Parked here before him in a hanger, the C-47 stood even bigger than most. It had been designed as a civilian aircraft, built to ferry wealthy Westerners between New York and London, stopping in Greenland to refuel. Each of its giant propeller engines was the size of a truck. Petr knew it was the plane Bobby intended him to stow away in. But Petr wondered where he would hide in that behemoth, and hoped its engines wouldn’t deafen him.
As he stared at the plane, Petr once again began to have doubts. He knew he wasn’t doing the right thing, the patriotic thing. Not just the Soviet Union, but Russia herself, was fighting for her life. He didn’t care about Stalin and the Communist Party, but he did care about his father and his uncle and his cousins. He even cared about all the regular Russians he hadn’t ever met. He wasn’t sure why he cared about people he didn’t know, but he did. He cared about them more than the nameless, faceless people he’d soon be meeting in America.
Despite all that, Petr didn’t regret his decision to travel with Karen to Chelyabinsk. The brief time they’d spent together on the Trans-Siberian Railway was the happiest time of his life. He wouldn’t have given up that experience for anything. It still drove him now—the promise of future bliss with Karen in America. That was all. Some Russians might assume he was motivated by cowardice. They might say he was betraying his country. So be it.
He wasn’t afraid to fight. The bitter truth was that a part of him was anxious to experience once more both the terror and the thrill of combat. They came together, Petr had discovered—terror and thrill. As a rocketeer, he’d only felt terror, since he’d never had the sensation of fighting back, apart from his one-man stand against the panzers. But when he was made a tank killer, he discovered a latent aggression inside himself. He liked to fight. And worse, he liked to kill. So, no, it wasn’t cowardice that motivated him to betray his country.
It still wasn’t too late to change his mind.
Chelyabinsk, too, had an army recruitment center. Petr had just been there last night. He never went back to sleep in the dorm with the musicians. Instead, he’d wrestled with himself and with his decision to escape Russia. He’d approached the army recruiters, pretending to be his own nonexistent cousin. He wasn’t there to enlist, he explained, but there at the behest of his grandmother, who was desperate to find out what had happened to her grandson hero, Petr.
The recruiters obviously tried to do their job, admonishing the boy to join up by assuring him that it would be better than getting drafted. But they also both had grandmothers of their own, and they couldn’t resist helping her. So they looked up the grandson’s record. The hero, Petr, they sadly reported, was missing in action and presumed either dead or a prisoner of war, which, they seemed to think, was even worse than being dead.
The report had given Petr some comfort. He knew that no one would be hunting him now. He could escape with Karen and make a clean start. But he still hadn’t been sure what he should do. He’d spent the remainder of the evening walking aimlessly through Chelyabinsk’s streets, trying to decide.
When the time came to meet Karen, he still wasn’t sure. So he resolved to let a kiss decide. At his first opportunity, he would kiss her, and he’d know by how she responded whether she still loved him. If she did, he’d go with her to America. If she didn’t, he’d rejoin the army and help defend his homeland.
Petr looked away from the Skytrain and across the hangar at Karen. She was so beautiful. She’d long since recovered from the Nazi beating she’d received, and she was no longer the filthy, scrawny girl he’d first met outside Leningrad. She’d put on weight during their train trip so that her stomach even slightly swelled, pushing up against her tight, borrowed dress.
Petr stared at Karen’s tummy, finding it maddeningly erotic. He desperately wanted to rub his hands and lips over it. He had to look away, lest he cross the hangar once more and give in to those compulsions. He knew he’d made the right decision. After all, what difference could he, one person, make to the Russian war effort?
Despite the assurance of a Hollywood reporter, he was no John Wayne. He was a simple man, a simple kid, really, a Russian boy with simple desires and modest ambitions. Better to live than to die, better to love than to fight, and most of all, better to spend a long life with that gorgeous woman.
He gazed at Karen then, and she gazed back at him. “You would be blushing,” he told her.
“Why?” she asked, with a coy smile.
“If you knew what I wanted to do right now.”
And Karen did blush, because she was thinking something similar.
Right then the door unlocked, and Bobby entered. “You made it,” he said with relief.
“We made it,” Karen confirmed.
“Well, then, let’s do this. We don’t have much time.”
CHAPTER 44
THE CELLIST AND THE CHOIRBOY
It had been awkward at first, climbing into Bobby’s lap—not because it put Karen in an uncomfortable physical position, but because it put her in an emotionally difficult one.
She had once yearned for Bobby’s touch. That yearning had helped her survive the dark days of Leningrad. But, she was ashamed to admit, since meeting Petr, that yearning had left her.
Now, as she leaned back against Bobby’s chest, it was as though her body was becoming reacquainted with a long-lost comfortable chair. Despite the growl and rumble of the Airacobra’s powerful engine, Karen felt Bobby’s heartbeat thump against her back. The pressure of his arm across her stomach was strong and reassuring.
She moved her fingers gently up his forearm and bicep, feeling the curve of his muscles under his shirt. He wasn’t wearing his flight jacket; he’d given it to her, and she’d pulled it over her simple, straight dress. She felt strangely proud to be wearing it, the way she’d seen those silly cheerleaders wearing their boyfriend’s letterman jackets. At the time she’d found the ritual vaguely demeaning, as if the boys were laying claim to the cheerleaders and confining them in a straitjacket. But now she understood the comfort it provided. It made her feel wanted. More than that, it made her feel protected.
Only a few months ago, Karen had felt neither. No one wanted her in Leningrad, and certainly no one had protected her. Even her own father seemed to care more about the symphony than about her. She now knew she was wrong in that perception; her father had loved her, but he was simply incapable of protecting her. She’d learned to forgive him for that.
Karen had been left on her own. And now she had two men protecting her. Two men, she knew, however, was one too many. She indulged herself, comparing the feel of Bobby to that of Petr. They were both long and lean, but Bobby’s skin was softer. She remembered that his chest had been smooth when she’d left New York, but that was a long time ago, and she wondered whether he’d grown the same coarse hair that bristled across Petr’s chest.