If Bobby had brown hair on his chest, Karen imagined it would be soft. She was tempted to push her hand between the buttons of his shirt and satisfy her curiosity. But she resisted that urge, not out of fear that he’d reject the gesture, but out of fear that he’d welcome it.
She began to wonder whether that would be such a bad thing. Somehow, unconsciously, she’d found a way to turn in his lap so that she could twist her neck and look at his face. It was long, angular, even slightly patrician. Yet it was simultaneously trustworthy and trusting. Bobby’s lips were full, and they were perpetually curled at the corners into a dimpled smile.
It was an inviting face, and a familiar one, but there was something new there, too. Karen could detect a darker quality behind Bobby’s eyes that she’d never sensed before. They were not as dark and brooding as Petr’s eyes, but they’d lost the playful twinkle she remembered.
“What are you staring at?” Bobby asked, glancing away from the sky and up at her face.
“You,” Karen answered. “You’ve changed.”
“So have you,” Bobby acknowledged.
Karen nodded and turned back forward, breaking eye contact with her fiancé and staring once more through the cockpit window. She didn’t want to think about how she’d changed. She knew she wasn’t the same person who’d left New York, and she wasn’t sure she liked the person she’d become. She felt selfish for what she’d put Bobby through, and what she was currently putting Petr through. She tried to tell herself that it was all for Petr’s own good, that her actions were a necessary evil to rescue him from certain death.
But was that just an excuse to keep him close? And if she loved Petr, wasn’t she just using Bobby? Who else had she simply used to survive? Inna? Sasha? Could it be that she felt compelled to save Petr not because she loved him, but because she felt guilty about her dead father and dead friends, and she needed to somehow redeem herself?
She honestly didn’t know. Her brain and emotions both seemed to be betraying her.
“So what do you think?” Bobby asked her.
“About what?”
“About this…”
Bobby twisted the aircraft into a roll and a dive. Karen smiled as her stomach climbed up into her chest and Siberia’s treetops revolved over her head. “It’s incredible!” she yelled, exhilarated.
“Lieutenant Campbell, are we under attack?” It was the voice of Captain Hart coming over the radio. As General Marshall’s personal pilot, the captain was their squadron’s tactical commander. He knew they weren’t under attack, and his sarcastic tone was his way of reprimanding Bobby for breaking formation.
“No, Commander,” Bobby responded. “I thought I saw an antiaircraft emplacement and wanted to take a closer look.”
All the pilots had been briefed on the secret objective of their mission, so Bobby knew he could get away with insubordination by claiming it was to scout Russian air defenses. He’d volunteered to fly in the rear of the formation so that no one would see Karen in his cockpit. Only Jack knew the truth, and Bobby intended to keep it a secret until they all landed in Krasnoyarsk and it was too late for them to forbid bringing Karen home.
“Machine gun or flak?” Captain Hart asked, all sarcasm suddenly absent from his tone.
“Neither. Just an abandoned tractor,” Bobby reassured him, twisting and climbing back into formation.
“Do you ever get used to it?” Karen asked after Bobby quieted his radio.
“Get used to what?”
“That feeling in your stomach. It’s like the roller coaster at Coney Island, but a hundred times more intense.”
Bobby laughed. “Yeah, they call it g-force. You gotta get used to it, some, but not too much. Get used to it too much, and it could be dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Why?”
“That sensation you feel, it’s your equilibrium warning you to cool it. You press the g-forces too hard, you can black out.”
“That’s possible?”
“Not flying like this, but in combat, with a Zeke on your tail, yeah, you could start to lose your vision and then fall unconscious before he even shoots you down.”
Karen suddenly felt cold. She hadn’t ever considered Bobby fighting in combat. But he was an Army Air Forces pilot; that’s what they did, what they were trained for—to fight, to kill. Just like Petr. The whole reason she was doing this was to save Petr, and now she realized Bobby was in just as much danger. Why wasn’t she trying to save him? “Have you… have you fought yet?”
“Yeah, I’ve fought,” Bobby replied, without a trace of bravado.
“Have you killed?” Karen asked with trepidation.
“No, not yet,” Bobby admitted. “But not from lack of trying.”
“But you survived, anyway,” Karen said, as if to reassure herself.
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
But Karen was worried, suddenly. She’d been so stupid, so shortsighted, and she now understood why his eyes looked haunted. She wrapped both her hands around his arm and squeezed. “Don’t try too hard,” she said.
“To do what?”
“To kill. Just try to survive.”
“One doesn’t go without the other,” Bobby confessed.
“You’re right,” Karen sadly admitted.
And they spent the rest of the flight in silence.
Krasnoyarsk was a surprisingly beautiful city built up along either bank of the wide, flat Yenisei River. The formation of Russian and American warplanes circled the entire area before lining up, one by one, for landing.
Bobby’s aircraft was last, giving Karen the opportunity to admire the city in silence. She was surprised by the historic architecture; she’d imagined Siberia to be a wild land only recently and forcefully populated, as Chelyabinsk had been. But Krasnoyarsk’s skyline was spotted with the tall spires of Russian Orthodox cathedrals that were hundreds of years old, and its docks were lined with beautiful old mansions that in czarist times belonged to adventurous nineteenth-century merchants made rich by their exploitation of Siberia’s vast resources.
Emerald hills and forests surrounded the city, which in turn surrounded beautiful green islands serving as parks in the middle of the river. A ribbon of railroad track twisted through the forest and over the short mountains before passing through the city across a magnificent bridge. Karen realized that the tracks belonged to the Trans-Siberian Railway, and her eyes followed them southeast until they disappeared over the distant horizon.
They finally landed. There was no hiding Karen now. Before Bobby slid back the P-39’s cockpit canopy, the Russian ground crew spotted an extra passenger in his lap. They watched in openmouthed wonder as Karen climbed out and hopped down, still wearing Bobby’s leather flight jacket.
“Hello,” she greeted them in Russian, with a smile. The Red Army soldiers didn’t say anything; they just avoided her gaze and went about their business checking the airplanes. The same could not be said of Lenka, one of the Red Army pilots escorting the Americans out of Siberia.
“You’ll be reported,” she threatened as soon as she caught Karen alone outside one of the airplane hangars.
“Reported for what?” Karen kindly asked.
“Treason.”
“But I’m not even Russian. I’m American,” Karen replied in English.
That surprised Lenka, who stared daggers at Karen. “Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Karen.”
Lenka didn’t offer her own name. Karen only discovered it later when she asked Bobby. Instead, Lenka just stormed off in anger. Now that it was an open secret Bobby had brought a stowaway, it was only a matter of time before General Marshall himself found out. When he did, he invited both Karen and Bobby to dine with him.