wingtips, and the plane below waved back. Nina took the stick—why not, they had to burn some time before risking descent—and they played with the other U-2 for a while, chasing back and forth. The other plane always stayed below, rippling along the cloud floor . . . “Oh,” Nina realized. “S’not another plane. It’s our shadow.”
They went off into gales of laughter again, and Nina fought her way out of the safety harness and half stood up, leaning into the rigid airstream. “Don’t you climb on the wing again,” Yelena shouted, but Nina stood up just enough to tug Yelena’s hair back and kiss her dizzily, warmly, besottedly in the morning wind. “Let’s land,” she shouted back. “Because we’re so drunk we’ll end up over Berlin.”
Yelena brought them down with a lurch, jouncing along the muddy runway to a halt. “Was that a landing?” Nina wondered, climbing out. “Or did a German shoot us down?”
“Shut up.” Yelena giggled, sliding from her cockpit, and would have slid straight to the ground in a puddle if Nina hadn’t caught her around the waist.
“Get up, rabbit!” Nina dragged Yelena down the runway as the ground crew hauled camouflage toward the Rusalka. “We can’t go back to the canteen like this, I can’t look Bershanskaia in the eye!” They managed to sign off what was necessary, then slunk off giggling behind the temporary airdrome.
“Poppies!” Yelena breathed. The field behind the airdrome was a weed patch, but red blooms had threaded themselves through. She bent over a patch of red flowers and staggered, toppling headfirst among the poppies and taking Nina with her. They couldn’t think of a reason to get up so they just lay there in a patch of rye, twined up and kissing, Nina on her back staring up at the sky. Everything she had seen of Poland had been made hideous by mud and smoke and ruins, but here in this tiny frame of vision staring straight upward, it was beautiful. A pure blue sky, framed on either side by fronds of rye and waving poppies, Yelena’s head resting heavy on her breast.
“We should get back,” Yelena whispered eventually.
“Don’t want to.” Nina twined her fingers through Yelena’s hair.
“We have to, rabbit.”
They disentangled and made their way back to the airdrome. The vodka had, for the most part, worn off. “I could sleep for a week,” Nina said with a yawn, but before they could turn for the barracks, Nina heard herself being hailed. “Comrade Lieutenant Markova!”
She turned, saw the approaching figure of the regiment’s deputy commander, saluted with a smile. The other woman did not smile back. She was grave at the best of times—Nina wouldn’t have wanted to carry the burden of being deputy commander and chief of the commanding staff—but now she had a face like winter. Nina felt the last of her vodka euphoria drain away as cold tendrils of dread crawled along her veins.
“You’re to see Comrade Major Bershanskaia at once.”
“What’s wrong?” Nina took a step forward. She couldn’t think of anything that would cause such an expression but death: a U-2 crashed or missing. “Has someone not returned? Did Galya—”
“Report to Comrade Major Bershanskaia,” the order was repeated. Nina was suddenly aware of eyes on her all over the airdrome. Heart suddenly pounding, Nina tugged her hand free of Yelena’s puzzled arm and turned toward Bershanskaia’s temporary office. Where she stood at attention in her flight overalls pinned with a borrowed gold star, crushed poppy petals still tangled in her hair, and learned that her world was at an end.
AT FIRST SHE DIDN’T KNOW what was happening. She stood baffled as Bershanskaia gazed down at her desk and talked in circles.
“I’m sure you understand that in times of war there is increased vigilance, Nina Borisovna. Enemies of the state uncovered every day.”
Nina nodded, since a response seemed to be required.
“Enemies of the Motherland are found even in the most remote regions. Distance is no protection. We must all continually manifest the greatest vigilance”—she was clearly quoting someone, Nina didn’t know who—“in relation to the enemies and spies that secretly penetrate into our ranks.”
Pause. Nina nodded again, confusion mounting.
“Very recently there was a denunciation as far east as Baikal. A man denounced as an enemy of the state.” Still, Bershanskaia would not meet Nina’s gaze. “A tiny village not far from Listvyanka.”
Alarms began blaring through Nina’s skull. “Oh?”
“Perhaps you knew him.” Bershanskaia lifted her head at last; her eyes bored into Nina. “I feel certain you