The Huntress

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by Kate Quinn


  “I can take care of the shop, truly. You have Dad’s other things to sort out.” What to do with his clothes, his shoes, his belongings. Whether to move his shaving brush and razor in the bathroom. All the things to be decided after a death.

  “He was very organized, thank goodness.” Anneliese began warming the milk. “I don’t want you to think we have to worry about money. There was insurance; we won’t have to scrimp to make ends meet. I’m meeting with the lawyer about the will.”

  Jordan couldn’t even begin to contemplate the official details. “If I can help . . .”

  “Between the two of us, we can handle everything.” Anneliese smiled over her shoulder, stirring the milk. “I’m so lucky you’re such a capable girl, Jordan. More than a girl, really—I shouldn’t keep calling you that. Having a grown woman at my side is a great comfort at a time like this.”

  The compliment warmed Jordan more than the cup of cocoa Anneliese placed in her hands. “Thank you.” Anneliese sat in the chair opposite, pushing her hair back over her shoulders, and Jordan saw a faint pink line of a scar disappearing around the back of her neck below her collar. “Did you hurt yourself?” Jordan indicated the scar; she didn’t think she’d seen it before.

  “Childhood accident.” Anneliese made a face. “I always thought it looked ugly, so I cover it up first thing in the morning. American makeup is a wonder!”

  “It’s not ugly. It’s hardly noticeable.”

  “That’s what your father said.” Anneliese touched her mug to Jordan’s. “To Dan.”

  “To Dad.” Jordan savored the chocolaty warmth—Anneliese’s cocoa was better than anyone’s; something extra she put in it—and found herself appraising her stepmother across the table. “How are you, Anna? How are you really, I mean? You put on a very good face for the neighbors, but you’re also drinking cocoa at one in the morning.”

  Anneliese massaged her temples. “There’s a dream I’ve been having for years, since the war. It mostly went away when I came to live in this house, but now it’s come back. Your father was a good antidote to bad dreams, very—” She paused, said a German word, tried to find its equivalent in English. “Very of this earth? I could wake up next to him, reassured. He was solid. Nothing could follow me out of a dream with him there.”

  Jordan felt her throat tighten, but it was a good tightness. “I remember him sitting on the edge of my bed when I was little, telling me the bats couldn’t come out of the dream and get me.”

  “Is that what you dreamed of?” Anneliese smoothed a lock of hair back. “Bats aren’t so bad.”

  “I was only Ruth’s age, bats were bad enough. What’s your nightmare?” Anneliese hesitated. “It can’t hurt to tell me.”

  Her stepmother looked as if she wasn’t going to speak, but her hand drifted up under the dark fall of her hair, rubbing the back of her neck, and the words started seemingly despite herself. “The dream always starts beside a lake. A woman is running, straight for me. She’s small and ragged, and I see her hair flashing through the shadows, and I know she wants to kill me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why. You know dreams, they don’t make sense. But she’s filled with hatred.” Anneliese shivered. “I chase the woman toward the lake, it’s open there, she can’t hide . . . But she does. She disappears into the lake—it swallows her up, pulls her in like it’s helping her hide. I stand there on the edge, waiting for her to come for me.”

  Jordan shivered, herself. Anneliese’s voice was slow, dreamy, as though she were half asleep.

  “I wait for a long time, and finally I know it’s all right. She’s gone. I’m safe.” Anneliese lifted her eyes. “And that’s when she rises out of the lake, streaked with blood, and drifts across the water toward me. Her teeth are so sharp, and her nails glint like razors . . . And that’s when I wake up. Before the night witch cuts my throat.”

  “That is ghastly,” Jordan couldn’t help saying.

  “It is.” Her stepmother lifted her cup, trying to smile. “Hence cocoa at one in the morning.”

  “Who’s the woman in the nightmare?”

  “No one I ever knew.” Taro laid her long nose on Anneliese’s knee; Anneliese stroked her and said something loving in German. “I think she comes from one of those gruesome fairy tales I heard too young. A rusalka.”

  “You said that word before.” Jordan hunted for the memory. “When we first went to Selkie Lake.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Anneliese’s tone was lighter now. “A selkie comes from a lake too, but she’s the Scottish version, not quite so malevolent. In Germany they have stories of a lorelei, who sits on a rock above the water, combing her hair. Go farther east, though, and she becomes much much more dangerous—a rusalka.” Anneliese’s blue eyes dropped to the table. “A rusalka only comes out in the night, dressed in the lake. And if you cross her, she will kill you.”

  A little silence fell. “Well,” Jordan offered at last. “I feel lucky I only ever had bad dreams about bats. And about walking down the school hall in nothing but my brassiere, like a Maidenform ad.”

  “And now I’ve given you ideas about night witches! I’m sorry, Jordan. I should never have told you something so gruesome. At the witching hour too.” Anneliese glanced at the clock, rueful. “I’m not myself after these dreams; they make me very fearful, and I babble. Very unlike me.”

  “Did it help?”

  “I think it did.” Anneliese drank off the rest of her cocoa. “I might be able to sleep now.”

  “Then I’m glad you told me.” Jordan rose, collecting both mugs to put in the sink. “Can I just say . . .”

  Her stepmother paused halfway to the kitchen door, Taro padding behind her. “Yes?”

  “I’m so glad I have you.” Jordan met those blue eyes square. “We didn’t exactly get off on the right foot, thanks to my wild imagination. But I don’t know what I’d do without you, now.”

  “You’d be just fine without me, Jordan.” Anneliese reached out and touched her hair. “You’re a tower of strength, just like your father.”

  They hugged fiercely. Just us now, Jordan thought. Us two holding everything together for the sake of Ruth and a dog and a business. The notion was perhaps not as frightening as it had been.

  “Maybe you could walk me down the aisle next spring,” Jordan said as they broke the hug. “What do you think, should we shatter tradition?”

  “Of course, if you like.” Anneliese’s lips quirked. “There’s only one small problem.”

  “What?”

  “You have no desire at all to marry Garrett Byrne.” Anneliese kissed Jordan’s cheek good night. “There. I’ve given you something to dream about rather than night witches crawling out of lakes.”

  Chapter 29

  Ian

  June 1950

  Boston

  Bad news, boss.” Tony’s voice reverberated at the other end of the phone like he was on the bottom of Nina’s Siberian lake rather than a short distance away on Clarendon and Newbury.

  Ian shifted the receiver from his bad ear to the good, still doing up the buttons of his shirt and wincing at the scratches Nina had left down his back. “Let’s have it.”

  “Befriending Kolb has been a dead end. He won’t get drawn in to talk. Just a grunt, and then some excuse to skitter away.”

  Disappointing, Ian thought, but not surprising. Tony’s efforts to charm their suspect had been met by a stone wall for weeks now. Nina wandered in from the bedroom, wearing one of Ian’s shirts and nothing else, and looked inquiring.

  “I hate to admit failure,” Tony concluded, “but the carrot approach has officially failed.”

  Nina stood on tiptoe so she could cock her own ear to the receiver. “Is our turn?”

  “Have at it,” Tony answered. “Right now Kolb thinks I’m just a dumb Yank too thick to notice I’m getting the cold shoulder, but if I keep on, he’ll get suspicious. I’m down on strikes; you’re up to bat.”

  Ian fumbled f
or a pencil stub. “Is that a baseball metaphor?”

  “You’re in the land of the brave and the home of the free now, boss, it’s time to abandon cricket. I’ll be here until closing; the pretty Miss McBride is bringing her stepmother to give me the nod of approval, but Kolb is off work this afternoon. Two more hours, if you want to take a run at him.”

  “Why not?” Ian looked down at Nina. “We don’t have tickets for the symphony this evening, do we, darling?”

  “Am not your darling, you capitalist mudak.”

  Ian grinned. “Give me Kolb’s address.” By the time he rang off, Nina had located her trousers in the trail of clothing that led toward the bedroom. Ian scrutinized them, patches and all. “Do you own anything that would make you look like a pinch-mouthed secretary?” She stared as though he were speaking Chinese. He sighed. “I suppose as a married man, this moment was inevitable.”

  Nina sounded suspicious. “What?”

  “I’m taking you shopping.”

  “BLYADT,” NINA BREATHED as they entered the spacious double doors of Filene’s at Downtown Crossing. Ian could only imagine how strange it must look—how strange this whole, noisy, prosperous American city would look to a woman who had spent most of her life either on the far eastern edge of the world, in the Red Air Force, or in ration-locked war-torn England. She’d been astounded enough by the corner dime store off Scollay Square; now her eyes nearly glowed. “Everything just lying here? For sale, to anyone?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “No lines out the door, no haggling, no rationing . . .” She stared at the perfume counter. “Even in England, is not like this. Shelves are empty, things are scarce. This is like . . .” She said a Russian word.

  “Cornucopia?” Ian guessed. “Overflowing bounty?”

  “Decadent industrialist filth. Everything my Komsomol meetings ever said, how the West is wasteful and corrupt. Der’mo, I wish I come sooner.”

  “Try not to comment on capitalist or socialist anything where anyone can hear you.” Ian deposited his wife with a salesgirl in the ladies’ department and grinned to watch an exceedingly dubious Nina hauled into a dressing room with an armload of skirts. “Men always think women take too long,” the salesgirl twinkled, seeing him check his watch as she went off to find more clothes. Ian barely heard. Herr Kolb would be arriving home in two hours. If they could surprise him at his door, tired and off guard after a long day . . .

  “Is what secretaries wear?” Nina came out of the dressing room in a flowered summer dress with a froth of crinoline.

  “Definitely not. You need to look like a joyless soulless cow who hates everyone and everything, especially ungrateful little foreigners who lie about their war record. Surely you’ve met someone who—”

  “My Komsomol leader from Irkutsk,” she said at once.

  “Perfect. Turn yourself into her.”

  “Nu, ladno.” Nina vanished back into the dressing room, her voice floating out. “Is another reason I like it here—no political meetings.”

  “I assure you the decadent West does have them, and they’re every bit as boring. You’ve never been a cub journalist taking notes in the gallery as the MP for Upper Snelgrove drones on about combating district root rot.”

  The salesgirl bustled back with an armload of blouses. “She’ll look ravishing in these—”

  “No pink. No bows—” Ian rifled through the frilly stack. “Do you have anything in puce?”

  “Your wife doesn’t have the skin tone for puce, Mr. Graham. To be honest I don’t think any woman has the skin tone for puce . . .” The salesgirl headed off shaking her head, and Nina came out in a flat brown skirt and short-sleeved blouse.

  “Yes?”

  “Longer sleeves. Something that covers up the fact that you spent years being strafed by Messerschmitts rather than taking stenography courses.” Ian knew more of the history behind those scars now—Nina had been so entertained by his astonishment when she told him about meeting General Secretary Stalin, she’d unbent into telling a good many more stories up on the rooftop.

  “I see other men in this store sitting outside dressing rooms.” Nina vanished inside hers, already pulling the blouse over her head. “Is a thing American men do? Look annoyed while women try clothes?”

  “Not so much an American thing as a marriage thing.” Ian leaned against the wall, realizing how much he was enjoying himself. “Russian men don’t wait for four hours as their wives try on dresses?”

  “Russian men only wait four hours queuing for vodka.” A snort. “At least is better vodka than here. You Westerners, you don’t know how to drink.”

  “You have clearly never seen a roomful of war correspondents playing seven-card stud in Weymouth.”

  “Get some good vodka, and I drink you under the table, luchik.”

  “Make it scotch and you’re welcome to try, you little Cossack.”

  Nina swept out in a navy-blue blouse, long sleeved and high necked. “Yes?”

  She set hands on hips and face in a steely scowl, narrowing her eyes. “You look like an executioner who knows her shorthand,” Ian admired.

  “Is this hateful fucking blouse,” she agreed, looking in the mirror. “Deserves to die in an arctic gulag, this blouse. Deserves to wrap fish guts on a whaler and filter gasoline into jerricans.”

  The salesgirl bustled up with something bright over one arm. “Are you sure you don’t want something more colorful, Mrs. Graham?” She held up the dress by Nina’s face. Red as a Soviet flag, and a hem that would show a lot of strong, curved leg. “Isn’t she just born to wear red?”

  “She certainly is,” Ian said, straight-faced. “We’ll take it.”

  Nina scowled. “Why?”

  “Can’t I buy my wife a dress?”

  “We divorce, remember?”

  “Wear the dress to the divorce,” Ian said, and bought it. He couldn’t afford it, but he didn’t care.

  Soon after, he and his pseudo-secretary were walking down Summer Street, looking for a cab. The street was wet and shiny; while they were inside, a shower of rain must have passed over in one of those fleeting summer storms so common in Boston. Nina noted the sky with her usual upward glance. “Good flying weather?” Ian asked.

  “More rain coming, not good. But clouds for losing Messers, very good.” She smiled. “What it is, is good hunting weather.”

  He offered his arm. “So let’s go hunting.”

  WHEN HERR KOLB opened his door, Ian knew exactly what he saw, because a good many guilty men had seen the same thing over the past few years: a tall inquisitor in a knife-ironed suit, smiling with no humor whatsoever. Kolb did what most of them did when confronted by that man: took a nervous shuffle sideways as if he already wanted to hide.

  Ian liked it when they did that. I like it far too much, he thought.

  “Kann ich—can I help?” Kolb was a small man inside a suit that hung badly on thin shoulders; he blinked rapidly. They’d timed it well; he hadn’t even had time to remove his jacket. “Sir?”

  Ian let the silence stretch. They had to be nervous before he said a word. Too nervous to ask for identification, too nervous to think about whether he had authority to be here, too nervous to think about what their rights actually were.

  “Jurgen Kolb?” he asked at last in his most superior English tone. His father’s voice, the too-loud, too-confident drawl Ian had grown up hearing as a boy. The voice of a man who assumed the world was his oyster because he’d gone to the right schools and mixed with the right people; a man who knew the sun never set on the British Empire, and you had to make the Krauts and Wops and Dagos remember that, by God. “I’m Ian Graham of—” Ian rattled off a meaningless series of acronyms that he counted on Herr Kolb and his spotty English not absorbing and flashed his passport, which had enough seals and stamps to intimidate anyone with a guilty conscience.

  Kolb’s hand stretched out for the passport. “May I—”

  Ian stared coldly. “I don’t think
that’s necessary, do you?”

  For a moment it hung in the balance. Kolb could have shut the door in their faces; he could have demanded to see proper credentials. But he folded, stepping back. Ian sauntered in, Nina following with a steely glare as if prepared to ship Kolb to a gulag on the spot. A rented apartment, stifling hot and smelling of cooking oil and rust, furnished with little more than a cot, a table, and an icebox.

  “What is this?” Kolb summoned some indignation. “I haf done nothing wrong.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Ian took his time, strolling about hands in pockets. A bottle of cheap scotch on the table, a drink already poured. He’d poured a drink as soon as he got home, before even taking off his jacket . . . “I have a few questions for you, Fritz. Do be a good chap and cooperate.”

  “My name is not Fritz. Ist Jurgen, Jurgen Kolb—”

  “No, it isn’t,” Ian said pleasantly. “You runty little Kraut.”

  “Ich verstehe nicht—”

  “You verstehe just fine. Show me your identification.”

  Kolb slowly dug out his wallet, his passport, his various bits of paper. Ian flipped through, passing everything to Nina, who took notes as though copying down state secrets. “Good fakes,” Ian said, admiring the passport. “Really top-class work.” It was. Either Kolb was the man’s real name, which Ian doubted, or his guess that the McBride shop clerk was some kind of documents expert was looking better and better.

  “Ich verstehe nicht,” Kolb repeated, sullen.

  Ian dropped into his accented but fluent German, which made Kolb twitch miserably. “Your papers are false. You’re a war criminal. You came to the United States without reporting your crimes in Europe, which imperils your legal status here.”

  The man stared at his lap. “No.”

  “Yes. You’re helping other war criminals like yourself, probably in the back room of that antiques shop on Newbury and Clarendon.”

  Kolb’s eyes flicked to the drink sitting on the table, then back down to his lap. “How’d you get the job, Fritzie?” Ian picked up the glass, swirling the scotch to draw Kolb’s eyes to it. “Bamboozle the widowed mother into thinking you were a rare books expert? Take a backroom key out of the daughter’s purse while she’s off canoodling with her fiancé, so you can carve out a backdoor operation getting money out of your old National Socialist friends?” Ian shook his head. “Funny thing about Americans. They don’t care much about ex-Nazis, they get more worked up these days about the Reds. But for all their fuss about give me your huddled masses, Yanks don’t really like refugees, especially the kind who take advantage of widows and orphans.” Pause. “Like you.”

 

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