and I, we went to Heidelberg for a week. We look for die Jägerin’s old university friends, student records.” A shake of the head. “Dead ends.”
Ian had managed to put die Jägerin out of his head, mostly by working twenty-hour days. He was the only one in the office now; he had to take up Tony’s share of the load. “Do you believe me now, that pursuing her is hopeless?”
“We go to Boston anyway,” Nina said. “Tony and me. Come with us.”
“I meant what I said.” Ian leaned against the desk, looking down at her. “I won’t work with a vengeance squad. I won’t work beside you as you plan to kill her.”
“Bozhe moi, don’t be dramatic.” Nina glared. “I want her caught, punished, dead, I don’t care which. Tony, he says you are good at finding them. Tony and I try alone, maybe we fail—I don’t know America, I hunt seals and deer, not Nazis. If you come, I promise now: we find her, I don’t try to kill her.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” Ian asked quietly.
“Poshol nakhui, govno.” Nina seized Ian by the collar and yanked him down to eye level, her blue eyes all but spitting knives. “Am not just a savage from the taiga,” she hissed. “I am Lieutenant N. B. Markova of the Red Air Force. I make a promise and I keep it. Blyadt,” she spat for good measure, shoving him back so hard he staggered. “Fuck you.”
She reads romance novels, she breaks locks, and she’s a lieutenant in the Red Air Force, Ian thought. Just what every man wants in a wife! He felt the strangest urge to laugh, not because he thought she was lying, but because . . . “Bloody hell, Nina. When are you going to stop turning my world on its ear?”
She planted hands on hips, glaring. “You come with us, I promise I do things like you want. Carrot, stick, no razor.” How boring, her eyes said.
Ian didn’t bother quoting the odds against their succeeding. Nina clearly didn’t care what the odds of extraditing Lorelei Vogt were, and neither did Tony. “I know how much this chase pulls at you,” he said instead. “It does me too. Tony said Lorelei Vogt was my white whale, and he’s not wrong. But in Moby-Dick, everyone who hunts the white whale dies.”
“I’m hard to kill. So are you—Tony tells me about the places you go in the war. Come to Boston.”
“I have other cases. They are just as important as—”
“Ian,” his wife said, his name in her voice bringing him up short. “You want the huntress. For Seb and for the children, you want her. I want her for Seb and for the children and for me. Is not just vengeance, is also justice. Can be both. Is not wrong if it’s both.”
She put out her hand, and the burning chill of recklessness raced across Ian’s nerves again. Throw everything down because the bombs were coming closer and who knew what the odds were? Throw it all on the line. You bring this out in me, he thought, looking at his wife. The reckless side that had made him go to war with a typewriter instead of a gun, that risked everything for the right story, the right column. The right hunt.
This hunt goes on whether you join it or not, the voice of reason said. The one that refused to beat suspects, or be party to vigilante justice. One way or another, she’ll follow die Jägerin. If you don’t go with her, who knows how the chase could end? Nina certainly wasn’t going to be held by any promise of clean dealing if he wasn’t there.
He couldn’t tell what this hungry swoop in his stomach was, if he was talking himself onto the right path or onto the wrong one. But with a coppery hunger, it was whispering, Call me Ishmael.
“Boston.” Nina’s small hand was still extended. “In? Or out?”
Part II
Chapter 21
Nina
September 1942
North Caucasus front
Night had fallen, and with it, the chase.
Ahead of Nina, Yelena was sprinting. Arms pumping, legs flashing, head lowered as she poured every last drop of strength into getting ahead of the crowd behind. One boot hit the Rusalka’s lower wing, and Nina’s pilot vaulted straight up to the side of the cockpit, fist punching up toward the sliver of moon. “Too slow, rabbits! Rusalka claims first place on the runway!”
She was utter magnificence, crouched atop their plane on boot toes and fingertips