“Thank you, Pishkoff. The rules of my landing have changed now. Someone might try to assassinate me, I suppose.”

“And if you die, you get a statue.”

“Good night, Pishkoff,” Ironside said, dismissing him. Alone with the howl of the northern seas, Ironside understood he was, again, sailing into a historic occasion, and he hated historic occasions. He imagined that, somewhere nearby, a ship was passing in the other direction. He waved, as if to General Poole, whom he would never meet, now that he was in charge of the destinies of fifty thousand civilians, five thousand Slavo-British Legionnaires, and many Allied troops, including forty-eight hundred Americans. Had he ever seen an American? Tom Mix. All the doughboys he’d seen off duty, feeding pigeons in the square. But had he ever talked to an American? For a moment he couldn’t decide if he had or not. With rising anxiety, he wondered if he’d seen an American in combat. Newsreel footage.

Back at his cabin, there was a telegram from Mr. Nicholas Chaikovsky, supreme commander of Archangel. He congratulated Ironside for his promotion (Ironside noted Chaikovsky’s quick work). He also indicated that Ironside would be met by the entire Slavo-British Legion at dockside. “They will be in full parade dress and will demonstrate their superior techniques at formation. They will march, turning both right and left,” he promised, a phrasing that did not set Ironside’s mind at ease.

Ironside read weather reports (the highest recorded temperature this week was ten degrees below zero Fahrenheit), and he issued a coded telegram, his first order: the Allied men at the farthest post, Verst 455, should build a strong defensive position with barbed wire, and Supply should ship all the available machine-gun sandbags from the warehouses to the troops hunkered down in blockhouses. If there were any native Russian troops—he thought he’d seen such mentioned in the Canadian artillery—they should be rotated from outpost to outpost to share their knowledge of battle and survival in the snow. He ordered tea shipped to the British men and coffee to the Americans. “Build all further blockhouses under forest cover; in the open, they’re deathtraps. Recruit obvious parties for espionage, ferret out those who will play for both sides, feed them bad intelligence.” He added, “For the men in the field, make sure there is entertainment. Decks of cards, musical instruments if we can find them. Newspapers from their hometowns, as long as they aren’t demoralizing. The picture show. Comedies and romance—nothing with a message.”

That night, he was called to a dance in the Attentive’s cramped wardroom. He attended, head bursting with reportage. The Russian guests wore frayed and repatched gowns or sad, oily Savile Row dinner jackets. Some wore the khaki jackets and blue breeches piped with red silk of former officers; some had sewn back approximations of the great gold lace epaulets ripped from their uniforms in harsher times.