“A memento of my time in Chita,” he said. “Perhaps the only wise move I made before my trial was to hide things of value on my person. Sadly, the items I sewed into my clothes were stolen before I could use them, but I hid a diamond beneath that scar you have just discovered. It survived long enough for it to be useful.”
She pulled her fingers away, aghast. “You hid a diamond beneath your own skin?”
“A good hiding place, yes?”
She felt dizzy as she absorbed the news. “Does it still hurt?”
“Not usually, but please be gentle with the comb on that spot. The eucalyptus oil will not be kind if the skin breaks open again.”
She leaned in closer, no longer caring about the eye-watering sting of the oil. She needed to inspect his scalp without hurting the scar tissue. “I sense there is quite a story behind this scar,” she said, hoping he would share it with her.
Fortunately, he was in a chatty mood. “I spent many months with a friend who needed to escape as badly as I did.” He went on to describe his improbable friendship with a Buryat outlaw who had escaped from a penal colony. Together, they traveled thousands of miles before going their separate ways in a remote city called Chita.
What sort of man cut a diamond out of his own skin for an outlaw? Who navigated for months on end through a brutal wilderness in his quest for freedom? All her life she had admired brave, daring men who weren’t afraid of a challenge.
It looked like she had found one, but Dimitri was hiding something from her, and she feared it did not bode well.
13
Dimitri was beginning to feel like a man again, restored both in body and spirit. His first few hours in San Francisco had been a hectic experience. The sudden onslaught of noise and crowds, the fear of being alone and penniless, then the joy of falling into Natalia’s welcoming friendship. The mortification of telling her about the lice faded when she rolled up her sleeves to help him with the disagreeable problem.
After the lice treatment, Natalia noticed the disastrous shape of his hands and insisted on soaking them in warmed oil to soften the calluses he’d earned driving the sledge for months on end. He would probably go to his grave with those calluses, but he gladly accepted her ministrations.
Now they dined at a rooftop restaurant called the Oyster House, situated on a terrace overlooking the harbor on one side and the glittering lights of the city on the other. Few people chose to dine outside on such a chilly night, but it didn’t feel cold to him, and Natalia wore an elegantly tailored wool coat with a charming hat cocked at a saucy angle. She looked like a Russian princess in the clear, cold night.
He rotated a crystal goblet, staring at the remnants of a steak dinner and the votive candles that lit their table with a warmglow. Once again, he was on top of the world, dining with a beautiful woman, his belly full.
And somewhere in the cold, windswept land not far from the Trans-Siberian railroad lay thousands of people in unmarked graves. They called out to him for justice. The czar and his allies had done their best to silence him, but now he was in America, and the tables had just turned. It was time to embark on his next mission.
“I need to tell you what I witnessed in Siberia,” he said.
Natalia met his gaze across the candlelit table, pained sympathy in her face. “I’m ready to hear it.”
Dimitri drew a deep breath, bracing himself to relive the memory.
Natalia already understood his role along the southern route of the Trans-Siberian that skirted the Amur River. He did not need to tell her how the land was remote and isolated, nor how the border between Russia and China had repeatedly shifted over the past century. Many Chinese people had settled north of the Amur River in Russian territory even though it put them in a precarious legal situation. When the border was finally defined in 1858 by the Treaty of Aigun, those Chinese settlers living in Russia were guaranteed the right to keep their property in perpetuity.
The agreement worked well until the Boxer Rebellion of last year, when riots against European settlers broke out in China. It eventually spread toward the Russian border, potentially endangering the railroad.
“There was an incident in which Chinese insurgents launched shells across the river at the Russian town of Blagoveshchensk,” he told Natalia. “I was twenty miles away at the construction outpost, but the attack infuriated the Russian army. They used it as an excuse to expel the Chinese people living north of the river. It was too big a job for the local military, and I was ordered to appear along with workers from the railroad to help secure the border.”
He braced his elbows on the table, clenching his hands andlooking away as dark memories came to the fore. He’d arrived at Blagoveshchensk with a hundred workers. At first he didn’t understand what was being asked of him, but soon it was apparent that he was to help expel the Chinese villagers by any means necessary. Some villagers went peaceably, but others resisted. Then the army moved in, and it became a stampede, with Chinese people racing to get across the river. The barges and ferries were soon overwhelmed.
“By the time I arrived, dozens of men had already been killed,” he said. “They had fought the expulsion from their homes, and the retaliation was brutal. Thousands of others, mostly women and children with a few possessions carried on their backs, begged for mercy, but they received none. They were driven at the point of a rifle toward the river.”
Natalia’s eyes were wide with horror. He wished he didn’t have to share these details with her, but they were at the crux of the charges against him.
“I was ordered to command my men to guard the flanks and prevent anyone from escaping as the army drove the Chinese toward the river. It wasn’t an expulsion; it was an extermination. There were thousands of people, and they were helpless as the soldiers closed in. Then the shooting began.”
Dimitri swallowed back his revulsion. “I shouted at my men, ordering them to break ranks. We couldn’t step in front of the bullets to save those people, but we could give them the chance to escape. A Russian colonel ordered me back to the line, but I refused. I reminded him of the Treaty of Aigun. I saidhewas the one in violation of the law, not me. It was useless. I was arrested on the spot and taken to the governor’s mansion in chains. They sent me to Saint Petersburg to face trial on charges of refusing to obey orders, for which I was guilty, and of cowardice, for which I was not.”
His intransigence hadn’t done much good for the people of Blagoveshchensk. He later heard that over three thousand people had been killed. They had either been shot, axed, trampled, or drowned in the river.
“I have asked myself a thousand times if I could have done anything differently,” he said. “I wish I had never been put in that situation, but I cannot regret my decision. Had I participated in forcing those people into the river, it would have been murder.”
Natalia reached across the table, laying her hand over his clenched fist. How smooth and unblemished her hand looked against his weather-beaten one. He opened his hand, turning his palm up to clasp hers. She looked at him with no contempt, only sympathy, and he was grateful for it.
“The Russians do not wish this story to be known to the world,” he said. “I was not allowed to speak of the incident at my trial because the authorities needed to make an example of me. They publicly humiliated me so that others who witnessed the massacre would remain silent.”
