The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

  “So you’re willing to give up?” Tony’s eyes bored into him. “When she killed your brother?”

  “A lot of brothers have been lost in this war,” Ian clipped. “My loss is no more worthy of special consideration than anyone else’s. And I’m not willing to burn up everything in my life for vengeance.”

  “You’ve already burned up everything in your life, Ian. You just didn’t do it for vengeance; that’s for commoners who never went to Harrow.” Tony gave a thin, edged smile. “You burned up everything in your life for this office, that monk’s cell you live in, and three arrests a year.”

  Ian took a shallow breath. He spread his hands on the surface of the desk, leaning forward. “This center may be ramshackle, but it means something. My handful of arrests every year means something. Even if just a handful of reminders to the world that the guilty will face justice for what they’ve done. To me, that is worth it.” He gestured at the four walls again. “If I go overseas and throw everything into a fruitless hunt for die Jägerin, this center will probably collapse. So I’ll stay here and go on with the cases I have some chance of winning. And I will do that with or without you.”

  Nina had been silent up till now, straddling the back of her chair, idly flicking her razor open and closed, watching them spit insults. Now she rose. “I say we go to Boston.”

  “Have you heard anything I’ve said?” Ian transferred his gaze to her. “Even if we find her, we cannot put her on trial—”

  Nina shrugged. “So we kill her.”

  “No.” Ian came around the desk, covering the ground between himself and his wife in one stride. “We are not a damned death squad. We are better than that. Dead men don’t pay. They don’t suffer. The world learns nothing from them. Without public justice, it’s all pointless. We do not kill targets.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We don’t kill her. I kill her. I have no problem with that.”

  “What the bloody hell is wrong with you?” Ian’s voice rose to a shout. “If you’d kill Lorelei Vogt in cold blood, what makes you any different from her?”

  “I don’t do it for fun like her,” Nina flared. “I do it because she tries to kill me. Because I see her kill your brother.” Nina stepped closer, head tipped far back to nail her gaze to his. “Russians don’t forget that like Englishmen.”

  Ian stared down at his wife, close enough to feel her contained fury blazing up at him. She stared back, eyes narrowed, hair a blond feral mane. “I will not seek justice for one ruthless killer of a woman by joining forces with another,” he said at last. “Get the fuck out of my office.”

  Nina tilted one shoulder in a shrug and moved toward the door.

  “Hey!” Tony protested, starting forward, but Ian whipped around.

  “I have always said I won’t work with anyone who advocates for vigilante justice, Tony. Do not even try to tell me she is joking.”

  “Am not joking,” Nina said, taking her old jacket off the hook by the door.

  “I know you’re not,” Tony replied. “You’d open die Jägerin’s throat ear to ear and walk away smiling. But so would you, Ian, if you ever let yourself admit it.” Tony shook his head. “You might know more Latin than your wife here, but don’t think that makes you better than she is. You’ve got a savage in there too, you just pretend he’s never coming off the leash.”

  “He never is coming off the leash,” Ian said evenly. “Because I happen to believe that principle should be stronger than the need for vengeance.”

  “Excuses certainly are,” his partner bit back. “You know the real reason you won’t follow Lorelei Vogt to Boston? I do. Because you’d rather let a murderess walk free than take the risk of your righteous white hat ever slipping off.”

  Nina looked over her shoulder in the doorway. “Is true,” she said.

  Maybe it is, Ian thought. Which is why I will not risk it. Control is what separates men from beasts.

  “Send me a telegram when you get back to England,” he told Nina finally. “So I know where to notify you of divorce proceedings. Feel free to follow her out, Tony. As long as I’ve known you, you’d follow a woman’s arse and an easy argument before you’d ever follow what was right.”

  “I wondered my first day here how long it would take you to fire me.” Tony reached for his hat. “So long, boss.”

  Chapter 18

  Nina

  May 1942

  Engels

  She was beautiful. Olive green with red-painted stars, proud and new. Nina laid a hand on the sun-warmed wood.

  Who are you? the U-2 seemed to ask.

  “A friend,” Nina breathed back. All over the airdrome, the pilots and navigators of the 588th were examining their new planes. They would fly soon to join the Fourth Air Army on the southern front in the Donets Basin region. These planes would see combat.

  Yelena stood back, hands in her pockets. Nina turned, still stroking the propeller blade like the nose of a dog. “I know you’re disappointed it’s not a fighter,” she said, already feeling protective of the U-2. She wanted to cover its ears, make sure it didn’t hear it hadn’t been its pilot’s first pick. “But this girl will do us fine.”

  “I know.” Yelena’s smile had a wistful edge as she came and patted the propeller. Nina hadn’t expected to be picked for the fighters, but Yelena had wept disappointment upon learning that she too had been assigned to the night bombers. Secretly, Nina was relieved. The regiment of fighters had claimed tiny fiery Lilia and a good many others she was surprised to realize had become friends. At least she wasn’t losing Yelena. The intensity of her own relief had startled Nina.

  “Is it really so bad?” she ventured around an unexpected tightness in her throat. “Flying a U-2 with me?”

  “I’d have liked to fly a Yak-1, but . . .” Yelena’s smile faded. “I told you I was born in Ukraine, before my family came to Moscow?”

  “Yes.”

  “My old village has been overrun by Germans,” Yelena said softly, and Nina’s hand fell from the propeller. “Mama had word from her sister. Everyone was fleeing, roads jammed with people carrying bundles, children screaming, dogs howling. And German planes flew along the roads, strafing the crowd. My grandparents are dead. My cousins, dead.” She stopped, lashes dropping in a quick, fierce blink. Nina wanted to put an arm about Yelena’s shoulders, but held back. “I don’t care if I only fly a U-2 and not a Yak,” Yelena finished. “I’d fly a broom, as long as I was able to fight the Fritzes.”

  “And you’ve got the best navigator in the 588th,” Nina pointed out.

  Yelena gave a watery smile. “The most modest too.”

  They were going to fly well together, Nina already knew that. Marina Raskova had assigned all the pairings herself, and Nina’s heart lifted when she heard her assignment. Yelena was better but Nina was bolder; Yelena had sharper reflexes, Nina had keener eyes. They’d balance each other perfectly.

  “So, Comrade Lieutenant Vetsina,” Nina said. “From here, it’s my job to keep you alive. You fly the plane and I fly you, so you have to do everything I say.” She said it jokingly, but the flash of protectiveness that went through her was oddly fierce. Were all the other navigators already so worried about their pilots’ safety?

  “Don’t worry, Comrade Lieutenant. I’m a nice steerable creature. Just like her.” Yelena looked up at their U-2, slinging an arm about Nina’s neck. Nina leaned her head against that warm, firm shoulder. “What shall we name her?”

  “I think . . .” Nina blew out a thoughtful breath, smelling the soap Yelena had used to wash her short glossy hair, contemplating their plane. What beautiful words those were: their plane. “I think she’ll tell us when she’s ready, don’t you?”

  THEY FLEW OUT on a warm May morning, Raskova in the lead. She’d be taking command of the day bombers but had vowed to personally escort all the regiments to their front first. She rose into the air like an eagle, one hundred and twelve eaglets following her, red Soviet stars flashing in the May sunshine. They
leveled off below the racing clouds, Yelena’s head moving in the cockpit ahead of Nina’s as she snugged their U-2 tight and swift into formation. Major Raskova waggled her wingtips as the last plane veered into line, and they all waved back, the ripple moving down the line of wings like laughter. Nina realized her eyes were streaming tears behind her goggles—she hadn’t cried since the very first time she’d taken to the air at nineteen. Yelena took her hand off the stick and stretched it back over her shoulder, giving Nina a blind wave, and Nina waved back. Without even seeing her pilot’s face, she knew Yelena had an ear-to-ear smile.

  No one was smiling when they touched down at Morozovskaia. “Those bastards,” Nina spat. An escort of fighters from the Fourth Air Army had risen up to escort the 588th in, only the men hadn’t been content to fly escort; they’d flown attack patterns like advancing Messerschmitts.

  “They’re friendlies,” Yelena had shouted back to Nina, who tensed as she saw the first attacking swoop. “They’re just playing—” She held their course, but several of the younger pilots had got flustered and dove out of formation.

  “Raskova’s going to have their balls for earrings,” Nina snarled once everyone was safe on the ground.

  “They didn’t mean any harm,” Yelena argued. “It’s just hazing. Everyone coming new to the front is in for some hazing.”

  “Especially if you’re us,” the argument shot back. “Comrade Stalin’s pet project—”

  “—because we’re girls—”

  “Well, don’t show them any reaction,” Yelena said as they fell into march exiting the airfield. “Heads high, ladies.”

  Nina kept her eyes narrowed and her chin lifted as they walked the gauntlet of smirking men in flight overalls. Some wag from the back called out, “What’s the matter, girlies, can’t you tell stars from swastikas when you see ’em on a wing?” Nina broke marching rhythm to throw him an obscene gesture.

  “Enough,” Major Raskova barked, all-seeing as ever. “You’ll be based out of Trud Gorniaka, ladies, find your billets. Don’t get comfortable. With the front so unstable we could be moving any day or any hour—”

  “The Germans are close here,” Dusia Nosal proclaimed—a girl with a taut, thin face, probably the best flier in the 588th besides Yelena. She’d lost her newborn baby in a German bombing raid at the beginning of the war. “You can almost smell the sauerkraut. If we don’t get orders within the week . . .”

  But the commander of the 218th who came for the following day’s inspection had barely a glance for the regiment. “He called us what?” Nina hissed.

  “‘I’ve received one hundred and twelve little princesses, just what am I supposed to do with them?’” Dusia mimicked. “He was on the telephone to General Vershinin, or so I heard.”

  “He wouldn’t say that to Raskova’s face!”

  But Raskova had flown back to Engels, and the 588th received their orders from Major Yevdokia Bershanskaia now. “Two weeks of additional training,” Bershanskaia said over their groans. She had none of Raskova’s blue-eyed glamour, but she was steady, quiet, all brisk maternal efficiency like a hen herding chicks, no patience for stragglers or whiners. She’d wanted to fly fighters, Nina knew, but now she was commander of the 588th, and if she was disappointed, she didn’t show it. “You’re all to be individually flight-tested by a male pilot.”

  “What do they think we’ve been doing all that time in Engels?” Nina demanded. “Buffing our nails? We can’t be trusted until one of the men signs off that we know which end of the stick to hold?”

  “Ninochka,” Yelena said with a sigh, “shut up.”

  Nina, still smoldering, climbed stonily into her U-2 the following morning with a freckle-faced pilot who looked about twelve and threw her plane around the sky so violently that her inspector nearly threw up. “Pass,” he said, green-faced. Yelena’s examiner was a tall handsome Leningrader with a lazy smile, and Nina hated him on sight. “They make damned pretty pilots in Moscow,” he said, laughing at Yelena’s blush. “Virgin ears, dousha? Better toughen up, or you won’t last a fucking minute against the Krauts—” He kept stringing profanities, clearly enjoying Yelena’s bright red cheeks, and when he finally let her climb into the cockpit, Nina hailed him from the side of the runway.

  “What is it, little one?” he asked, loping up with a disbelieving glance for Nina’s head, which didn’t even reach his shoulder. “Are you even tall enough to see out of the cockpit?”

  He yelped then, feeling the keen edge of a stropped Siberian razor pressing against the inside of his thigh. Nina smiled, angling her body so no one would see the blade between her fingers. Yelena waved from the U-2, clearly wondering what the delay was.

  “My pilot,” Nina said sweetly, “doesn’t care for your fucking language, you bonehead Leningrad mule. Keep your mouth clean around her, or I will slice off your balls and cram them up your fucking nose.”

  “Women in the air,” he breathed. “World’s gone crazy, giving planes to you bitches.”

  “Bitches like my pilot fly better than you will ever fly in your whole goddamned life.” Nina gave another sweet smile. “So take her up there for a loop and keep your fucking language nice, and I won’t jam a propeller up your shit-factory and crank until your asshole flaps like your mouth.”

  “He said I’m a skilled pilot and a credit to the Fourth Air Army,” Yelena reported afterward.

  “Did he, now?” Nina said placidly.

  The Fritzes were grinding toward Stalingrad, reportedly advanced into the curve of the Don River, before the 588th received their orders. “First combat mission to be flown by three planes only.” Bershanskaia’s hand made its signature chop before a single groan went up. “Myself and both squadron commanders. Regard it as an exploratory sortie, girls.”

  “Let’s not grudge her,” Yelena said. “For the commanders it’s going to be all paperwork from here on out. She should have the honor of flying the first mission.”

  “Don’t be so everlastingly generous,” Nina groaned. “Just admit that you’d walk over your own mother to get into a cockpit by now.”

  “I’d walk over my own mother to get into a cockpit by now,” Yelena said immediately. “Just not a sestra.”

  A fine summer evening, warm and breezy. Impossible to think that the front was just kilometers away from this prosaic stretch of flat fields and hastily erected bunkers, torn-up roads dotted with trucks and ground personnel in overalls. The horizon showed plumes of smoke rising kilometers away—coal deposits on fire, someone whispered. There was still a little daylight left when the regiment gathered on the makeshift runway to watch Bershanskaia and the squadron commanders make their way to their planes. “They’ll fly to the auxiliary airfield at the front lines,” the whisper went around. “Arm there, fly their run, then back here.”

  Three planes took off into a darkening sky. Nina watched, hands stuffed in her pockets, physically aching. Tomorrow, she thought. From the taut, yearning faces all around her, the others were all thinking the same thing.

  “Well,” Yelena announced, “I’m not going to bed until they’ve come back. Let’s have some music!”

  A girl from Kiev began an ancient folk song, her voice hushed and lilting, and a few of the others took it up, braiding harmony around her soft alto. A Party march followed, brisk and tuneful, and more voices joined in as the stars came out in their thousands. The sky turned to black velvet, and Nina surprised herself by lifting her own voice in an ancient cradle song from the shores of the Old Man. She hadn’t even known she remembered it, all those verses in the lake dialect so old it was barely Russian. The other girls listened raptly. “What was that?” Yelena asked. She sat with her back against the nearest shed, fiddling with a length of cloth across her lap.

  “A song about the lake,” Nina said. “All songs from Baikal are about the lake. Waves that rock the boats and the cradles, and the rusalka’s hand setting both into motion. Then something with the moon . . . It doesn’t make a lot of sense, re
ally.”

  “Nothing makes sense,” Yelena said. “We’re in the middle of a war, and a few short kilometers from here people are dying. But us—we’ve never been so happy.”

  “Yes,” Nina agreed, watching the moon shine on Yelena’s hair.

  Dusia was singing now, her sad face smiling for once, and two of the other girls began to dance, swinging about arm in arm, laughter rising through the night. Someone beckoned Nina, but she flopped down by Yelena, tilting her head at the cloth in her pilot’s lap. “Are you sewing?”

  “Embroidering my flying scarf. Blue stars on white, what do you think?” Yelena tilted the cloth under the starlight for Nina’s eyes.

  “Where’d you get blue thread?”

  “Unpicked it from those horrible men’s briefs!” Yelena grinned, and Nina laughed. They were already flying high at the thought of being in the air tomorrow. The anticipation was so sweet it cut the mouth, like winter-cold water from the icy shore of the Old Man.

  They were making plans for how they’d celebrate once they flew five hundred missions and were made Heroes of the Soviet Union—“Gold stars on our chests, just like Raskova!” “When you get a medal, I hear you have to drop it in a crystal glass, fill the glass with vodka, and drink a toast!”—when a sawing, droning buzz rose in the distance: the sound of a U-2’s noisy little radial engine. As one, the girls of the 588th sprinted toward the runway.

  One plane touched down, then a second. The tails descended to the grass, dragging both U-2s to a halt, and the ground crew on duty went running out to make postflight checks and tie down the wings. Nina saw Bershanskaia’s compact form climbing out of her cockpit, stepping from the wing to the ground. The first squadron commander came after, stripping off her goggles. The regiment was already swarming around them, pouring laughter and congratulations, but Nina’s feet slowed. The returning pilots had blank, stony faces. Nina tilted her face to the rush of stars overhead.