“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Petr raised his index finger toward her face. “Your eyes.”
Karen nodded. Both her eye sockets were purple and swollen from the beating. “My lips, too. It’s OK. They’ll heal.”
“No, I meant they’re still beautiful.”
Karen blushed and looked down in embarrassment. Then she remembered something. She looked around. “Where’s Duck?”
Now Petr flushed red—not in embarrassment, but in shame. “I had to leave him behind.”
Karen was astounded. She’d seen how much Petr loved that dog. “How could you?”
Petr slumped, misinterpreting the question as an accusation. “It was either you or him. I had no choice.”
“Yes, you did, and you chose me,” Karen responded with a smile. She wanted to kiss Petr then. She wanted to leap into his arms and pull his face toward her and kiss him.
But she didn’t.
Petr only looked baffled. “We… we should keep going.”
“Yes,” Karen said, nodding. “We should.” But she didn’t move. Not yet. “First, how do I use this?” She slid the loaf of bread into a pocket and unslung the German submachine gun from her shoulder.
Petr grabbed the stamped steel MP40 and examined it. “I don’t know,” he said. “If it’s anything like ours… first you release the safety.” He examined the bolt. “Which has already been done. That’s dangerous.”
Karen watched and nodded. “Then what?”
Petr shrugged. “Then just point and shoot.” He handed the weapon back to her. “But don’t hold down the trigger when you shoot. My drill instructor told me that. You only have one magazine, and the barrel will rise, making you miss. Try to fire in short bursts, like a pistol.”
“I’ve never fired a pistol.”
“Neither had I, until today.”
Karen secured the MP40 as he’d shown her. “How did you blow through that wall?”
“I used Duck’s mine.”
“His what?”
“He was… a mine dog.” Petr struggled as he referred to Duck in the past tense. Karen could see that his eyes were welling up. “Do you know what that is?” he added.
“No.”
“He was trained to run under tanks. He wore a jacket stuffed with explosives. A mine. The idea is that once a mine dog is under a panzer, boom, the explosives go off and destroy the tank.”
Karen was horrified. “Doesn’t that kill the dog?”
Petr nodded. “This is war. Everyone dies.”
“Not everyone.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
Karen desperately wanted to give in to her urge to wrap her arms around Petr’s neck and kiss him on the lips. She was afraid of what he might say, how he might react. “Thank you,” she said instead.
“You’re welcome,” Petr stammered before turning from her. “Are you ready now?”
Karen nodded. “I’m ready.”
Petr looked at her hand, as if about to take hold of it. Instead, he turned and began to march. Smiling for the first time in months, Karen followed closely behind him.
CHAPTER 26
THE GOATHERD
Unteroffizier Oster huffed and puffed as he ran, leading his men back to the village. He was sure he would somehow be blamed for this fiasco, and he was preoccupied with how he could avoid getting demoted.
When he caught sight of the bridge, Oster was relieved to find it wasn’t the target of the explosion, after all. But he could smell smoke. He stopped running and raised a fist, signaling his squad to proceed carefully as he led them in a crouch through the village, following his nose to the platoon’s command post.
Outside the house, charred, splintered wood marked where a hole had been blown through the wall, apparently with dynamite. The platoon’s medical orderly lay dead in the blast’s scorch mark. Oster drew his pistol, inched quietly toward the edge of the hole, and peered inside. Schaefer lay in a pool of his own blood, bled out like a stuck pig. Not far from him lay Krieger. The big man apparently went down fighting, judging from his wound and his missing MP40. The storage closet door hung open. The partisans hadn’t wanted to destroy the bridge. They’d attacked to rescue the spy.
Suddenly Oster realized he wouldn’t be demoted. On the contrary—whether he liked it or not, he’d just received a field promotion. He then led his squad through the village to examine the bridge. He was satisfied to find it didn’t appear booby-trapped or mined. But he noticed an old man staring at him.
“What happened?” Oster barked.
“Crime and punishment,” the old man explained, and he pointed toward the command post.
That infuriated Oster, and he drew his pistol and shot the old man in the head.
CHAPTER 27
THE CHOIRBOY
After the loss of two valuable warplanes to a freak sandstorm, Army brass had decided that the route from Eritrea was an impractical and dangerous way to supply the Russians. So Bobby and his squadron were recalled to Palm Beach. Bobby’s squadron mates were growing restless and bored.
But more than anything, Bobby was relieved. He hadn’t heard from Karen since June of 1941, almost a year ago. And now, suddenly, he received hundreds of her letters all at once. They had obviously been held up by the Soviet postal service, trapped in Leningrad until they could be delivered across the ice road, and then delayed even longer while they were examined by the State censors. But they had finally gotten through.
And that meant Karen was still alive.
So Bobby spent his spare time trying to decipher what the Soviet censors had deleted in Karen’s notes. Now he held a page up to a window, hoping the sunlight would illuminate the writing under the censor’s thick, black ink.
It was no use. The censor had been too good at his job. Whatever was written beneath the ink was lost forever. So he picked up a different letter and reread from the beginning.
Dearest Bobby,
It’s only been a few months, but it feels like a lifetime. My life in New York, my time with you, even my first year in Russia, they all seem like a dream I have trouble remembering. In that dream people laugh. They smile and they talk and they joke. In that dream no one hides food or steals wood. But now I’ve woken up and the dream is fading. All that’s left is the real world, the world of cold and hunger. That’s the world I live in, and try as I might I can’t return to the dream.
Yesterday my neighbor’s cat died. In the dream world my neighbor, Mrs. Kudaschova, loved that cat. She seldom let it out of her arms, let alone her sight. She carried it everywhere, stroking it, feeling it purr. But in the new world, the real world, she doesn’t have time to take care of a cat. She needs to take care of herself.
She has been doing that by luring pigeons to her balcony, where she can snare them. She plucks the pigeons, roasts them, and adds their meat to her bread ration. Perhaps that sounds disgusting to you, in the dream world. But just writing about it is making my mouth water. That’s the way it is here. Yesterday morning Mrs. Kudaschova put out her bait and set her snares like she always does. But the air-raid sirens interrupted her. When those sirens go off, we have to drop everything and race down into the basement. I don’t know why—if a bomb were to strike, the whole apartment would just fall on top of us, wouldn’t it? But everyone seems to think the basement is safe, so that is where we go. Mrs. Kudaschova always brings her cat down with her. But this time she couldn’t find the cat. And when a bomb exploded across the street, she finally lost her nerve, stopped searching, and joined us in the dark.