printed large and held aloft over the crowd, the way Nina’s father said peasants used to hold up their icons.
The Coca-Cola buzz was wearing off by the time Raskova’s ashes were laid to rest. Nina was swaying on her high heels as Lieutenant General Shcherbakov gave the funeral oration, echoing as he was broadcast across the land. Talking about the highest standards of Soviet womanhood and credit to the Motherland. Who were they even talking about? Speeches like this could be made at any funeral. Nina remembered the squadron commander who had died on the very first sortie; how the Night Witches had toasted her memory under the stars and sung soft songs that echoed across the airfield. That was how Raskova should have been remembered, not with rote rhetoric and the mournful broadcast beats of the “Internationale.” It should have been women talking about Raskova today, not these old men.
Two down, Nina found herself thinking. First the squadron commander, then Raskova. Who’s next? Which was stupid because the regiment had lost more besides those two. But the thought still echoed in Nina’s brain: Who’s next?
Yelena’s face flashed before her eyes, along with a heart-stopping kick of terror.
Marina Raskova’s ashes were formally interred in the Kremlin Wall. Banners dipped, officers held their salute, a single plane droned low and mournful over Red Square. It was done.
“RASKOVA’S EAGLETS.”
At the sound of that famous voice, heard from so many broadcasts and radio speakers, Nina thought every sestra beside her was going to faint. Women who kept calm while being peppered by antiaircraft guns were blushing and shuffling like schoolgirls, hardly able to look up at the great Comrade Stalin.
There had been endless receptions after the funeral; more suits, more droning; Nina had swallowed another trio of Coca-Cola tablets and now the world sparked bright colors again. They had all been lined up in some featureless anteroom, waiting over an hour—somewhere nearby, Nina could hear champagne corks popping. Suddenly a door opened and people flooded in, flashbulbs making everyone blink but Nina. I’m used to enemy searchlights, I won’t flinch at a camera. She looked through the flash and there was Comrade Stalin emerging from his crowd of dignitaries like a wolf from the underbrush, hard fleshed as concrete in a glittering uniform.
More rustling as an aide droned. Marina Mikhailovna Raskova’s honor guard would be honored themselves with the Order of the Red Star; applause rippled. Nina gave an inward shrug. What did a medal matter? A dozen women in the 588th flying right now had better records; she was only getting this because she’d been grounded when Raskova died. She didn’t think Comrade Stalin cared all that much about the medals he was giving out either; he stood scrawling at a notebook with a pencil stub. Making notes of the latest hundred thousand dead in Leningrad, maybe. How strange it was to lay eyes on a person who was so familiar, yet at the same time a stranger. Like peasants in the tsarist days getting a glimpse of God, only Comrade Stalin had more power than God.
Nine flashes rippled, camera clicking as each beaming woman stepped forward to be pinned with the five-pointed red-enameled star. The flash went off in Nina’s eyes as the pin pricked through her uniform. A little bit like stepping forward one by one to be shot. If Comrade Stalin had decided to do that right here in this anteroom, stick a bullet instead of a medal into each woman’s chest, no one would have stopped him.
Nina looked at the General Secretary over the shoulder of the aide pinning her. His mustache, grayer than it looked in all his portraits. Pockmarks on heavy cheeks. Teeth stained by pipe smoke. His eyes were lidded, almost sleepy as he watched them receive their medals. But you aren’t sleepy, Nina thought. Not at all. Somewhere in the next room another champagne cork popped. Would everyone get champagne, or just Party members? Party members only, Nina guessed.
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