To die at 58 as an oligarch in one’s own time is insulting. To wake up at 20 as a White Guard officer in a freezing railcar heading to Harbin is unexpected.
In my pocket there is not a penny, my body can barely move after typhus, and outside the door of the cattle car—there are Chinese patrols, looters, and the merciless year of 1920.
My main asset is a loyal Cossack scout-plastun with a “Mauser,” a boy—the heir of a wealthy family—and a hundred hungry emigrants. My strategy is audacity and experience from the past.
I’m not going to save a collapsed Empire. I will build my own.