To die at 58 as the oligarch of one’s era is bitter. To come to your senses as a 20-year-old White Guardsman in an icy railcar racing to Harbin—that’s the real surprise.
My pockets are empty, my body after typhus barely obeys, and outside the door of the cattle car there are Chinese patrols, marauding bands, and the merciless year of 1920.
My only capital is a loyal Cossack scout with a “Mauser,” a boy, the heir of a well-off family, and a hundred worn-down emigrants. My plan is audacity and the skills brought from my past life.
I have no intention of hauling a dead Empire out of the ruins. I will build my own.