‘The hiwi will take me into the town,’ Josef said. ‘We’ll find the house where the pilot is. Then we’ll come back and decide what to do. Hiwi.’
‘Yes.’ Nikolai answered with a quaver in his chin, like a man answering a judge, or the Reaper.
‘Know now I will kill you the instant you do anything other than what I tell you.’
‘I know.’
‘If you take me to any house but the one the pilot is in, you won’t come back from that village.’
Nikolai rested his eyes on black Josef. Seconds passed in the crackling quiet field. The twin seemed to soothe, a man finally at his destined place, at his gallows.
‘Yes,’ answered Nikolai.
Josef swung in his saddle to face Breit.
‘Nazi. If you twitch the wrong way, Daniel will shoot you out of the saddle. Tell him, Filip Filipovich.’
Josef swung his horse now to Katya.
‘Witch,’ he said, ‘I’ll find your pilot for you.’
Katya was stunned. Josef tipped his hat brim to her and turned.
Nikolai fell in and the two rode toward Kazatskoe.
She watched them go, amazed at the turn in Josef. She trusted what he’d said.
Ivan nestled his horse beside Katya, gazing off at Kazatskoe with her.
Daniel was restive. He dropped from his saddle to grab a stem of grass, then climbed back up to chew on the blade. He settled behind the German, as though measuring Breit for a bullet. Filip sat his horse alone, head slumped away from the hot world. The four of them waited like this under the sun, sweating and without shade.
‘I hope we find him,’ Ivan said. ‘Is this pilot your lover?’
Katya was uneasy with the question. ‘Lover.’ It was a term from peacetime, when girls and boys paired off like that, not when they were forced to spend years away from home - changing and hardening years -
not when they died by the hundreds and thousands every day. And there was Filip, lonely and hating being here, a man who’d claimed he would murder his brother. Could Katya have a boyfriend in front of poor Filip?
‘Yes,’ she said without intending. ‘Yes,’ she said, needing it to be so.
‘Good for you,’ said Daniel from behind the German. He spit out the weed and climbed down to pluck a new one. He looked up at Katya. He seemed wounded somehow by her smile.
Josef and Nikolai were gone no more than thirty minutes. They returned across the long field; at a distance they rode on shimmers from the heat. Katya wanted to ride to them but Ivan stopped her. ‘We wait,’ he said, ‘like we were told.’
The two came slowly, no need for haste and attention. Josef rode behind Nikolai, who kept his head down, the match to his brother Filip.
When they were close, the twins did not look at each other.
‘There’s a house on the western edge of the village,’ Josef said. ‘I couldn’t get a look inside the windows. But there are two guards. The hiwi says the guards were there a couple of days ago when he was taken to that house.’
‘He’s in there,’ Nikolai said.
Katya’s heart gripped. There was a pilot in that house. Was it Leonid?
‘What are we going to do?’ Daniel asked, standing beside his saddle.
‘Wait until dark?’
‘No,’ Josef decided, scratching deep into his beard. ‘The village is mostly deserted. There’s maybe two dozen Germans spread out, staying out of the sun. If we go in after curfew and we’re spotted, we’re definitely partisans. I say now, while there’s only the two guards.’
‘How do we get inside?’ Ivan asked.
Josef shook his head. ‘I don’t know yet.’
The sun beat on them pondering this question. Katya waited for Josef to concoct a plan. The horses shifted hoof to hoof. Filip never raised his gaze from beneath his brim.
Katya spoke.
‘Nikolai?’
‘What?’ the twin answered. He’d become more lively than his brother.
Perhaps he hoped to wipe away his stain by helping free the downed pilot.
‘The two guards. Were they the same ones who were there three days ago?’
‘I don’t… let me see. Yes, I think yes. I’m sure at least one of them was.’
‘Alright. Ivan, how much food do we have with us?’
Ivan swung his backpack around and dug into it. He pulled from it a canteen and a broad, hard loaf.
‘Bread and water,’ Katya said. ‘Perfect.’
Josef asked, ‘You have an idea, Witch?’ The dark man looked at her with new eyes today. Katya worried all the time who in the partisan cell might be the spy, who had betrayed the Night Witches and the partisans beside the railroad. She’d been troubled that it might have been Josef, he seemed so distant and embittered. She began to believe it would not prove to be him.
She pointed at the twin. ‘At least one of the guards has seen Nikolai before, right? He knows Nikolai is an interpreter.’
She swung the finger to the starosta, stricken in his saddle. Filip seemed to have swapped roles with his traitor twin, he bore the millstone of guilt now.
‘Filip will go instead. The guard won’t know the difference. I’ll pose as a nurse and go with him carrying the food. We’ll tell the guards we’re waiting for the Gestapo, they’re going to interrogate the prisoner again. We’re there to feed the pilot and get him ready. We’ll get one of the guards to come inside. Then Josef, you take care of the one outside.’
‘And the guard inside, Witch?’
She thought of Leonid’s face, too bashed to tell the color of his eyes.
His eyes were blue. Sky blue. She fingered the knife at her hip, the pistol in her belt.
‘I’ll do what I have to.’ She looked over to the starosta. The old man still eyed the warm ground.
Josef turned in his saddle to the soldiers Daniel and Ivan, book-ends around the German prisoner. Breit did not understand anything being said, his eyes darted to every speaker.
‘Alright,’ Josef said. ‘When both guards are down, you two come with the Nazi and the extra horse for the pilot. Witch, you and Filip…’
‘I’ll go.’
Nikolai sat straight in his saddle. The twin spoke with his chin high; his brother peered out from under his brim to listen.
‘Filip can stay here where it’s safe. I’ll go. They know me.’
Katya cut her eyes to Josef. Even under such a sun, his gaze was hooded.
‘I’ll go,’ Nikolai said again. ‘I’ve done enough to my brother.’
Josef growled, ‘Shut up, kiwi.’ He faced Filip. ‘Old man? Go or stay?’
Filip raised his head to his twin. Katya watched them stare at each other, the two faces so identical, and so different.