“You’re not the first girl to come to me directly rather than through official channels.” Raskova folded her arms. “How many flying hours do you have?”
Nina embellished her record by a few hundred hours, presenting her certificates and detailing her training. Raskova listened with warm attention, but her next words hit Nina in the gut.
“Good numbers. But do you know how many girls have applied with numbers just as good or better?”
Nina’s hopes went into a tailspin, but she persisted. “I’m a born pilot. Made for the air.”
“So are all the girls I’ve picked. So are many of the ones I’ve turned away.”
Raskova was gearing up a gentle refusal; Nina could feel it. She stepped forward, pushing down the dread. “This is about more than a flying record.” Fighting to find the right words. “The girls in your regiments won’t be training students or flying mail routes. They’ll be bombing fascists, making nighttime runs, dogfighting with Messerschmitts. Your girls need—” What was the word, the right word? “They need to be tougher than old boots,” Nina finished.
“And you’re tougher than old boots?”
“Yes. You are too, Comrade Raskova.” Nina lifted her chin. “Three years ago, making the cross-country flight for the long-distance record, when your team couldn’t find the final runway due to visibility, you parachuted out. You were separated from your pilot and copilot and spent ten days alone in the taiga. No emergency kit. No food.”
“I made do.” Raskova said it easily, well accustomed to gushing girls and their hero worship—but in a moment’s sudden reminiscence, she wrinkled her nose. “I still remember the cold. Like sleeping cheek to cheek with Father Frost.”
“I grew up in that taiga.” Nina took another step. “You survived ten days there. I survived nineteen years. Cold, ice, a landscape that wants you dead—none of it scares me. Flying at night doesn’t scare me either, or bombs exploding, or fascists trying to shoot me down. Nothing scares me. I am tougher than any university girl with a perfect record and a thousand hours of flying time.”
“Are you?” Raskova studied her. “Think twice about what you’re asking for, Nina Borisovna. Going to the front—it’s a very hard thing. Many think it a waste, giving planes to girls when there are already more than enough men to fly them. I have told Comrade Stalin himself that my women will be better, and so they must be.”
“I am better.” Nina could feel her heart beating hard in her chest, like a propeller whipping up to speed. “Let me prove it.”
Another long moment. Nina hung suspended in agony. There’ll be a chance, her father had said. Don’t ask, when you see it. Just fucking take it. But Marina Raskova was the end of her chance—beyond this room, there was nothing to seize. It either all ended here, or all began here—and drowning in Marina Raskova’s blue eyes, Nina began to feel desolation choking her throat.
The most famous aviatrix in the Motherland rummaged through her colleague’s desk, found a pen and some official-looking paper, began to scribble. “This is a pass to the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy. You’ll have to follow the rules once you get there,” she warned with a twinkle, “but at least there’s tea to go with the rules.”
Nina felt her wings lift. “What else is at the academy?”
“Aviation Group 122.” Raskova pressed the pass into Nina’s outstretched hand with one of her knee-buckling smiles. “Your sisters-in-arms.”
NINA STOOD A MOMENT gaping at the academy’s palatial redbrick facade and imposing gates before braving the steps. Inside she found a rushing mass of trainee pilots dashing everywhere: women in flying caps and overalls, girls with curled hair and heels as though they were going dancing, female officers with cigarettes and taut faces shouting orders. Nina showed her pass and identification to the nearest officer and received a grunt. “We leave for training in a few days. You’ll be issued a uniform—”
“Where do I sleep?” Nina asked, but the officer had already turned away. Nina wandered for a while, having no idea where to go, still dazed with her triumph. She had done it; she was here. A bone-cracking yawn overtook her as she meandered down a vacant corridor; after sleeping four nights in a chair, she was desperate for a nap. Throwing her coat down beside an unlit heating stove, Nina curled up on it and dropped into sleep like falling into a black pit. It seemed only seconds later when a girl’s laughing voice said, “You look lost, sleepyhead!”
Nina pried open her eyelids. She’d been having some hazy dream of dogfighting through piled clouds as Marina Raskova’s voice whispered encouragement in her ear, and she said the first thing that came into her mind. “Are you my sister?”
“What?” The voice sounded even more amused.
Nina rubbed her eyes. The figure bent over her was a blur against the harsh corridor lights. “She said my sisters-in-arms were here.”
“Comrade Raskova said the same to me.” A hand grasped Nina’s elbow. “Welcome, sestra.”
It was the same word for “sister” that Nina had grown up speaking, but the Moscow tang in the girl’s voice made it different, a new kind of sister. That’s good, Nina reflected, since I didn’t like any of my blood sisters. She let herself be helped up, and the shadow resolved itself into a girl a year or two younger than Nina but half a head taller, porcelain skinned and smiling, ink-dark hair in a plait past her waist. “Yelena Vassilovna Vetsina,” she said. “From Ukraine, but I came to Moscow at twelve. Glider school when I was sixteen, then air club. I was studying at the Moscow Aviation Institute when the call went up for the regiments.” She rattled off a very impressive number of flying hours.
A pedigreed candidate, Nina thought. Educated, polished, impeccable record, probably a model Komsomol member. The kind whose application would have been stamped and moved to the top of the pile. A little warily, Nina nodded back. “Nina Borisovna Markova, from Baikal. Flight instructor at the Irkutsk air club.”
A dimple appeared in Yelena’s chin. “How many flying hours did you tell Raskova you had?”
“Three hundred more than I actually do.”
“I improved mine by two hundred. I felt so guilty, but then I met the other girls here and realized we all embellished our records. A regiment of liars, that’s what Raskova’s getting. Good thing we can all fly like eagles.” The dimple blossomed into an outright grin. “Did you faint, meeting Raskova? I swear I nearly swooned. She’s been my hero since I was seventeen.”
Nina couldn’t help smiling back. “Mine too.”
“Where are you classed for training, pilot, navigator, mechanic, or armorer?”
“Navigator.” Nina had hoped for a pilot classification, but Raskova had explained that there were enough pilots already. Nina was disappointed, but she wasn’t going to quibble. It was enough just to be here.
“Pilot for me. I can’t wait to get my hands on the new Pe-2s.” Yelena looked at Nina’s old coat. “Have you got your uniform yet?”
“No—”
“I’ll show you where. It’s horrible, the same standard issue they give the men. The bigger girls are all right, but little ones like you are swimming. And we’re all clumping around in the boots, even my new roommate who has feet like pontoons.”
Nina’s uniform came in a bulky packet, and she began to swear the minute she unfolded it. “Even men’s underwear?” Unfolding a pair of vast blue briefs.
“Even men’s underwear.” Yelena laughed. “Wait till you’ve worn it for a few hours—”
“Or walked a runway in it in zero degrees,” grumped another woman’s voice. “You would not believe the chafing.” Several more trainee pilots had gathered, looking interested. To a chorus of “Go on, get suited up!” Nina went into an empty storeroom and shuffled out shortly afterward. Even more girls had clustered in her absence, and they all went into a unison gale of laughter at the sight of Nina’s massive trousers puddling over huge clumping boots.
For a moment Nina bristled. Normally when she heard female laughter it was unkind or it was uncomprehending: girls like Tania mocking her flyaway hair or provincial accent. But this laughter was merry, and looking around, Nina saw that a good many of the girls looked every bit as ridiculous in their own enormous uniforms.
“We can cuff and stitch the hems, but you are out of luck on the boots.” Yelena shook her head. “Have you got some cloth to stuff into the toes?” Nina’s scarf went into the right boot, as Yelena unwound her own.
“I can’t take yours.”
“Nonsense! What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine, Ninochka.”