timbered and jagged: Mount Piramida, eleven thousand feet high, loomed just south of the Trans-Siberian tracks.
Somewhere in this district, Aleksandr Kolchak played out his penultimate gamble.
âTwice around Christmas our locomotive had run out of fuel and the boilers had frozen and burst. The third time it happened we were in the Kuznets, I think it must have been two or three days after Christmas. We uncoupled the locomotive and concocted some sort of cable truss with which we heaved and jacked and tipped the locomotive off the rails, and then the Admiralâs train reversed into us and we were coupled onto the caboose of his train. But we were too heavy and his locomotivesâhe had two of them in tandem on his trainâonly slipped their wheels on the tracks. You see, we were on the upgrade there, it was miles and miles of two or three percent grade. Even putting sand on the rails didnât help. Our train was simply too heavy. The gold itself weighed five hundred tonsâone million pounds that isâand there was all that armor plate, we had twenty-eight armored goods wagons filled with treasure. It simply wouldnât budge.
âOur detachmentâmy brotherâs and mineâwas still manning the gold train, of course. We were not alone there, the Admiral had assigned several of his officers and their staffs to us. The gold was the most important thing in his existence then and of course he wasnât going to trust it to two dozen worn-out soldiers like ourselves. We were knee-deep in colonels and brigadiers and it was a curious arrangement because officially my brother and Iâsubalterns in rank, you knowâwere in charge there but we had more high-ranking officers than enlisted men on our train. Naturally none of them took orders from us. But we were all in the same hopeless situation and there was very little frictionâthe officers were as terrified as our enlisted troops, no one had the strength to be abrasive.
âAll the officers on the Admiralâs staff kept vying for assignment to our train. There were a number of reasons. We were always the first to receive food and firewood, for instance. The Admiral meant to insure that we stayed in good fighting health in case we had to defend the train against an attack. Then too there was the fact that our train wasnât overcrowded. The gold weighed so much that it hadnât been possible to jam people into every available space. There was elbow roomâeach of the goods wagons had only part of its space filled with treasure, there was a good deal of empty space because of the weight. And also everyone knew that if any train got through it would be ours, so that everyone wanted to be part of it. There were squadrons of Cossacks aboard the trains in front of us and behind us and their sole assignment was to prevent our own people from climbing on board this train. I have no idea how many were murdered by those Cossacks; it must have been hundreds at least.
âWhen we were stalled that final time in the Kuznets the Admiral called a conferenceâthe ranking people on his staff. My brother and I were not privy to it of course, but afterward it was easy to see what they had decided. I donât know whose idea it wasâI doubt it was the Admiralâs, he was too jealous of the treasure, he wouldnât have volunteered to part with it. But someoneâor some groupâmust have convinced him that it simply wasnât possible to go on carrying it with us. We were still a thousand kilometers short of Irkutsk.
âAt this time we had progressed ahead of the vanguard of the refugee column on the trakt. I suppose it must have been two or three days behind us. We did not know then, of course, how many of them had perished. * But in spite of our special treatment we had lost several lives even among our own small privileged company and we couldnât believe that those poor wretched beings had much chance of
Somewhere in this district, Aleksandr Kolchak played out his penultimate gamble.
âTwice around Christmas our locomotive had run out of fuel and the boilers had frozen and burst. The third time it happened we were in the Kuznets, I think it must have been two or three days after Christmas. We uncoupled the locomotive and concocted some sort of cable truss with which we heaved and jacked and tipped the locomotive off the rails, and then the Admiralâs train reversed into us and we were coupled onto the caboose of his train. But we were too heavy and his locomotivesâhe had two of them in tandem on his trainâonly slipped their wheels on the tracks. You see, we were on the upgrade there, it was miles and miles of two or three percent grade. Even putting sand on the rails didnât help. Our train was simply too heavy. The gold itself weighed five hundred tonsâone million pounds that isâand there was all that armor plate, we had twenty-eight armored goods wagons filled with treasure. It simply wouldnât budge.
âOur detachmentâmy brotherâs and mineâwas still manning the gold train, of course. We were not alone there, the Admiral had assigned several of his officers and their staffs to us. The gold was the most important thing in his existence then and of course he wasnât going to trust it to two dozen worn-out soldiers like ourselves. We were knee-deep in colonels and brigadiers and it was a curious arrangement because officially my brother and Iâsubalterns in rank, you knowâwere in charge there but we had more high-ranking officers than enlisted men on our train. Naturally none of them took orders from us. But we were all in the same hopeless situation and there was very little frictionâthe officers were as terrified as our enlisted troops, no one had the strength to be abrasive.
âAll the officers on the Admiralâs staff kept vying for assignment to our train. There were a number of reasons. We were always the first to receive food and firewood, for instance. The Admiral meant to insure that we stayed in good fighting health in case we had to defend the train against an attack. Then too there was the fact that our train wasnât overcrowded. The gold weighed so much that it hadnât been possible to jam people into every available space. There was elbow roomâeach of the goods wagons had only part of its space filled with treasure, there was a good deal of empty space because of the weight. And also everyone knew that if any train got through it would be ours, so that everyone wanted to be part of it. There were squadrons of Cossacks aboard the trains in front of us and behind us and their sole assignment was to prevent our own people from climbing on board this train. I have no idea how many were murdered by those Cossacks; it must have been hundreds at least.
âWhen we were stalled that final time in the Kuznets the Admiral called a conferenceâthe ranking people on his staff. My brother and I were not privy to it of course, but afterward it was easy to see what they had decided. I donât know whose idea it wasâI doubt it was the Admiralâs, he was too jealous of the treasure, he wouldnât have volunteered to part with it. But someoneâor some groupâmust have convinced him that it simply wasnât possible to go on carrying it with us. We were still a thousand kilometers short of Irkutsk.
âAt this time we had progressed ahead of the vanguard of the refugee column on the trakt. I suppose it must have been two or three days behind us. We did not know then, of course, how many of them had perished. * But in spite of our special treatment we had lost several lives even among our own small privileged company and we couldnât believe that those poor wretched beings had much chance of
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