“You should eat something,” he said as Nikita sat down across from him. “You don’t want to pass out in front of the old man.”
Nikita frowned. “That hasn’t happened in a long time.”
“It happened a month ago. And if Dima hadn’t caught you, you would have bashed your head on the cobblestones.” He made a face when Nikita recoiled at mention of Dmitri. “I’m sorry,” he said, quieter. “I don’t mean to keep bringing him up.”
“No one does.” Nikita looked toward the window, swallowing with difficulty. He was starting to really hate Siberia; every time he tried to search out something beyond the train to occupy his thoughts, he was met by nothing but white. A blank canvas on which to project his hurt and doubt.
“You should eat, though,” Kolya pressed. Implacable as a mother. Dima had always been the one to press a heel of bread into his palm, look at him sternly and demand that he eat. It made sense that one of the others would assume the role in Dmitri’s absence, and it made more sense that that person would be Kolya. “I hid some of the pirozhki from Ivan.” He flipped open his satchel and revealed a few pastries wrapped in greasy newspaper. “A little stale, but good still.”
When Nikita reached to take one, dizziness pulled him sideways. Yes, he needed to eat, even though he wasn’t hungry.
The pirozhki was stale, the pastry crumbling on his tongue, the meat cold and congealed in the center. He almost gagged on the first swallow.
Smooth as the glide of his blades, Kolya moved in, distracting him from the chore. “What does he really want? The old man?” His eyes lifted, brows raised, hand still making passes with the whetstone.
Nikita swallowed, and said, “To help himself. I have no idea what sort of story he spun to Stalin, but I’m sure he was convincing. He’s theatrical,” he said with a grimace. “You should have seen him in the major general’s office.” He tried to mimic the man’s expansive hand gestures, slinging crumbs.
“Eat,” Kolya said. Then: “He doesn’t fool you, though.”
Nikita snorted around a mouthful. “Nor you. But flattery always works on despots.”
He murmured an agreeing sound and tucked the stone away, held his knife up to the window and peered down the length of the blade with one eye closed. Sunlight winked across the steel. “Your mother used to tell stories,” he said, tone deceptively casual.
“Lots of stories.”
“There aren’t too many Philippes left in Russia, my friend.”
“No,” Nikita agreed. “I don’t guess there are.”
~*~
It was hardest being around Pyotr, and Nikita felt guilty about that. Dmitri would have wanted his oldest friend to look after his little brother in his absence, but Nikita looked at the boy – and he was just a boy, too young for this, still wide-eyed and tender-hearted – and he saw Dima’s face, and kind words turned sour on his tongue, left his mouth as orders and dismissals. It should have been Dima here now, and not Pyotr. Dima who would have looked at Philippe and known, who would have stayed up late, bitching and drinking and plotting and reminding Nikita to eat something.
It was full dark now, the lamps guttering and insufficient, Pyotr’s face a shiny-eyed echo of his dead brother’s in the shadows. He leaned in close, shoulder pressing into Nikita’s as he craned his neck for a glimpse of the sleeping Philippe two seats ahead. “What do you think?” he whispered, breath warm and sour against Nikita’s cheek. “Is he who he says he is?”
Young, yes, but not an idiot. That was good.
“An old man who’s swayed Stalin? Yes, I think he is that,” Nikita whispered back. “Beyond that, I don’t know.” He suspected, but he wasn’t going to burden Pyotr with his fanciful suspicions.
“But,” Pyotr said, frustrated. “What kind of weapon? And why does he need a man to make it?”
Nikita shrugged. “Men make all weapons. Maybe,” he said, feeling a grin tug unbidden at his lips, “it’s a great bear trap made only in Siberia, huh? One big enough to snap shut on a German panzer.”
In the dim light, Pyotr wrinkled his nose.
Nikita chuckled. “It isn’t for us to question, bratishka. We go where we’re told, do what we’re told. Yeah?”
Pyotr flopped back in his seat with a sigh. “Yeah.”
Inwardly, the boy’s disquiet delighted Nikita. Whatever Philippe was up to, it wasn’t good. Nikita like knowing the boy had his older brother’s instincts.
The train lurched, suddenly. Tossed them forward. There was a terrible squeal, a clacking, clanging, a thump as someone fell out of his seat.
“Fucking hell!” Feliks shouted, finally awake.
Ivan and Kolya made startled sounds as the train came to a screeching, teeth-rattling halt, that slow-grinding deceleration that was as fast as an engineer could lock down a rig this long.
Nikita felt Pyotr grab onto his arm. “What’s going on?”
“Shh, I don’t know,” Nikita said, bracing his feet against the floor, fighting the momentum with his teeth gritted.
Stopping seemed to take an age, and then, finally, they were still. A puffing hiss of steam, and the train ground to a final, trembling halt.
Stillness reigned a moment…and then they were on their feet.
“What the fuck?” Feliks demanded, half his hair stuck up at a crazy angle from sleeping. “Are we there?”
“No,” Nikita said, already tugging on his gloves. “We’ve hit something.”
“We what?” Ivan demanded.
“Your captain is correct, I believe,” Philippe chimed in, steadying himself against a seatback as he stepped into the aisle. He was still in his long fur coat and gloves; he’d never taken them off. “The train has collided with something.”
“Collided with what?” Feliks demanded.
“Let’s see,” Nikita said.
Ivan led the way to the door and down the iron step to the ground.
The cold was impossible. It burned the skin of Nikita’s face, made his eyes tear. Under a half-veiled moon, the snow stretched smooth and decadent in all directions. The forest loomed black, the spiked shadows of trees reaching for them across glittering snow.
Ivan bulled through the waist-high drifts, breath steaming, clearing a path that they all followed in, single-file. Nikita felt Pyotr right up against his back; it wouldn’t have surprised him if the boy took hold of his sleeve like a child. They made slow but steady progress up the length of the train, toward the hissing engine.
The first splash of blood looked like tar spilled across the snow, black and glinting faintly in the moonlight. It was still warm, steam curling up in slender tendrils.
Nikita saw a hat, fur with flaps over the ears.
And then a hand.
“Fuck,” Feliks said without inflection. “It was people.”
Pyotr made a sound that might have been a gag.
Nikita heard the sound of vomiting ahead of them. Several attendants stood in a cluster amid the gore, their faces slack with shock. It was the conductor who was sick, dry-heaving over the snow, hat clenched in his hands. “Oh God,” he gasped between heaves. “I didn’t see…I tried to stop…oh God.”
An older man – look of grim resolution, tidy gray beard – turned toward their group as they approached. “Stay back, please–” he started, and then froze when he saw their long black coats.
Nikita shouldered his way around Ivan, taking point.
“Sir,” the attendant started again, tone quavering. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. We’ll have the train moving again shortly, if you’ll go back to your seats.”
“What happened?” Nikita asked.
The man made a face. “Trappers, sir. We couldn’t see them in the dark until we were on top of them. We think one had got stuck on the tracks, and his friends were trying to help him loose.”
The conductor swayed and went to his knees in the snow, dazed-looking.
“Get him up,” Nikita said, stomach souring. “Get the train moving.”
&n
bsp; “Yes, sir,” the attendant said, ducking his head.
“I think I can help,” Philippe spoke up, shuffling forward until he was alongside Nikita. He smiled at the bearded man, kind, fatherly. He patted the satchel he wore over one shoulder. “I have something here that may help to calm him.”
“Yes,” the attendant said, surprised. “Yes, please.”
Philippe glanced up at Nikita, asking permission with a look. In the dim light of the moon, his eyes seemed to glow.
Nikita shook the thought away. “Make it fast.”
“Of course, Captain.”
In the trees beyond, a wolf howled, one long, mournful note.
“They’ll come for the bodies once we’ve moved on,” Kolya said.
Yes, they would.
6
CHEKA
Tomsk, Siberia
Throughout his life, Sasha’s father had taught him many things, but the most important was this: family came first. Before city, before country, before business, before pride – family held sway over all.
Perhaps that was an idea afforded them by the lawless wilds of Siberia. In Moscow, or Petrograd, or Stalingrad, they would be the inheritors of a legacy of serfdom. Now chained by collectivization, and by the merciless grinding of the Bolshevik industrial machine.
But here, in Tomsk, they’d always been free. Life wasn’t extravagant, but it was theirs.
Sasha was nineteen, and foolish enough to think his life would always be his.
Evening fell in curtains of pale purple and blue, the sunset a bruise in the western sky, last light striking like flares off icicles and the fresh layer of crust on the snow. Sasha’s long legs ate up the distance; he’d been walking in snow his whole life, and it was second nature, placing his feet carefully, his fur-wrapped boots keeping out the cold and the wet. The sled gliding along behind him, heavy, but manageable. He felt the pleasant burn of lean muscles in his arms and shoulders and chest as he towed his kills. A badger, a fox, a deer – the last a young buck with tiny buds for spring antlers.
He was always clear-headed and peaceful after a successful hunt. After the adrenaline washed him clean, and the urgency bled out of him. When a vague sickness settled in his stomach, a blending of gratitude for the animals he’d killed, and regret for the lives taken. Furs were the family business, and they’d provided them with a comfortable house, food to fill their bellies, vodka for the long cold nights. They had paid to bury Sonya, when she passed, his poor little sister, always sickly and frail. Paid for his tuition at the university in town.
But there would always be a part of him that hated the way the life bled out of the animals’ eyes. A last wink of light, and then nothing. Husks to be dressed, and butchered, and tanned.
The light was gone from the sky by the time he reached the edge of town, but then there were lighted windows to show him the way. Warm wooden houses all buckled up for the night, shadows moving behind curtains. The market was shut up, the children had abandoned their games. He heard the distant whistle of the train – it would depart in just a few hours, loaded with pelts, and raw gold, and coal, all of it bound for the factories in Stalingrad…and the war effort.
“Thank God it doesn’t touch us here,” his mother always said. “There’s not a German alive stupid enough to come into Siberia.”
And there wasn’t.
A few young men from Tomsk had gone to join the Red Army, those from families fallen on hard times, who needed the money. And Sasha had seen the cattle cars packed with prisoners headed for the gulags.
Not us, not us, not us he prayed at night. He wanted nothing to do with the war. His family had suffered enough losing Sonya – they didn’t need to lose him too.
He turned down his street, routine propelling him forward, through the shoveled drifts to their brown wooden house with whitewashed scrollwork around the windows. He imagined he could smell his mother’s cooking, feel the heat of the fire, the promise of familiar comforts already lulling him half to sleep.
“Sasha,” someone called, and he pulled up short.
Their neighbor, Andrei, big, bearded, and ruddy-cheeked, always laughing, stood with his arms stiffly at his sides, his expression totally out of place. He almost looked afraid as his eyes skipped up to Sasha’s house.
“What is it?” Sasha asked, heartbeat accelerating.
Andrei’s breath plumed white in the darkness. He shook his head, like a man who’d seen a ghost. “Six men went into your house. One was old. But five were not. They had…they wore long black coats.”
Sasha frowned. “What?”
“Black coats,” Andrei stressed. He looked petrified. “Chekists, Sasha. Stalin’s secret police. Not the locals – these came from the train. From Moscow, I heard.”
Chekists. From Moscow.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Sasha looked toward his house. The windows were lit. A curtain twitched.
He started forward.
“Sasha, wait–” Andrei said, hurrying toward him.
But Sasha’s legs were longer. He left the sled behind and mounted the front steps in a few strides, let himself soundlessly into the front door.
The inside of their house was homely and cozy, two-story, the walls and floors and ceilings all made of wide wooden planks stained from time and wear, deep brown, and their surfaces almost soft to the touch, polished smooth by the brush of boots, and hands, and his mother’s broom. They rarely used the front door, always entering through the kitchen, so the front room was empty and silent save the faint crackle of the logs in the grate. His father kept fires burning in all the rooms this time of year. Sasha looked beyond their simple, comfortable furnishings to the doorway that led into the kitchen, just beyond the staircase. He could hear the low din of multiple voices, the scuff of too-many feet.
His pulse pounded in his ears, throbbed strongly in his throat so that it was hard to swallow.
His mother would tan him for tracking snow across her clean floors.
But his mother was in the kitchen with the secret police right now, so he thought she’d forgive him this time.
He crossed the room up on his toes, silent, and pressed himself flat to the door casing when he reached it. Straining, listening.
He was met with silence. His own heartbeat. Quick, nervous breaths that could have been his own, or could have been his mother’s.
A stranger’s voice said, “Your son’s here, I think.”
A big hand darted around the casement and grabbed a fistful of his jacket.
“Hey!”
The hand dragged him like he weighed nothing into the room, and when he got a look at the man it belonged to, he felt the blood drain out of his face. He was huge. Tall and broad and bull-like. Dressed in a long black leather coat and a black fur hat embroidered with the hammer and sickle. He grinned, flashing a gap between his two front teeth.
He was a monster. All thoughts of throwing a punch at him flew straight out of Sasha’s head. He dangled like a doll, gaping.
“Ooh, look at him,” the man said with a laugh. “Skinny and pretty as a girl.”
“Ivan,” one of the others scolded. “Don’t break him.”
Sasha glanced wildly across the room – there were his parents, huddled together at the table, pale-faced but unharmed – toward the speaker. He was dressed the same, though more normally proportioned. A few years older than Sasha, dark-haired, snowflakes melting on his jacket, his eyes hard and blue-gray. His face was handsome, but cruel. Shut up like a summer dacha, revealing nothing.
“No, please, not that,” someone else said.
This voice belonged to a squat older man with a salt-and-pepper beard and oddly kind, sparkling eyes. He nudged between two of the black-coated men and walked toward Sasha – smiling.
His coat was a patchwork of pelts, his hat gray wolf fur. His clothes were not the all-black of a Chekist, but formal and stiff, the dated clothes of a gentleman from the days of the empire.
The big man – Ivan –
set Sasha back on his feet, but didn’t let go of his jacket. Sasha caught a glimpse of his mother’s face, her damp eyes and trembling lower lip, and thought better of snatching out of the man’s grip.
“You must be Sasha,” the smiling man said, drawing up in front of him. He captured one of Sasha’s hands between both of his; his palms were smooth, soft, warm. It was unsettling to Sasha, in his world of cracked dry skin and hard-work calluses. “My name is Philippe. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Uh…” Sasha said.
Philippe tsked and glanced around the room. “Captain, your men are intimidating the poor boy. Give him some space.”
The man with the cold gray eyes stared at Philippe, expressionless, muscle in his cheek twitching. Then he nodded to his men and they all stepped back toward the wall.
A bit of the tension in Sasha’s belly released. For the moment.
“Now,” Philippe said, turning back to him, beaming. “I think you’re probably wondering what we’re all doing in your home, yes? And you have many questions, I assume. Don’t worry.” He patted the back of Sasha’s hand. “I’ll explain everything.”
~*~
Mama had made stew: rabbit with thick-sliced turnips and potatoes, flavored with a little wine. Under the weighty gazes of the men, she served up bowls of it with slices of buttered bread, more generous with the portions than she normally would have been, not wanting to displease them.
Sasha’s heart felt like it might burst out of his chest, its rhythm frantic with anxiety.
“Papa,” he whispered, leaning into his father. “What–”
“Hush,” his father said.
Everyone was seated at the long plank table, save Ivan, who prowled around the kitchen peeking into cupboards. And the captain, who leaned against the wall with his arms folded, looking bored with them all. This must be an everyday occurrence for him, Sasha thought, invading homes and watching families tremble in their boots.
He tried and failed to understand what Stalin’s thugs would want with anyone in Tomsk. It was strange beyond imagining.
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