She emphasized family with nothing but a flare of her eyes. Nina stood gripping her sealskin cap as implications crashed like exploding shells. “Not everyone is related out by the Old Man,” she managed to say. “It’s a huge lake, after all. Many villages. Did the man have a wife, children?”
“Grown children, I’m told.” Again that emphasis with the eyes. Children. “Though any children would be wise to distance themselves from a father accused of speaking anti-Communist rhetoric, and making inflammatory statements about Comrade Stalin.”
Your father has been denounced. The words hung there, silent and hideous. Papa, Nina thought. So often he spoke up in her head, snarling and spitting. Now he was silent. What did you say? Did the wrong someone finally overhear one of your rants? Nina supposed, remotely, that he was lucky it had taken this long for his mouth to bring him down.
“A warrant has been issued for the man’s arrest.” Bershanskaia cleared her throat. “Enemies of the state must be punished with utmost severity.”
“Is it—is it known who denounced the man?”
“No.”
Was it my fault? Nina had met Comrade Stalin’s eyes at Marina Raskova’s funeral, had thought of cutting his throat, and he had paused. Not long—but he had paused. Had he noted her name in passing beside the running wolves sketched in his notebook? Or simply remembered that name when he saw it raised beside an award for a gold star? Was all of this happening simply because the General Secretary disliked the way the smallest of Raskova’s eaglets had met his eyes? He’d ordered men killed for less . . .
Nina swept the thought away. What does it matter how it had happened? It happened. Whether from the Boss’s intervention or a simple report from a neighbor, her father had been denounced. Nina’s ears buzzed with the sound of that word, as though she’d been deafened by tracer fire. Bershanskaia’s voice faded in and out.
“. . . the innocent, of course, have nothing to fear at the hands of . . .”
Nina almost laughed. Innocence did not mean safety; everyone knew that. Her father was doomed; Bershanskaia knew it. And Nina’s father wasn’t innocent. Any of his ranting monologues over the years were bad enough to earn a bullet.
Papa—
“Where is he?” The words rasped out of Nina, cutting Bershanskaia off. “My—this enemy of the state.” Speak no names, utter only vague generalities; that was how you talked of these things. A conversation could happen, and yet at the same time not happen at all.
Bershanskaia hesitated. “There are sometimes difficulties as enemies of the state seek to evade their due arrest and retribution.”
Nina did laugh then, a one-note bark of laughter that hurt her throat. So they had not been able to scoop up her wolf of a father. He had probably melted into the taiga as soon as he saw it coming. Would they ever find him, those mass-produced men of the state with their blue caps and endless paperwork? Run, Papa. Run like the wind.
Her ears were still buzzing, but she could hear the drip of water from a leaky corner of the roof. Drip, drip. “What does this mean?” she managed to say. “For those—related?”
“You understand that in such cases warrants are frequently issued for the arrest of an enemy of the state’s family.” Bershanskaia’s gaze bored into Nina again, unblinking. “Due to concerns that anti-Soviet attitudes may have taken root in the family unit.”
“Would—would that be the case here?”
“Yes. Yes, it would.”
Drip. Drip. Drip. The leak was slowing, and Nina stood frozen. A moment ago she had been wishing her father luck—now she thought, I should have cut your throat before I left home. Her father had eluded arrest, so they’d take his family instead. For the first time in years, Nina thought of her siblings. Scattered to the four winds, probably now being rounded up and lobbed into cells. She couldn’t see a troika taking pity on the Markov brood, the feral offspring of an avowed enemy of the state. Hooligans: that was how they would all be categorized. The state was better off without hooligans.
“Children are not all like their father,” she managed to say. “A war record would speak for itself, surely.” Lieutenant N. B. Markova, Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Red Star, six hundred and fifteen successful bombing runs to her name, soon to be Hero of the Soviet Union. Surely it counted for something. “With a