Sibley's Secret

by Frank Perry

Kolchak was taken from the train as the Americans, on board for protection, looked away. He was then interrogated and tortured between 21 January and 6 February, 1920; despite contrary orders from Lenin, he was condemned to death.

  Kolchak was brought before a firing squad in the early morning of 7 February 1920. He seemed calm and unafraid, and he is said to have refused a blindfold. A priest gave him The Last Rites before the squad fired. His body was unceremoniously dumped over a nearby cliff into the frozen Angara River, never to be seen again.

  The Train

  The bleak Siberian winter was lasting forever. The temperature outside was over minus fifty degrees and the wind was blowing hard enough to buffet the train car sitting, unmoving, on the cold steel tracks. None of the Americans had experienced anything like Siberia in their lives before the Army sent them there. Most would have preferred to stay in the cold damp trenches in France, even with the Germans shooting at them, over this.

  He stood for several seconds, rocking on his feet to regain feeling before reluctantly saluting the man standing in the open boxcar door before him. Sergeant Albrecht hated the Colonel, Lt. Colonel Brucston Hicks, or as the men called him behind his back, ‘Suckson Pricks.’ Albrecht and Hicks had a long history. The Sergeant even knew that his family name had been changed from Hiklebein when the first Dutch farmers settled in Michigan, probably because they were too stupid to spell it; at least that was Albrecht’s opinion.

  Albrecht’s family were also Dutch farmers who settled near Lansing, but that wasn’t the reason he hated Hicks. The reason went back before the war, starting in 1915 when the Sergeant first joined the Michigan National Guard, when it was almost certain that America would enter the war in Europe. He’d been a private and Hicks had been his company commander, a Captain at the time. Hicks was no leader. He kissed ass and made his men work like dogs while he played bridge with other officers. He also stole supplies and sold them to civilians. Their Guard unit was designated as Quartermasters, supply specialists, in the Army Reserve, and Hicks took full advantage of it. None of his men benefitted, and most knew about Hicks, but they kept their mouths shut like “good soldiers.”

  When the unit mobilized as part of the 8th Army Division in 1918, Hicks was promoted to Major, and Albrecht became a corporal. When they arrived in France, most of their work was in the rear, taking supplies to the front so that the combat soldiers could continue fighting. Hicks quickly found ways of trading supplies for battlefield souvenirs to sell back home, or selling supplies to local villagers on the black market. The men all knew what Hicks was doing but remained silent. The military offered no channel for complaints against the commander. Hicks always stayed behind the lines with the supplies, but nonetheless received a medal and Purple Heart for heroism and wounds received carrying supplies to the trenches, having never been there. His men suffered those wounds and earned the medals, but Hicks received the awards. He was promoted to Lt. Colonel for conspicuous gallantry, which almost caused a mutiny among his troops.

  Back home, before the war, Hicks managed a granary in Jackson County. This was probably where he first learned how to steal and avoid getting caught. Some of the enlisted men had more demanding jobs as civilians before the war. Albrecht had been a news reporter, actually a sports and obituary reporter, for a major newspaper in Lansing and expected to return to it when the war ended. Before shipping out, they had all drilled on weekends, and Hicks had been their commanding officer. No one was quite certain how he got his commission: it wasn’t through merit. As soon as the war ended and they were released from service, Albrecht planned to go back to the paper and write the whole Hicks story, focusing on thievery and cowardice.

  Unfortunately, their Battalion had been reassigned near the end of the war as part of the AEF-Siberia and sent to Russia until the end of 1920, basically to guard a train line. They weren’t the only foreign soldiers spread over most of the Russian continent: Brits, Canadians and Japanese were there too. The AEF had overall responsibility to protect the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and the General, MGEN Graves, wanted them to be an example for the other troops, so he stationed his division across the worst of it, across the Siberian plain.

  Hicks was fuming, “Soldier (he knew Albrecht’s name), you will salute a superior officer whenever and wherever you see him. Is that clear?” Hicks was red-faced and shaking as he spoke. His breath froze in front of him, but the shaking was from rage, not the Siberian winter. He may or may not have known how the men felt about him; he was never close to them, but he was getting less and less respect as the months passed by after the war had ended in France. They should have been going home with the others. They weren’t real soldiers, they were National Guard, weekend warriors, citizen soldiers, volunteers, whatever you wanted to call them; and he, Albrecht, was fed up and didn’t care if he got busted and sent home for insubordination. The only reason he still tolerated Hicks at all was to avoid a court martial that might get him discharged dishonorably. He had served honorably and wasn’t going to lose that recognition, even if it meant saluting Suckson Pricks.

  Albrecht’s hand went up reluctantly, “Sir. I can’t just stand by and let those peasants take these Russian soldiers off the train. They’re shooting them for God’s sake, sir.”

  “That’s not your concern, Sergeant. Our orders are to protect this train and the supplies on it. That’s all. If the Czechoslovak Legion demands these Russian soldiers and are pointing guns at the train to get them, we’ll give them the soldiers. We are not to get involved, by order of President Wilson!”

  “Sir, we fought with these Russians (Whites) in France. We’re allies. These men have done nothing except follow orders to guard the supplies they loaded for that Admiral.”

  “The Admiral has been taken off the train by the Czechs.”

  Albrecht stood silently for a moment. “You mean the American Army gave up a Russian Admiral to a bunch of rebels?”

  “I’m not going to stand here explaining matters that don’t concern you, Sergeant. Get these Russians off the train. If they refuse to go, then shoot them.”

  Hicks left the boxcar without saluting. Albrecht was tempted to shoot him in the back and do everyone a favor, but he held back. He had a horrible task ahead. He had to order his men to push the last Russians, boys like themselves, into the mob waiting along the siding. He could hear the shots resonating across the rail yard above the storm. They weren’t even given a military firing squad. They were making the soldiers kneel while some peasant with frozen hands, who never fought for his country, fired a single bullet into the soldier’s head. He’d seen men in France shot in the head and not die immediately. Albrecht saw the first ones executed in horror from a distance, but couldn’t bear watching more. The shots continued. He’d seen men die in the trenches in France, but at least it had been matched in battle. This was just murder by a mob. This part of the world was insane.

  It was bitterly cold with snow biting at his face as he jumped down from the car, holding his trench coat collar tight around his neck, walking with his head down against the perpetual Siberian blizzard. He walked to the next forward car, still filled with Americans and Russians, taking cover behind the heavy crates marked “rail wheels” that the Admiral had had moved aboard. He pushed the door open a few feet and yelled. “All Russians, jump out.” When nothing happened he pushed the door wider and saw the horror on everyone’s faces, both Americans and Russians. For all he knew some of the Americans had come from Russia originally. “Come on men, the Russians have to go.” He wasn’t convincing himself, much less the other soldiers. He yelled more forcefully, “Americans, kindly escort the Russian soldiers from the car.”

  There was motion inside and he heard several cries of “No, no,” but the Americans did their job and pushed or pulled their foreign brethren to the door where they were thrown into the mass of rebels waiting for them with guns of various origins. One Russian turned at the door and a Cz
ech officer shot him in the back with his revolver. The man wasn’t killed immediately, but collapsed out of the car where he was dragged away.

  Neither Albrecht nor his company’s men, mostly civilian friends from around Lansing, would ever forget the screams of the Russians being taken away to be slaughtered like lambs. They had followed orders, but would never forgive President Wilson, the Army, General Graves, Colonel Pricks or themselves. This wasn’t war, this was murder, and they were all part of it. Soon, the article about Hicks would be written if Albrecht survived the winter without killing the Colonel. These were not morally acceptable orders. They had crossed the line.

  In Tranquility

  Kiki hurried down the stairs to reach her smartphone charging on the kitchen counter. She got there at the fourth ring. “Hello.”

  “You sound out of breath.” She recognized Jim Olander’s voice.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Whew! We just got home from the airport, and my phone was dead.” She was alone. Chad had taken her car to his girlfriend’s as soon as their bags were in the house.

  “So, I guess you had a good trip back?

  “Yeah, it all worked out great. We got to