To illustrate the point, however mildly spoken, the White swept an arm to indicate the putrefying balconies and the verminous orchestra pit.
“Trying to remind us how great this revolution of yours is?”
For a moment, Trotsky bristled so fiercely that his bushy hair began to quiver, but with a supreme effort, he quelled his obvious wrath. One hand rose and very carefully adjusted the glasses across the bridge of his nose, while the other gripped the front lapel of his overcoat with affronted dignity.
“The losses of this war weigh on us all,” the Red said, stiffly at first, but warming to the speech as he went. “But the reason I called us all here has nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the future.”
Rustling among the Whites was greeted by indignant glares from the Reds, but no one contested the point.
“By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard what has happened with Stalin,” Trotsky continued, ignoring the leers and unsympathetic comments from the Whites with his dignity intact. “I’m sure you’ve also heard about the construction project in Petrograd.”
There were more muttered exclamations, but these were far less energetic and far more uncertain. They’d been too busy waging war on the members of the opposite faction and occasionally each other, but word had still reached them, though not with its meaning understood. Yes, they’d heard, but even if they believed, the information did not lend itself to understanding. After all, why would anyone waste valuable resources on building anything in a blasted pit like the fallen capital of the Russian Empire?
“I thought you said this meeting was about the future?” the White asked, a lazy smile making a half-hearted attempt at mimicking his mustache. The Whites around him nodded and chuckled deep in their chests. “Do you plan to delay until the winter snows fall and collapse the ceiling on us all?”
Trotsky sniffed but did not take the bait, turning slightly instead to make it clear he was addressing all present.
“We have good reason to believe both of these incidents were the direct result of German meddling in Russian affairs. In the face of our great nation falling under the control of the black-coated heathens, it seemed to be high time we came to some sort of understanding.”
The Red turned sharply to his counterpart and arched an eyebrow.
“Does that serve as an explanation, Wrangel?” he hissed. He rocked back a little on his heels as he hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his greatcoat.
Wrangel, who was much taller than Trotsky and seemed even more so given his gaunt frame, glared down his nose at the Red and seemed prepared to say something particularly unkind. Finally, his shoulders bowed a little more, and his gaze became distant. His chin rose and fell slowly, to the obvious consternation of several of his fellow whites.
“You may be a godless little Jew, but you aren’t wrong,” Wrangel declared with a retiring sigh. “The Germans and their legions of treacherous conscripts are circling like wolves.”
Many of the whites nodded gravely along with their ad hoc champion, but a few clearly did not appreciate his sudden commiseration with the Reds.
A stout officer sputtered beneath an outward-sweeping mustache that looked ready to engage a bull horn to whiskers.
“My intelligence reports say Stalin cooperated with the Germans,” he declared, shooting a narrowed glare at the Reds before angrily turning to scowl at Wrangel. “How do we know this isn’t some ploy by the communist vermin to get us to lower our guard?”
“Because leaving the scattered corpses of our armies in the Caucasus Mountains is a pretty stupid way to win the war, Yudenich,“ Trotsky rebuked before Wrangel could reply. “Stalin took more of our strength than any of us cares to admit, and it was irrevocably broken in Georgia.”
Yudenich’s mustache writhed as though ready to strike, but Trotsky glared through his spectacles undaunted.
“If you have intelligence about Stalin and the Germans, it must corroborate what I am saying,” the smaller man snapped before turning back to Wrangel. “We can keep suspecting and killing each other, but it will only be that much easier for the blackcoats to come along and pick us apart if we do that.”
Again, Wrangel looked as though nothing would please him more than to sneer in the Red’s face, but an absolute weight bore down on him, and he could only nod.
“I would see you all dead in a ditch, but not if it means those savages become our new masters,” he said, turning to his constituents with a measuring eye. “I don’t think any true Russian would want such a thing.”
The emphatic phrasing combined with the tall man’s relentless stare cowed the other Whites, even Yudenich. Some muttered similar sentiments of wishing ignominious death on communists, but not if it meant German boots on their throats. Most nodded silently.
Satisfied, Wrangel turned to regard Trotsky coolly but without challenge.
“I assume you have something in mind?”
Trotsky nodded again as he and all the Reds stared in shock. For all their wild hopes, none had thought the Whites would be won over so easily. Many had declared days ago that the royalist snobs would rather see Russia in ashes before they worked with the Bolsheviks. It seemed that Trotsky’s statement that their country was already in ashes had been more successful than even he had dared to hope.
“Well,” Trotsky said, wiping off his glasses pensively to buy time, “the first thing we need to do is secure our western borders and co-opt the supplies headed to Petrograd. I’m sure we could all make use of what is being funneled there.”
Several heads on both sides nodded in unison before noticing and stopping with juvenile alarm.
“Do you know what is being built there?” Wrangel asked, a frown spreading across his face.
From above them, a deep, velvety voice reached down to brush every man’s ear like a descending silken noose.
“The future,” the voice said,
