White Wolf

by Lauren Gilley

  Stranger still was Philippe. The smiling man with a French name who spoke flawless Russian.

  The men dug into the food with gusto.

  Sasha couldn’t bring himself to lift his spoon. “Why are you here?” he asked Philippe, and his father kicked him hard beneath the table.

  Philippe chuckled. “A very reasonable question. Ah, where to begin?” He pushed his bowl to the side and folded his hands on the tabletop, expression contemplative. “We are a long way from the capital, but I trust you know what happened in Moscow?”

  Sasha nodded.

  “The Germans are very committed to this war effort,” he continued with a sigh. “Surprising? No. But alarming. The Vozhd is equally committed. He’s using every means at his disposal to ensure that we turn back the fascists. These are frightening times in the Motherland,” he said, earnest, “and anyone who can help should help. For the good of us all. Don’t you agree, comrade?”

  Sasha’s tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He wanted to curl his hands into fists. He wanted to run. He wanted to do something.

  He nodded.

  “Some men have more to contribute than others. Some have quite a lot to contribute – you could almost call them gifted.” His smile made Sasha think of the hunt, the moment of stillness when the sights were leveled and the trigger finger was ready. The held breath before the shot. “Men like you, Sasha.”

  The statement hit him like a fist to the stomach. “What?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

  “Sasha,” his mother hissed.

  But he’d already started down this path, and didn’t seem able to back out now. “Gifted? Me? What could Stalin want with me?”

  One of the men snorted.

  Patiently, Philippe said, “You’re modest. An admirable trait. Especially at your age – how old are you, Sasha?”

  He didn’t like the question, but saw no reason to lie. “Nineteen.”

  “Wonderful! Your life is just beginning! Young, and strong. Just the kind of specimen my project requires.”

  This time it was Sasha’s father who spoke up. “Project?”

  “The Vozhd has employed me to design a very special, state-of-the art weapon. One that will enable us to beat back the Nazis once and for all.” Philippe smiled wider than ever, bright eyes disappearing into the lines around them. “An incredible weapon, known only to a few.”

  “Everyone’s become a soldier,” Papa said, grimly, “and there aren’t enough men to work the factories, is that it? They need someone to make the guns, and tanks, and bullets?”

  Philippe’s smile twitched to the side. “No, comrade. This isn’t a gun, or a tank, or a bullet we’re talking about.”

  “Then what?” Sasha asked.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you all the details. But I need your help, Sasha. You’re the last piece of the puzzle.”

  “But…”

  “Tell him what it is,” one of the men spoke up. It was the gray-eyed captain, his mouth a cruel, straight line. “Stop with your speeches and tell the boy what you plan to use him for.”

  Philippe turned to look at him, and a stare-down ensued.

  Philippe said, “Captain, will you give us a moment?”

  The captain waited, and waited…and finally pushed away from the wall, making it known that he’d chosen to leave them alone. He hadn’t been ordered.

  The five of them trooped into the front room, boots heavy across the boards.

  Sasha heard his mother let out a small, relieved sigh.

  But there was no relief here. The man who lingered across the table from them was of no comfort, smiling and talking about weapons.

  “Please,” Papa said. “I’m not sure what you want–”

  Philippe leaned toward them, a sudden movement, bracing his elbows on the table, voice low. “Listen to me. I didn’t bring these men with me as my friends. They’re my escorts. They have orders to retrieve you – by whatever means necessary. I don’t think I have to tell you that they are not gentle men.” His brows lifted meaningfully.

  Sasha’s hand rested on the table and Philippe covered it with his own. Warm and smooth, like before.

  Sasha wanted to pull away, but found he couldn’t. His hand grew warmer, and then warmer still. His adrenaline ebbed and in its place was a bone-deep exhaustion. He was so tired. He could have put his head down on the table and slept.

  “I shudder to think what they’ll do to you if you resist. What they’ll do to your family. Sasha.” The old man looked grim. “I’m so sorry, my son, but I’m afraid you don’t have any choice. When the Vozhd calls you…you must answer. Or else Captain Baskin and his men will kill you and me both.”

  Put like that, he didn’t really have a choice, did he?

  ~*~

  He was a boy. Just a boy. Younger even than Pyotr.

  A volunteer, Nikita thought with an inward sneer. A great weapon commissioned by Stalin. A special man to wield it – and he was just a lanky Siberian boy with pale hair falling in his blue, blue eyes. A boy who smelled of snow and wilderness, wrapped in wolf and badger fur, unselfconsciously entitled in the way of all Siberians who’d never lived beneath a man’s boot heels in Moscow.

  Nikita wanted to be sick. Every time he blinked, he saw Dmitri’s face…now overlaid with the narrow, angular face of Aleksander Kashnikov.

  Kolya sidled up to him, voice low. “It’s not too late to kill the old fool and say he was eaten by a bear.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”

  “We aren’t actually taking the boy, are we? Nik–”

  “We have our orders,” he said with finality. But his stomach clenched.

  This line of work was going to get him killed one day.

  And it would be a relief.

  ~*~

  “My beautiful boy,” Mama said, voice a choked whisper, pressing her cheek to his heart. He was so much taller than her now, and when he looked down at the top of her head, he saw rivers of silver threaded through her dark hair.

  Father was next, his hands rough against Sasha’s face as he cupped his jaw. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery. “I’m proud of you, son.”

  Shadows danced across the floor, the leap and crack of the fire in the hearth. Around them, the house was warm, and dark, and full of memories. He let his gaze rove across the furniture, the rugs, his mother’s tea set on its shelf above the settee.

  He’d been born in this house, upstairs on sheets soft from many washings, and he was filled now with the heavy knowledge that he’d never see this place, or his parents, again.

  But he would rather leave than risk their safety.

  “Come, boy,” the man named Ivan called from the door.

  “I love you,” he told them, one last time, heart in his throat, and he went to catch the train with the Bolshevik nightmares.

  7

  TO MOSCOW

  He’d never been farther than the regional rail station in Tayga. Now, dawn was coming on in slow, purplish degrees beyond the windows of a plush, empty train car, and a part of Siberia he’d never seen was flying past the window.

  Monsieur Philippe sat across from him, talking animatedly, gesturing with his hands. Sasha didn’t register most of what he said, because the strangest sense of calm had come over him once the train started moving. His thoughts were slow, like tree sap in winter, his limbs heavy with an exhaustion that didn’t feel natural. True, he hadn’t slept, but this was a cottony, heavy stillness that would have bothered him if he’d been awake enough to care.

  “…I’ve found the healing properties of herbs to be–” Philippe was saying.

  Ivan leaned onto the back of the seat, chewing some sort of food. “Go away, old man,” he said with the casualness of a man used to being minded. “You’re yammering. The young one doesn’t want to listen to you.”

  “Well, I…” Philippe stuttered, getting to his feet. He looked at Ivan and blanched. “Yes, well. Alright.”

  He walked away
…and took with him Sasha’s sense of calm. Like a hand or foot that had fallen asleep and had the blood flow returned, his body went cold and tingly with needles. Anxiety spiked in his gut, a slow-churning nausea. His lungs tightened and he took a short, sharp breath through his mouth.

  Ivan flopped down into the abandoned seat across from him and smirked. His big frame was settled in a boneless sprawl. This was someone who answered to very few, in good favor with the Vozhd and confident to boot.

  The smell of cold grease and stale pastry wafted over. Ivan lifted a mashed bit of pirozhki and shoved it into his mouth, talking around it afterward. “What does the old fuck want with you?”

  Sasha shrugged. “Don’t you know?”

  The smirk stretched into a full-on grin. “You’re brave. I like that.”

  But he wasn’t. He was terrified, and growing more so by the second. Fear crawled like ants down his arms, tingling painfully in his palms. He clenched his teeth and tried not to let his breathing show; the last thing he wanted was to look like a cornered animal in front of these men.

  But Ivan saw. Doubtless he’d seen untold frightened Russians in his career. He chuckled. “What do think I’m going to do to you?” He brushed crumbs off his shirt; he had a grease stain above one pocket.

  He shrugged again. Sasha had a few ideas about what the men dressed in black did to suspected anarchists, but he’d never seen them in action. He didn’t want to reveal his backwater ignorance…or give the brute any ideas. He thought about skinning a deer carcass – the sharp knife sliding between the skin and fat of the animal – and a lump formed in his throat.

  Ivan groaned. “Don’t you think if we were going to kill you we would’ve already done it?”

  Oh. Well, there was that.

  “Ah.” Ivan tapped his own temple with a thick finger. “You have to be smart, wolf pup. Think about it. I could have killed you at your kitchen table,” he said, casually, like it was something he did all the time. It probably was. “But we’re taking you to Stalingrad.”

  “Stalingrad?”

  “Yeah. First to Moscow, and then south to Stalingrad. And why do you think that is?” He narrowed his eyes, searching.

  “I – I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Ivan stared at him another moment, Sasha’s heart pounding behind his ribs, and then he let his head fall back and relaxed, once more unconcerned. “You’ve never met him before? The old man, I mean.”

  “No. How could I have?” Mama would have rapped his knuckles with a spoon. He couldn’t help it; his temper came out when he was scared.

  Ivan didn’t seem to mind, though, shrugging lazily and staring out the window as the first rays of sunlight stabbed upward along the horizon. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I don’t trust him. What would he want with you, huh? A country boy who’s never seen the capital? Why are you what he needs?”

  Sasha slid down further in his seat and didn’t answer.

  “Ivan,” a voice said, and Sasha was startled to see the captain standing beside their seat. He’d removed his hat and coat, but was no less sinister in his black shirt and waxed pants, his worn black boots and gaiters that buckled up to his knees. He tipped his head and Ivan got to his feet. Said, “Pyotr’s trying out the card tricks you showed him on Monsieur Philippe.”

  “Oh shit,” Ivan said, and lumbered away down the aisle.

  Sasha fought the impulse to grab at his sleeve, ask him to stay. Ivan was huge and hapless and intimidating, yes. But the captain was somehow more so.

  It was because he was so put-together, Sasha decided, as the man settled gracefully in the seat across from him. He’d taken the train from Moscow to Tomsk, was now headed back, and looked fresh from morning ablutions: his clothes spotless, his jaw clean-shaven, his dark hair parted and styled neatly. If it weren’t for the sludge of melted snow and mud on his boots, Sasha wouldn’t believe this was someone who’d walked down the pathways of his hometown. This was a city man, elegant and refined.

  But he held himself as still as the best of hunters, present in his body in a way that spoke not of drawing rooms…but of combat. And his stare. He was terrifying.

  As with any predator, Sasha didn’t want to risk glancing away. Turn your back on a wolf, and it was the last mistake you’d make.

  The wolf in that scenario was never worried, though, and neither was the captain, casting his gaze toward the window. The sunlight rose in discreet spokes, white-gold against a pink backdrop. The tundra glittered, gilded and magic-kissed as light struck ice.

  Sasha had always wanted to see the rest of the world, but not like this, never like this.

  “It’s Sasha, right?” the captain asked, gaze still trained on the window.

  Sasha groped for the defiance he’d shown Ivan, but found it had abandoned him. “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you ever been outside of Siberia, Sasha?”

  “No, sir.”

  “This must be overwhelming for you.”

  “I…yes.”

  He turned to face Sasha, then, expression unreadable. “Are you frightened?”

  He swallowed. “Yes. A little.”

  The captain’s face softened. He didn’t smile, but the tension in his jaw eased, and his eyes grew warmer – summer storm clouds rather than winter. “You don’t need to be frightened of us. My men and me.”

  Sasha felt his brows go up.

  A corner of the captain’s mouth twitched; Sasha thought he almost smiled. “We’re just following orders. It’s Monsieur Philippe who has ideas.”

  “What…what sorts of ideas?”

  The captain propped an ankle on the opposite knee. His boots were very worn, Sasha now saw, the leather cracked along the line of stitches at the sole. But beneath the dampness of snow, they had been lovingly buffed and oiled.

  “I don’t actually know,” he admitted. “Our orders were to retrieve you and take you to the lab in Stalingrad. No one told us what for. I guess we’ll learn at the stopover in Moscow.”

  The lump in his throat swelled. His voice came out choked and halting. “What kind of weapon is he making?”

  The captain shook his head. “I don’t know. He won’t tell us.”

  “He said…he said if I didn’t come with you, you would have hurt my parents.”

  “I probably would have, yes.”

  He’d figured as much, but hadn’t expected such brutal honesty.

  The captain snorted. “I’m not a nice man. But I always tell the truth.”

  Sasha gulped. A truth of his own slipped out. “I don’t want to join the Red Army.”

  “No one does,” the captain said, tone almost soothing. “But I think it’s better than some alternatives.”

  “Like?”

  “Like being dead.” A smile, bare but unmistakable, graced the man’s face. It made him look younger, friendly even. “Get some rest, Sasha. I think you’ll need it.”

  8

  EVERY HUNTER WORTH HIS SALT

  Nikita’s mother was beautiful. Everyone said so. She was the source of his gray eyes, and his straight, regal nose. She used to wear her coppery-brown hair caught up at the back of her head, and by the end of the day, when it was dark and she finally let herself into the apartment, limp strands had fallen down to frame her face. She always smelled of furniture polish, and strong soap…and of a stranger’s cologne. Some nights there was a button missing from her dress, a torn sleeve, a frayed seam. She would sit under a flickering lamp, bent nearly double, straining to see, and mend her dresses with great care.

  He’d never known his father – a factory worker turned soldier who’d been killed by a brick to the head in a street riot. But his mother was a loving, endlessly patient presence in his youth. She kissed his forehead every night before bed, her lips velvet-soft, her breath faintly sour from a rotting back tooth. “Sleep well, my little prince,” she would murmur, with love in her eyes.

  He was eleven the night she
gave him the bell. Small enough to fold it into his little hand; it was warm from her skin. “Do you know who this belonged to?” she asked, voice strangely urgent. And she told him.

  His mother was beautiful. Everyone said so. And no one suspected what she really was underneath.

  He had that in common with her.

  Sasha tried not to fall asleep, fighting his increasingly-heavy eyelids for long moments. But exhaustion finally won out and his head tipped sideways against the window. His breathing settled into something deep and regular, a rhythm that soothed some of the anxiety racing under Nikita’s skin.

  He could seek out the company of his men, but he stayed, content for the moment in the quiet. The train swayed gently and he felt his own eyelids growing weighty, his blinks irregular and farther apart.

  The problem, he reflected – well, one of them, anyway – was that Dmitri had been long-legged and blond, too. He’d been broader – he’d had a soldier’s physique – and his eyes had been brown instead of pale blue. His jaw had been squarer and his nose crooked from two different breaks. But Nikita saw hints of his dead best friend in Sasha, and it was unsettling. Seeing the fear in the boy’s eyes while he jutted his chin and tried to be brave sent him spinning back in time, when he and Dima had been reckless, stupid, and feigning bravery to get by. Whatever Philippe had planned for the boy, it was likely to end in death – Nikita didn’t want to care by the time that happened. He didn’t want to feel sick inside.

  Sicker than he already did.

  He touched the utility pouch on his pants leg where he kept the bell, thinking of the promise he’d made his mother. If he didn’t keep it soon, then all the terrible things he’d done couldn’t be justified as a means to an end – they would just belong to the endless list of Soviet atrocities.

  “Nik,” Kolya called, soft, and he stood, grateful for the distraction. “Come and look at this.”

  He was at the rear of the car, sitting sideways in a seat on the other side of the aisle, breath fogging the window.