“Not a shooting job?” asked Aleksandra. She walked to the bench near the stove and sat down, ignoring the guards’ nervous starts and the Major’s hand clutching at the flap of her empty holster. She took a small, roughly stitched pouch from the top of her boot, opened it to gather a piece of newsprint and a careful pinch of tobacco, and began to roll a cigarette.
Aleksandra was, or at least had been, a killer. A sniper first and foremost, though not only that. Her official tally was 190 confirmed kills, though she had certainly killed many more people. The Germans at Stalingrad had called her Todesgeist, the Death Ghost, for her ability to reach impossible firing and ambush positions, squirming through rubble and ruin, climbing up chimneys and factory ducting, progressing along sewers too small for humans to pass, dragging her rifle behind her. Or sometimes just taking a knife, and picking off sentries one by one…
Professor Termin looked at the Major and jerked his head.
“You may leave us. Take those two with you.”
“Comrade Academician, are you—”
“If she wants to kill us, I doubt you or they could do anything about it,” said Termin wearily. He looked directly at Aleksandra, taking off his glasses so she could see his eyes clearly. “But I think you would do better to leave with us, don’t you, Comrade Captain?”
“I don’t know,” said Aleksandra thoughtfully. “If it’s not a shooting job, what is it? And have you anything to drink?”
Termin waited as the Major and the guards left. The officer with the strange rank of Science Investigator knelt down and opened the suitcase. He took out the bottle of vodka that rested on the pile of uniform clothes inside and tossed it over to Aleksandra. She caught it easily and smiled. A real smile this time, as she glanced at the label.
“The good stuff. And I thought Comrade Stalin had finally decided to have me shot.”
“As I said, there was an error—”
“Spare me,” spat Aleksandra. She laid her newly rolled cigarette carefully down on the bench next to her, drew the cork from the bottle with her teeth, and took a deep draught, rolling the vodka around in her mouth, her eyes half-closed in deep satisfaction. But only half-closed. Termin and Shargei noted the brilliance of those lidded eyes, still watching them, alert to their every movement.
Aleksandra set the bottle down, used the toe of her boot to swing open the stove door and lit a stick of kindling from the box at the side to ignite her cigarette.
“The job?”
“It is… a question of access,” said Termin. “Tell me, you have been here some time. You do not seem greatly debilitated by the… uh… environment, but are you still able to perform your contortions?”
Aleksandra took up the bottle and had another swig of vodka, ignoring his question.
“Are you?” asked Termin again.
“Perhaps,” said Aleksandra. “That box represents the dimension of whatever I need to get through?”
She made her mouth strangely, almost obscenely, quadrilateral and blew a smoke square rather than a ring, and then another through the first. “A cube about thirty centimetres a side?”
“Thirty-one point one five centimetres,” said Shargei, lifting the open-ended box like a prize exhibit, though he did not stop watching the strange smoke square drift across the room.
“Why should I do this job for you?” said Aleksandra softly, almost to herself.
Termin scratched his nose and looked at the floor. Shargei put down the box. Aleksandra watched him. She held the bottle negligently, but she could smash it on the stove in a second, slash both men’s throats… and she wasn’t fooled by Shargei’s “Science Investigator” title.
Shargei didn’t unbutton his holster, as she’d thought he might be stupid enough to do, to threaten her directly. Instead, he reached inside his coat and removed a small buff envelope. He held it out to Aleksandra. She put the bottle down again, took another puff of her cigarette, licked her fingers to pinch it out, returned the stub to her boot-top, and then took the envelope.
There were four photographs inside. Head shots, but not Lubyanka or camp portraits.
Aleksandra’s father and mother, her older sister, and younger brother. They looked older than when she had last seen them, but not visibly hurt, injured, or terrified.
“They are not in camps, they are not prisoners, they continue to live their lives,” said Shargei. He smiled, but his eyes were cold. Whatever his shoulder boards proclaimed, Aleksandra knew him for what he was, and she received his unspoken threat as to what would happen to her family if Aleksandra did not agree to do whatever it was Shargei and Termin wanted her to do. It was the old lever, thrust into position once again. Ever reliable, to move the world, or just one person.
“Do I come back here after?” asked Aleksandra. “To finish my tenner?”
She had been sentenced to ten years in the camps, but knew it was unlikely she would ever be released. Everyone got ten or twenty-five years, but the former was notional, it simply meant “at least ten” and anyone who got twenty-five knew it was effectively a death sentence.
“Who knows?” answered Shargei. “Maybe not. And while you do the job for us, you’ll have special treatment. And your family, too.”
Again, there was an unspoken threat in his words. “And your family” echoed in Aleksandra’s mind. She had heard the phrase before from Security Service officers.
Aleksandra slid the photographs back in the envelope, and the envelope up her sleeve. This was how it worked. She could kill these two, but even if she escaped direct retribution herself, her loved ones would pay for it. Just as Aleksandra could have escaped the camp, in summer at least. But she was kept here, by fear. Not for herself, but by what would happen to her family in retribution for anything she did.
There was no escape. Little hope, save that if she could continue living, anything might happen. Like the story of Nasreddin and the Sultan’s horse. Stalin might die. Aleksandra might die. Maybe she would even be set free.
“So thirty-one point one five centimetres,” she said. “Put the box over by the wall.”
Shargei placed the box as instructed.
“Stand over by the other wall. You too, Professor.”
Aleksandra went to the door and lowered the bar. The hut had only one window, small and high up, the glass grimy with smoke. But weak sunshine streamed through it, little tainted by the grime, putting the light from the hanging lantern to shame.
“Don’t get excited,” said Aleksandra. “This is serious work, and I don’t like gawping men.”
A tiny knife fashioned from a piece of saw-blade, utterly forbidden in the camp and previously unseen, flashed in her hand. She made a groin-high cutting motion, before the knife vanished again.
“Understood,” said Termin.
Shargei nodded.
Aleksandra undid her rope belt, took off her coat, jerkin, felt vest, smock and undershirt, padded trousers, and drawers and laid them in a careful heap. There was no fat on her anywhere, even the little she once had long dissipated by the lack of food in the camps. Naked, she was incredibly wiry and muscular, but also somehow otherworldly, or elfin.
“It would be better if I had my rifle to drag behind me,” she said, lying down on her stomach, facing the open end of the crate.
“You won’t need a rifle,” said Termin.
“I’m used to it,” replied Aleksandra. “It helps me, psychologically.”
This wasn’t true. But it might lead to her getting a rifle.
She eased forward, putting her head into the box, and at the same time, smoothly and easily dislocated both her shoulders. She continued to move, undulating like a snake, and within seconds was through the box and out the other side. Her arms moved back into position with only the faintest audible click, and she stood up, flexing her fingers. She poked out her tongue and picked up the tiny knife she’d held there, though neither Termin nor Shargei had seen her put it in her mouth.