She drew the bell up by its chain and lifted it from the drawer, brought it to her face. It looked innocuous, the same dinged-up, tarnished bit of metal it had always been.
“I don’t…” she said to herself…
And then there was an incredible flash. She felt a numbness overtake her, felt herself falling, crumpling. She thought she hit the floor.
But then her vision cleared, and there he was, her blue-eyed stranger.
She gasped, and when her lungs expanded, they felt too-large somehow. She felt energized, full of leashed power, awash with the kind of adrenaline she had never known.
She was sitting upright in a ratty corduroy chair, feet planted on the floor, hands on her knees; she flexed them and felt denim beneath her palms: jeans. She looked at them, and they were a man’s hands, large, and white, and strong-looking.
“What,” she said, and her voice was not her own. Deep, masculine, and faintly-accented. “What,” she said again, panicking now, energy flooding her limbs in a terrifying way.
“Oh,” the stranger said, and came to kneel at her feet, hands on her knees, face tipped up to hers. Young. Sweet. Trusting. He was beautiful, blue eyes wide with wonder. “Nikita,” he said. “I think it’s happening again.”
She was panting, could hear the rush of her own breathing, lungs working beautifully. “I can’t…I’m not…who are you?”
“Shh, shh, it’s alright.” He sounded Russian. Oh shit, oh shit, she thought. All her father’s crazy rambling about Dark Forces, and here she was, in someone else’s body. “Ekaterina, it’s you, isn’t it?”
“H-h-how do you know my name?”
He smiled, teeth white and sharp. “I am the best of friends with your great-grandfather. We’ve been looking for you.”
“We?”
Slowly, as if he didn’t want to startle her, he lifted her hand (but it wasn’t her hand!) into his and moved them both to her chest – smooth with muscle, no longer her own, a man’s chest. His fingers were long and pale and delicate. “Yes, we.” He couldn’t stop smiling, expression beatific. “Nikita and me. Your great-grandfather. And I’m Sasha.”
“I…” She closed her eyes, wanting desperately to wake from this new, too-vivid kind of nightmare. The snow and the blood were better than this…this interaction. It felt so real.
Sasha stroked her face, fingertips warm against her cheek. “It’s alright,” he whispered, but she wouldn’t open her eyes.
He sighed, quiet, patient. “I think you had better show her, Nik. If you can.”
Though her eyes were shut, it began to grow light behind her lids. A slow-creeping gray light that seemed to exist inside her head.
“It’s alright, Katyusha,” Sasha said, stroking her face again. “He’ll show you. Let him. He’s your family.”
Sashka, she thought, unbidden. Someone else’s thought. Little brother.
And then she fell through time.
Part II.
The Volunteer From Siberia
4
THE CAPTAIN
Moscow, January 1942
His footfalls rang against the glossy floors. Uneven. A slight hitch. The wooden heels of his boots went off like gunshots each time they kissed the polished tiles. He didn’t have eyes for the opulence around him, the creamy white walls and their gilded drippings. The soaring domed ceilings. His mother would have given her last heel of bread to see the inside of this place. Nikita had given the life of his closest friend – though not willingly.
His destination was the set of gold inlay doors that loomed a dozen strides ahead. The uniformed guards standing at attention on either side shifted forward as he approached. One – young and pale-faced – opened his mouth as if to speak, and his partner silenced him with a hand gesture. Their eyes skipped over him, but they didn’t move to intercept him. His long black coat, the black boots, the gloves – it marked him for what he was.
The young one caught his lower lip between his teeth, and Nikita knew he’d seen the blood, the shiny splashes down the front of his coat; the trickles that ran down his sleeves and filled the palms of his gloves with tacky pools.
“I want to see him,” he said, without slowing.
They conferred with a glance. And opened the doors.
Major General Rokossovsky was entertaining a guest, a small man in a gray fur coat, bundled up in a chair opposite the expansive wooden desk. The major general glanced up with obvious annoyance, displeased by the interruption, and did a double-take. It was the blood. Plenty of men demanded it, but so few of them ever wanted to see it. Rokossovsky’s nostrils flared as if he could smell it.
Nikita could smell it. Some of it was his, still oozing from the long gash across the tops of his shoulders.
Most of it was Dmitri’s.
The flecks on his boots – those were a different story.
“Captain Baskin,” the major general began. “This is unexpected.”
But it wasn’t. Or, it shouldn’t have been. Maybe in other parts of the world, commanders expected their men to challenge this kind of bloodshed. Here, though, complete, unswerving loyalty was a given. To the major general, Nikita was not a man – capable of independent thought, emotion, resistance – but a weapon. A tool. And tools didn’t question their handlers.
Nikita reached inside his coat and withdrew a small, bloody bundle of cloth. He tossed it onto the desk, and it landed with a wet plop that caused the major general to wince.
“What is this?” he demanded, lip curling back in disgust.
“What we found in the village.”
Rokossovsky glared up at him.
Nikita met his stare.
A muscle twitched in the major general’s cheek. “What is it?”
No response.
“Major General,” the stranger said, his accent light, cultured. Like a Russian who had studied abroad, and who had lost the heaviness of Moscow. “If I may?”
Rokossovsky gave a stiff nod.
The man leaned forward over the desk and gnarled fingers flicked back the cloth. In the center, dark with blood, rested a small bird-shaped pendant on a chain.
Nikita recalled the slender, white throat, the soft gasp, the speckled brown of frightened eyes.
“All of them,” Rokossovsky had said of the families Nikita and his men had been charged with searching. “Anarchists, all. And anarchists aren’t human.”
It was artifacts they’d been charged with looking for – anything of great value. To be retrieved by any means necessary.
The stranger pinched the chain between thumb and forefinger and lifted the necklace, so the bird swung back and forth, a grisly pendulum. “A trinket,” he said, smiling softly. “A pretty bauble for a little girl.”
“Yes.” Nikita’s tongue felt oily; he could taste the blood. “A little girl.”
The major general inspected the necklace without touching it. “This was it? This was all you found?”
“There was nothing to find. There never has been.”
He’d known this moment was coming, had been building for months now. All those villages, all those simple farm folk, factory workers, families with too many mouths to feed. Upended furniture, and startled shrieks, the cries of babies. And the blood. All the blood. Nothing worth taking but a handful of trinkets that were precious to their owners, and worthless to the cause. Threats from Germany, amassing armies, and a mad scramble in the dark for something even darker, something Nikita wasn’t sure he even understood. He’d known it would come to this face-off across a desk, he just hadn’t known how much he’d lose in the process.
“I’m done,” he said, simply, and reached to unfasten the top button of his coat with one bloody-gloved hand.
“Wait,” the stranger said, twisting in his chair. Smooth, unremarkable features, lines around his eyes – eyes that were, as Nikita studied him – brighter than he’d first thought. Full of sparks and mischief. His beard and mustache were neatly trimmed, salt-and-pepper. His hair shone with expensive
oils.
“Captain,” he said, smiling, “the major general and I have been talking about you and your men.”
Nikita had always thought that when he finally resigned, he’d do so with his heart in his throat, his pulse beating loudly out of his ears and fingertips, his skin slick with sweat beneath his clothes. He’d thought his jaw would lock and his tongue would freeze, and that he wouldn’t be able to get the words out. Because the words were a death sentence. The day he said “I don’t” was the day he signed the rest of his life away.
Instead, he felt nothing but cold. His insides full-up with the bleak chill of the winter that lay beyond the Kremlin’s decadent walls. He let the few, fragile soft parts of himself soak up the grief, lock it away tight until he had the chance to feel it properly, and everything else was ice.
At the stranger’s words, he felt the first crack in that wall of indifference. The first faint stirrings of something like fear.
“Captain Baskin,” Rokossovsky said, folding his hands together on the desk. “I’d like you to meet Monsieur Philippe.”
Nikita didn’t acknowledge the man, who was now watching him with a smile.
“He comes to us with a great boon,” the major general continued. “A way to stop the Germans.”
Nikita didn’t take the bait.
The stranger – Philippe – turned around fully, tucking his legs up into the chair like a child. “You see, Captain, there is a program, one which I’m quite familiar with. A way to create a powerful weapon.” His smile widened as he spoke. “The kind of weapon that the Führer, even with all his factories and technology, could only dream of obtaining. It will turn the tide of the war.”
Nikita curled his hands into fists, felt the stickiness of drying blood gluing his fingers to his palms. “I don’t see what this has to do with me or my men.”
The major general smiled then, sharp and angry. “Monsieur Philippe’s weapon requires a volunteer.”
“One with certain…gifts,” Philippe said.
“You,” Rokossovsky said, pointing at Nikita, “are going to go and fetch him.”
5
THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY
Moscow was the city of his birth, but he was glad, in a way, to step onto the train and leave it behind for now. The taint of war lingered. It still smelled of corpse flesh, and the sourness of dried blood. No one had expected the Germans to get as far as the capital, but they had, and though they’d been turned back, they would make another run for the Motherland. Hitler and Stalin had that in common: neither of them would admit defeat until they’d expended all their men. What was slaughter in the face of victory?
Nikita was selfish and a coward, because though he loathed what he did in the name of patriotism, it was better than serving in the Red Army. Ignoble, but easier to swallow.
At least…it had been. Before Dmitri…
“Do you know what I love most about Siberia?” Philippe asked, and Nikita closed his eyes a moment, willed himself not to snap at the old man.
When he opened them again, the scenery beyond the window had not changed: an endless stretch of snow and pine forest, tree trunks flashing past with dizzying speed, the sky white with the promise of yet more snow. The gentle swaying of the train and the steady clack of the wheels on the tracks could have lulled him to sleep – where he would undoubtedly suffer nightmares of Dmitri – if only the old man would shut up.
They had the luxurious car to themselves – the Major General’s coin had bought what no one’s seemed able to these days: comfortable seats, clean windows, and food should they want it. The boys had all sensed that Nikita wanted to be alone, and they had spread out through the car; somewhere up ahead, he could hear Ivan’s soft laughter as he cheated Pyotr at cards.
But Monsieur Philippe was either tactless or insufferable, choosing to plop himself down right across from Nikita. And he kept trying to make conversation.
Nikita slanted him a look but wouldn’t ask what? He wasn’t going to make this easy on the old fool.
“I love the people best,” Philippe went on, cheerfully. “They are peasants, yes, but they’ve never been serfs. The men and women of Siberia serve no one but themselves. They are a free people.”
Nikita stared at him.
“As free as is possible in our part of the world,” he allowed. “Which is freer than most.” He smiled at his misty reflection in the window, the glare of sun on snow washing out his face, making him look younger and less lined.
Nikita said, “That’s not the sort of thing a man should be saying to someone in a black coat.”
Philippe chuckled. “No, I suppose it’s not. But rest assured, Captain, I have no plans to draw your ire.” His eyes scrunched up into slits when he smiled, an expression that transformed an otherwise boring face into something grandfatherly and charming. “I can promise you that I am every inch the patriot.”
“A French Russian patriot,” Nikita deadpanned, gratified to see a tiny twitch at the corner of the man’s mouth. He was remarkably calm for someone sitting across from a Chekist…but not unflappable. “What are you doing in the Soviet Union, Monsieur?” he asked in French.
Philippe smiled. “Your French is good,” he responded in kind, then switched back to Russian. “I have lived here since before it was called the Soviet Union. I suspect there are things you can’t guess about me, just as there are things I can’t guess about you. For instance: I would love to know how a member of the secret police came to be so well-spoken.” He smiled again, the kindly gesture full of threat. “Perhaps your story is as full of twists and turns as my own. Perhaps not. Either way, I think both of us have many secrets.”
Nikita decided he hated him, and that he might prove dangerous in the long run. He schooled his features, though, shrugging and turning to face the window again. The glare of the snow was so bright he was forced to squint, eyes watering.
The trees began to thin, the trunks flashing fewer and fewer, and then a break appeared, an unobstructed view of white tundra, cut through by a jagged, gleaming ribbon of a stream, bright as fire beneath the cloud-veiled sun. Animals stood at the water’s edge, a dark cluster of them, no more than smudges as the train shuttled past. Nikita was not an outdoorsman, and he couldn’t have said if they were deer or bear, only that they walked on four legs, and stood testament to a wilderness he’d only imagined up ‘til now.
“Wolves,” Philippe said, softly, tone almost reverent. “Have you ever seen a wolf before, Captain Baskin?”
The animals – wolves, if the old man was to be believed – were soon swallowed up by snow, and then more trees as the forest enfolded them once more. “No. Only the skins.”
“This should be educational for you, then.”
“How so?”
“Look into the eyes of a wolf, and all you think you know about the world pales in comparison.”
~*~
Ivan took a bite of his pirozhki and said, “I want to know about the weapon,” showering flecks of pastry across himself, the seat, and the carpet at their feet.
“Don’t spit food on us, you animal,” Nikita said with affection, brushing crumbs from his jacket and withholding a smile. Of all his boys, Ivan was the one who could tease a grin and a chuckle out of anyone. Brutish and charming at the same time, he was deadly efficient, and completely devoted to making everyone laugh.
Philippe seemed sufficiently charmed – probably because Nikita had been silent the past half hour, and Ivan’s appearance moments before was a break in the monotony.
“Ah, the weapon,” the old man said, folding his hands in his lap and turning to face Ivan. “It’s complicated, I’m afraid. Only a few of us know how to hone it.”
Ivan looked to Nikita for help, who only shrugged. He looked back. “It’s a tank?”
“No, no.” Philippe laughed. “Dear boy, it’s much more subtle than that.” He stroked his beard and leaned back in his seat, considering. “Think – ah, yes – think of a tank as a blunt instrument.
A club. By comparison, my weapon is a scalpel. Surgical, precise. It can go where a tank cannot, and do the things a gun never could. It requires a special sort of man to wield.”
Ivan crammed more pastry in his mouth, until his cheeks bulged, dark brows clamping down over his eyes as he chewed. “We’re not special?” He made a dismissive sound that sprayed more crumbs. “Nikita can wield anything you give him,” he said, making a sweeping gesture toward him. “Try and see.”
Nikita was touched, in a way.
“I mean no disrespect to your captain,” Philippe rushed to assure. “It’s just that…well, I suppose you’ll have to see.”
“See what?”
“Ivan, leave it,” Nikita said.
Ivan huffed in annoyance. “I’m just asking. We get sent all the way to Siberia for someone special, I want to know what it’s all about. Don’t you?” he asked, turning to Nikita.
Nikita did want to know. Badly. This whole business stank of a fool’s errand.
Philippe shrugged, but his smile was smug. “I’ve promised Russia a way to beat the Germans, and that’s what she’ll have.”
~*~
When Nikita got up on the pretext of stretching his legs – and he did need to; the train ride to Tayga would take a full day and half a night – Philippe thankfully stayed behind. It was dusky beyond the windows, those tight hours between daylight and dark when the snow seemed phosphorous in the waning pale sunlight. Ivan was teaching Pyotr how to hide cards up his sleeves. Feliks had balled up his hat to use as a pillow, draped his coat over himself, and gone to sleep stretched across two seats.
He found Kolya in back, near the door of the car, sharpening a knife with long, steady passes of his whetstone. His other knives were laid out on the seat beside him; the one in his hands was his favorite, Nikita knew, double-edged and perfectly balanced, it could slice as well as it could stab, long enough to slide right through a man’s ribs and pierce his heart.
His dark eyes lifted a moment, expressionless, touching Nikita as he approached and then falling back to the knife. They missed nothing, those eyes.
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