The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

  “It isn’t true,” Kolb muttered. Nina shook her head as if she’d never heard such lies.

  “It is true. It’s just a question of what I decide to do about it.” Ian swallowed the scotch, grimacing. “Bloody hell, doesn’t forgery pay well enough for single malt? Tell me who you’ve helped. Whom you’ve made papers for.”

  Kolb’s chin jerked, but his lips stayed pressed shut.

  “You don’t seem to realize you’re in luck today.” Ian picked up the bottle, watching Kolb’s eyes go to it. “I’m not really interested in you, Fritzie. Give me some names, and I’ll forget I know yours.”

  The German moistened his lips. “I don’t know any names. I come to start a new life. I wasn’t a Nazi—”

  “Ich bin kein Nazi, ich bin kein Nazi.” Ian looked at Nina, setting down the bottle. “They all say that, don’t they?”

  She nodded ominously, pencil flying.

  “I was a member of the party,” Kolb burst out in German, suddenly talkative. “But it wasn’t like you make it sound. You had to be a party member just to get by. I was just doing my job.”

  Ah, the sweet sound of justifications. Once they started to justify themselves, you were getting somewhere. Ian sat back. “What job?”

  “An assessor. Rare books, musical instruments. My advice was sought.” Straightening his tie. “I examined antiques that had been gathered and sent to Austria, on the way to private collections in Berlin. That is all.”

  “Gathered. That’s a nice word for stolen.”

  “That wasn’t my job.” Stubbornly. “I only assessed items that came to me. Restoring anything damaged, seeing it crated for travel. I wasn’t responsible for confiscations.”

  “That was someone else’s job,” Ian sympathized. “Of course. Well, a man who can spot a forgery usually isn’t too bad at making them.”

  “I use my skills honestly to make a living, that’s all.”

  “I want names. Who you helped. Where they are now.” Lorelei Vogt. The name was on the tip of Ian’s tongue, but he swallowed it. He didn’t want Kolb knowing there was someone specific they were looking for, if there was even the remotest chance he might warn her. He might warn her anyway that someone is sniffing for war criminals. But that was a chance they’d have to take; without Kolb they had no lead at all.

  The German moistened his lips again. “I helped no one. I am hiding nothing.”

  “Then you won’t object if my secretary has a look around.” Kolb opened his mouth, but Ian gave a freezing glare. “An innocent man would give his permission without hesitation.”

  Kolb shrugged, sullen. “There’s nothing to find.”

  “All entirely cricket, eh?” Ian said as Nina slapped her notebook down and stamped into the bedroom. Kolb looked scared, but his eyes followed Ian, not his supposed secretary. Ian’s hopes that Nina would find something incriminating began to sink.

  “Have a drink,” he said instead, pouring a splash of scotch into the glass. Just enough to wet the tongue, get a drunk’s thirst really roaring, and from the eager way Kolb grabbed the glass, Ian suspected he was a thoroughgoing boozer. “Let’s go over this again. Your real name, to start. Why hide it? It’s not illegal here to take a new name. Normally you Jerries go for Smith or Jones, but I suppose given your pathetic English, you didn’t see the point in trying to pretend you weren’t German.” Ian let contempt filter into his voice. “Or maybe you just shortened your real name? Was it Kolbaum, Kolbmann? There are a lot of Jews in the antiques business, are you a Jew? Helping out the Nazis to get yourself a pass—”

  “I’m not a Jew.” That pricked Kolb’s Aryan outrage as Ian had thought it would. “I’m Austrian, pure descent!”

  Even a small apartment like this one took a long time to search thoroughly. Nina checked every floorboard for loose nails, every cupboard for false backs, every bedspring and dinner plate and item of clothing, as Ian hammered at Kolb. He put a third of the bottle of scotch into the man, as he alternated between cutting sarcasm and a whip-snap roar that had Kolb cringing in his chair. Ian learned his real name was Gerhardt Schlitterbahn. Ian learned a tedious amount about the business Kolb had done in Austria for the Third Reich, assessing Blüthner pianofortes and first-edition volumes of Schiller confiscated from Jewish families. Ian learned how Kolb nearly starved after the war, how Daniel McBride had agreed to sponsor him in return for lending his expertise to the shop—and that was where the man clammed up.

  It didn’t matter if Ian threatened to come back with an arrest warrant, if he put money on the table, if he threatened to get Kolb sacked by informing his employers that the man they had sponsored was a Nazi. Kolb ignored both bribes and threats, mouth sealed shut. He was drenched in sweat, half drunk, sniffling and flinching whenever Ian came within arm’s length, but he wouldn’t admit he had aided any fellow Nazis, and he wouldn’t list names.

  Nina stood behind him, fists on hips, shaking her head. She’d torn this apartment apart with the kind of brutal efficiency Ian envisioned in secret police raids, and found nothing. If Kolb had incriminating lists or documents, they weren’t here. Disappointment rose sharp and bitter in Ian’s mouth.

  Kolb gnawed his lip, eyes yearning for the scotch. You know, Ian thought. You know where she is. So much knowledge locked behind that clamped mouth.

  “You’re severely trying my patience, Fritz,” he said at last.

  “I have nothing to tell you.” Kolb spoke in a righteous rising whine. So very hard done by. So wronged. “I’ve done nothing, nothing at all—”

  Ian didn’t mean to move. He didn’t realize he’d risen until he swatted the bottle of scotch to the floor in a shower of glass, sank a hand into Kolb’s collar, dragged him out of his chair, and hoisted him up against the wall. “You cataloged stolen books while the people who owned them were shipped off in cattle cars,” Ian said. “Don’t tell me you did nothing, you little Nazi shit.”

  Kolb squeaked, eyes huge. Ian hoisted him another inch, off the floor, so the man’s face abruptly started turning purple. “Tell me who you helped get here.” Ian heard the blood rushing in his ears. “Tell me who you’re protecting.”

  Lorelei Vogt. Give her to me.

  Kolb just stared, whimpering, and Ian had never wanted to hurt a man so badly in his life. Fling him to the ground and give his face a few good stamps, till he was spitting blood and tooth splinters out along with names.

  He won’t talk, the thought whispered. However much Ian scared him, Kolb feared something else more. Very possibly die Jägerin. If I were a cringing paper pusher nursing a bottle of scotch, I’d be quite scared of what a woman like that could do to me—a woman who killed six children in cold blood. Ian heard the thought come cool and ruthless. You’ll have to hurt him quite a lot to make him more afraid of you than her.

  At that point, though, information couldn’t really be counted on. People in enough pain would say anything to make the pain stop.

  But Ian didn’t care. He wanted to do it anyway. He wanted to beat this man to a pulp.

  He heard a snick behind him, and he didn’t need to look back to know Nina had unfolded the razor from her sleeve. Anything he did, his wife wasn’t going to stop him.

  Ian took a long breath and lowered Kolb back onto his straining toes. He stepped back, fishing his handkerchief out and wiping his fingers clean of scotch splatters as Kolb sagged gasping against the wall.

  “Maybe I believe you, Fritz.” Ian fought to keep his voice light, conversational. “Maybe you’re just a sad man left over from a bad war, trying to make his way in the world. You’re lucky my colleagues”—waving a hand, implying hordes of faceless associates from the police department, the immigration bureau—“have other names more interesting than yours.” Ian collected his hat, Nina her notebook. The razor had been stowed. Only the smell of liquor, the crunch of glass underfoot, and the fear in the little German’s eyes gave away what had almost happened.

  It still could happen, Ian thought. A fist to the gut, then
when Kolb doubled over, bring the knee up and break his nose. The crunch would be glorious. “Do I need to mention that you shouldn’t think of leaving Boston?” Ian asked instead.

  “No,” Kolb said at once.

  “Good. Innocent men don’t run. You run, I’ll come after you. And I won’t be so friendly next time.” Ian clapped his fedora over his hair. The rage was draining, leaving a sick feeling in the gut. Bloody hell, Graham, what did you almost do?

  “Have a good day,” Ian managed to say, and fled.

  Chapter 30

  Nina

  July 1943

  Russian front near Taman Peninsula

  Drink your Coca-Cola, rabbit.” Nina yawned, stepping up onto the wing and passing Yelena a pair of stimulant tablets. “It’ll be eight runs at least.”

  Eight runs over the Blue Line, the stretch of German fortifications between Novorossiysk and the Sea of Azov, a razor-edge thicket of searchlights, antiaircraft batteries, enemy airdromes, fighters on alert . . . The Night Witches had been hammering at the same stretch since they’d been transferred here in the spring. They’d been so jubilant, sweeping into their new post flushed with pride because by now everyone knew that they were pushing the Fritzes back. The swastikas were falling back before the red stars, and the 588th had their part to play.

  The Forty-Sixth, Nina reminded herself as the Rusalka was cleared to take off. The 588th had been renamed the Forty-Sixth Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment in February. “Five other regiments of U-2 fliers in our next division, ladies,” Bershanskaia said with pride, “and not one has been named a Guards regiment.”

  “The men don’t have our sortie numbers!” Nina had called from the back of the crowd, and even as Bershanskaia cut her hand downward to quell the resulting laughter, she smiled. Because they all knew it was true. The other regiments flew hard, but they didn’t push their planes and themselves to the absolute limit. They hadn’t fought to come to the front, only to be called little princesses.

  It had been a very long time since anyone called a Night Witch a little princess, but Nina didn’t think any of them had forgotten.

  Yelena was saying something, Nina realized, pointing at the U-2 lined up ahead of them. “. . . worried about her,” Yelena said, nodding at the other plane’s pilot who was staring blankly out of her cockpit. “Irina hasn’t been right since Dusia died.”

  “Irina didn’t bring her pilot down alive,” Nina said. In April, Dusia had taken a shot through the floor of her cockpit from a Focke-Wulf—clipped through the skull, dead in an instant. Her navigator Irina had had to land, stiff with shock, but she’d gone back to flying the next night. “She thinks she should be dead too, not sitting in her pilot’s place.”

  “Don’t tell me you think that!”

  “No, but she does.” Promotion from the rear cockpit to the front happened over the body of another pilot. You lost a sestra, you had to slot another into her seat and keep flying. Nina shivered, touching her star-embroidered scarf for luck.

  A smooth ascent into the cloudless sky—tonight they took off fourth. Nina felt her pills kick in, giving the world its slowed-down razor-edged clarity, the glass-clear alertness. She’d pay for it later, jittering and blinking and unable to sleep, but it was worth it to feel this awake and alive, sliding immortal through the sky.

  “Searchlights,” Nina called through the interphones as they approached their target. Yelena had already seen those four searching columns, had already started her descent. Nina saw the lead plane in the cross-beams, a white spot bleached colorless—

  And then it turned from white to red in a sudden burst of flame.

  For a moment Nina thought her ears had burst, that she had gone deaf. The guns, she thought, where are they? There were no shells exploding in the air, the batteries below were silent, and yet a U-2 was falling out of the sky in a shower of glowing red-and-gold fragments.

  “Drop!” Yelena was screaming to the next plane in line, but strange flashes were already arrowing in, straight through the dark rather than from the ground. The second plane exploded, falling apart midair, and two more girls were dead. Bile crawled up the back of Nina’s throat. “Night fighters,” she heard herself shouting through the interphones, “they’re lining us up with night fighters—” They had never been hit with that before; the tracer fire was setting the U-2s alight like dry kindling. The third U-2 in line should have been sideslipping, diving out of the line of flight, but it sailed straight into the lights, undeviating. Irina was in the cockpit, Nina thought, Irina who had brought Dusia’s corpse down, then sat frozen for hours afterward. She must be shock-frozen now, Nina thought, shouting fruitlessly at the plane. Shock-frozen the way Yelena had been that time she imagined Messerschmitts where there were none—because Irina didn’t even try to evade the tracer fire. She flew on, straight and slow as a stone lobbed gently into a river, and then she was burning in the air like a sheet of paper.

  The next fighter to make its pass would target the Rusalka.

  Yelena had already thrown them into a nosedive. “Get under the lights,” Nina yelled through the interphones. They were sinking fast toward the ground, and from the corner of her eye she could see the flaming wreckage of Irina’s plane—charred fuselage, half a wing, a horrendously bright flare that might have been burning hair on a dead woman’s head—settle over the earth in glowing embers. The Rusalka’s altimeter fell, Yelena forcing them down under six hundred meters, five, four—“We’re over the target!” Nina shouted, “keep straight—” Normally Nina would have released the bombs, but they were far too low. Two hundred meters now and still falling. Nina looked back and saw the U-2 behind them tumble out of the sky midway through its own evasive maneuvers, a burning propeller whirling into the night like a star, the navigator’s flares going off in colored bursts even as the plane’s wings broke apart. Nina saw the shape of a German night fighter for the first time, lit jaggedly by the green light of the flares.

  “Under one hundred meters,” Yelena called, bringing the engine back to life even as the altimeter needle scraped the bottom. The Rusalka roared, nose lifting as Yelena brought her around still hugging the ground. “I can’t see—”

  Nina struggled to get her bearing for the new heading, back to the airdrome. This mission was done. The searchlights were still stabbing the air, but the Night Witches had scattered to the wind, run for cloud cover, turned for home. The ground below glowed with burning fragments. Four planes, Nina thought numbly. They had never, ever lost so many at once. Losses came singly, a plane at a time, perhaps two. Not four.

  She could hear Yelena crying in the front cockpit, even as she took them up to a safer height to jettison their bombs. “Tell me where to go,” she was weeping, “tell me the heading. Take me home.”

  “HOW DID THE FRITZES know our target?”

  “Even they get lucky. Who knows?”

  Ten minutes. Eight girls. One moment they were immortal, the Night Witches descending on their targets. The next moment, burning like candles.

  “I’ve been promoted to pilot.” Nina mumbled the news into Yelena’s hair, standing outside the schoolhouse that now served as their barracks. “Moved up with three other navigators.” She should have been raging to be moved away from Yelena, but all rage had been drained out of her.

  “It’s where you belong,” Yelena said valiantly. “The regiment needs you in a pilot’s cockpit, not steering me around.” But her face crumpled. Nina pulled her closer, openly kissed her wet eyes and her wet cheeks, not bothering to look for privacy. Ever since coming back to the barracks and seeing the eight folded cots against the wall that would not be filled that night, all the women were embracing, clinging, comforting each other. The most disastrous night in regiment history had bloomed into a beautiful summer morning, and they all knew they would be going up again tonight. The word had come down that they’d have night fighters of their own flying, if any German night fighters reared their snouts again.

  “They’ve g
iven you a U-2 already?” Yelena asked, wiping her eyes. “For tonight?”

  Nina nodded. “Bershanskaia’s pairing you with Zoya for navigator. She’s good—you were right about that. She’ll take care of you.”

  Not like I can. But she didn’t say it; this was the time to fill her pilot with confidence.

  “Who’s your navigator?” Yelena asked.

  “Galina Zelenko.”

  “Little Galya? How is that skinny prat supposed to keep you out of trouble?” Yelena sounded unaccustomedly savage. “She looks about twelve!”

  “Eighteen, and terrified of me. Am I really that frightening?” Nina’s attempt at levity fell flat. I don’t want to leave you, she wanted to cry. I can’t fly with anyone but you. But this was the way of things: lose a sestra, slot another into her cockpit, keep flying.

  They stood in the sunlight, clinging to each other. “I just want this war to be over,” Yelena whispered. “I want an apartment in Moscow overlooking the river, Ninochka. I want to sit at the window with a glass of tea, and hold your hand, and watch babies play on the floor. I want to sleep ten hours every night. I never want to kill even a spider again.”

  Peace and tea and sunlight. Nina tried to imagine it, an apartment with a wide gray river outside, children laughing, tea sweetened with cherry jam, but all she could see was planes falling through the night like burning flowers. I want to kill Nazis, Nina thought. Whether this war ends tomorrow or in a hundred years, I don’t think I will ever stop wanting to kill Nazis.