Comrade Stalin came forward to take each woman by the shoulders in hearty congratulation. “You do honor to the state.” A kiss to each cheek, the peasant way, the proletarian way. Then the next in line. No one said anything in return; cheeks burned red as fire and eyes glowed. Nina looked past them to the aide who had taken Comrade Stalin’s notebook and was now shuffling an armload of folders. The notebook fell faceup to the ground, and the aide picked it up but not before Nina caught a glimpse. The General Secretary with his important frown, scrawling away as though lives depended on every pencil stroke, had been doodling wolves. Wolves in red and black, slavering from the page.
Heavy hands grasped her shoulders. “You do honor to the state.” The wiry stiffness of Comrade Stalin’s mustache brushed her cheeks. With Nina in heels, they were almost the same height. Such a giant in your portraits, Nina thought, and you’re hardly taller than I am. The thought made her smile in genuine amusement, and she saw an answering smile quirk under the graying mustache. “This one,” the great man said to his aide. “This eaglet looks Comrade Stalin directly in the eyes!”
Comrade Stalin is a lying pig who shits on the common man, Nina’s father commented inside her head, so loudly she wondered if the man breathing tobacco in her face could hear it. Tell him he’s a murdering sack of shit, her father advised.
Not helpful, Papa, Nina thought.
The heavy hands still rested on her shoulders. “What makes you smile, Comrade Lieutenant Markova?”
This wolf could smell lies, of that she was certain. “My father spoke passionately and often of Comrade Stalin,” she said with utter truth.
He liked that. “Your father was a great patriot?”
“He cut many tsarist throats, Comrade Stalin.” Also utter truth.
“A good servant of the state, then.” Comrade Stalin smiled. The whites of his eyes were yellowed, like Papa’s. Nina thought of her father looking at her speculatively, right before he tried to drown her. Comrade Stalin’s gaze was speculative too. “How many enemies of the state have you killed, Nina Borisovna?”
“Not enough, Comrade Stalin.”
Fucking Georgian swine, her father hissed. Drag him under, rusalka bitch. And Nina couldn’t help but think how easily she could kill the most powerful man in the Motherland right here and now. She had the razor in her sleeve; she never went anywhere without it. She could drop it into her palm, flick it open, and open that heavy throat with one slash. She smiled, amused by the thought.
“Good hunting, eaglet.” Comrade Stalin kissed her again on each cheek, then stepped back. His gaze withdrew from her like a needle; more cameras flashed. Then he was gone.
“RED STARS!” The cry went up at the barracks, and everyone curtsied as if three tsarevnas had come back to the regiment. “It’s all due to you,” Nina shouted over the tumult. “Comrade Stalin gave me a red star because he liked my new hair!”
“I like your new hair,” Yelena admired in the shed afterward, as soon as they could sneak off alone. They lay spooned together in the back corner, Yelena’s back against Nina’s chest. Threaded through her collar was a drying rose plucked from one of the funeral wreaths behind Marina Raskova’s urn—the only memento of Moscow Nina had had time to take home. “You belong as a blonde, Ninochka. It makes you stand out, and you should stand out.”
“Then I’ll keep it blond just for you.” Nina tipped Yelena’s head back for a lingering kiss. Their escaping breath puffed white in the frigid air. “Did you miss me?”
“Not a bit! Zoya never tries to climb out on the wing.” Yelena grinned, and Nina swatted her. “You saw the girls from the other regiments—what’s their news?”
“Both of the other regiments are integrated, did you know that? Men and women. Necessity, they said. The 588th is the only one still just us ladies.”
“It’d better stay that way. The male pilots slack,” Yelena said, scornful. “They actually go in for meals between bombing runs. When was the last time any of us had dinner outside of a cockpit? No wonder our numbers are so much higher.” Squirming face-to-face so she could touch Nina’s star, Yelena whispered, “So what was he like?”
No need to ask who he was. “Short. And he pretends he’s such a big man!”
“It’s the height of his soul, not his head.” Yelena smiled. “I would have fainted if it had been me.”
Nina had heard that kind of awe from the others, but Yelena had always been quick to smile at Party drolleries and contradictions. “He’s not God, Yelenushka. Just another sack of Party horseshit in a suit.”
Yelena sat up straight. “Don’t say that.”
“I don’t, not in public. I’m not stupid.” Nina sat up too. “I don’t want the black van coming to my door.”
“But you actually think such things?” Yelena sounded horrified. “That the General Secretary is . . .”
“A pig-spawn schemer who stamps on the people?” Nina shrugged. “My father’s been telling me that my whole life. Of course he said the same thing about the tsar, but—”
“Exactly. You said your father was as crazy as a vodka-mad boar. I didn’t think you agreed with him about anything.”
“Crazy doesn’t mean wrong.” It popped out of Nina’s mouth. “I think Comrade Stalin’s a fake.”
Yelena drew her knees to her chest. “What do you mean?”
Nina thought of the city all decked out for Marina Raskova, who probably would have been happier with the sweet voices of her pilots harmonizing the peasants’ chorus from Eugene Onegin, which she’d once sung with them on the way to Engels. “All the parades and the speeches—it’s like a stage front, or . . .” Nina shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just a little navigator from the Old Man, I don’t know anything.”
“No. You don’t.” Yelena’s voice was sharp. “Maybe it’s all ice and taiga out on the lake and nothing ever changes, but I remember Moscow the way it was, growing up. And before that, the way my grandfather told me it was. Because of Comrade Stalin, things are different.”
“Better?” Nina challenged. “Queuing at three in the morning to buy shoes, the way you told me your mother did when you were little?”
“It will be better. Comrade Stalin has a plan for it, for all of us. I look at Moscow and I can see it the way he sees it. The way it’s going to be, after the war.”
Nina stared at her. He’s a yellow-eyed wolf in a man’s skin, she wanted to throw at her lover, and you look starry-eyed because the wolf decided to pin a medal on me rather than eat me? “I missed you every moment I was gone,” she said instead, speaking through stiff lips. “Are we really quarreling an hour after I get back?”
“No.” Yelena sounded just as stiff. “You don’t understand, that’s all. You don’t see. You grew up so differently—”
Uncivilized, Nina thought. Just a little savage who doesn’t understand anything.
Silence fell.
“I wasn’t really in any state to see things as you do,” Nina offered finally. “Moscow or Comrade Stalin . . . I had double vision all through the funeral thanks to those pills.” The tablets had given Nina a ferocious headache when they finally wore off. “Coca-Cola—if that’s what Americans serve in diners, no wonder they’re all crazy.”
Yelena melted at once, as Nina had hoped she would. “I didn’t mean to bite your head off.” She unwrapped her arms from her knees, reached for Nina’s hand. “I’m so tired, that’s all. We’ve been flying such long nights. Fourteen runs, fifteen runs. They’re moving us soon, did you know? Somewhere near Krasnodar.” A sigh. “They say it will be even worse there.”
She looked exhausted, tar-black circles under her eyes, the dried rose at her collar her only flash of color. My Moscow rose, Nina thought. “Is the Rusalka fighting fit again?”
“Yes, the mechanics finally cleared her.” They talked easily then of the Rusalka, of flying, of the things they loved. Is that why we never quarreled before? Nina wondered. Because we only talked of war and flying and each other?
Well, they weren’t going to quarrel again. It wasn’t like Nina wanted to come back into the shed and talk Party politics. All she wanted to do was cuddle and laugh and make love. Just give me Yelena and the Rusalka, she thought. That’s all I need in this world.
So which of you is next? came Comrade Stalin’s amused voice. Yelena? The Rusalka? Or you, little eaglet?
Nina shivered as if a rusalka’s webbed green hand had wrapped wetly around her heart. What did you see? she wondered in the direction of the General Secretary, even as she and Yelena bundled up to creep out of the shed back to their beds. What did you see?
Maybe nothing. Maybe it was just the Coca-Cola pills, making her fearful.
Or maybe he saw that the last of Marina Raskova’s eaglets didn’t believe the horseshit stories he wove for girls like Yelena, the stories about how the Motherland was on its way to a glorious future. Did he see that? Nina always wondered. He must have seen something, enough to remember her name. Maybe he’d jotted it as an afterthought into his notebook beside the running wolves. Because the investigation came within the year.
Chapter 28
Jordan
June 1950
Boston
Jordan’s father sat holding a piece of sandpaper, looking over one shoulder. The image shimmered through the fixer bath, ghostly in the red light. Jordan heard his voice from that afternoon, as clearly as if he were standing here in the darkroom. What are you up to, missy?