The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

  “I’ll tell him you died a hero,” Nina told the boy who had been her friend for a few short, desperate months. “I’ll tell him you saved my life, that you fought a Nazi murderess and made her bleed.” She’d make him more than what he was, a warmhearted boy who died because he trusted that people were good.

  No, she thought. He died because he had the bad luck to meet you, Nina Markova. Because you fail every team you ever join, and then you lose them. You lost your regiment of two hundred sestry, and then you find Seb, and even though your team is now only one, you lose him too.

  Weeping, Nina kissed Seb’s bloodied hair and lurched down the dock without looking back. She glanced once at the yellow house, feeling the primal desire to creep inside, track down that blue-eyed German bitch with her slashed neck, and finish what she’d started. But it would take everything she had just to get back to her campsite alive.

  I am the rusalka of the world’s deepest lake at the world’s farthest end, she told herself, staggering delirious and blood light under the new moon. I am a Night Witch of the Forty-Sixth Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment. I do not fear Germans, or the night, or any lake in the world. She did not think she would ever be afraid of drowning again.

  She was afraid of something else now instead.

  SHE ALMOST DROWNED in her own lungs by the end of winter, when the pneumonia settled in and shook her in bone-rattling spasms. But Nina Markova survived, coughing and emaciated, filthy and ravenous, until the Germans pulled away from Poznań in January of the new year—until she could emerge blinking and staggering from her forest into the sterile white arms of the Polish Red Cross pushing through the liberated camps and stalags. There were months of thermometers and medicines, months being moved from one hospital berth to another, tossing and turning as she dreamed of a blue-eyed huntress until she knew that face better than her own. Nina was thinking of that face as she sat upright in the latest hospital cot, deliriously tracing a star on the sole of one foot with a red navigation pencil and vowing to do it over in tattoo ink, when a whip-lean Englishman with desperate eyes came running at her with a torrent of questions, and she had been able to recite the first line of the story, the myth. Not Your brother is dead because I failed him but Your brother died a hero.

  Chapter 54

  Ian

  September 1950

  Boston

  Nina avoided Ian’s eyes. The woman who had stared down Comrade Stalin, Ian thought, now staring at her own interlocked hands to avoid his eyes. The Ford had wound its way out of Boston and was speeding northeast.

  “I lie to you,” Nina said, ignoring Jordan and Tony in the front seat, speaking only to Ian, her Russian accent thickening. “Is my fault Seb dies.”

  Ian didn’t answer. Jordan and Tony exchanged glances, said nothing either.

  “I should have stayed with him. Die Jägerin, she wouldn’t catch me off guard. Or I should be faster, join him on the dock. I hesitate too long, is done.” Nina sighed, and Ian heard the layers of guilt and pain in that sigh, the long nights she’d thought about this in the years after the war.

  “You did your best,” he managed to say.

  “Not enough. Seb should have lived.” Nina looked at him then, unblinking. “Is what you’re thinking.”

  Part of Ian did think that. The unthinking rage of a brother too swamped by loss to be fair: You knew how trusting he was, and you left him to be slaughtered. Then the rage of a betrayed lover: I slept beside you, I trusted you, I told you about the parachute, and you keep this from me?

  “I fail him,” she said again, more softly. “Is what I do, when I have a team. I fail my regiment, I lose them. I fail Seb, I lose him. Is why I don’t have a team anymore. I shouldn’t have come, joined you . . .” Looking from Tony to Ian. “But I want to find the huntress. Since I have to stumble away from her by the lake, I want to find her again. It makes me selfish, so I join you. I shouldn’t have.”

  That’s your one fear now, Ian thought. Not lakes. Not drowning. To fail another sestra, another teammate, another comrade.

  He drew a deep breath, shoved the shock and the anger away. Reached out with one hand and hooked his trigger finger through Nina’s, looking into his wife’s blue eyes that held such desperate sorrow behind their opaque shield.

  “You didn’t fail him, Nina. And you aren’t going to fail us now. Believe that. This team will not save Ruth without you. This team cannot catch die Jägerin without you. If your one fear is losing another team, her one fear is you, and we are going to use that.” Nina’s eyes flared.

  “We need to get there first, and we’re at least an hour and a half behind,” Tony said grimly behind the wheel.

  Ian released Nina’s finger with a fierce squeeze. “We’re going to catch up.”

  The Ford stopped in a spray of gravel. Ian had never seen it before, but Tony had described it: the tiny ramshackle airfield where Nina had gone joyriding. Ian looked at a blue-and-cream biplane droning overhead, preparing to land, and felt a wave of pure terror. He shoved it down. “Jordan, can you persuade your former fiancé to do us a very large favor?”

  GARRETT BYRNE LOOKED at them, dumbfounded. “You want to borrow a plane?”

  “Olive,” Nina said. “I like Olive.”

  “Ruth is in danger, Garrett,” Jordan said. “It’s for Ruth—”

  “If she’s in danger, contact the police and—”

  “Brilliant idea, Gary,” Tony snapped. “Telephone the police and report that a child is with her mother. That’ll send them running, all right. Superb.”

  “I can’t let an unlicensed pilot waltz off with one of my aircraft—”

  “Tony, get his other arm.” Ian came round the desk to take Garrett Byrne by the elbow. “We’re locking him in the closet.” So much for the line we won’t cross, Ian thought. He wasn’t just stepping over that line, he was vaulting across it, perfectly willing on Ruth’s behalf to bolt Garrett Byrne in with the cleaning supplies. Garrett seemed to realize it.

  “Jesus—” He yanked out of Ian’s grip. “Jordan, is this true? You were right all along, your stepmother is . . .”

  Jordan nodded, white faced.

  “Jesus.” He gulped it this time, looking at Nina. She gazed back, eyes slitted. “Mrs. Graham, you’d better bring Olive back without a scratch, or—” But Jordan was already flinging her arms around him in a violent thank-you, Nina was calling for maps, and Garrett pulled free and went jogging off to have the Travel Air 4000 fueled.

  Tony looked at Ian. “Is this really going to work? Riding to the rescue in a biplane; this is something out of a serial where damsels get tied to railway tracks.”

  “It will work,” Ian said with all the conviction he could muster.

  “Only way to beat a car to the cabin,” Nina said calmly, pawing through the maps. Her doubt and guilt had gone, Ian saw in relief—she had a mission to fly and the navigator in her had snapped to the fore, all business. “If I can land. Jordan, you say there is flat spot nearby, no trees? Show me—”

  Soon they were all jogging for the runway, Olive standing proud in her blue-and-cream paint. Nina tugged flight goggles on. She could have been a ludicrous sight, goggles and boots and a Filene’s summer dress, but she was all cool, hard competence. “Plane can take four. Two each cockpit.”

  “That’s not safe,” Garrett began.

  Nina ignored him. “Is crowded but possible.” She looked over her shoulder at Ian. “Jordan with Tony in front, you fly with me.”

  Ian had been afraid she would say something like that. “It would be far safer to fly with Tony, while Jordan and I follow in the car—”

  “I fly four out of Taman once when U-2 behind me is chased down and the engine holed. Galya and I have to ferry the pilot and navigator. Was like flying a brick, but she stays up. Mostly.” Tony was already settling into the passenger cockpit up front, Jordan scrambling after him. Nina crooked a finger at Ian, who fought a gripping wave of the deepest panic he’d ever felt in his l
ife.

  Nina felt the same panic when she threw herself into Lake Rusalka, he thought. She could have let it take over, let herself sink, and then there would have been no one to bear witness to Seb’s murder.

  Ian fought his stuttering heart down out of his throat and stepped up onto the wing. “Don’t fail me, comrade,” he said through gritted teeth, and dropped into the cockpit.

  WHEN OLIVE’S WHEELS lifted from the ground and Ian saw the first terrifying glimpse of the earth falling away below, he wanted to shut his eyes and bury his face in his wife’s hair. It was all scent and touch and noise up here in the tiny world of wind and metal, fabric and sky. It ravaged his ears.

  The cockpit was so tiny it felt like being jammed inside a cartridge, Ian folded into the seat and Nina folded into him, her back against his chest, his arms welded around her waist, every limb in contact, every twitch of muscle shared. We aren’t nailed together this close when we’re making love, Ian thought. He had no idea how Nina was managing the controls, wedged up against them as she was, but she did it with complete confidence. Ian kept his eyes on her instead of the terrifying sky, his wife’s hands moving over those strange dials and levers like a pianist, and felt a flash of terrified pride in her skill.

  She shouted something he couldn’t hear. How long the flight lasted, Ian had no idea. To him it lasted forever, then forever took on a new meaning as the engine died.

  She’s doing it on purpose. She knows what she’s doing. Bringing them down toward Selkie Lake without the engine so that there would be no warning mechanical thrum to give their presence away. But all his instinct knew was that the engine was dead and they were dropping from the sky like a stone, and suddenly the world was full of terrible silence. Against the rush of the wind Ian heard Jordan’s gasp, Tony’s curse . . . and Nina laughing.

  I married a bloody madwoman, Ian thought. As if she could hear him, Nina reached up behind her own head and touched his cheek. This time he heard her when she said, “We won’t crash.”

  “Bloody hell we won’t,” Ian muttered into her hair. Nina stretched out her arms to the wind, back arching against him as if she could add her wings to the plane’s, and Ian snatched her hands back inside. Olive was still dropping. “Hands on the controls, goddammit!”

  She laughed again. Below the pines were rushing upward, and the silver flash of what must be Selkie Lake. Nina took the stick and for a moment, his wife’s body twinned against his, Ian felt what she felt. There is nowhere she leaves off and the plane begins, he thought. Woman and machine, masters of the air. And one terrified man clinging to their tail feathers.

  “Is there,” Nina was saying, calm as water, “the treeless stretch. Is long enough.”

  Ian felt her hands moving, but he didn’t look down to see the drop, just buried himself in the engine grease and north-wind scent of her hair as the biplane continued to fall out of the sky. He’d flung himself and the team into the void, and he’d trust his wife to bring them all down.

  Don’t fail me, comrade.

  One final sickening lurch, and wheels bounced on ground. Every tooth in Ian’s head rattled. Bloody hell, we’re alive. He repeated it like an incantation, and then a different incantation: Let die Jägerin be here.

  Chapter 55

  Jordan

  September 1950

  Selkie Lake

  Nina saw the cabin first, its modest slanted roof showing between tree trunks, and at a gesture from her they all went silent. Jordan felt her own heart thumping as they crept closer, careful of the dried leaves underfoot. The silver expanse of lake opening wide between the trees, the short ribbon of the boat dock stretching out . . .

  And sitting at its end, Ruth.

  Relief washed violently over Jordan at the sight of that small figure. Ruth’s feet swung over the water, and her blond head was bowed as she looked down into her lap. Hang on, cricket. I’m coming for you.

  At Jordan’s shoulder, Tony pointed. The sturdy old Ford belonging to Jordan’s father was parked beside the cabin, trunk standing open. Even as they watched, the cabin door opened and Anneliese came out with a pair of traveling cases. A very different-looking Anneliese, Jordan saw. Much less the Vogue fashion plate in an old coat and trousers instead of skirts frothing with crinoline, hair now bleached a tired-out blond and lying damp on her shoulders. Jordan realized the rest of the team had gone utterly still at the sight of her—Tony’s gaze unblinking even as his fingers flexed, Ian turned to stone if stone could emanate waves of ferocity, Nina flowing into some strange relaxation, lips curving like a moon. Three profiles overlapping one another, devouring their first real sight of the woman they had been hunting.

  “Ruth,” they heard Anneliese call, closing the Ford’s trunk on the cases and tossing the keys into the front seat. “We’re leaving.”

  So close, Jordan thought. Even flying, they had barely got here in time. By car they would never have made it. A few fast-murmured plans flew, the first part of which was Get Ruth. Until Ruth was removed they could do nothing or Anneliese might kill her.

  Nina slanted off toward the east, away from the cabin and the dock. Tony peeled left toward the cabin’s far side where Jordan had told him about the back window. Ian and Jordan continued on straight, stopping well inside the tree line, where Ian cupped his hands around his mouth and gave a whistle: the haunting four-note opening of the simple Siberian lullaby he had learned from Nina and taught Ruth to play on her violin.

  Anneliese, slamming the car door, didn’t hear. At the end of the dock, Ruth looked up.

  Ian whistled the opening bar again, low and calling. Jordan bit her lip, watching Ruth’s eyes hunting for the music. Anneliese paused, clearly puzzled, but she didn’t play the violin, she didn’t know the ancient cradle song Ruth played so beautifully. Anneliese stepped onto the dock, her back to the cabin as she walked out over the lake. “Ruth, into the car. Stop sulking.”

  At the end of the dock, Ruth stood up. Jordan thought she could see the stubborn set of that fragile jaw all the way from here. Anneliese held out a hand, but Ruth brushed straight past her, breaking into a run. That’s it, cricket, Jordan wanted to cheer as Ian whistled one more time and her sister pelted off the dock.

  At that moment, Tony broke out of the cabin at a flat sprint, door banging open, something long in one hand. He scooped up Ruth like a football, tossing her over one shoulder and running for the car. Anneliese scrabbled in her coat pocket, but her pistol snagged for a split second and Tony was moving too fast. He yanked the car door and dove inside, pulling Ruth with him out of sight. Jordan could hear him urging Ruth down flat on the floor of the car, even as he slapped a long glinting shape down across the open driver’s-side window: Dan McBride’s spare shotgun, taken from the cabin and now leveled at Anneliese.

  Jordan quivered inside like a plucked violin string, seeing Ruth disappear inside the car. Tony had sworn that if all went wrong he would drive away with Ruth, that he would make her safe first. The most precious pawn was off the board.

  Now, staring across the chessboard, they faced only the queen.

  Anneliese had frozen midway down the dock, pistol finally in hand, caught between lunging toward shore and firing from where she stood. Her back was to the trees as she stared at the car, and Jordan stepped out of cover onto the shore.

  Ian strode arrow straight at her side. “Stay back,” he said very low voiced. “This time she may shoot you.”

  “I know how to throw her off guard,” Jordan murmured back, feeling the Leica about her neck on its strap. She’d snatched it on pure instinct when they left the house—perhaps the same instinct that made Ian stretch for his typewriter, Nina for a plane, Tony for his own nimble tongue. When preparing to level with an enemy, you readied your best weapon. “Anneliese doesn’t really want to kill me, and after years of hiding, she’s scared of the camera. I can use both against her. If I don’t, she’ll shoot you—you’re the stranger; she’ll aim right for your head.”

  Ian’s str
ide didn’t slow, sun glinting off his hair as he aimed for the dock. Jordan didn’t stop either.

  From inside the car, Tony was shouting at Anneliese in German and English, telling her to remain still or he’d shoot, keeping her gaze aimed at him. Jordan could see him from the corner of her eye. She didn’t turn to look directly; neither did Ian. The world had narrowed to the two of them, and Anneliese. It has to be us, Jordan thought. The ones who have already gone against her and lost something—me, my father; Ian, his brother. Us. The ones who refused to lose Ruth too.

  Anneliese saw them as they stepped onto the dock, stiffening in a freeze of pure shock. She seemed to turn very slowly, or maybe it just seemed slow to Jordan through the Leica’s lens as she lifted the camera—the flying strands of her hair, the blue of her eyes as they rounded, the knuckles whitening around her pistol. Watching it, something in Jordan telescoped, compressed, divided: there was the side of her that flinched in fear; the human side—and there was the lens that narrowed with perfect focus, the ruthless eye that put a lid on the chaos of emotions and simply watched Anneliese scrabble like a cowering animal chased out from under a bush. The cold inner lens that wanted nothing but to record what happened here and show it to the world.

  “Smile for the camera, Lorelei.” It was Jordan who smiled as she took the picture.