Then the best thing happens. Rufina gets up and bumps the table, which is quite rickety. Both mugs tip over and spill the remains of their contents. She emits a gasp of distress, followed by a muttered curse.
“Never mind,” I say quickly, “I’ve had enough,” and then yawn. There is a flicker of light in her eyes. Sleeping medicine, I think. But why does she want me to sleep? Why should I be asleep when the Schutzmannschaft come, when her son the archangel arrives to deliver me? For I’m sure that is her plan.
By the time I crawl into bed, dusk has thickened to darkness. I grasp the barrel of the pistol. It grows warm in my hand. I hear a creak in the floorboards outside my door. A liquid shadow slides beneath the door as it opens, then spills across the moon-washed wall, creating the silhouette of a lifted ax. I spring from the bed and, holding the pistol with both hands, cock the trigger. The scent of chocolate swirls through the air.
“No!” I say.
We stand scant meters apart. I’ve never come face-to-face with my victims. Never until this moment. And again the smell of chocolate seeps into my nostrils. My chocolate. I feel the undertow of an overwhelming fatigue pulling me down. I cannot kill anymore. The gun wobbles in my hand, and then I hear a deafening crack. Rufina looks at me in complete shock. A chunk of her head falls on the floor as she crumples.
I drop the gun to my side. My finger is still on the trigger and yet there was no recoil. I didn’t fire the shot. As I stand, staring in horror, a young woman emerges from the shadows and jumps over Rufina’s fallen body.
“Come on! We’re out of here,” she hisses at me. She’s holding a pistol, and slung across her back is a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle.
Even in the dim light, I recognize the sniper Roza Shanina. She’s one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her strawberry-blond hair is arranged primly in a schoolmarmish bun. A galaxy of pale freckles is sprinkled across her cheeks. She grabs me by the elbow and steers me out of the room. I twist around to look at the body of Rufina.
“Don’t look back! Never look back.”
* * *
We are racing across the field. Roza swerves right, toward the road that cuts through a pasture. There ahead of us is a Yak, and standing by the propeller is Galya! It’s such a beautiful sight, I can barely believe it. She takes off her flight cap and waves it joyously.
I break away from Roza and dash into Galya’s arms.
“You’re alive! How is that possible?” I am sobbing.
“No time for explanations. In you go. Be my navigator for just this flight,” Galya says.
Within two minutes, we are up in the air. Roza and I are squashed into the rear cockpit. The sky folds around me. The stars sing. My pant legs are splattered with blood. Galya hands me the coordinates for the flight plan.
“Where are we going?”
“Poland.”
The front has moved to Poland already? Galya explains that the Red Army has been extraordinarily successful. We have pushed the Nazis west. The entire front of the war has moved. The Germans are out of the Motherland.
Roza was right. We can’t look back. Just ahead.
I will never see Roza again. She was brought in by Commander Bershanskaya when a surveillance plane spotted my crashed aircraft. And it’s odd, but after that night I never dream of Yuri again. I think of him but I never dream of him. He has dissolved like a vapor on a sunny morning.
Galya’s hands are a few inches apart. She is bringing them together slowly. I have seen half a dozen of my fellow Night Witches make this same gesture as they describe what has happened since I crashed. There’s been a major shift in the war. The Allies have managed to surround the Germans and are preparing for a final push.
So much has happened since my crash, I might as well have been on another planet, in another solar system. “You see, from the west and the east we are squeezing them!” she exclaims, and claps her hands together. How Galya survived that crash is another story. Somehow she fell out of that plane in the flight seat and managed to open her parachute. She was quickly picked up by men from a Soviet infantry unit.
“Tell me one more time, Galya, how all this happened. About the Allies landing on the beaches in France. When was it exactly?”
“June sixth. First the paratroopers went in, thirteen thousand of them.”
My eyes widen. “Thirteen thousand! That’s a lot of Geronimos.”
“They probably weren’t shouting.” Galya laughs. “They wanted to sneak in before dawn.”
“What next?” I lean in, enthralled as a child listening to a favorite story.
“The assault by sea. That was the most incredible part. Twenty-one thousand infantry landing on Utah Beach. They cleared out the Germans there and within hours had penetrated nearly eleven kilometers into France.”
“Incredible!” I say.
“Inspiring. It was like a jolt of adrenaline into our troops. Then we started moving west on the tails of the Nazis while the Allies started to move east.” She raises her hands again. “We’re squeezing them, Valya. We’re going to strangle the Nazis.”
“And it was in Lublin where they discovered a concentration camp and all those horrible … horrible …” I trail off. I cannot fathom what I’ve been hearing about these camps—the atrocities that the Nazis committed.
This morning, we are awaiting our commander, Yevdokiya Bershanskaya, in a tent at a temporary airfield near Krosno in southern Poland. A map of the surrounding area has been set up, and we all stare at it, wondering about our next mission.
Bershanskaya strides into the room. Her green eyes are calm and steady, her shoulders squared. In some people the weariness of war is apparent, but not in Bershanskaya. Not a gray hair. Not a wrinkle in her tranquil brow. She flashes us a warm smile and takes up a pointer.
“Ladies, I give you the Vistula River, the longest river in Poland. Our focus is here.” She taps the map near the city of L’viv. “We are determined to hold it. That means protecting the Vistula bridgeheads. We have close to forty antitank artillery forces there repulsing the counterattacks of the German armored forces. Our job is to make sure the Red Army can do its job and defend the bridgeheads in this area.” She taps the map, indicating the cities of Magnuszew and Puławy. “The other regiments will be taking care of the northern bridgeheads toward Warsaw. It is up to us and the other aviation units to protect this Ukrainian front and make sure it does not slip back into Nazi claws. Thirty-two air divisions have been assigned. So including us, the Taman Guards, we’ll have the 586th Fighter Regiment and the 125th Guard Bombers. As you know, there are many men in those formerly all-female units. Only we, the Taman Guards, remain completely women. Let’s show them what we can do!” We all cheer. I cheer the loudest. I am grateful to be back, grateful for the chance to fight again.
As we disperse from the meeting, Bershanskaya signals me to follow her into her quarters. When I enter, I find her leaning on the small desk with both fists planted on the top. She looks at me for several seconds before speaking. Her forehead is crinkled and a ferocious light flickers in the limpid green eyes. It is as if there is a storm gathering.
“You are very good, Valya. Over the past week, you’ve flown more than a dozen missions and hit extremely difficult targets every single time. Quite remarkable, especially after not flying for so long.”
“Thank you,” I say, my voice quavering. What is she going to tell me?
“This task we have been given, the bombing of the ammo depot, is going to be complex. As you know, the civilians in that part of the Belarusian-Polish border are not what one could call solid allies. The Schutzmannschaft is very active. Pockets of collaborators all over. Worse than where you were on that farm. Extracting you was relatively easy. I was so pleased when Galya came back with those coordinates. Ever since Operation Bagration began, getting you out was a primary objective.”
She sees the astonishment in my face and continues. “Yes, I wanted you because I knew sooner or later the Red Army would be cr
ossing the Vistula and protecting the bridgeheads would be key. It will depend almost entirely on air divisions. The Taman Guard will have forty aircraft flying. Half of our planes will be led by me. I want you to lead the other half.”
Surprise and excitement course through me. “I am honored, Commander.”
“That is beside the point,” she says curtly, and reaches for something in her pocket. She slaps it on the desk. It is a small packet. “If you go down and survive, the Germans will capture you.”
“I know there are no prisoners of war. Only traitors.”
“It is worse than that,” she says. “Did you hear that Stalin’s son Jacob committed suicide when he heard his father denied having a son?”
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t hear that. What are you trying to tell me?” My eyes fix on the packet. I know what’s in it. Cyanide tablets. There have been rumors about these being issued to prevent prisoners of war from revealing secrets under torture.
“Now, listen to me carefully, Valentina.” She leans across the desk, her face inches from mine. “I am not worried about you being tortured by the Nazis. I am worried about you being tortured by Joseph Stalin. I am going to tell you a dirty little secret. Does SMERSH mean anything to you?”
“Counterintelligence, right?”
“Yes; ‘death to fascists’ is what the acronym stands for. The SMERSH agents work hand in glove with NKVD.”
“Right,” I say slowly, trying to process what she is getting at.
“You see,” she continues, “every time a German prison camp is liberated, these SMERSH units and NKVD officers move in to interrogate the Russian prisoners, the ‘traitors’ who allowed themselves to be captured. These agents are charged with evaluating the prisoners’ loyalty to the Soviet Union. Stalin is paranoid. He is as bad as Hitler,” she whispers hoarsely. Oh, she has said it! I think. She has said what none of us have dared to say out loud for years. It’s why Mama never wanted to talk about Papa after he disappeared. She feared for the worst. She feared a fate much worse than death.
“Have you told the others this?”
Something seems to deflate within her. She shakes her head. “How can I hand a packet of cyanide to every single pilot and navigator and tell them what I just told you and then expect them to fly?” She pauses and looks at me. To my surprise, her eyes well with tears. “I had to tell you. I can’t be dishonest with you and expect you to lead. You are a wing commander now. This is the terror of such responsibility.”
I nod and start to leave.
“Not yet, Comrade Baskova.” She points to a chair. “Please sit down. There is someone I want you to meet. Though I believe you may already know him.”
“What? Who?” I ask, looking around the room.
“Comrade Vasnov, you may enter now.”
My heart leaps into my throat as, from a door I never noticed in the rear of the office, Yuri steps out.
“Surprised?” he says with a small smile. I’m speechless. Once again Yuri has emerged from the vaporous mists of war. “I was going to come rescue you myself, but Roza was closer.”
I remain silent as the words sink in. All those weeks when I felt so stranded, so alone, Yuri was thinking about me. “You were worried about me?” I say finally.
“Worried about a girl who’s flown over five hundred bombing missions? No, not really. I know you can take care of yourself. But someone had to fetch you at some point.”
“So what are you doing here now?” I ask, noticing Commander Bershanskaya glance quickly between us. I have the sense of someone watching a tennis match, but the match is too slow for her liking.
“Yuri came to deliver some important news,” she said. “We have cause to believe that your sister is in one of the camps near Smolensk.”
I leap from my chair. “You mean she’s alive?”
Yuri takes a deep breath. “Roza and I infiltrated that camp less than a week ago. We picked off half a dozen guards. I saw Tatyana in one of the infirmary buildings. Roza saw her too.” He rubs his forehead.
“How did you know it was my sister?”
“She looks so much like you.” He reaches out and touches my hair.
“But my hair isn’t red.”
“No, it’s gold. But it’s your sister that I saw. Believe me. I had her in my crosshairs for hours, or so it seems.”
His words seem to suck all the air from my lungs. “In your crosshairs? Why?”
“I was trying to take out the men guarding her and the other prisoners. Her head kept getting in the way.”
“So my sister lives,” I say wondrously. It seems so miraculous, it’s as if I’m tasting starlight. The very starlight I saw when I sat on the wing of my crashed plane and glimpsed Orion’s Belt and knew she lived. My wonder hardens into steely resolve. “I need to rescue her.”
“Yes, but you must wait for the right moment,” Bershanskaya says. “Remember, between you and your sister in that camp are a dozen or more bridgeheads on the Vistula River. That ammo depot must be blown up before you can rescue her. Those bridgeheads must be protected so the Red Army can get through. Go to the mess and get yourself some coffee and food. Your plane will be ready to fly in”—she looks at her watch—“exactly ten minutes. And be sure to keep this a secret.” She glances toward the door, as if worried about eavesdroppers. “No rescue mission has been authorized. You must go and return without being caught.”
I can feel the cyanide tablets in my pocket. If I don’t get to Tatyana soon, she could be killed as a traitor by our own forces. I don’t have a minute to lose.
“Thank you,” I say to Yuri as we leave Bershanskaya’s quarters. “You don’t know what this means to me.”
“It’s a pleasure to share good news for once,” he says stiffly; then his voice softens. “I hope you find her, Valya. I hope you both make it back safely.”
I nod. “Would you like something to eat before you go?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve been gone for too long as it is. Perhaps I’ll see you again, when all this is done.”
“Perhaps,” I say, smiling slightly at the idea of seeing Yuri when we can focus on talking—and maybe laughing—instead of killing.
He places his hand on my arm, squeezes it, and then he’s gone.
Dirty little secrets have a way of spreading. There’s an eerie quiet as I walk into the mess. I see everyone stealing glances toward a table in the corner. Ivan Orlyev, deputy chief of SMERSH on the Belorussian Front, is sitting with his pal from the NKVD, Anton Semenov. Suddenly my stomach is not up for food. But it’s too late. I feel their eyes rake over me for clues that might betray a potential “traitor.” They rise and begin making their way toward me. They remind me of cartoon characters. In my head they become Smitt and Smatt. Maybe like Mutt and Jeff, the favorites of many Russian kids.
“Comrade Baskova?” Orlyev asks. I nod. “I understand that you are to function as a wing commander in the defense of the bridgeheads of Vistula.”
I hate the way this man speaks. Function? As if I am a cog in a piece of machinery. “Yes, sir.”
“And I understand that your sister went down somewhere in Kursk.”
My stomach clenches. “Yes, sir.”
“Never found, eh?”
“Never found, sir.”
“Presumed dead.”
“Not presumed. She’s dead,” I lie. They must believe she’s dead and not a prisoner of war, since all POWs are considered traitors.
“Olga Markovich witnessed the accident, but she’s dead too.” I just made this up, but they have no way of checking my story now.
With his bloodless lips, sharp nose, and close-set eyes, Orlyev evokes the aspect of a rodent. But what’s far more repulsive is his vanity. His hairline is receding as fast as the German army, but he has obviously spent some amount of time combing the remaining strands over his bald head in what I’m sure he considers an artful arrangement. Semenov, on the other hand, has the appearance of a slightly wizened cherub. Everything is
round—his cheeks, his nose, his completely bald head that gleams pinkly. Scattered with purple veins, his scalp suggests a kind of vascular cartography of some unknown land.
“We understand that you were shot down in the Ukraine …” Orlyev’s beady eyes narrow. He pauses, and Semenov cuts in.
“Perhaps you had some contact with the Schutzmannschaft?”
Luckily, at that moment, Bershanskaya arrives. “Pardon me, gentlemen. I do not mean to interrupt, but Comrade Baskova’s plane is ready.”
I go back and find Galya. She has to know about Tatyana. We have to start planning now, but we can’t let anyone overhear us. It’s broad daylight, so we aren’t yet flying, but we will in a matter of hours. The only place we can truly have privacy is in the cockpit of our U-2.
“Follow me,” I call, and begin walking toward our plane.
“Why? I want to sleep.”
“Not now; I want to run a compass check.”
“A compass check? We just did one yesterday. Our compass is fine.”
“Just be quiet and follow me.”
Galya seems to sense this is not about a compass check at all. We reach the plane and climb into our cockpits. I unfold a map. “You see the bridgeheads that Commander Bershanskaya marked?”
She looks over. “Yes.”
With a trembling finger, I point to an area south and east of Smolensk. “You see that?”
“Yes. It’s beyond the bridgeheads. What is it?”
“Tatyana,” I whisper. “She’s in a prison camp there.”
“You’re kidding. How do you know this?”
“Yuri.”
“Yuri? How can that be?”
“You know when Bershanskaya called me into her office?” She nods. “He was there.”
I quickly explain about the POW camp and how he recognized her. “If the Germans don’t kill her, the NKVD will capture her. That’s what they do. They’ll capture her and send her to the gulag as a slave.”
Galya looks down and clenches her fists. “I heard rumors of this. We can’t let it happen to your sister.”
“As soon as the bridgeheads are secure, four divisions of the Red Army will go in. Some will go to these camps to ‘liberate’ the prisoners. But it will be no liberation. Russian trucks will come in to take the prisoners back east to another kind of death. Believe me.”