But now that two of the three fronts had been stabilized, the little airport languished again. Apart from two ribbons of runway and a double row of humped aluminum hangars, it was beginning to look more like the rolling pasture on which it was built, dusty and weedy.
The landing strips were lined with the hastily constructed hangars, and a single control tower jutted above their rooftops like a camel’s head over its humps.
The entire facility was surrounded by a chain-link perimeter fence patrolled twenty-four hours a day by Red Army military police driving GAZ-64 jeeps. By agreement, the American delegation wasn’t allowed to post its own sentries inside. Despite the Soviet security, someone had cut a hole in the wire fence right below a NO TRESPASSING sign.
“The runways are built next to a pond,” Bobby explained, “And the fishing’s too good to keep the locals out.”
“When do they have time to fish?” Karen wondered.
“They never sleep,” Bobby replied. “Get down.”
Bobby, Karen, and Petr flattened themselves on the cool ground as a GAZ jeep rumbled by. First its headlights, then a top-mounted spotlight, swept over their heads as its brake lights showed, and it then continued on its patrol.
Bobby checked his watch. “If you go now, you’ll have three and a half minutes before they make another round.”
Karen didn’t hesitate. She was already crawling through the hole in the fence as she translated Bobby’s instructions to Petr.
Petr nodded and crawled through behind her.
“Remember,” Bobby continued, “hangar eighteen.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Karen whispered in alarm.
Bobby shook his head. “I’ve gotta go through the main gate. Otherwise they’ll be suspicious.”
“OK,” Karen replied reluctantly. “Hangar eighteen.”
She lowered her head and sprinted into the alley between two hangars. Petr sprinted next to her, and they caught their breath in the shadows. The GAZ jeep made another pass.
“What number is this?” Karen asked, looking at the curved slope of the hangar rising up beside her.
“Seven,” Petr reported.
“How do you know?”
“I looked at the number when we ran past.”
Karen realized she should have done the same. One number didn’t help much since they didn’t know how the hangars were organized. “We’ll wait until the jeep comes around again and run down the line,” she advised.
“Of course,” replied Petr, as if he’d come up with the same plan ages ago.
The jeep drove by, and Petr took off running. Karen sprinted after him.
She read the number of the next hangar—nine—before turning into the next alley, following Petr.
As she turned the corner, she ran right into Petr’s open arms. He’d hidden, and he was waiting for her. He pulled Karen close and kissed her.
She closed her eyes and relished the feel of his mouth on her own. Tears welled up and ran down her cheeks—not tears of anguish, but tears of relief. And she kissed him back.
The jeep drove past once again. She dimly heard the rumble of its engine and sensed the brightness of its headlights, and still she kissed him. Her nose ran, and she couldn’t breathe, but still she kissed him. Whatever happened, she didn’t want to be the one to pull away; she didn’t want to be the one to end the kiss. She wasn’t. Petr withdrew his lips and caught his breath. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“For what?” Karen wondered.
“For kissing you like that.”
She shook her head vehemently, sniffling as she spoke. “Don’t be sorry; be the opposite of sorry.”
“But you’re crying.”
“I’m crying because I didn’t think we’d ever kiss again.”
“I know,” Petr admitted. “I wasn’t sure, either. I needed to see how you’d respond.”
“Like this,” Karen whispered, and she kissed him again.
That kiss might have lasted a moment, or it might have lasted an hour. They lost all sense of time, and they nearly forgot where they were. They felt and remembered only one thing: each other.
Too much of that passion finally drew them apart. They wanted more from each other, more from their bodies, and it reminded them both that this was neither the time nor the place to give in to their desire.
So they parted once more, this time letting go of each other entirely. They leaned back against the hangar’s cool aluminum siding and closed their eyes, each relishing this moment of relief.
They’d both thought they’d lost the other. But they hadn’t. Petr gently tapped the aluminum three times: “I love you.”
Her eyes still closed, Karen smiled and tapped four times back: “I love you more.”
She stole a glance at Petr and saw that he, too, was smiling.
“Listen,” he whispered.
Karen heard frogs croaking in the distance. “It must be the fishing pond,” she said.
“They weren’t croaking a minute ago.” Concern had crept into Petr’s voice.
Karen’s eyes popped open in panic. “I don’t hear the jeep.”
“Shh,” Petr warned.
And Karen heard the soft tread of boots on gravel.
It was the military police. Something had aroused the guards’ suspicions, and they were sneaking up on their position.
Petr took Karen’s hand and pulled. He couldn’t risk speaking, but he needed her to follow him. Karen instantly obeyed. She trusted Petr, she’d discovered. She trusted Petr more than she even trusted herself. He led her back around the opposite side of the hangar, keeping off the gravel runway so that the wild grass muffled their footsteps. Then Petr crouched down and removed his shoes. Karen did the same. Petr held both his shoes in one hand and let go of Karen with his other. He counted with his fingers: one, two, three…
They sprinted across to the neighboring line of hangars.
The gravel runway hurt Karen’s stockinged feet. Her heel came down hard on a large pebble, and pain jarred up her leg. She grimaced but refused to cry out or even slacken her pace. Soon they again landed in the safe embrace of the hangars. Petr didn’t pause to catch his breath. He took Karen’s hand again and led her to the opposite side of the hangars at a brisk jog.
Karen read their numbers as they rushed past… twelve, fourteen… and realized how the buildings were organized—the other row was odd numbers, and this one was even.
They passed sixteen, reached eighteen. Petr, with trepidation, tried the door. It opened. They slipped inside and locked the door behind them. They’d made it. Karen let out a breath of relief. And once more, Petr kissed her.
This time Karen pushed him away. “We can’t. Not here. I don’t know when Bobby’s coming, and if he sees us…” She hesitated; she didn’t want to tell him the reason.
But Petr wanted to know. “If he sees us, what?”
“He’ll never take us back to America.”
Petr nodded. It was obvious to him that Bobby still loved Karen. He’d worried that she still loved Bobby, too. But he’d been wrong to worry. Karen loved Petr. She’d proven that with her kiss. So Petr trusted her again, and he felt slightly ashamed that he’d ever stopped trusting her.
If she needed to pretend, if it was crucial that they spend the entire flight back to America without touching again, Petr could handle that. He brushed his lips against hers.
“One last one for the road,” he said before pulling away and walking to the opposite side of the hangar.
CHAPTER 43
THE ORGAN-GRINDER AND THE CELLIST
The front landing gear of the C-47 Skytrain was so tall that Petr barely had to duck to fit under it.
Petr was surprised by how big airplanes were on the ground. He’d never flown before; he’d traveled across Russia with the army mostly on foot, sometimes by truck, and most recently by train. He’d seen plenty of planes up in the air during his time in combat. German airplanes were what his Katyusha battery feared the most. The Luftwaffe was always hunting for the Russian rocket batteries, and the Red Army pilots didn’t fare any better in their aerial duels against the Luftwaffe than the rest of the army did on the ground. As German aviators began to establish air superiority, Petr and his comrades always had to make sure they had cover nearby, whether a ditch or a trench or a tree line—anything to get away from the Katyushas’ truck and stay hidden. Petr’s unit had lost three trucks to air attacks. One time he’d watched from only a few dozen yards away as the German warplane dove low and strafed the Katyusha truck into oblivion. But even then the plane had been deceptively high in the sky, its small size an optical illusion.