“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 horse-shit 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