by Kate Quinn
“CHEERS,” IAN SAID to his team. “We’ve unraveled our first thread.”
The three of them stood around the table, looking down at the list.
“Seven of these addresses are fakes,” Ian said. “No pattern to it, they’re mixed in with the real ones. But Riley Antiques in Pittsburgh, Huth & Sons in Woonsocket, Rhode Island . . .” He rattled off the rest. “Not one of them is real.”
“What’s on the other end when you dialed those numbers?” Tony asked.
“All private residences.” Sometimes a woman had answered the telephone, sometimes a man, in one case a child’s treble. But not one person at the end of the line had been anything other than puzzled when Ian asked about the business named on the list. “I heard at least three German accents, as well. And when I asked the operator to find me the number of the business, she told me there was no Huth & Sons in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, or anywhere else in Rhode Island for that matter. Same with the others. Those businesses do not exist.” Ian could feel his heart clipping along in staccato pleasure, the thrill when tedious legwork finally produced a lead.
Tony gnawed a thumbnail. “Was anyone on the other end suspicious?”
“Some sounded flustered. One rang off on me. Mostly I pleaded a wrong number and rang off myself in a hurry.”
Nina hadn’t said anything at all. But her eyes glittered, and as Ian looked from her to Tony, he felt the same electric charge leaping between the three of them.
Seven addresses. Die Jägerin might be living at one of them.
“Car or train?” Ian asked. “We’ve got a few day-trips ahead of us.”
“BLOODY HELL . . .” Ian looked around a sea of unfamiliar street signs, pulling over with a squeal of some very dodgy brakes. Tony had taken the train to Queens to see a cousin and come back in a rusty Ford on loan. “Hand me that map, Nina.”
Nina rummaged for it, sharp white teeth crunching through the skin of a beet. She ate raw beets like apples, until her teeth were pink. Ian hoped they wouldn’t be pulled over by any policemen questioning his tendency to drift to the correct (i.e., English) side of the road, because the woman at Ian’s side looked like a small blond cannibal. “You’re holding the map upside-down, comrade. Some navigator you are.”
“I navigate skies filled with stars,” Nina said huffily, “not places called Woonsocket.”
“I am never getting in an airplane with you, so kindly start learning to navigate in two dimensions rather than three.”
“Mat tvoyu cherez sem’vorot s prisvistom.”
“Leave my mother out of this.”
It had been a two-hour drive between Boston and their first target, with Tony staying behind to cover the tail on Kolb. Nina had spent most of the drive telling Ian how she’d left the Soviet Union, flying into Poland two steps ahead of an arrest warrant before running into Sebastian. American road maps might be a mystery, but Ian was getting a feel for how to navigate the minefield that was his wife: ask anything about Lake Rusalka or what happened there with die Jägerin, or display any sign of affection whatsoever, and she either lapsed into prickly silence or detonated outright. But she didn’t mind telling him about Seb, and Ian stored her affectionate stories up like coins. New memories of his little brother, every one priceless . . . but now it was time to work.
The Ford soon coasted into a quiet suburb with green yards and bicycles lying in driveways. Number twelve was a small yellow house with a modest, lovingly tended garden. It most certainly wasn’t an antiques shop named “Huth & Sons.” Seeing it here, so plainly a residence and not a business, made Ian’s pulse pick up. Someone who was not who they were supposed to be lived here.
Nina had fallen silent too, thrumming like a plucked wire. He drove past number twelve and parked around the corner. Nina slid out, back to severe respectability again today in the high-necked blouse she’d worn to interrogate Kolb, a broad summer hat shading her face. She took Ian’s arm and they strolled up the street in perfect propriety. As discussed, Nina released his elbow and continued wandering up the street, and Ian turned as if by impulse up the front stoop of number twelve.
Had there been no answer to his knock, Ian and Nina would have returned to the car to wait, but the door opened. A middle-aged man, stocky, hair parted and barbered with (Prussian?) precision. “Hullo,” Ian said in his most drawling public school accents, removing his fedora with a deprecating smile. “Terribly sorry to disturb you, but my wife and I are pondering moving to the neighborhood.” He waved at Nina, standing one house down with the map raised close to her nose as if she were shortsighted. Critical to have her at a distance, in case it was indeed die Jägerin who answered the door, who might remember Nina’s face as Nina remembered hers. Ian’s wife gave a distracted wave back, deftly hiding most of her features between the map’s edge and her big hat brim, but without looking like she was trying to hide. Bloody hell, but you’re good at this, Ian thought in admiration.
“We’re considering a house just a block over. Graham’s the name.” Ian extended a hand, banking as always on two things: that most people were incapable of refusing a handshake, and that most people instinctively trusted a plummy English accent. It worked, as it usually did: the other man shook hands, firm and unhesitating.
“Vernon Waggoner. My wife and I have lived here a year.”
Definitely German, Ian thought. That unmistakable clip, the W like a V, the V like an F. Ian made pleasant small talk, asking if the neighbors were friendly, what schools there were for his nonexistent daughters. Did Mr. Waggoner have any children? No, just his wife and himself. Waggoner remained polite but formal.
“Your wife, does she like the neighborhood?” Ian asked. “Mine is most anxious to make friends here.” It was entirely possible that die Jägerin might have settled down with a new husband; her options for work would have been few for a refugee. Ian wanted a good look at any woman who lived in this house, but there was only so long he could spin chitchat on the stoop.
“Vernon?” Another voice floated from the hall behind, and a woman appeared, drying her hands on a dish towel. “Do we have visitors?”
Her German accent was much heavier than her husband’s. Ian’s eyes raked her face even as he begged pardon for interrupting. Very plump, blond, blue eyes. About the right age for die Jägerin—it was entirely possible that the very young woman in their old photograph had put on weight and tinted her hair. Ian angled himself as he shook her hand, drawing her out on the stoop so Nina from her vantage point would have the best look possible. His heart thudded.
But Nina tucked the map under her arm and crossed the lawn to mount the steps, offering a gloved hand. Ian’s hopes crashed. Had she kept her distance, she would have been signaling Yes, that’s the one.
“Do you hail from Austria or Germany, Mrs. Waggoner?” Ian continued, concealing his disappointment. “I spent some years in Vienna as a young man, I remember it fondly.”
“From Weimar,” Mrs. Waggoner said with a quick, relieved smile that a German accent was not going to be answered with a nasty look.
“I had a good friend from Weimar, actually . . . does the name Lorelei Vogt mean anything to you?”
They both looked blank, not even a tiny flinch of a reaction. Well, it had been a long shot. Even if they had met her, who knew under what name?
“I shan’t take up any more of your time,” Ian said, taking Nina’s arm. She murmured something politely inaudible. “You’ve been most kind.”
“Not at all,” Waggoner said jovially enough, but it hadn’t escaped Ian’s attention that in this land of overwhelming friendliness, the man hadn’t invited them in. He stood solid in the doorway, smiling a pleasant smile, eyes giving away nothing. I wonder what you were, Ian thought, before you became Vernon Waggoner of Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
“Thank you again,” Ian said, and retreated down the stoop. Nina’s hand in his elbow gripped like steel.
“Not her,” she murmured.
“I know.” They rounded the co
rner out of sight, and Ian opened the car door for her. “But he was someone. He has things he was nervous about hiding, enough to pay Kolb for a new name.” Ian closed the door after Nina, slid in on his own side. “A camp clerk? A Gestapo guard? One of those Reich doctors who culled the unfit from the ranks of the master race?”
Ian heard his voice growing louder and halted himself. He’d wanted so badly for it to be Lorelei Vogt. He wanted that door to open and show him the woman who killed his brother.
“We come back for this mudak some other time,” Nina said, kicking off her heeled pumps. “We know where he is, what he looks like. Later, after die Jägerin, we get him. Whoever he is.”
“He’s a goddamned Nazi,” Ian said. “But not the one we’re looking for.” He wasn’t even aware of making a fist before he drove it hard into the wheel.
“Seven names on list,” Nina said. “Six more chances.”
He flexed his stinging fingers, and Nina made the gesture she’d made at the diner, hooking her trigger finger through his. Not a gesture intended to comfort—rather, it was a reminder. A promise that the hunters had yet to fire their shot. Ian looked down at her finger looped around his own, then at her calm blue eyes. Nina Markova, a hurricane in compact female form, outer chaos whirling around an eye of silent, startling serenity. He’d first felt that serenity when he realized they could sit across a diner table in wordless accord, and he felt it thrumming through his bones now despite the frustration of the hunt. He squeezed, and she squeezed back before pulling away and reaching for the maps, all business again.
I am falling for my wife, Ian thought. Damn you, Tony . . .
He put that revelation aside for later, with a gritting effort. They had work to do. “Hand me that list, comrade. Six more addresses, six more chances.”
But Lorelei Vogt wasn’t at the address in Maine either, or the one in New York or Connecticut or New Hampshire. At that point, two fruitless weeks having eaten almost every cent they had, Ian and Nina cursed and had to turn back toward Boston.
Chapter 41
Nina
September 1944
Western Poland
Time still had a tendency to shift and melt when Nina wasn’t paying attention, so she wasn’t sure if it was ten days or two weeks before she saw her first German.
She was back in the woods, after a tense series of days when the trees gave out and she had to move through open countryside, turning away from any signs that indicated towns, raiding isolated cottage gardens for carrots and turnips to augment the fire-roasted meat of whatever small animals she managed to snare. She’d considered knocking discreetly at one of those Polish cottages, seeing if she could trade game for bread, but Nina looked down at herself—dirty overalls, broken nails rimmed in dried blood. The first thing any Polish housewife would do if she saw Nina on her doorstep was scream, and who might come running then? A burly farmer with a pitchfork, or a German soldier? Nina was relieved when civilized fields melted back into woods. Just keep away from people, she thought—and that day, of course, she found five.
She was fighting her way up a bramble-choked slope when she heard a sharp cry and froze in place. That was no animal caught in a predator’s jaws. That sound had come from a man’s throat.
Another cry, a series of shouts, then a young man’s voice panicked and distinct: Nicht schiessen, nicht schiessen—
“Don’t shoot.” Even Nina knew that much German. If you didn’t manage to make your way back to friendly lines or kill yourself before you were captured, you raised your hands and said Nicht schiessen. Not that it would do much good, because everyone knew what the Germans did to prisoners.
Nina had been falling back the moment she heard human voices, but now that she knew a German with a gun was somewhere ahead of her, she stole forward. All the missions I’ve flown, she thought, all the bombs I’ve dropped, and I’ve never seen a German face-to-face. They’d been anonymous: the faceless pilots in the cockpits of Messerschmitts, the invisible fingers that triggered tracer fire into the sky.
Ahead of her, Nina heard a shot. A cry. The meaty thunk of a body hitting the ground.
She lowered her knapsack and sped forward, razor in one hand and pistol in the other, cursing herself for wasting her bullets driving off fever dreams, and went still behind a clump of underbrush. Held her breath, peering through.
Four men stood in the clearing. A fifth lay on the ground, thin arms outflung, drilled between the eyes by a bullet hole. His two companions stood behind him, hands raised, skinny as fence rails in uniforms Nina didn’t recognize. Two Germans held them frozen in place, neatly barbered and uniformed, the one nearest Nina still lifting his pistol away from the dead man, the other with his weapon leveled at the two prisoners. Everyone shouting in German and some other language Nina didn’t know, the younger dark-haired prisoner trying to plead, the larger towheaded one edging forward with some idea of attacking, the Fritzes clearly screaming at them to get back. Everyone shouting too loud to hear Nina emerge from the brush.
Her feet carried her forward before she even decided to move. She went straight for the nearest German, the one who had shot the man on the ground, and he didn’t notice until he saw the younger prisoner’s eyes spring wide at something behind him. The German whirled, and Nina caught a photographically clear flash of his face: young, dark haired, a well-fed throat pushing at his high collar. He backpedaled, bringing his pistol up, but it was too late, she was already on him like a wolf. For Nina he might as well have been every Hitlerite the Night Witches had ever faced. The night fighter who had shot eight women out of the sky, the Messerschmitt pilot who had chased the Rusalka down and holed her wings like a screen—this complacent German boy with the swastika clinging to his arm like a spider was all of them. Nina felt a rising howl tear out of her throat as she brought her razor around and laid his cheek open to the bone. Blood sprayed sudden and scarlet in the air. The German screamed, and a shot sounded somewhere as the second German lunged and the older prisoner went for his weapon, but Nina only saw flashes beyond the enemy in front of her. He went down, winnowed to the forest floor, and her arm never stopped swinging in wide scything cuts. By the time she looked up, he was a pulped mass on the pine needles and all was silent.
Slowly, Nina blinked blood out of her lashes. Her throat ached. The second German lay dead as well; the older prisoner, blond and bony, held his pistol. The young dark-haired prisoner had both palms clamped to his lower leg. Both stared at her with white around their eyes, and Nina realized the dripping razor still swung from one numbed hand. She tried to wipe it off on her sleeve and realized her overalls were drenched in blood. She leaned down, searching the German’s body and finding an astoundingly pristine handkerchief. Cleaning off her razor and her face, she dropped the resulting red rag on the ruin of his throat, feeling her soul float back into her own body from somewhere remote. “Lieutenant N. B. Markova of the Forty-Sixth Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment,” she heard herself say distantly. “Hero of the Soviet Union, Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Red Star.”
The two men stared at her, and Nina’s remoteness disappeared under a wave of despair. Who knew if they were English or French, Dutch or American, but they didn’t understand her—they might as well have been rocks for all the legible conversation that was going to happen in this blood-laced clearing. Nina wondered bleakly if she was ever going to have another conversation with a human being again—if she’d die the next time she encountered a German, with the last exchange of words to ever leave her lips being that terrible night on a muddy airdrome where Yelena broke her heart.
Then the younger prisoner limped forward, still clutching his lower leg—dark haired, skinny as a railway spike, a long serious face. “Gunner Sebastian Graham, Sixth Battalion Royal West Kents, lately of Stalag XXI-D in Posen,” he said in slow, clear Russian. “Um . . . charmed to meet you.”
“BILL AND SAM AND I blitzed out this morning. We were carted out on a work detail, road repai
r—we did a bunk straight into the trees. We’ve been stumbling around in circles for hours, trying to find train tracks so we could hitch a railway car. The goons eventually picked up our trail.” Sebastian Graham shook his head. “Lucky thing for Bill and me, meeting you.”
Bill—William Digby of a regiment and rank Nina didn’t catch—grunted something in English that Nina would have bet was Not so lucky for Sam. The three of them hadn’t lingered in the clearing among the carnage—Sebastian knotted a wad of rags around his leg where the second German’s wild shot had clipped him, as Nina and the towheaded Bill stripped the two dead men of clothes, weapons, anything useful. Sebastian had to lurch along with his arm around Bill’s shoulder as Nina hauled the overloaded pack, guiding them back to a quiet glade with a stream she had trekked past earlier that morning. They all collapsed panting, drinking their fill, and now Bill was wolfing down a bar of chocolate found on the second German as Sebastian rolled up his trouser leg to look at his wound, and Nina raked through the rest of the German spoils. This morning she had been one, and now she had become three. It was dizzying.
“Where are we?” she begged to know. It was the thing that maddened her most, after years of navigating by maps and coordinates—having no reference in this world of trees and Polish road signs except the points on a compass. “Are we still in Poland, or—”
“We’re just outside Posen. That’s what the Jerries rechristened Poznań. Fort Rauch in Stalag XXI-D—we’re not even three hundred kilometers from Berlin.” Sebastian Graham leaned forward eagerly. His leg had to be hurting him, but giddiness and freedom seemed to be blocking the pain. “Is the Red Army close? We had a camp wireless getting news of the eastern front, but if there’s an advance arm nearer than we thought—”
“No. It’s just me.” Nina looked down at the pile of German loot—matchbooks, penknives, ammunition—and wondered how much to say about how she’d got here. “I flew off course and crashed,” she simplified at last. “I had to abandon my plane.”