Sibley's Secret
Page 9
abandoned or turned over to his lieutenants. He’d become maniacal about it ever since the now-failed submarine expedition began. He was convinced the stories were true about Kolchak having the gold, but he knew they were misleading. The gold hadn’t gone into the lake: there was a far simpler explanation. Kolchak had been betrayed by the Czech Legion while trying to escape aboard the Trans-Siberia rail and was turned over to the Bolsheviks. He’d had no time to remove the gold from the train, which was going to Vladivostok on the overland route, not on some contrived line across the frozen lake. It wasn’t that difficult to understand. The gold had stayed on board and continued on with the train after all the Russian Army guards had been removed and slaughtered. The Americans controlled the train and, therefore, had taken the gold to Vladivostok. They may not even have known it was aboard.
Collaboration
Evan and Karina had been sitting studiously, working side-by-side with few words exchanged. Around noon, his stomach growled. “Oops, sounds like my body is demanding food again. Want to join me for lunch?”
She only glanced at him briefly, then returned to writing on her notepad. “I am not very hungry, so go without me.”
“Aw, come on. You need to eat too, and we could talk informally, like we discussed.”
She sighed, putting her pen and notepad into her portfolio, “All right, but I do not want to be away long.”
They asked the attendant to keep others away from the reading machines, and she said she would try. They both carried shoulder bags, exiting the museum. There was a small café with outdoor tables directly across the boulevard from the museum entrance.
He ordered something that looked like a baguette stuffed with meat and vegetables from the picture on the menu, and she ordered a salad that he didn’t recognize. He was dreaming of a Big Mac, but that would probably be for dinner later, near his flat.
It was a clear warm sunny day, so they sat outside at a small round table with an umbrella. He spoke first, “So, what are you looking at today?”
She smiled briefly, “I’m looking for clues about Admiral Kolchak’s gold.”
“Very funny. Okay, did you know that Kolchak had a son, Rostislav, with his wife Sofia? The boy and his mother escaped during the revolution and lived in Paris for the rest of their lives.”
“What does the son mean for the gold?”
“I don’t know. I’m just researching Kolchak, not treasure hunting per se. That’s what I told you, remember?”
“I do not believe you. The gold is the main reason everyone is interested in Kolchak.”
Their food arrived and they ate briefly before Evan continued. “Well, no one has found the gold yet, and it’s important, despite the reason, to build a family tree for historical reasons, maybe even to locate his gold.” He took a bite of the bread.
She paused, “You need to look very closely at the dates when Sonya and her son left Russia.” She began eating.
He grinned, “Sofia had moved to Sevastopol with Rostislav in 1919, hoping Admiral Kolchak would join them before the Reds won the war. He never came, and she took her son to Paris when the Whites were about to be defeated, where they lived out their lives. There’s some letters between them that I’m reading. They didn’t seem to be on good terms.”
She said casually, “Kolchak was going to fight to the death against the Reds and she knew the Whites would lose.” She was also smiling, seeing his reaction.
“I don’t know. The letters just don’t seem personal. It seems odd for two people in love, separated by war, and with the possibility of never being together again not to be communicating warmly; is that the Russian way?” She didn’t answer.
They finished eating and as Evan was about to pay, Karina stopped him and insisted on paying, saying that she was being paid excessively well, and he was poor. It humbled him, but she was insistent, and right.
On the walk back across the street, she said, “I want to know more about Sonya and Rostislav when you finish. When you finish, we can talk about Anna.”
“You mean his mistress?”
She looked at him more seriously. “She was more than a mistress. She also had a son that Kolchak regarded like his own.”
“What do you know that I should know?
Tragic Love
Anna Safonova was born in 1893. In 1912, age 19, she married Russian Admiral Sergey Timiryov. Together, they had a son, Vladimir Timiryov, who would become a notable illustrator, best known for his work in Jack London’s books. Tragically, the young man was executed by firing squad in 1938, like so many other notables, during Stalin’s great purge.
Kolchak and Anna were both married, so he and his young lover maintained a secretive affair from 1915 to 1917, until it became widely known. Anna divorced Timiryov in 1918 to be with her lover, Admiral Kolchak, who was twenty years older. They lived openly together after that until 1920. Anna stayed with Kolchak until his execution, refusing to escape. Throughout their scandalous affair and the rest of her long life, she maintained her undying love of Kolchak, suffering repeated imprisonment and Siberian labor camps for more than sixty years.
After Kolchak’s death by firing squad, Anna married Vsevolod Kniper in 1923 during her first release from prison, but he was simply a means to survive and she was still an attractive woman. She was in love with her dead Admiral. As a young woman, before marriage to her first husband, she had lived in St. Petersburg where she had studied theater, art and several languages. When she met Rear-Admiral Alexander Kolchak in 1915, he was her husband’s friend and commanding officer. Her affair with Kolchak began in secret shortly afterward, but became more open over time, leading to her divorce from Admiral Timiryov. While living with Kolchak from 1917 until his death in 1920, she worked in his anti-communist Siberian government as a translator. When Kolchak was betrayed by the Czechs and given up to the Bosheviks, she begged to be kept with him and was imprisoned nearby until after his execution.
Anna’s tragic life thereafter included unrelenting persecution and punishment by the Soviets for decades. Her only real crimes, in the final analysis, resulted from her unwavering love of the dead Admiral. She would never let his memory die. It was only after her death and the collapse of the Communist experiment that Kolchak was immortalized in statues and monuments across Russia.
Six months after she was released from prison after Kolchak’s execution, she was sent to a Siberian forced labor camp. Following another short release, she was imprisoned again in 1922 charged with “undesirable connections with foreigners and former White officers.”
She was imprisoned again in 1935 for “concealment of the past” and went to a Siberian labor camp once again, but later the sentence was changed to house arrest (internal exile) in Siberia because of her declining health. She tried to live by cleaning streets, but was imprisoned again in 1938 until the end of WWII. Before the end of her sentence, her son had been executed by the Soviets, and her second husband, Vsevolod Kniper, had died from heart problems. All of her other relatives had perished while she was imprisoned. She tried to contact Kolchak’s niece, but was rebuffed.
After leaving prison in 1945, she settled briefly in Scherbakov on the Volga River, near Moscow, where she became the property manager for a drama theatre, but, once again, in 1949, she was denounced by jealous workmates, convicted of unspecified crimes, and sentenced to prison in eastern Siberia for nine months. After release, she returned to the theater where she worked quietly for the rest of her life, into her early eighties, dying in 1975. Throughout her life, her crime was her love of Admiral Kolchak, who is today, ironically, immortalized as a national naval hero.
Anna was remarkably resilient and talented, and despite the government’s relentless torment, she ended her days as a well-mannered old lady with a history unknown by associates in the theater. Only the theater director knew about her love story with Kolchak, and the tragic life that had ensued. Late in life, frail and beaten, she had pleaded wi
th the government to end the unbearable conditions she’d endured throughout the years. Finally, in 1960, she was granted a small communal room in Moscow. She was also granted a small pension of 45 rubles. Remarkably, as the daughter of a noted composer, Anna secured appearances on stage as an extra in a play, then subsequently in War and Peace, as one of the cast as a noble lady. She then made more stage appearances with larger roles, and she wrote poetry based on her love affair with the Admiral.
Since her death, she has been depicted on screen in various characterizations, and some consider her the model for Lara in Doctor Zhivago.
Olander
Kiki and Chad were waiting at the lobby entrance when he arrived. She was dressed in jeans and a knit shirt, and Chad wore a UNH tee shirt over cutoff jeans. He opened the car’s front door before his mother and slid behind the seat into the back, leaving Kiki standing outside. Jim had come around to hold the door for her.
Chad lounged in the back alone. “Nice wheels! What is this, something from the ‘80’s?”
Jim smiled into the rearview mirror, “Not quite. It’s a 1967 Plymouth Fury 426 Hemi. The fastest car Mopar ever built.” He started accelerating slowly with a muted rumble from the exhaust.
“How fast will it go?”
“It’s over forty-five years old, so I keep in legal limits, but