It was well after midnight when Karen and the NKVD man left the Smolny together. But with the city still burning, it was bright enough to see. It was a long walk; the trams hadn’t run for months, and even if the NKVD could have procured a vehicle and petrol, the streets were too clogged with rubble to allow a car’s passage. Eventually they reached the edge of the city, and the Red Army’s defensive trenches.
Thank goodness Inna’s sister wasn’t on duty. Sasha’s father showed the sentry his NKVD identification, and they crossed into the no-man’s-land beyond Leningrad’s defensive perimeter.
Karen held her breath as they crossed the open ground. She knew that German artillery was already aimed on this position and that German spotters on the surrounding hills would call to the guns if they suspected someone was trying to escape the doomed city. But once again the darkness was her friend, or perhaps the smoke from the city fires protected her, because they weren’t detected, and soon she was leading the NKVD man through the frozen boreal forest.
Karen didn’t know where she was going, and she didn’t really care. Her plans had already been spoiled. The truck with her name on it had long since departed, and the train tickets in her pocket were worthless.
They came to a clearing. It seemed as good a place as any. Karen stopped and looked around before pointing at a tree. “There,” she said.
Sasha’s father walked to the tree and looked at its branches. It was a young spruce, green and sappy, and it didn’t look good for firewood. “How?” he asked.
Karen detected the suspicion in his voice. “Not that one, the oak,” she corrected herself. She walked up to the trunk of a big barren oak tree and pointed up at its gnarled branches. “He said he would climb up and hack off a limb.”
“Did you see him?”
Karen looked up through the dark branches. “I helped hoist him up, and then he told me to leave.”
“None of the branches are broken.”
The NKVD man was right. If her story were true, some of the branches would have been cut short. “Perhaps he didn’t succeed.”
“There are no tracks.”
Karen looked down. Inside she was beginning to panic. She’d almost convinced him, but now she was making fatal mistakes. Her story was beginning to unravel. Then she remembered: “It snowed three days ago. It must have covered up the tracks.”
“I see. So, who is Karen Hamilton?”
Karen’s blood froze. She slowly turned around and saw that the NKVD man had a pistol in his hand. He was pointing it right at her.
“I found another ration card on the same woman who had Sasha’s. She said you had given it to her.”
Karen stared at the gun, and her mind raced. Maybe she could make a run for it. Maybe in the forest and the darkness she could get away. But it wasn’t dark anymore. The sun had begun to come up, and already there was enough light for him to shoot her easily. And they were only a few feet apart. The NKVD man wouldn’t miss at that range. Karen knew she was dead.
She was about to say something, a desperate lie about how this Karen was a neighbor who had died and had left her an extra ration card. But a new voice interrupted them.
“Hello, comrades!” the voice called out. “Are you from Leningrad?”
A boy dressed in the uniform of a Russian soldier had appeared in the woods behind the NKVD man.
The NKVD man spun, pointing his pistol at the smiling boy.
Karen jumped at the NKVD man, trying to tackle him to the ground.
CHAPTER 15
THE ORGAN-GRINDER
Petr’s journey to Leningrad lasted several days. He had nothing to eat but the meager rations in his mess kit, bread frozen solid that he had to cut using his sharp shovel like an ax. He shared every meal with Duck. He didn’t dare build a fire for fear that its smoke would give his position away to the Germans. The water in his canteen was soon frozen, leaving him nothing to drink but snow. He traveled only at night, because it was easier to see the glow in the sky, and he felt safer surrounded by darkness. It was colder at night, too, and the ceaseless march helped keep him warm. Compared to the days, Petr’s nights were almost pleasant.
On the second night, Petr crossed another river. It was frozen solid, and the troughs of tire tracks were dug right down its middle. Apparently the Germans were using it as a road, so Petr called Duck deeper into the woods and they avoided the river.
On his third day, he saw smoke where the glow had been in the sky the night before. Now he knew he was heading toward Leningrad, but he incorrectly assumed the smoke was the result of artillery duels between the Germans and the Leningrad defenders. That night the glow was brighter, too, and it motivated him to keep marching even after the rising sun slowly turned the darkness gray. Petr knew he was close, maybe only a few miles from the city’s trenches, and he knew that meant the Germans must be nearby, too. He decided to keep marching.
Petr came to a road. It led in the exact direction he was marching, so he had to follow it somehow. He moved parallel to the road, deep enough within the coniferous forest to stay hidden from the view of any trucks passing by.
He heard voices up ahead.
He and Duck crouched. Petr was unarmed. He’d lost his big PTRD rifle in the log house and hadn’t found a secondary weapon. So he held his breath and stayed hidden. But then he heard the voices a little more clearly. And his heart leaped. They weren’t speaking German—they were speaking Russian.
Petr rose from his crouch and bounded forward with a smile. Duck trotted beside him. They passed through a wall of spruce and into a narrow clearing.
A man and a girl stood there, on the opposite side—the girl’s back to a tree and the man’s back to Petr. Petr waved and called out to his comrades in greeting, asking about Leningrad.
The man turned to him. Petr froze. The man had a pistol in his hand. It had been pointed at the girl and now was pointed at him. The girl lunged at the man, trying to knock him down.
CHAPTER 16
THE CELLIST AND THE ORGAN-GRINDER
The moment Karen clamped her arms around the NKVD man, she knew she’d made a mistake. She should have run while she had the chance. The NKVD man was half a head taller than she and physically fit, much better fed. Grabbing him felt like grasping at the trunk of a tree. All she could do was deflect his arm, spoil his aim. The gun went off, and a bullet plunged into the ground. Maybe that saved the young soldier who’d appeared, but not her. The NKVD man grabbed her, threw her down. Karen felt herself falling onto the cold ground and saw the pistol moving toward her, the barrel pointed at her forehead. She tried to squirm away, but the NKVD man only tracked her with the aim.
Then the NKVD man was thrown to the ground. An animal was on him, a wolf, ripping at his coat. No, it wasn’t a wolf. It was a dog. Snarling, it ripped out bundles of wool and flesh with every bite. Karen kept scurrying backward, as terrified of the dog as she was of the NKVD man. But the dog didn’t seem interested in her. It kept biting and tearing at the NKVD man.
The NKVD man put up a good fight despite the torment of being eaten alive. He managed to climb to his knees, protecting his face and neck from lunging fangs with his bleeding left forearm. The dog’s silent attack had knocked the gun from his hand, but now the NKVD man patted the ground, searching for it. As the dog kept lunging, his fingertips groped for the steel barrel.
Karen heard a voice: “Duck! No! No, Duck!” The voice was getting closer—it was the soldier, running toward them.
Karen swallowed her fear and lunged for the gun. Her hand wrapped around it at the same time as the NKVD man’s did. But he was so much stronger, she knew she could only hold on a few moments before he yanked it from her grasp. So she tugged at the trigger. The pistol boomed, and she felt it kick, but she kept pulling the trigger, over and over. The bullets zipped harmlessly into the forest. She wasn’t trying to aim; she was only trying to empty the gun before the NKVD man could turn it on her. The gun clicked empty just as the NKVD man wrestled it from her grasp.