The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

  Nina held herself rigid through the long vigil, keeping her eyes straight ahead as most of Moscow shuffled past: women with bent shoulders, bony children, men with boots held together by twine . . . Then came another confusing shuffle of functionaries and suits, and suddenly it was the next day, the world still sparking and floating as Nina took her place in the vast stately procession into Red Square, past draped bunting and more wreaths. The only face coming distinct among the masses was Raskova’s, her dark hair and wide smile reproduced a hundred times over on photographs printed large and held aloft over the crowd, the way Nina’s father said peasants used to hold up their icons.

  The Coca-Cola buzz was wearing off by the time Raskova’s ashes were laid to rest. Nina was swaying on her high heels as Lieutenant General Shcherbakov gave the funeral oration, echoing as he was broadcast across the land. Talking about the highest standards of Soviet womanhood and credit to the Motherland. Who were they even talking about? Speeches like this could be made at any funeral. Nina remembered the squadron commander who had died on the very first sortie; how the Night Witches had toasted her memory under the stars and sung soft songs that echoed across the airfield. That was how Raskova should have been remembered, not with rote rhetoric and the mournful broadcast beats of the “Internationale.” It should have been women talking about Raskova today, not these old men.

  Two down, Nina found herself thinking. First the squadron commander, then Raskova. Who’s next? Which was stupid because the regiment had lost more besides those two. But the thought still echoed in Nina’s brain: Who’s next?

  Yelena’s face flashed before her eyes, along with a heart-stopping kick of terror.

  Marina Raskova’s ashes were formally interred in the Kremlin Wall. Banners dipped, officers held their salute, a single plane droned low and mournful over Red Square. It was done.

  “RASKOVA’S EAGLETS.”

  At the sound of that famous voice, heard from so many broadcasts and radio speakers, Nina thought every sestra beside her was going to faint. Women who kept calm while being peppered by antiaircraft guns were blushing and shuffling like schoolgirls, hardly able to look up at the great Comrade Stalin.

  There had been endless receptions after the funeral; more suits, more droning; Nina had swallowed another trio of Coca-Cola tablets and now the world sparked bright colors again. They had all been lined up in some featureless anteroom, waiting over an hour—somewhere nearby, Nina could hear champagne corks popping. Suddenly a door opened and people flooded in, flashbulbs making everyone blink but Nina. I’m used to enemy searchlights, I won’t flinch at a camera. She looked through the flash and there was Comrade Stalin emerging from his crowd of dignitaries like a wolf from the underbrush, hard fleshed as concrete in a glittering uniform.

  More rustling as an aide droned. Marina Mikhailovna Raskova’s honor guard would be honored themselves with the Order of the Red Star; applause rippled. Nina gave an inward shrug. What did a medal matter? A dozen women in the 588th flying right now had better records; she was only getting this because she’d been grounded when Raskova died. She didn’t think Comrade Stalin cared all that much about the medals he was giving out either; he stood scrawling at a notebook with a pencil stub. Making notes of the latest hundred thousand dead in Leningrad, maybe. How strange it was to lay eyes on a person who was so familiar, yet at the same time a stranger. Like peasants in the tsarist days getting a glimpse of God, only Comrade Stalin had more power than God.

  Nine flashes rippled, camera clicking as each beaming woman stepped forward to be pinned with the five-pointed red-enameled star. The flash went off in Nina’s eyes as the pin pricked through her uniform. A little bit like stepping forward one by one to be shot. If Comrade Stalin had decided to do that right here in this anteroom, stick a bullet instead of a medal into each woman’s chest, no one would have stopped him.

  Nina looked at the General Secretary over the shoulder of the aide pinning her. His mustache, grayer than it looked in all his portraits. Pockmarks on heavy cheeks. Teeth stained by pipe smoke. His eyes were lidded, almost sleepy as he watched them receive their medals. But you aren’t sleepy, Nina thought. Not at all. Somewhere in the next room another champagne cork popped. Would everyone get champagne, or just Party members? Party members only, Nina guessed.

  Comrade Stalin came forward to take each woman by the shoulders in hearty congratulation. “You do honor to the state.” A kiss to each cheek, the peasant way, the proletarian way. Then the next in line. No one said anything in return; cheeks burned red as fire and eyes glowed. Nina looked past them to the aide who had taken Comrade Stalin’s notebook and was now shuffling an armload of folders. The notebook fell faceup to the ground, and the aide picked it up but not before Nina caught a glimpse. The General Secretary with his important frown, scrawling away as though lives depended on every pencil stroke, had been doodling wolves. Wolves in red and black, slavering from the page.

  Heavy hands grasped her shoulders. “You do honor to the state.” The wiry stiffness of Comrade Stalin’s mustache brushed her cheeks. With Nina in heels, they were almost the same height. Such a giant in your portraits, Nina thought, and you’re hardly taller than I am. The thought made her smile in genuine amusement, and she saw an answering smile quirk under the graying mustache. “This one,” the great man said to his aide. “This eaglet looks Comrade Stalin directly in the eyes!”

  Comrade Stalin is a lying pig who shits on the common man, Nina’s father commented inside her head, so loudly she wondered if the man breathing tobacco in her face could hear it. Tell him he’s a murdering sack of shit, her father advised.

  Not helpful, Papa, Nina thought.

  The heavy hands still rested on her shoulders. “What makes you smile, Comrade Lieutenant Markova?”

  This wolf could smell lies, of that she was certain. “My father spoke passionately and often of Comrade Stalin,” she said with utter truth.

  He liked that. “Your father was a great patriot?”

  “He cut many tsarist throats, Comrade Stalin.” Also utter truth.

  “A good servant of the state, then.” Comrade Stalin smiled. The whites of his eyes were yellowed, like Papa’s. Nina thought of her father looking at her speculatively, right before he tried to drown her. Comrade Stalin’s gaze was speculative too. “How many enemies of the state have you killed, Nina Borisovna?”

  “Not enough, Comrade Stalin.”

  Fucking Georgian swine, her father hissed. Drag him under, rusalka bitch. And Nina couldn’t help but think how easily she could kill the most powerful man in the Motherland right here and now. She had the razor in her sleeve; she never went anywhere without it. She could drop it into her palm, flick it open, and open that heavy throat with one slash. She smiled, amused by the thought.

  “Good hunting, eaglet.” Comrade Stalin kissed her again on each cheek, then stepped back. His gaze withdrew from her like a needle; more cameras flashed. Then he was gone.

  “RED STARS!” The cry went up at the barracks, and everyone curtsied as if three tsarevnas had come back to the regiment. “It’s all due to you,” Nina shouted over the tumult. “Comrade Stalin gave me a red star because he liked my new hair!”

  “I like your new hair,” Yelena admired in the shed afterward, as soon as they could sneak off alone. They lay spooned together in the back corner, Yelena’s back against Nina’s chest. Threaded through her collar was a drying rose plucked from one of the funeral wreaths behind Marina Raskova’s urn—the only memento of Moscow Nina had had time to take home. “You belong as a blonde, Ninochka. It makes you stand out, and you should stand out.”

  “Then I’ll keep it blond just for you.” Nina tipped Yelena’s head back for a lingering kiss. Their escaping breath puffed white in the frigid air. “Did you miss me?”

  “Not a bit! Zoya never tries to climb out on the wing.” Yelena grinned, and Nina swatted her. “You saw the girls from the other regiments—what’s their news?”

  “Both of the ot
her regiments are integrated, did you know that? Men and women. Necessity, they said. The 588th is the only one still just us ladies.”

  “It’d better stay that way. The male pilots slack,” Yelena said, scornful. “They actually go in for meals between bombing runs. When was the last time any of us had dinner outside of a cockpit? No wonder our numbers are so much higher.” Squirming face-to-face so she could touch Nina’s star, Yelena whispered, “So what was he like?”

  No need to ask who he was. “Short. And he pretends he’s such a big man!”

  “It’s the height of his soul, not his head.” Yelena smiled. “I would have fainted if it had been me.”

  Nina had heard that kind of awe from the others, but Yelena had always been quick to smile at Party drolleries and contradictions. “He’s not God, Yelenushka. Just another sack of Party horseshit in a suit.”

  Yelena sat up straight. “Don’t say that.”

  “I don’t, not in public. I’m not stupid.” Nina sat up too. “I don’t want the black van coming to my door.”

  “But you actually think such things?” Yelena sounded horrified. “That the General Secretary is . . .”

  “A pig-spawn schemer who stamps on the people?” Nina shrugged. “My father’s been telling me that my whole life. Of course he said the same thing about the tsar, but—”

  “Exactly. You said your father was as crazy as a vodka-mad boar. I didn’t think you agreed with him about anything.”

  “Crazy doesn’t mean wrong.” It popped out of Nina’s mouth. “I think Comrade Stalin’s a fake.”

  Yelena drew her knees to her chest. “What do you mean?”

  Nina thought of the city all decked out for Marina Raskova, who probably would have been happier with the sweet voices of her pilots harmonizing the peasants’ chorus from Eugene Onegin, which she’d once sung with them on the way to Engels. “All the parades and the speeches—it’s like a stage front, or . . .” Nina shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just a little navigator from the Old Man, I don’t know anything.”

  “No. You don’t.” Yelena’s voice was sharp. “Maybe it’s all ice and taiga out on the lake and nothing ever changes, but I remember Moscow the way it was, growing up. And before that, the way my grandfather told me it was. Because of Comrade Stalin, things are different.”

  “Better?” Nina challenged. “Queuing at three in the morning to buy shoes, the way you told me your mother did when you were little?”

  “It will be better. Comrade Stalin has a plan for it, for all of us. I look at Moscow and I can see it the way he sees it. The way it’s going to be, after the war.”

  Nina stared at her. He’s a yellow-eyed wolf in a man’s skin, she wanted to throw at her lover, and you look starry-eyed because the wolf decided to pin a medal on me rather than eat me? “I missed you every moment I was gone,” she said instead, speaking through stiff lips. “Are we really quarreling an hour after I get back?”

  “No.” Yelena sounded just as stiff. “You don’t understand, that’s all. You don’t see. You grew up so differently—”

  Uncivilized, Nina thought. Just a little savage who doesn’t understand anything.

  Silence fell.

  “I wasn’t really in any state to see things as you do,” Nina offered finally. “Moscow or Comrade Stalin . . . I had double vision all through the funeral thanks to those pills.” The tablets had given Nina a ferocious headache when they finally wore off. “Coca-Cola—if that’s what Americans serve in diners, no wonder they’re all crazy.”

  Yelena melted at once, as Nina had hoped she would. “I didn’t mean to bite your head off.” She unwrapped her arms from her knees, reached for Nina’s hand. “I’m so tired, that’s all. We’ve been flying such long nights. Fourteen runs, fifteen runs. They’re moving us soon, did you know? Somewhere near Krasnodar.” A sigh. “They say it will be even worse there.”

  She looked exhausted, tar-black circles under her eyes, the dried rose at her collar her only flash of color. My Moscow rose, Nina thought. “Is the Rusalka fighting fit again?”

  “Yes, the mechanics finally cleared her.” They talked easily then of the Rusalka, of flying, of the things they loved. Is that why we never quarreled before? Nina wondered. Because we only talked of war and flying and each other?

  Well, they weren’t going to quarrel again. It wasn’t like Nina wanted to come back into the shed and talk Party politics. All she wanted to do was cuddle and laugh and make love. Just give me Yelena and the Rusalka, she thought. That’s all I need in this world.

  So which of you is next? came Comrade Stalin’s amused voice. Yelena? The Rusalka? Or you, little eaglet?

  Nina shivered as if a rusalka’s webbed green hand had wrapped wetly around her heart. What did you see? she wondered in the direction of the General Secretary, even as she and Yelena bundled up to creep out of the shed back to their beds. What did you see?

  Maybe nothing. Maybe it was just the Coca-Cola pills, making her fearful.

  Or maybe he saw that the last of Marina Raskova’s eaglets didn’t believe the horse-shit stories he wove for girls like Yelena, the stories about how the Motherland was on its way to a glorious future. Did he see that? Nina always wondered. He must have seen something, enough to remember her name. Maybe he’d jotted it as an afterthought into his notebook beside the running wolves. Because the investigation came within the year.

  Chapter 28

  Jordan

  June 1950

  Boston

  Jordan’s father sat holding a piece of sandpaper, looking over one shoulder. The image shimmered through the fixer bath, ghostly in the red light. Jordan heard his voice from that afternoon, as clearly as if he were standing here in the darkroom. What are you up to, missy?

  Pretend I’m not here, Jordan remembered answering. I want a picture of you in the workshop.

  These were some of the last pictures of her dad she’d taken. Jordan felt a tear slide down her chin, wiped it away. She’d been crying on and off for the last hour, since she’d come banging down into the darkroom at eleven at night to develop the prints. Why not? She couldn’t stand the thought of lying in bed staring at the ceiling. Couldn’t bear to think about tomorrow, another day working in the shop now that it was open again, helping train the new clerk and coming home to one of the funeral casseroles Anneliese had pulled out for them to eat in total silence. Just three of them around the table, not four . . . Jordan blinked hard, standing back from her row of prints.

  “That one.” A low-angle shot of her father peering down at a tarnished card tray. “That’s the real you.” Daniel Sean McBride at work, the essential Daniel Sean McBride. It was him. It was good.

  Jordan realized the tears were coming fast now. She let them fall, going on to the roll of shots she’d taken at the tiny airfield the day Garrett took her flying. She knew she should call Garrett; he’d been leaving messages. So had his mother, gentle hints about springtime dates for the rescheduled wedding. The thought of plunging back into wedding plans made Jordan want to shriek.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She sighed as she cleaned up her chemicals and trays.

  As Jordan let herself back into the house, a slim pale figure moved out of the darkness at the foot of the hall stairs. “You couldn’t sleep either?”

  Jordan started violently at Anneliese’s voice. “You scared me!”

  “I’m sorry.” Anneliese pulled the sash tighter on her pale blue dressing gown. “I was going to make some cocoa. Would you like some?”

  “Sure. Did Ruth wake you up again?”

  “Her night frights are getting worse.” Anneliese moved into the kitchen on those soundless feet, pulling down two mugs. Taro padded in, keeping a watchful eye for any food that might hit the floor; Anneliese scratched her black ears fondly. “I don’t know how to deal with Ruth when she’s in such a state. She’s always been so biddable, I don’t know what to do with her when she’s not.”

  “She just misses Dad.” Jordan sighed. �
��Is she asleep now?”

  “Yes, finally. Now I’m the one tossing and turning.” Jordan’s stepmother looked fragile in the bright kitchen light, dark hair loose for once, face naked without its smoothing of powder and lipstick. “No, sit down,” she said as Jordan began to help with the stove. “You must be so tired, all those shifts you’ve been working at the shop.”

  “The new clerk will be ready to manage on his own soon. That will be a help.” Jordan managed a smile, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table. “He told me he could sell ice to Eskimos, and he can.”

  “What’s his name again?”

  “Tony Rodomovsky.” Jordan had thought she’d find it embarrassing, working with a man after he’d first encountered her sobbing into a lemon meringue pie, but it hadn’t been. The new clerk had taken his handkerchief back the following week with light good humor, made no reference to her fit of weeping, and treated Jordan exactly as he treated everything else female he encountered in the shop—namely, he flirted with her. The kind of meaningless undemanding flirtation that was soothing. How pretty you are, his smile said. Please, let me take care of the customers. In fact, let me take care of everything. The female customers certainly responded to that smile. He knew next to nothing about antiques but he was so rueful about his own ignorance, it didn’t seem to matter. “You know he actually got Mrs. Wills to buy something, not just spend an hour criticizing every piece?”

  “That is a charmer. Have I met him?” Anneliese massaged her forehead. “It’s all been such a whirl, I can’t remember.”

  “Not yet. His references were excellent. Do you want to meet him before his trial period is up?”

  “I’ll look in soon.” Anneliese sighed. “I don’t even want to set foot in the shop. I had my little ideas here and there to help sales, but your father was so proud that his wife didn’t have to work . . . Going there now seems like going against his wishes.”