The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

  Nina rattled it off. “Get some rest, Comrade Major,” she finished.

  “We’ll rest when the war’s over.”

  The year turned; flight training started for the navigators. Flying at night, getting used to the pulse of the blackness around them in the open-air cockpit, cruising under an icy sliver of moon and learning to land with no more aid than a few makeshift runway lights. Everyone knew Raskova would be sorting Aviation Group 122 into its three regiments soon: the day bombers, the night bombers, the fighters. Only the best would be in the fighters, and Nina already knew she wasn’t going to be among them.

  It was a strange thing, not to be the best—she’d been the best for so long, certainly the best female in the air club, but here there were hundreds of women who had all been the best in their air clubs. Three members of an aerobatic team had enlisted; they could flip and twirl a plane like birds of prey. Lilia was impervious to air pressure; she’d push her machine to its limit without ever getting dizzy. Yelena could land featherlight on the roughest field in the region. Nina couldn’t match any of them, and she knew it. That hadn’t been a very pleasant realization at first, if she was being honest—her mouth had been sour with envy, realizing she was outclassed. But it hadn’t taken long for envy to fall away under the grinding stones of work and practicality. They were all fighting the damned Hitlerites in the end, if they ever got off this cheerless stretch of airfield by the Volga. When that happened, Nina wanted to fight wingtip to wingtip with fliers even better than she was.

  “You’re a high-flying eagle,” Nina told Yelena, “and I’m a little hawk.”

  Yelena slid an arm through Nina’s, giving the warm squeeze of reassurance that enchanted Nina every time. Maybe because she’d never really had a woman for a friend before. “You’re no little hawk, Ninochka.”

  “I understand how the plane works—I pull the stick in a particular way, the plane moves a particular way. You understand why. Thrust, ratio, aerodynamics—you fly better for knowing all that.” They were crossing the frozen airfield toward the canteen on a freezing January morning. A group of men in mechanics’ overalls let out derisive whistles, but Nina ignored them. “For me, none of the science ever sinks in.” Nina rapped her own forehead. “Hard Siberian skull.”

  One of the mechanics was shouting something at Yelena, grabbing his crotch. She still tended to blush when she heard the hoots and crude jokes, but for once she was distracted. “Don’t say you’re stupid, because you aren’t.”

  “Maybe not, but I’ll never understand what I do in the air. I just do it.” Nina wriggled her fingers. “Magic.”

  Yelena laughed, but it did feel like magic: Nina had no idea why a propeller worked or what the flying wires did, but as soon as the wheels lifted from the ground, her whole body disappeared into the plane. Her arms became wings, her torso filled the cockpit, her feet disappeared into the wheels. The sensation only strengthened in night flying; her eyes disappeared altogether and she could no longer see that she hadn’t become part of the plane. Flying through a midnight sky came as naturally to Nina as a rusalka swimming through her lake. She didn’t have Yelena’s grace or Lilia’s reflexes, but she had no fear of the dark and moved in the air like it was home. It didn’t make her the best, but it made her very good, and for Nina that was enough.

  February came to Engels, bearing rumor and heartbreak on an icy wind. One of the navigators learned that her parents had starved to death in Leningrad; a girl in the armorer class had a brother fighting the German advance who swore in his letters that the Fritzes were decorating their tanks with Soviet heads. But even the most ghastly rumor couldn’t dent the ferocious anticipation as the women received their assignments. Nina stood breathless as names were read off.

  Aviation Group 122 was no more. There were only the 586th, the 587th, and the 588th. New minted Junior Lieutenant Nina Borisovna Markova would fly out with the 588th.

  The night bombers.

  Chapter 16

  Jordan

  Thanksgiving 1946

  Boston

  Jordan.” Anneliese came into the dining room and dropped the bomb. “Have you been looking through my things?”

  Jordan froze, hands full of silverware. She looked across the expanse of dining room table that Anneliese had decorated for Thanksgiving with the gold-rimmed china that only came out of the cupboard a few times a year. Looked at her stepmother, who gazed back at Jordan with quizzical innocence.

  “What’s that?” Jordan’s father said, distracted. He was on hands and knees at the sideboard, unearthing the turkey platter.

  “I was asking Jordan if she’d been searching my things,” Anneliese said, still with that puzzled air. “Because I think she has been.”

  “I was cleaning.” Jordan hitched her voice into use with a jerk she hoped wasn’t too audible. How did you know? “That’s all.”

  “Then why were you looking through my Bible?”

  The picture, Jordan thought. She’d thought she’d put it back exactly as she found it, but—

  Her father rose, puzzled. “What’s this about?”

  It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It was Thanksgiving Day—the house smelled of sage and turkey and fresh-baked rolls, sending Taro into a tail-wagging shiver of canine delight. Ruth was laying out napkin rings, rosy cheeked at the idea of her first Thanksgiving. Within the hour, they should have been sitting down to eat. This was not when Jordan had planned to broach the subject of exactly who and what her stepmother might be. She was going to wait until the holiday was done and both Anneliese and Ruth were out of the house. Then she would lay her case before her dad alone, speaking calmly like an adult, not a child with a wild theory. She would convince him first, and then they could surprise Anneliese together.

  But now Anneliese was the one who’d surprised her, and all the cards were up in the air.

  “It’s nothing, Dad.” Jordan smiled, trying to slide past the moment. “Let’s check the turkey.”

  But Anneliese was holding her ground, looking more and more hurt. “My Bible is private. Why would you—”

  Jordan’s father was folding his arms now. “What’s going on, missy?”

  He wasn’t going to budge, she could tell.

  So, then.

  Jordan looked at her stepmother, frail and pretty in her powder-blue dress, pearls like congealed ash compressing her throat. Met those blue eyes square and didn’t blink. Anneliese didn’t either, but Jordan thought she saw surprise there—as if her stepmother had expected fluster, not calm.

  “If you think this is the time to bring it up,” Jordan said, “then by all means, let’s talk about this.” She laid down the silverware, aware her hands were sweating. “Ruth, will you take the dog into your room and play? Thanks, cricket.” She was not getting into this within Ruth’s earshot. Jordan waited until she heard the click of the bedroom door and then turned back to her stepmother.

  “I don’t know if Anneliese Weber is your real name,” Jordan said without preamble. “I don’t know if you were really born in Austria, or if you came to this country legally or were running from something. What I do know is that you’re a liar. You’re a Nazi. And you’re not Ruth’s mother.”

  The accusation hung in the suddenly electrified silence, crackling. Jordan felt as though she’d pushed all the air out of her lungs along with the words. She looked at Anneliese, standing there so decorative and pretty. She’d imagined her stepmother flinching or recoiling—maybe bursting into laughter or tears.

  But not a muscle moved in Anneliese’s face. Her blue eyes didn’t widen even a fraction of an inch. “Goodness,” she said at last. “Where has all this come from?”

  Jordan’s father was looking thunderous. “Jordan—”

  “This isn’t a wild story I’ve made up.” She kept her voice calm, reasonable. This was no time to be shrill or defensive. “I have proof, Dad. Just look at it, that’s all I ask.” She’d been keeping the photographs tucked in the lining of her pocketbo
ok, waiting for the right chance to show her father—she got them quickly, laid the first one down on the table before him. The photograph she’d snapped in the powder room after the wedding. “Anneliese’s wedding bouquet. She tied an Iron Cross into it as a wedding charm. An Iron Cross, and it’s not from the fourteen-eighteen war either. That’s a swastika. It’s a Third Reich medal.” Swinging her eyes back to Anneliese. “I didn’t find it in your room when I looked, so what did you do with it?”

  Anneliese was silent. Dan McBride’s gaze flicked over the photograph despite himself. Jordan rushed on, the words flowing like a river. Lay it out. Make your case.

  “That’s not all. Look at this.” The second photograph, the copy of the vacation picture in Anneliese’s Bible: the couple in bathing suits, standing by the lake waving to someone unseen. “Is that your husband, Anna?”

  “Yes,” she answered, still calm.

  “Kurt? Or Manfred? Because I’ve heard you use both names. Kurt Weber is listed on Ruth’s birth certificate as her father, so who’s Manfred?”

  Blue eyes flickered, then. Triumph stabbed Jordan. She was getting somewhere. Yes.

  “The Iron Cross is his, isn’t it?” she pressed. “Because he was a Nazi. And don’t give me that utter horseshit about—”

  “Jordan!” Her father barked, an automatic reproof for swearing, but he was still staring at the photograph. She pressed on.

  “—about how being a member of the Nazi Party didn’t make you one of the bad ones, Anna, because he wasn’t just a Nazi. He was SS, wasn’t he?” Jordan stabbed a finger down on the man in the photograph, his upraised arm. “He has a tattoo on the underside of his arm. You can just see it, there. Most SS officers had their blood types tattooed under the left arm.” Jordan turned back to her father. “Mr. Sonnenstein told us that, remember? He helped identify the provenance of those paintings that came out of Hamburg right after the war; he told us how the owner selling them had been SS, trying to pass as a French art dealer. How he’d been identified by his tattoo.” Looking back at Anneliese again. “Your husband was a decorated officer in the SS. And neither of you were Ruth’s parents, because the date on that photograph says März, 1942. March. Ruth was born in April ’42 according to her birth certificate, Anna, so why aren’t you eight months pregnant in that photograph?”

  This time the silence wasn’t charged through with electricity. It blanketed the room like a weighted sheet. Jordan’s father was standing as if he’d been turned to granite, gaze switching between the photographs on the table. Anneliese stood hands folded, looking at Jordan, and something in that gaze made Jordan’s heart bang off her ribs in a sudden surge of fear. It was the look she’d captured in the very first picture, the night her father had brought Anneliese to dinner. The woman who looked so fragile and pretty, now somehow dangerous.

  “It’s more than just this.” Jordan swept a hand at the pictures. “You spin a story about a refugee attacking Ruth at Altaussee, but it’s you Ruth recoils from. She remembers her mother playing the violin, yet you told me you never played it. Who are you?” From the kitchen came the muffled chime of the timer to check the turkey, but no one moved. “Who are you?” Jordan repeated.

  “You haven’t made up your mind about that?” Anneliese said. “You seem very certain about everything else.” Those cold blue eyes swam with tears, and Anneliese was suddenly shaking with sobs.

  You are not going to fob this off with crying, Jordan thought, pressing her lips tight. But her dad took a confused, automatic step forward, and Anneliese turned in a helpless movement, turning her wet face against his shirt. “Don’t say anything to Ruth,” she whispered. “It was all to protect her.”

  “Stop lying,” Jordan flared, but Anneliese’s tears rolled even faster. Her husband’s arm came around her shoulders, even though his face was still blank with shock.

  “There, now,” he muttered. “Let’s all be calm—”

  “Be calm?” Jordan cried. “Dad, we let a Nazi into our family. She could be anything, a murderer. Who knows how dangerous she—”

  “Stop shouting. I can’t hear myself think—”

  “Don’t be angry with Jordan.” Anneliese lifted her face, flushed and dewy with tears. “Please don’t be angry with her.”

  “Angry at me?” Jordan’s voice scaled up despite herself. “I’m the one who found you out. You’re the one who lied your way into our—”

  “I did,” Anneliese said simply. “I don’t deny any of it.”

  Jordan felt as though she’d stepped down a step that wasn’t there, teeth snapping shut on empty air. She’d expected tears, anger, evasions. She hadn’t expected pure, bald-faced acceptance of all charges. “What do you have to say, then?” she rallied, and she cringed to hear how hectoring she sounded.

  “Kurt was not my husband’s name,” Anneliese said quietly. “I was never married. The man in the photograph here is my father, and his name was Manfred. He was an officer in the SS, yes. I knew nothing of his work, what any of them did. He never discussed work with me, and it certainly wasn’t my place to ask. I’m not a modern girl like you, Jordan. I went to university and I read English poetry, but my mother died and I came home to keep house for my father, to obey him while I lived under his roof. I wasn’t political; I kept to the kitchen. I didn’t hear the terrible things about the SS until after the war, after my father had already died. Can you imagine my horror? A man who had always been a kind, good father, discovered to be part of . . .”

  Her eyes welled up again. She turned her head as if she wanted to bury her face back in her husband’s shirtfront, but with a gigantic effort kept talking, smoothing her cheeks with her hands.

  “I wanted no part of Germany or Austria after the war. I wanted a fresh start. Of course I didn’t tell anyone about my family when I applied to come here. Who would? I wouldn’t be accepted if people knew.” Her voice trembled. “My first week in Boston, a boy threw a stone at me because I had a German accent. What would they do if they knew what my father had been?”

  “If you’re so innocent, why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I wanted to leave it all behind me, all that ugliness. The hatred. People throwing names and stones . . . I wasn’t bringing that into your beautiful house.” She made a little helpless gesture at the four walls, the festive Thanksgiving table. Gently, her hand came to rest atop her husband’s. “I did carry my father’s medal at the wedding. It was the only thing I had of his . . . and I wanted him to walk me down the aisle. Was that wrong?” Her drowned blue eyes turned back to Jordan. “You want to know why you couldn’t find the medal, when you searched my room? I threw it into a pond on our honeymoon. Because that part of my life was finished.”

  Something cold and hideous was growing in Jordan’s middle, knotting her stomach. She still had the sensation that she’d taken a wrong step, ended up in the wrong room. Made the wrong accusation, the thought whispered, but she braced herself with a deep breath. “And Ruth?” she asked, fighting to sound level, reasonable. Because Anneliese’s creamy voice was reason itself. “Explain Ruth.”

  Anneliese went off into another torrent of tears, hands over her face. Jordan’s dad stood helpless, looking between his wife and his daughter, and something in Jordan squeezed when he reached out and touched Anneliese’s hair. “Sweetheart—” He never could stand to see a woman crying. And Anneliese was gripping his hand, pouring out words—to him, only him, not giving Jordan so much as a glance.

  “God gave me Ruth. He gave us to each other in Altaussee. The war was over and I was walking beside the lake—I’d finally gotten my papers, my tickets here. I was thanking God for my good fortune, and I see a little girl crying on a bench. Filthy, thin, her papers pinned to her coat. Only three years old. She couldn’t tell me anything, where her parents were. Who knows what happened to them. I waited hours with her. I didn’t know what to do. That was when a half-crazed woman tried to attack us. Everyone was desperate for boat tickets, for money. I fought for Ruth lik
e she was my own, and that was when I knew she’d been sent to me. I couldn’t leave her.” A long quivering breath. “So I washed the blood off her face where she’d been knocked down and took her with me when I left Altaussee, and by the time we landed in Boston she seemed to think I was her mother. Most of the time, I forget I’m not her mother. She was so young, and it all happened like a terrible dream . . .”

  Another choked silence fell. Jordan’s lips parted. She couldn’t think what to say. “I don’t believe that,” she forced out finally. “It all sounds—theatrical.”

  “War is theatrical, Jordan. I don’t expect you to understand that; you haven’t lived it.” Anneliese’s voice was drained, lifeless. The cold pit in Jordan’s stomach clenched again. “Those of us who survive are only alive because of some stroke of luck. Ruth’s parents were struck down; she was left behind. My father was struck down; I was left behind. Any survivor’s story is extraordinary. Death is everyday; survival is a theater trick.”

  Still Jordan’s father wouldn’t speak. His face was gray and sagging, but his hand lay under Anneliese’s.

  “Why did you lie about Ruth?” Jordan clutched after the certainty that had sheathed her like armor. “Why?”

  “I thought you might not love her . . .” Looking up at her husband. “She’s almost certainly a Jew. How many men would take a Jew into their homes, give her their name? I was afraid.”

  He flinched. “I would never have hesitated to—”

  “I deceived you. I’m so sorry.” Anneliese reached out, touching his cheek. “Perhaps you won’t forgive me. But don’t hold it against my poor Ruth.”

  “Dad, stop,” Jordan said desperately. “How can we trust her? She has lied about everything, you need to—” Her own thoughts circled in confusion. What do you even think anymore? “Your name isn’t Anneliese Weber, is it?” Rounding on her stepmother. “That’s Ruth’s mother’s name, it’s on her birth certificate, so it can’t be yours. You were lying about that too—”