“Where are we?” Sasha asked, not really expecting an answer.
But Ivan said, “Our private offices. We’re very important people around here, don’t you know.”
“As important as Commander Beria?”
There was just enough light to see Ivan’s slanted, smirking look. “Careful, pup.”
“Right.”
The light grew brighter, and then the stairs leveled off at the top to reveal a wide open space – the sight of which hit Sasha like a physical presence, halting him on the top step, hand reaching reflexively for the bit of iron railing there. Before him stretched a loft, the top floor of a warehouse with soaring ceilings, exposed steel beams and girders, rivets, and vents. Ten tall, arched windows marched down the far wall, pouring in pale winter sunlight across rough board floors. Open, and bright, and full of echoes, like a cathedral.
The furniture seemed too-small: a cluster of tidy desks and telephones, a low table cluttered with mugs. A blue china teapot sat perched atop a stove in one corner. In another, there were dumbbells, barbells, and a sand-filled punching bag suspended from the ceiling.
He found it indescribably lovely.
But then he thought of the people waiting for bread downstairs, and his wonder dimmed.
Ivan walked over to the makeshift gym and dropped his bag on the floor; it landed with a heavy thump, a muted jangle of metal.
“Your offices?” Sasha asked.
Kolya had walked to the desks to set their lunch down, and shrugged out of his coat and hat. “We’ve been working on the major general’s special project for over a year.” His inflection told Sasha what he thought of that. “We got this in the bargain.” He waved a hand to indicate the loft.
“What do you do here?”
“Sleep, sometimes. Eat. Train.” He twitched a bare scrap of a grin. “And now, train you.”
~*~
Sasha did not, in fact, know how to fight. Sure, he’d tussled with the other boys on his street when he was younger, had rolled on the floor when he was three and four, and his favorite game was the one where his father pretended to be a bear and snarled and fake-batted at him until Sasha was laughing so hard tears streamed from his eyes. But he’d never had occasion to throw a real punch, and as he stood opposite Feliks, his sleeves folded back and his knuckles wrapped in dirty, once-white linen bandages, his inexperience settled across his shoulders like a physical weight.
“Um,” he said, and Ivan chuckled.
“I thought you knew how to fight?”
“Well. About that.”
The chuckle turned into a hearty laugh. “Don’t worry. I knew you were lying.”
“I wasn’t lying,” Sasha huffed, and Kolya lifted his brows. “Alright, alright, I was lying.”
“Why?” Kolya asked.
“Because–”
Feliks ducked in and punched him right in the arm.
“Ow!”
The three Chekists laughed, and Sasha clapped a hand over his mouth. Shit. It hadn’t hurt terribly, but it had hurt nonetheless, and he hadn’t been at all prepared for the attack.
He felt his cheeks heat with shame. He waited for the insults.
But none came. As their laughter died, he saw that they were smiling – but not unkindly. Not like he was a joke.
“Rule one,” Kolya said, “is to always pay attention. Never let your guard down. Not around anyone.”
“Not even around you?” Sasha shot back.
“Especially not us,” Ivan said, stepping up beside him. “Alright, here, let me show you. Hold your hands like this…”
~*~
Nikita tried to pass it off like he forgot to eat sometimes. That he got distracted and skipped meals by accident. But the truth was he didn’t like to eat. He rose every morning, and went to bed every night with a low-grade nausea stirring in the pit of his belly. Eating did help with his constant light-headedness, but it wasn’t a surefire fix.
He knew the moment they left the apartment that it had been a mistake to skip breakfast, but there was no helping that now. He drew his shoulders back, swallowed down the lump in his throat, and pressed on with deliberate strides. Most days if he ignored the sensations, they went away on their own for a little while.
Monsieur Philippe proved a beneficial distraction.
“I’ve been assured that everything we’ll need for the procedure is already waiting for us at the lab in Stalingrad,” he said as they walked. “But of course you can bring anything else you think is necessary.”
“Of course,” Nikita echoed. Not knowing what this “procedure” was all about was becoming an itch beneath his skin, one that was slowly driving him up the wall. Every time Sasha looked at him for permission or approval, every time he twitched a little smile because of something Ivan said, the rash spread a little farther, a little deeper. It was a true worry now, edging toward regret. He’d always told himself that when the chance to strike a blow against the Soviets arose, he would take it, no questions asked. But after Dmitri...
“Nik,” Pyotr breathed beside him, leaning in close, breath ghosting warm across his ear. “It’s him.”
He didn’t have to ask for clarification.
Walking toward them, flanked by two of his favorite lackeys, was Commander Beria.
Nikita’s stomach grabbed, and a throbbing headache started up behind his eyes. He really should have had breakfast.
Beria spotted him with a chilly smile and changed course, coming right toward them.
Nikita angled his shoulder in front of Pyotr, drew up to a halt with his arm cocked in a way that slanted his elbow across the boy’s front, a makeshift shield. Pyotr was eighteen, but he looked younger. He looked –
“Captain,” Beria greeted.
“Commander.”
Pyotr pressed up close behind him, close enough for Nikita to feel his full-body shiver and know it had nothing to do with the cold.
“I saw Dyomin and Bashanov before,” Beria said. “With your new recruit.”
“Oh, you must mean Sasha,” Philippe said, injecting himself into the conversation with a guileless, beaming smile. The moment he started speaking, Nikita felt a sudden flowering of calm inside himself, a soft lavender ointment smoothing across all his tattered nerves. Pyotr stopped shivering, a long, deep sigh leaving his lungs, rushing against the back of Nikita’s neck. It’s okay, he thought. We’re fine. And he had no idea why he would think such things in front of the Commander, around whom nothing was ever fine.
Beria blinked, surprised. “Who are you?”
“Monsieur Philippe. Very pleased to meet you.” He boldly took one of Beria’s hands between both of his, the same way he’d done to Nikita, and his men, and Sasha upon meeting all of them. “And you must be Commander Beria. I’ve heard such wonderful things about you from the Vozhd.”
Nikita found his tongue again, the sense of calm pumping through him, flooding his veins. “We’re helping Monsieur Philippe with a new kind of weapon. Top secret. Stalin’s orders.”
Beria looked between him and the magician, gaze troubled. His usual coy, threatening attitude had abandoned him, and he seemed only confused. Worried, even.
“Well,” he said, finally. “Alright.”
“Good afternoon,” Philippe told him, and started off down the sidewalk again.
Nikita nodded to his commander and moved to follow –
But Beria’s hand curled around his elbow, pulled him up short.
He still seemed confused, and frightened now, too, struggling with whatever spell of emotion or doubt had overtaken him. “What are you up to, Nikita?” he hissed. “Why wasn’t I informed of this?”
It took every ounce of self-control not to rip his arm out of the man’s baby-raping hold. A fresh wave of confidence filled him, heating him from the inside. “You’ll have to take that up with Stalin,” he said, simply, and this time Beria let him go.
When they were well away, he risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that Beria was staring a
fter them, frowning.
Pyotr whimpered, part-distress and part-relief.
“It’s alright,” Nikita told him, gripping him briefly by the back of the neck and squeezing. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
Ahead of them, Philippe walked with cheerful, bouncy strides, fur hat bobbing along.
“Monsieur,” Nikita said. The sense of calm was fading now, replaced by his usual drained, queasy disquiet. The old man had worked some magic on them, then. In this instance, Nikita couldn’t say he minded. “Do you know who that was?”
“Oh, yes. Don’t worry, though. I had a peek at his future, and I can promise you it doesn’t end well for him.”
A cold comfort, given the man’s reputation. “What about our futures?”
“Are you sure you want to know about those?”
He glanced over at Pyotr, walking with his head down, eyes trained on the dirty snow. “No,” he decided. “I guess not.”
~*~
“Good! Again!” Ivan called.
Sasha stepped back out of Feliks’s reach, weaved, dodged, and snapped a punch that almost connected. Almost. Feliks blocked him, but for a moment his eyes went wide, startled, like he was surprised Sasha had gotten so close.
“You have to be faster,” Ivan said. “Not so timid. Get in there! Really hit him.” He smacked his palm with his own fist for emphasis.
“Mind your footwork,” Kolya said.
Sasha glanced down –
And Feliks popped him in the jaw.
It was light, just a tap really, but his teeth snapped together and the pain lit up the inside of his skull, shooting through his bones, rattling down his neck. He bit his tongue and tasted blood.
He grunted in surprise and staggered back, reaching up to cradle his face. His skin felt hot and tight immediately, already swelling.
“I see it’s going well,” Nikita said dryly, and Sasha wondered when he’d arrived and how long he’d been watching.
“Hey, it’s his first day,” Ivan said in his defense, and Sasha felt a burst of warmth for the man. “I remember you on your first day.”
“I was thirteen,” Nikita said. “And you knocked my tooth loose.” He touched his canine with the tip of his tongue, like he was testing it.
“Yeah, but it didn’t fall out.”
Nikita snorted and then looked at Sasha. “They’re probably teaching you all wrong.”
“No. Um…no, they’re great.”
Another snort. He shrugged out of his coat and laid it across the desk, on top of the others there. He unbuttoned his cuffs and started to roll his sleeves up. “You’re standing all wrong. Come here and I’ll show you.”
Embarrassed now, he walked forward to meet Nikita halfway across the floor of the makeshift gym.
Bare-knuckled, out of place in his pressed shirt and belted pants, the captain lifted his hands in a careless way, expression bored.
Sasha resumed his stance, just like Ivan had showed him, leading with his left, fists up tight so he could deflect a blow to his face – not that it had helped him do so yet. He took a deep breath and tried to let it out in a steady stream, not wanting to betray his nerves. He had no doubt he looked like a startled deer, all whites-of-his-eyes and flash of teeth when he grimaced. He waited – for an instruction, a correction, for Nikita to make the first move.
And he kept waiting.
The man’s pale eyes – gray on the train and in the apartment – revealed striations of pale blue in the fall of early sunlight. A wolf’s eyes, Sasha thought, uncanny and intimidating.
Finally, slowly, Nikita threw a punch. A halfhearted jab, really, with no force or energy behind it. Sasha blocked it easily and danced back out of reach.
“Good, good. But hold your ground better. You can’t be retreating the whole time. You’ll never land a good blow that way.”
Sasha nodded.
And then waited some more.
After a moment, Nikita said, “Do you remember the man you passed outside earlier?”
“Commander Beria?”
“Yes. Him. Do you remember him?”
Sasha thought recalling his name was essentially remembering him, but he said, “Yes.”
“Last week, he left his office downstairs, walked over to the bread queue, and picked out a little girl who was waiting with her mother. Two of his men, one on either side, took hold of her arms and pulled her out of the queue.”
Sasha swallowed the sudden tightness in his throat. He didn’t want to hear the rest. He knew where this was going, it was impossible not to, but he thought hearing it in words would somehow make it more horrible to contemplate.
Nikita said, “The mother protested, at first. Her other children had died of typhus, she said, and the girl was all she had left in the world. Her husband was killed outside of Moscow, fighting in the Red Army. ‘My husband died a patriot,’ she said. She was stupid enough to say that. To say anything at all. Commander Beria hit her with a closed fist.” His own tightened, knuckles cracking.
Sasha could hear his own rough breathing, the way it sawed in and out of his mouth, heard the thump of his pulse deep inside his head, but the others were all quiet. Listening.
“She fell and she didn’t get back up. Commander Beria had his men bring the girl to the apartment he keeps here in the city. They carried her into the bedroom and left her there with him, waited outside in the hall for several hours until he was done.”
His face was blank as he spoke, his voice emotionless. “Maybe she screamed,” he said, “maybe she cried. Maybe she begged. Maybe she called for her mother. Who knows. I wasn’t there.
“Commander Beria likes to play rough,” he said, cold, cold. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to snap the girl’s neck, but in the throes of passion, accidents do happen.”
Sasha flushed hot all over. His breakfast curdled in his stomach. He was angry, he realized. Furious.
“She was seven years-old,” Nikita said. “He stole her, forced himself on her, and snapped her neck.”
He threw a fast jab toward Sasha’s face.
Sasha blocked it. And hit back hard.
“Good,” Nikita said as he parried him. “Again, good.”
Sasha faltered.
“I take orders from a man who rapes children. What do you think of that?” Nikita asked.
And then they slid into the dance.
Jab, block, jab, block, punch. Pain blossomed in his ribs, his arm, his shoulder, and blasted white-hot across his face. But he kept going, digging in closer, faster, angrier, tasting blood from his split lip. He felt his lungs working, his muscles bunching, felt the flex of each tendon in his arms and hands. Nikita was older and stronger, but Sasha was faster, and he pressed that advantage, ducking away from blows and striking back lightning-fast with his own. Nikita stopped telling him that he was “good,” the fight devolving into grunts and quick hisses when something hurt. And it was a fight. Sasha’s anger was for Commander Beria, yes, but also for his family, for himself, for having been snatched away from home and brought here to be used as a weapon. Beria was the match to the fuse, but the fury had already been there, brewing steadily since the night Andrei warned him that out of town Chekists had invaded his home.
He dodged a blow that sent Nikita leaning too close, and popped the man right in the mouth with a hard right hook.
Nikita made a surprised sound and staggered sideways, off-balance and struggling not to fall.
A big hand closed on the nape of Sasha’s neck and squeezed, and just like that all fight bled out of him. Rushing out like wine from an uncorked barrel.
“Easy there,” Ivan said, chuckling, giving him a little shake.
Kolya had stepped forward to lend an arm to Nikita. The captain waved him away, but accepted the bit of towel Kolya offered for his bloodied lip. He pressed it to the split and took a visibly shaky breath, other hand pressed to the side of his head.
He hadn’t had breakfast with the rest of them, Sasha remembered, and was flooded w
ith guilt. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, least of all Nikita, who’d promised he wouldn’t be a soldier, who was just as worried and confused by Monsieur Philippe’s plans as Sasha. The secret White working to bring down the Soviets from the inside.
“Oh no,” Sasha murmured.
Ivan chuckled. “He’s alright. Didn’t know your own strength, did you?”
No, he hadn’t, not in relation to inflicting harm on other men. He knew he was capable with a rifle, and a knife, and that he was a nearly unparalleled tracker, that he could set up camp with deft, practiced movements, and that he could pitch a reindeer skin tent that would never leak.
But he hadn’t known that he could hit someone that hard with his fist. The bright crimson flash of blood on Nikita’s mouth as he pulled the towel back was a bucket of icy water down Sasha’s back.
“Oh no,” he repeated.
Nikita heard him this time, gaze flicking over. One corner of his bloodied mouth lifted in a smile. “That was good, Sasha. Well done.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What for? You learned something today. You learned that you fight better when you’re angry.”
Sasha reached to push his sweaty hair off his forehead, and saw blood on his wrapped knuckles. He shivered, cold despite the sweat pooling at the small of his back. “Is it true what you said about the commander?”
Nikita’s expression turned grim and he nodded. “Yes.”
Sasha took a deep breath and nodded. Curled his hands into fists and tested the soreness of his knuckles. “I’m ready to learn more.”
Ivan laughed again, low and delighted.
Nikita sent him another flicker of a smile. “You heard the man, Feliks. Show him some more.”
~*~
Every day, Nikita would take one of the others and go off to “work,” reporting to the major general, or Commander Beria, or any number of higher-ups, always returning back for supper gray-faced but determined. They were preparing for the trip, they said, getting everything ready.
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