Dimitri never expected to develop a genuine friendship with the Mongolian horse thief he met in the middle of the Russian taiga, but something about mutually saving each other’s lives tended to bring men together. Temujin once shot a wolf that had been creeping up on Dimitri while he’d been hunkered over an icy stream to fill the waterskin jug. Another time Dimitri woke to find a lone bandit about to slit Temujin’s throat. The bandit had been frightened away by Dimitri’s well-thrown rock. Over the following weeks, Dimitri and Temujin leaned on each other while foraging for nuts or tramping through the woods at night.
Their journey through the taiga of south-central Siberia took almost a month, but Temujin had the ability to blend in during the rare times they came to a village. He was a Buryat who didn’t know if he’d been born in Russia or Mongolia but moved easily in both. No one looked askance at Temujin as he haggled for rides on the back of a wagon, and once he bartered for a ten-day journey on a river barge, which transported them nine hundred miles.
Over time, they learned each other’s life stories. Temujin had once been a nomadic herder who moved with the seasons and lived in a yurt made of animal hides stretched over a lightweight frame. That came to an end after he married.
“Tania wanted a real house made of wood,” Temujin said, and he had built her one with his own hands. It was only a single room, but it had a real wooden floor and a doorway through which they watched their goats grazing on the land. They hadlived happily for three years before Tania died giving birth to a stillborn son, and that was when Temujin, by his own admission, “went a little crazy.”
“I couldn’t live in the place that had been built for a woman no longer on this earth. I left and never looked back.”
He embarked on a life of stealing horses. He was eventually caught and condemned to a penal colony near Iskitim. For the next two years, he mined copper before escaping and joining the gang of outlaws.
“I am a nomad again,” Temujin said one night as they trudged through the first dusting of snow. “I was foolish to try to be otherwise.”
“Will you go back to stealing horses once we make it out of the forest?”
Temujin shrugged, but Dimitri had learned to see the good in this thief.
“I don’t believe God would have sent you a good woman like Tania and then taken her away for no reason. She proved you can be more than a thief.”
He expected Temujin to scoff, but he merely stared into the distance in speculation. “You have often spoken of this god who comes in three parts,” he said. “The Father, and the Son, and the one I still don’t understand.”
“The Holy Spirit,” Dimitri said. “Out here in the wilderness I feel the Holy Spirit everywhere. Whispering in my ear, urging me to survive long enough to deliver my message. It was the Holy Spirit that gave me the courage to leap from the train. Somehow, I believe we are both going to survive, Temujin.”
Their friendship did not come without arguments, and as November turned into December, those arguments became more urgent. The climate was worsening, and they could not survive the winter on their own. Each time they stopped to make a camp, they argued.
“We should turn south,” Temujin insisted, squinting against the sideways-falling sleet as he kicked aside pine needles insearch of kindling dry enough to burn. “We can find shelter in Mongolia for the worst of the winter.”
Dimitri shook his head. “I can’t afford to stay in one place for months on end. I must get to Port Arthur before the worst of the winter arrives.” It was the only way he would be able to reach Natalia and begin righting the terrible atrocity he had witnessed.
Temujin dumped a jumble of twigs into a mound. “I can’t believe you really intend to sail to America. What about that house of yours? The one with too many rooms and a name?”
“Mirosa.”
“Yes, Mirosa. And the woman with the blond hair and hot eyes?”
“Olga.” Dimitri smiled a bit at Temujin’s characterization ofhot eyes. It was no secret that Olga hoped they could finally marry now that she was a widow, but his exile meant Olga was lost forever. So was Mirosa and his apple orchards and picnics in the dappled sunlight with friends from across the valley. It was all gone, and when he was this cold and miserable, he didn’t have the strength to discuss it.
In the end, Temujin agreed it would be easier to suffer the cold heading toward Port Arthur than risk the mountains to the south, but their troubles soon got worse. Snow gathered and deepened, soaking the thin leather of Dimitri’s moccasins. He was in danger of frostbite until they came across a dead Russian soldier in the snow. A deserter? The wolves had already gotten to him, but his boots were still in good shape. Dimitri tried not to look as he stripped the body of the boots, gloves, and a hunting knife. Temujin took the scarf and belt, and then they headed onward.
The weather got so bad that Dimitri risked approaching a village nestled beside a frozen lake. One of the villagers had a pony and sledge used by hunters to haul animal carcasses. It was only a five-foot slab of wood with two runners at the bottom and a bar for the driver to hold while steering the pony, but it could travel quickly across the snow.
The only thing of value they had to barter was the gold coin. It was worth ten times what the pony and sledge cost, but they had no choice. They were both wanted men, and that sledge could be the key to their salvation.
They harnessed the pony, boarded the sledge, and set off toward the east and freedom.
9
On Friday morning, Natalia tried to tutor Liam on the impact of tariffs on exchange rates. They sat at the worktable in her office but hadn’t made much progress because Liam’s attention kept wandering to the family gathering at her cousin Gwen’s lake house that weekend. It would be his last chance to row on the lake before winter, and he wanted to leave work early to enjoy a full three-day weekend. Natalia hadn’t had a three-day weekend since... well, not since becoming an adult.
“All work and no play makes for a dull young lady,” Liam teased.
“Then I’m dull,” she replied with a shrug. Her salary reports were due on Monday, and she planned to finalize them this afternoon. She didn’t mind. Working for the bank was what gave shape and meaning to her life, and she loved it.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Liam said. “If I prove that I can make sense of fluctuating exchange rates before lunch, we take off for the lake this afternoon.”
“Deal!” she said. It would be worth it if Liam could finally buckle down and start making progress on mastering finance.
Their deal worked. By two o’clock they were aboard a carriage heading north for the lake house, but Natalia still brought along a book on economic philosophy to read over the weekend.It wasn’t that she disliked gatherings at the lake, but at least she could put her evenings to good use learning something important.
