“That’s just it. I’ve served as a mechanic for three years now. I want to serve on a flight team. I don’t have the hours to be a pilot, but I could be a navigator. No one knows the systems better than I do.”

  I nodded my agreement. She knew the planes so well there was no way she would be anything less than an exemplary navigator.

  “I was hoping I could serve as your navigator, Captain. Since we’ve been working together this whole time. I assumed you’d be given command, and as such, you’d be taking up your own plane. I’d be honored if you’d even consider me.”

  The reality of her words hit me. I couldn’t be certain command would be mine, but that decision would be made soon. A plane would be mine if I wanted it—that much was sure, at least. I finally would have command of my own plane—the thing I’d dreamed of since I was a ten-year-old child in the fields of Miass. Now that it was mine, I wondered if it had been worth all the loss and sacrifice to have my wings. The question seemed too large. And irrelevant. The plane would be mine, and I could either fly it or make a mockery of all that sacrifice.

  I looked at Polina’s hopeful face and imagined my own in her stead when I’d first shaken Sofia’s hand at the academy. I was awestruck by Sofia’s bravery then, dying to join her ranks. Polina wanted the same things now as I did then.

  She would be more valuable on the ground as our lead mechanic. It would have been prudent to ask her to keep her place, but I couldn’t stifle her dream any more than I could have stopped dreaming my own.

  “Get a helmet and a flight suit,” I said. “I want you ready as soon as we’re given orders.”

  Three days later we got word that Oksana’s final wish was to be granted: I would be commander of the regiment, and promoted to major for accepting the position. Mama and Vanya would be proud, but the last thing I wanted in recompense for Oksana’s loss was a new title.

  I had to stop myself from taking my place in the rear cockpit after hoisting myself up onto the wing. I slid into the front, less gracefully than I might have hoped, and strapped myself in. I waited for Polina to slide into place and fasten her own harness before I started the engine. My hands were steady as the plane roared to life, and I ascended into the night sky under my own power.

  From the rear cockpit the view was generally of wing, windshield, and the back of the pilot’s helmet. In front the view was of propeller and the vast reaches of the sky. It wasn’t like a truck, where you could see the road in front of you. If you wanted to see your target, you looked over the side, sometimes banking the plane to get a better view. I couldn’t see straight ahead, but my view upward was unobscured and spellbinding. As we soared the thirty kilometers to the German camp, the blue velvet expanse of the night sky stretched before us, encrusted with stars shining like diamonds under candlelight.

  There was no light below, making the tapestry above a breathtaking display. My father used to point out the constellations when I was a girl, and I found myself wishing I’d paid more attention. One of the few constellations I still recognized blazed ahead of me—the Pleyady—the Seven Sisters. A star for Oksana, Sofia, and Taisiya, who I hoped were somehow looking out for us. And one for Polina, Renata, and me, the six of us bound by our service. The seventh? The Polikarpov that took us on our missions each night and who was, as Sofia had once wisely said, the fifth member of each crew. Separated by life and death, but always united in duty.

  I felt no pleasure, no satisfaction, as I dropped my payload on the German camp, but felt secure with Polina in the seat behind me. I knew now how sincere Vanya, Taisiya, and Oksana had been when they said how much easier the task of piloting was with a good navigator in tow. She was my eyes and ears when I needed them. She allowed me to concentrate on the task of maneuvering the craft as we returned through the midnight-blue abyss back to the safety of our camp.

  At the end of the night’s work, the women turned to me, their faces expectant. Orders. They’re waiting for me to give orders. I didn’t feel a surge of pride, only the weight of the responsibility I bore to keep them safe.

  “Renata, lead the crews in regular maintenance. The rest of you, get some sleep.” Renata beamed at the unspoken promotion from armorer to mechanic. She’d had a brilliant teacher in Polina and would follow her flawless example.

  I could have taken the time to get some rest but found myself seated behind Oksana’s desk. My desk. Maps, official orders, and telegrams covered the surface so that the scarred top wasn’t visible. I began to wade through the piles of documentation that had accumulated since Oksana’s passing, on the desk that had always been so painstakingly organized.

  The newest message, now addressed to me, contained orders to move west, yet again. Closer and closer to the German border. No regrouping to the east in months. Onward, ever onward.

  My orders were clear. Longer sorties. As many flights as we could manage in a single night, every single night the weather allowed for it. Any time there was a suitable target within range, we were to attack.

  I knew it meant only one thing: victory was in our reach, but we could not falter if we were to grasp it.

  CHAPTER 24

  June 1945, the Battle of Berlin, Sorties: 1,106

  The city of Berlin lay in ashes. Empty husks of buildings teetered and collapsed at random, filling the streets with dust and trapping war-weary citizens beneath the rubble. The German people eyed us with distrust and stooped their heads, avoiding eye contact. They cowered in the presence of the massive portrait of Stalin erected just outside the Brandenburg Gate. The city, and indeed all of Europe, was being cleaved in two—all that was Soviet, and all that wasn’t. Comrade Stalin had to be pleased with his victory. He’d paid for it with plenty of Soviet blood.

  We stood at alert, waiting for an insurgency. The commanders were certain there would be one, but I doubted there would be attacks of any real significance. With Hitler dead in his bunker, the serpent of Germany had been decapitated. There was no one left with the drive to fight. I wondered if, without Stalin at the helm, Russians would have taken to the streets to defend Moscow. It was all too easy to imagine my own countrymen wearing this haunted look of defeat and acquiescence.

  Ground troops were charged with keeping the peace, and we were simply there to await the official surrender orders to return home. We found ourselves with almost nothing to occupy our time. Now that we didn’t have missions all night long, we all tried to adjust to a normal rest schedule but found the dark of night too unsettling for slumber.

  At odds with idleness, we spent our newly acquired free hours wandering into Berlin during the day as sleep eluded us. Never alone, always in groups. We circumnavigated the outskirts of the city, knowing many of the streets were impassable from the mountains of rubble.

  “Do you have the time?” Renata asked, rubbing her bare wrist as we walked along.

  “No,” Polina answered. “Does it matter? No one expects us until tomorrow.”

  The deciduous forests to the east of Berlin were a change from the lush evergreens of home, but the parts that remained intact were thriving and verdant—indifferent to the hate that engulfed the city to the west. It felt good and natural to have twigs and branches underfoot instead of the blasted remnants of pavement and cobbles. The air was thick with smoke, not the pine-scented purity I associated with a ramble in the woods, but it was one step closer to home.

  “I’ve written to Mama,” Renata said, still fidgeting with her wrist. “I’ve asked her to make her famous potato pancakes and zharkoye. And blintzes with black currant preserves. The minute I get home.”

  “Your mama will have you the size of a house within the first month of your homecoming,” Polina chided.

  Renata’s descriptions of her mother’s zharkoye—beef stew—were nearly as longing and tender as our comrades’ descriptions of their husbands and sweethearts and had been used more than once as a distraction from our poor rations. “All the better,” Renata retorted. “I’m entitled to a few months of gluttony after four years of hard work and army rations.”

  “Absolutely true,” I agreed, remembering the massive gingerbread matryoshka doll pryanik of my youth. I had army pay now. I’d buy a dozen if the store was still open and operating as soon as I got back to Moscow. I’d eat three for myself before I crossed the threshold back onto the street, and give the other nine to the hungriest-looking children I came across. And then likely return for more when I realized how many more children were in need of some sweetness in their lives. I spared a thought for Comrade Mishin and the children he tended. For Oksana’s sake, I hoped they’d managed to survive, though the odds against them had been overwhelming.

  Grinning, Polina kept up her teasing of Renata. “So much for finding a handsome hero to make little Soviet babies with.”

  “Any man who has been to war will be pleased to see a woman with some meat on her bones,” Renata said. “They’ve all seen enough of the contrary.”

  “I think they’ll be glad for the affections of a healthy, happy woman,” I said, then allowed my thoughts to wander as I hadn’t since before the height of the war. I hadn’t heard from Vanya in three months, but few of us had seen letters or postcards since we crossed into Germany. I hoped he wasn’t far from here, but we would have to wait for our reunion in Moscow unless we were remarkably lucky.

  We heard a muffled scream up ahead, followed by deep-voiced chuckles. Renata and Polina looked over at me, awaiting orders; we’d been part of the military machine for so long, we didn’t even consider breaking ranks, even though we were all but discharged from duty. A second scream pierced the air, and I motioned for them to follow me as quietly and quickly as the root-strewn path would allow.

  We happened upon two of our soldiers and a German girl of about sixteen.

  One knelt between the girl’s knees, his trousers dropped. The other had her pinned down to the forest floor with one hand and was groping her breasts through a tear in her blouse with the other.

  “Get off of her, you disgusting jackasses,” I snarled.

  “What do you care what we do with some German bitch?” the man with his pants down said, barely glancing back at us. “We’ve won the war; we’re able to do with them as we please.” This soldier, no more than twenty years old, wore the marks of a lieutenant. The other was a sergeant.

  “Get off of her,” I spat again. The soldiers looked at me in disgust but made no signs of movement. “That’s an order.”

  “Fuck off,” the kneeling soldier said.

  The poor girl, her blond hair matted with blood and her eyes pressed shut against her nightmare, whimpered softly.

  I pulled out my service revolver and pointed it at the soldier’s head. “I am your superior officer. I will not repeat my order a third time.” I heard Polina and Renata free their pistols behind me as well.

  The man must have seen the eyes of his companion facing me widen, because he turned. If he was alarmed by finding three pistol barrels trained upon him, he didn’t reveal it. But he did sigh and sit back. “Disloyal whore,” he mumbled, pulling up his trousers. The sergeant at least had the good graces to look embarrassed. “I should report you for this.”

  “How do you think it would go for you? I’m within my rights to shoot you where you stand, you insubordinate prick. Get back to your regiment, and busy yourself cleaning latrines. It’s a far better use of your time.”

  The soldiers skulked off in the direction we came from, leaving the German girl behind without a thought. So very typical. She wiped her eyes and pulled her ruined blouse over her bruised breasts. I offered her a hand to help her stand, but at the movement she cowered as if I’d made to strike her.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, remembering the German I’d learned before the academy. We’d all made an attempt to learn a little during our scarce free hours once we’d become confident we’d be crossing over the German borders, and I’d been called on to give a few tutorials for our regiment and others.

  The girl said nothing, only scooted farther back into the brambles, her green eyes round with fear. She had seen too much to trust anyone with a red star on their uniform, and I cursed the soldiers, and the thousands like them, who had seen her as nothing more than the spoils of war.

  I removed my small knapsack and opened it. We’d intended to eat lunch in the quiet splendor of the woods, but my stomach now rolled at the sight of the canned meat and hard bread in my bag. I offered her the modest meal, making sure both my hands were visible.

  “Take this, please,” I said in my rough German. “You look like you need it more than I do.”

  The girl looked at me, cocking her head to one side in appraisal, then looked at the food in my extended hands and accepted it, setting about devouring it before I could change my mind.

  “I’m Katya. These are my friends, Polina and Renata.” I sat next to her on the bed of ground cover and patted the ground next to me, encouraging the girls to follow suit.

  “Heide,” she mumbled in reply, still eating ravenously.

  “You might want to slow down,” Polina encouraged in halting German. “You might make yourself ill.”

  Heide considered the advice and slowed her pace.

  Renata, never one to sit idle, gathered the buttons from the dirt and pulled a mending kit from her day bag. She removed her uniform jacket and motioned to exchange it for the girl’s spoiled blouse. Timidly she traded the garments, covering herself as best she could with her hands. She’d felt exposed enough for one day. Renata, with the same devotion and attention to detail as she used when servicing an engine, sewed the discarded buttons back in place. She examined the garment and, seeing none of the other damage was significant, handed it back. The buttons would never lie as neatly as when the blouse was new, but the girl could wear it back into town without shame.

  With the girl continuing to look at us like a wary dog who expected a kick at any moment, we spoke cheerfully—alternating between our native Russian and broken German—to keep her at ease, but there was no way for us to quell her nerves.

  “Would you like us to take you home?” I asked. “We don’t want you to come across any more trouble.”

  She contemplated my offer, clearly understanding that the likelihood of more soldiers on the road was as certain as the impending sunset. But still she hesitated. Had she come across other Russian soldiers who had baited her with kind gestures only to cause her pain, or was it merely that she’d seen so much atrocity in the past five years that she’d learned to fear the red star on our uniforms just as we feared the ugly black spider on theirs?

  “Please let us help you,” I prodded. “We just want to help you.”

  “But why? You are Russian. I am your enemy.”

  “Do you intend to fire a gun at me, my aircraft, or my comrades here?” I asked, my expression flat.

  “No,” she stuttered, her face draining of color.

  “Good. We don’t intend to hurt you, either, so we’re not enemies. The war is over. You have nothing to fear from us.”

  She exhaled deeply and looked at each of our faces in turn, then pointed south down the path, in the same direction where the soldiers departed. They might be waiting for all of us behind any bush or tree, despite the fact that Polina, Renata, and I were their countrywomen. We’d insulted their pride, and at least the younger of them seemed the sort to exact revenge on any women who dared commit such a slight.

  She led us to a house on the edge of town that would once have been described as quaint. It was fashioned from thin, rough-hewn logs and a few windows that would have let in the dappled forest sunlight had they not been boarded up to protect against stray bomb blasts and the eyes of lusty soldiers. She showed us inside the cottage, where two children with dirty-blond hair were playing on the unswept floor. At the sight of our uniforms, they jumped up and cowered in the far corner of the room. The little boy wrapped his arms around his sister, who wept onto the collar of his shirt. Though he could not have been more than seven years old, his nostrils flared and he looked at us defiantly.

  “Your father or one of your brothers is here to keep an eye on things?” I asked, having noticed there was not another house within sight. The children’s raspy breathing seemed to calm as they parsed my German.

  “No,” she said. “They’re gone. Drafted. My father died early on in France, and my brother was shot because he refused to—well, you understand.”

  “I do.” More than a few of my own countrymen had met the same end when they refused to answer Stalin’s call, and Hitler was surely no more forgiving.

  “How do you manage to keep yourselves out of harm’s way?” Polina asked.

  “I don’t,” Heide said, her arms crossed and her chin tucked to her chest. “Such a thing is not possible. They come, and I am powerless to stop them from doing as they wish. Taking food, blankets—whatever it is they desire. For the sake of the children, I can only do my best to ensure they don’t have reason to kill me.”

  In the stoop of her shoulders and the waver of her voice was a fatigue that sleep would not cure. The war had taken from her, but the aftermath had broken her.

  “How many times has your home been raided?”

  “Over and over,” she whispered. “I stopped counting.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Renata murmured, absentmindedly crossing herself, whispering “God bless and protect you” under her breath.

  I emptied my bag of the rest of my rations—scanty though they were—onto the scarred wooden table that dominated the room. Polina and Renata followed suit, adding some tinned milk and two apples to my meager contribution to the family larder. The little boy’s allegiance was won over in a flash by the paltry offering. He untangled himself from his sister and raced to the table and snatched up an apple before his older sister could enforce rationing. His teeth sunk into the fleshy globe of fruit with an audible crunch. Juice dribbled down his chin from the upturned corners of his mouth.

  “Selfish boy,” Heide chided. “Share with your little sister.” She turned to us. “That scamp is Klaus, and the little one is Veronika.”

 

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