaldson was quick on the draw, took out one with his Springfield, and Laurent dropped another. The last man threw down his weapon and fled around the side of the mission.
“Leave him,” Donaldson said. “We’ve got a more important quarry.” Guns drawn, they charged the mission and reached the doors as another shell hit an adobe house and turned it into a cloud of splinters and dust.
Lenin nearly bowled them over rushing out of his office, clutching a sidearm. He didn’t see the three men until it was too late. He abruptly stopped, began to raise the pistol, but thought better of it.
“Drop it nice and easy,” Donaldson said. Lenin tossed the revolver to the ground. “Good. You’re coming with us.”
“A prisoner? I expected to be shot.”
“I don’t shoot prisoners. Besides,” Donaldson said with a wry smile, “You may be useful yet.”
“I’m hardly scared. I’ve been in jails before, and always escaped,” Lenin said defiantly.
“Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be,” Laurent said menacingly.
“Wait,” Pomarov said. “Where’s my Pushkin?”
“That garbage? In the trash can in my office,” Lenin scoffed.
Pomarov looked as though he’d been shot, but darted into the office, and emerged a few seconds later with the two leather-bound volumes in one hand. “They cost me twenty rubles in St. Petersburg,” he admonished Lenin.
“A waste of money,” Lenin said.
“Move,” Donaldson ordered, and they guided him out of the mission. “Livery stable – where is it?”
“Down this street, at the end,” Lenin said. “If it hasn’t been hit yet.”
“Then we’d better hurry,” Donaldson said. They ran down the street, Laurent behind Lenin with his rifle trained on his back. The stables had not been hit, but the shelling had spooked the horses and driven off the proprietor and hands. The three officers found their mounts unharmed, saddled them up, and found a relatively calm horse for Lenin to ride. They rode out into the square. From the vantage point on horseback, Donaldson could finally look out into the bay. What he saw made him haul his mount to a halt.
“It’s the Mallory,” Donaldson said, pointing to a gray vessel several miles out on the sparkling smooth ocean. The Confederate battleship was surrounded by a host of smaller ships. He could spy several landing craft approaching the white beach below.
“If they’re shelling here. . .” Laurent began.
“Then we are at war,” Pomarov said dejectedly. “And I’m a prisoner.”
“No,” Donaldson said, shaking his head. “I’ll guarantee your safe conduct back to your unit.”
“You can do that?”
“A Confederate officer and gentleman always keeps his promises. But only if you allow Captain Laurent a rematch at the card table.”
“Done,” Pomarov said, relieved.
Donaldson turned to Lenin. “Give me your handkerchief,” he said. Lenin glared at him, but complied.
They rode to the beach, and arrived just as the landing craft beached themselves and Marines began wading ashore. When they saw Pomarov, the Marines leveled their Lee-Enfields at them. Donaldson waved the handkerchief at the Marines, and identified himself. “Ask Captain Stebbins. He knows me.”
“No need.” The voice belonged to the commander of the Marine detachment, a tall man who had the same dark coloring as Donaldson. “I was ashore when Stebbins traded a crate of Cubans to this man for three cases of wine. Damned fine stuff, by the way. Major Carlos Taylor,” he saluted Donaldson. “I’m in command of this landing force. I can figure out our Russian friend here, but who is that?” he pointed at Lenin.
Donaldson quickly explained the situation, and Taylor listened as the Marines formed up in squads. Taylor turned to a Captain, and gave quick orders to approach the village in two columns and take it. His second-in-command saluted, and led the Marines off.
“There won’t be much resistance,” Donaldson said. “The naval bombardment took care of that. So I take it we’re at war?”
“We are,” Taylor nodded. “Perhaps Captain Stebbins can explain that.” He ordered one of the landing craft to take the four men back to the Mallory.
They were escorted to the bridge of the battleship by an ensign in khakis. Stebbins, hunched over a large map in the center of the bridge, looked up and greeted Donaldson warmly.
“Harley, it’s good to see you again. Although I’m not happy about the circumstances. It’s war, then?”
Stebbins, a stout man with a gingery beard shot through with gray, nodded. “The Russians began a march on the Turks five days ago. The mutual defense treaties triggered a mobilization by the British and French. And we’re obligated to mobilize as well. We were in the neighborhood, so Richmond ordered us to seize a port here to support a defense of the border, possibly an attack on Novya Muscovy. But you seem to have gotten the jump on all of us.”
“Unintentionally, I assure you,” Donaldson said. He briefed Stebbins on their mission, capture and escape while Lenin stood glowering in the corner.
Stebbins stroked his beard when Donaldson finished. “Since you promised our brother Pomarov here safe transit back to his unit, I won’t rescind that order.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Pomarov said gratefully. “Your actions will be noted.”
“We’ll wire to Fort Ross, have you taken there under a flag of truce. Godspeed, Captain.” Stebbins turned to Lenin. “Take him to the brig and put him under guard.” Two Marines escorted Lenin off the bridge down into the steel bowels of the ship to a string of curses in Russian. “I’ll wire Richmond, let them know we’ve captured a spy. They’ll probably want him taken back to LA and interrogated, if not shot.”
“Not so fast,” Donaldson said, with a far-away look. “I have an idea.”
&&&
Before he was escorted back to Fort Ross, Pomarov and Laurent had a rematch at the card table. Pomarov graciously allowed Laurent to win back most of his losses.
The next day, the Marines from the Mallory had secured a beachhead and supply ships began unloading supplies and temporary docks. Several cavalry detachments from Fort Stewart, including Laurent’s, arrived the next morning to provide security for the perimeter. Donaldson and Laurent went ashore to confer with their subordinates, and by the afternoon the situation was well in hand. The Confederate Army was prepared to meet any advance by the Russian Army from Fort Ross.
At evening on the second day, they returned to the ship. The brig was below decks and aft, close to the engine room. Two Marines were posted outside the metal hatch. Donaldson and Laurent entered and found Lenin seated on the small bunk, an empty metal tray on the floor. He was furiously scribbling away on a sheaf of paper with a pencil nub. A stack of lined sheets sat neatly in the corner.
“So, the time has come to make me, as you say, walk the plank?”
“We’re not planning on making a martyr out of you, no matter how much you want it,” Donaldson said, leaning his frame against the wall – bulkhead, he corrected himself, now that he was on board a naval vessel. “Actually, we were planning on releasing you.”
Lenin looked surprised, but the look of relief was replaced immediately by one of suspicion. “There are conditions, no doubt.”
“We’re not going to let you run loose in Novya Rossiya again,” Donaldson agreed. “But that’s doing you a favor.”
“Not let me continue my work?”
“Be honest,” Donaldson said. “How much progress were you making with the indios and Mexicans?” Lenin remained silent. “The problem I see, from reading your works, is that you depend upon a large proletariat, meaning a large working class. Translation – you need a lot of beat-down factory workers taking poverty wages back to a run-down tenement house with a dozen squalling brats in it living on bread and water, if they’re lucky. Working in lousy conditions, losing arms and legs. It just isn’t here.”
“There were the workers in Novya Muscovy,” Lenin said.
“Mainly dockworkers and some light industry like fishing and canning. You got what’s left of the miners, but most of that played out back by the end of the war. Didn’t work any better up in Sitka, did it?”
“Tell him what they were using his pamphlets for,” Laurent suggested with a lazy grin, and Donaldson hushed him.
“Closest thing to what you need is further south, in the Central Valley areas south of here. Lot of Mexicans and freedmen working on the plantations, harvesting cotton and vegetables. But they’re a pretty conservative lot, like most peasants.”
“So what do you propose to offer?” Lenin asked defiantly.
“You want an urban proletariat, we’re happy to give you one. There’s a war going on in Europe right now, the British and French Empires against the Russian Empire along with the German and Balkan states. Naturally, we’re getting dragged into it, so that pits the Confederacy against the Union again. You want an urban proletariat, you got it. I propose to put you on a train here in California, with a ticket clear to Chicago. Lots of oppressed laborers there with all the class consciousness you could hope for, and a fair amount of them speak Russian so you won’t have as much trouble being understood.”
“It’s a start,” Lenin admitted hesitantly.
“I’ll sweeten the pot,” Donaldson said. “Ten thousand dollars in gold, to finance your little revolution.”
“Fifty.”
“Twenty-five thousand,” Donaldson said.
“Thirty.”
“Done.” Donaldson had been authorized to go as high as forty by the War Department, but only if he had to.
“When do I leave?”
“How long is it going to take you to pack?”
It took an hour to collect the few personal items and clothing from his quarters at the mission. Three days later, Donaldson and Laurent put Lenin, with a half dozen armed guards, on a military transport car hastily added to a freight express headed east on the Transcontinental line from Los Angeles to Nashville. From there the train would then head north to Chicago.
“I get a bad feeling about this,” Laurent said gloomily as they watched the train depart in a storm of black smoke and cinders. “We may have thrown away thirty thousand in gold to a con man. Or there might be something to all of his revolution talk. I read it myself, and if I was a dumb bohunk making five bucks a month, it’d sound pretty good.”
“I agree. I’m planning on that.”
“This is just supposed to cause trouble in the rear for the Yanks, but what if he actually succeeds?”
Donaldson gave a dismissive wave of the hand and laughed. “Relax,” he told Laurent. “Lenin is dedicated, but far too obtuse for most American’s tastes. Nobody here would ever fall for Communism. What’s the worst that could happen?”
**** THE END ****
Copyright Sam S. Kepfield 2011
Clipart Image: Google Images
Editor’s Note
