Her knees gave out and she sat down abruptly in the chair before Bershanskaia’s desk. Looking at the clock on the wall she was astounded to see it was late afternoon. Briefing would begin soon for the night’s mission.
She exhaled a shaky breath. “This has been a very informative discussion, Comrade Major. I understand you have been interviewing all your pilots, to urge constant vigilance against saboteurs and enemies of the state.”
“Of course.” Bershanskaia’s voice was cautious. “All of you.”
“My navigator is having dizzy spells,” Nina said. “Comrade Lieutenant Zelenko is unwell and would benefit from a night’s rest.” Nina raised her chin, looked Bershanskaia in the eyes. “As a former navigator, I am more than capable of flying tonight’s runs alone.”
Silence expanded around the words. Nina’s mouth dried out, and suddenly her pulse was fluttering.
“You may fly alone tonight, Comrade Lieutenant Markova. Inform your navigator to report to the infirmary.”
“Thank you, Comrade Major Bershanskaia,” Nina said through numb lips. Saluted, for the last time.
Gravely, slowly, Bershanskaia saluted her back.
And Nina took her leave.
THE WORD HAD already spread.
No one approached Nina as she left Bershanskaia’s office on feet that did not quite feel the Polish mud. Everyone watched in grave silence, eyes speaking volumes as she passed. No one reached out, no one spoke—until she came into the derelict barn that served as a barracks, and Yelena rose from Nina’s cot with swollen eyes.
“Oh, Ninochka—”
The violent pressure of those strong arms nearly broke Nina in half. She sagged in Yelena’s grip, gulping unsteadily as Yelena stroked her hair.
“The word already came out that Galya’s grounded.” Yelena clearly knew what that meant; her voice was filled with dread. “You’re—you’re going up alone?”
Nina nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“Don’t,” Yelena whispered. “Fight the charges. It’s all a mistake. They won’t condemn a Hero of the Soviet Union! If you appeal—”
Of course Yelena with her shining belief in the system would think acquittal a simple matter of innocence. Nina just shook her head. “No.”
“Why won’t you—”
“I’m going up tonight, Yelenushka.” Her six hundred sixteenth bombing run, Nina thought. Her last.
Yelena pulled away, eyes filled with tears. “Don’t crash,” she begged. “Don’t throw your plane into those Fritz guns. Don’t make me watch flames coming up from your wreckage—”
“I’m not going to crash,” Nina said thickly.
She freed herself from Yelena’s arms. No time to waste: forcing the chaos of her thoughts aside, she rummaged under the cot for her meager stash of possessions. A pilot at war needed so little—a pistol, a sack of emergency supplies in case of crashing. An old white scarf embroidered with blue stars . . . Nina stuffed everything into a knapsack, ransacking the barracks for all the food she could find. In Bershanskaia’s office she’d been too stunned to form a plan; her thoughts stretched no further than the offer to fly alone. Get off the ground, that was all her instincts had told her—get into the sky before the shackles came.
Now what?
Despite herself, she envisioned aiming for a battery of antiaircraft guns, the white flare of the searchlight filling her world like a sun as she dived into it for once rather than away. The image crooned. Better to go, in fire and glory, to sleep.
I’m so tired.
But Nina pushed that vision away. She looked at Yelena, standing in her flying overalls trying not to weep, and opened her mouth. But she thought who might be listening and put a finger to her lips in warning. Shouldering her knapsack, Nina grabbed Yelena’s arm and marched her wordlessly out, across the trampled field to the middle of the runway. The dying afternoon sun beat down, insects droned, and there was no one within fifty meters to hear anything they had to say to each other.
“I’m not going to crash my plane.” Nina swung around at last, facing Yelena. “I’m going to run. I’m flying west.”
The uncurling quiver of fierce affirmation inside her stomach was all she needed. West, not east. The dream of the girl growing up by the Old Man.
She looked at Yelena’s wide eyes and cupped that much-loved face between her hands. “Come with me,” Nina heard herself saying, heart beating in her throat. This was not planned either, but among the torrent of emotions running riot through her chest—shock at her own coming arrest, rage at her father, stark liquid grief for the loss of her regiment—something lighter joined the maelstrom: a feather touch of hope.
“Come with me,” she repeated, and suddenly the words were spilling eager and blunt. No speaking in vague generalities now—here under the open sky, Nina was done with Party euphemisms. “Wait until the last instant, then run for the navigator’s cockpit. They won’t be able to stop us. They’ll report us both dead before the time my arrest warrant arrives, and we’ll be free as birds with no disgrace attached to the regiment. How far west can we get, the two of us and a U-2 full of fuel?”
“Into Poland?” Yelena gestured at the ugly trampled ground around them, the smoke-smudged western horizon. “It’s crawling with Germans—”
“Where else can I go? Anywhere behind our own lines, I’ll be found. It’s west for me, or it’s propeller first into the nearest battery of guns.”
Yelena winced, turning away from Nina’s hands. “You don’t have to go. You’ll be acquitted—”
“No,” Nina cut her off. “I flee now or I die later—a few days, a few weeks, even a few years, but I’ll die. I can make my way through Poland, maybe even farther. To a new world.” She had no idea what she was going to do, dropped into war-racked Poland, but she knew she and Yelena could survive together. “Come with me,” she repeated, grasping Yelena’s hands in both her own. “The West, Yelenushka. Where black vans don’t come in the dead of night because your neighbor wants your apartment—”
“Don’t say that!” Yelena cried in reflexive fear of eavesdroppers, but Nina threw her head back in defiance.
“Why not? They’ve already denounced me. They can’t do it twice.” The satisfaction of that was fierce. Take me away from my regiment, my plane, my friends? Nina thought to the vast barren country that had sired her. I’ll turn my back on you without a second glance, you frozen heartless bitch. And I’ll take your finest Hero with me. She and Yelena would be so much better, if only they could escape the Motherland and wait out the war. No arguments about Party politics or Comrade Stalin, nothing to divide them. She’ll see what this place is, if she sees it from the outside. I’ll give her everything else she wants—an apartment by a river and babies playing on the floor. Nina was ready to tear those things bare-handed out of the unknown capitalist world if she had to, tear them out and lay them at Yelena’s feet if only she’d come west tonight.
But her heart seized, because Yelena’s head was shaking back and forth.
“My mother is in Moscow,” she said. “My aunts and uncles are in Ukraine. I can’t leave them—they’ll all be denounced and arrested in turn, if there’s even a whisper I deserted.”