Читать книгу The Huntress - Кейт Куинн - Страница 20

October 1941

Moscow

Marina Mikhailovna Raskova, Hero of the Soviet Union and most famous aviatrix of the Motherland, had dark hair and rosy cheeks and a gleaming white smile. Her blue eyes were like lakes, and Nina fell into them like she was drowning.

“So—” Raskova looked Nina up and down, visibly amused. “You’re the girl who’s been making Comrade Colonel Moriakin’s life hell the past few days?”

Nina nodded, suddenly speechless. They stood in a borrowed office in Moscow’s aviation headquarters, an ugly box of a room with the usual desk heaped with folders and the usual portrait of Comrade Stalin on the wall. Raskova had sauntered in with a tossed comment over her shoulder to someone unseen—“You don’t mind if I take ten minutes, Seryosha?”—her voice as warm and crystalline as it had sounded over the radio. Nina followed that voice into the office every bit as blindly as she had followed it to Moscow in the first place, and now stood twisting her sealskin hat between her hands, desperately trying to summon the speech she had practiced all those long, monotonous hours on the train from Siberia to Moscow.

“You come from Irkutsk?” Raskova prompted when it became clear Nina wasn’t going to speak first.

“Yes. No,” Nina blushed. “Baikal. Then Irkutsk.”

Raised eyebrows. “You’ve come a long way to see me.”

More than four thousand kilometers. From train windows Nina had seen vast gold sunsets over stretches of taiga, followed by endless kilometers of towering dark trees where it was all too easy to imagine Baba Yaga’s witch house moving along on stalky chicken legs. Country stations where women in flowered shawls herded goats off the tracks were followed by city stations where railway officials rushed about in brass-buttoned coats. Farmland and pastureland, factories and tenement blocks, horse carts and cars, all whisking past Nina’s wide eyes.

“Your first time in Moscow?”

“Yes.” Her first glimpse of the city had been so terrifying—the vast spread of boxlike buildings, the peaks of distant spires and domes from old imperialist palaces and cathedrals, the spread of Three Stations Square where trains fed their passengers into the city—that her overwhelming urge had been to leap back onto the railcar. You do not belong here, the panicky thought pounded, looking at the overwhelming crush of uniformed soldiers, kerchiefed women, and slab-booted men. It wasn’t just the size and scale of it all, it was the pulsation of fear at being so much closer to the advancing enemy. Houses were draped with camouflage; flak guns crowned rooftops like long-legged cranes; streets were lined with barricades of welded railway girders. There was nothing like it in Irkutsk. You don’t belong here, go back east—

But she wasn’t going east again, not ever. You don’t belong here, Nina Borisovna, she had told herself, pushing through the crowd. You belong up there, in the sky. And if going through here is the only way there, then through here is where you’ll go. So she tunneled her vision, shut out Moscow, and stamped out into the sour-breathed cold-hunched press of humanity to find the aviation headquarters. “I didn’t pay much attention to Moscow,” she managed to tell Raskova. “I won’t be here long enough to make it worthwhile.”

“You won’t?”

“I’ll either join your new regiment, or go home.” Though Nina had barely a ruble left in her pocket, so how she was going to manage fare back to Irkutsk if she was rejected, she had no idea.

Raskova laughed, the sound warm and easy. “Why didn’t you apply through your Komsomol or your air club?”

“They would have said no. They were picking university girls, educated girls.” Nina heard her voice coming stronger, but her hands still had a death grip around the sealskin hat. “So I came direct to you.”

Raskova leaned against the edge of the desk, peeling off her gloves. She looked like she’d come right in from the airfield, still wearing boots and overalls. Her hands were fine and white, but she had oil smudges across her knuckles just like any pilot. “Colonel Moriakin says you camped in the chair outside his office for four days until he agreed to see you.”

“It was the fastest way to get an appointment.” Nina was surprised when Raskova burst out laughing. “He said I was crazy, but that I should talk to you, Comrade Raskova.”

“You’re not the first girl to come to me directly rather than through official channels.” Raskova folded her arms. “How many flying hours do you have?”

Nina embellished her record by a few hundred hours, presenting her certificates and detailing her training. Raskova listened with warm attention, but her next words hit Nina in the gut.

“Good numbers. But do you know how many girls have applied with numbers just as good or better?”

Nina’s hopes went into a tailspin, but she persisted. “I’m a born pilot. Made for the air.”

“So are all the girls I’ve picked. So are many of the ones I’ve turned away.”

Raskova was gearing up a gentle refusal; Nina could feel it. She stepped forward, pushing down the dread. “This is about more than a flying record.” Fighting to find the right words. “The girls in your regiments won’t be training students or flying mail routes. They’ll be bombing fascists, making nighttime runs, dogfighting with Messerschmitts. Your girls need—” What was the word, the right word? “They need to be tougher than old boots,” Nina finished.

“And you’re tougher than old boots?”

“Yes. You are too, Comrade Raskova.” Nina lifted her chin. “Three years ago, making the cross-country flight for the long-distance record, when your team couldn’t find the final runway due to visibility, you parachuted out. You were separated from your pilot and copilot and spent ten days alone in the taiga. No emergency kit. No food.”

“I made do.” Raskova said it easily, well accustomed to gushing girls and their hero worship—but in a moment’s sudden reminiscence, she wrinkled her nose. “I still remember the cold. Like sleeping cheek to cheek with Father Frost.”

“I grew up in that taiga.” Nina took another step. “You survived ten days there. I survived nineteen years. Cold, ice, a landscape that wants you dead—none of it scares me. Flying at night doesn’t scare me either, or bombs exploding, or fascists trying to shoot me down. Nothing scares me. I am tougher than any university girl with a perfect record and a thousand hours of flying time.”

“Are you?” Raskova studied her. “Think twice about what you’re asking for, Nina Borisovna. Going to the front—it’s a very hard thing. Many think it a waste, giving planes to girls when there are already more than enough men to fly them. I have told Comrade Stalin himself that my women will be better, and so they must be.”

“I am better.” Nina could feel her heart beating hard in her chest, like a propeller whipping up to speed. “Let me prove it.”

Another long moment. Nina hung suspended in agony. There’ll be a chance, her father had said. Don’t ask, when you see it. Just fucking take it. But Marina Raskova was the end of her chance—beyond this room, there was nothing to seize. It either all ended here, or all began here—and drowning in Marina Raskova’s blue eyes, Nina began to feel desolation choking her throat.

The most famous aviatrix in the Motherland rummaged through her colleague’s desk, found a pen and some official-looking paper, began to scribble. “This is a pass to the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy. You’ll have to follow the rules once you get there,” she warned with a twinkle, “but at least there’s tea to go with the rules.”

Nina felt her wings lift. “What else is at the academy?”

“Aviation Group 122.” Raskova pressed the pass into Nina’s outstretched hand with one of her knee-buckling smiles. “Your sisters-in-arms.”

NINA STOOD A MOMENT gaping at the academy’s palatial redbrick facade and imposing gates before braving the steps. Inside she found a rushing mass of trainee pilots dashing everywhere: women in flying caps and overalls, girls with curled hair and heels as though they were going dancing, female officers with cigarettes and taut faces shouting orders. Nina showed her pass and identification to the nearest officer and received a grunt. “We leave for training in a few days. You’ll be issued a uniform—”

“Where do I sleep?” Nina asked, but the officer had already turned away. Nina wandered for a while, having no idea where to go, still dazed with her triumph. She had done it; she was here. A bone-cracking yawn overtook her as she meandered down a vacant corridor; after sleeping four nights in a chair, she was desperate for a nap. Throwing her coat down beside an unlit heating stove, Nina curled up on it and dropped into sleep like falling into a black pit. It seemed only seconds later when a girl’s laughing voice said, “You look lost, sleepyhead!”

Nina pried open her eyelids. She’d been having some hazy dream of dogfighting through piled clouds as Marina Raskova’s voice whispered encouragement in her ear, and she said the first thing that came into her mind. “Are you my sister?”

“What?” The voice sounded even more amused.

Nina rubbed her eyes. The figure bent over her was a blur against the harsh corridor lights. “She said my sisters-in-arms were here.”

“Comrade Raskova said the same to me.” A hand grasped Nina’s elbow. “Welcome, sestra.”

It was the same word for “sister” that Nina had grown up speaking, but the Moscow tang in the girl’s voice made it different, a new kind of sister. That’s good, Nina reflected, since I didn’t like any of my blood sisters. She let herself be helped up, and the shadow resolved itself into a girl a year or two younger than Nina but half a head taller, porcelain skinned and smiling, ink-dark hair in a plait past her waist. “Yelena Vassilovna Vetsina,” she said. “From Ukraine, but I came to Moscow at twelve. Glider school when I was sixteen, then air club. I was studying at the Moscow Aviation Institute when the call went up for the regiments.” She rattled off a very impressive number of flying hours.

A pedigreed candidate, Nina thought. Educated, polished, impeccable record, probably a model Komsomol member. The kind whose application would have been stamped and moved to the top of the pile. A little warily, Nina nodded back. “Nina Borisovna Markova, from Baikal. Flight instructor at the Irkutsk air club.”

A dimple appeared in Yelena’s chin. “How many flying hours did you tell Raskova you had?”

“Three hundred more than I actually do.”

“I improved mine by two hundred. I felt so guilty, but then I met the other girls here and realized we all embellished our records. A regiment of liars, that’s what Raskova’s getting. Good thing we can all fly like eagles.” The dimple blossomed into an outright grin. “Did you faint, meeting Raskova? I swear I nearly swooned. She’s been my hero since I was seventeen.”

Nina couldn’t help smiling back. “Mine too.”

“Where are you classed for training, pilot, navigator, mechanic, or armorer?”

“Navigator.” Nina had hoped for a pilot classification, but Raskova had explained that there were enough pilots already. Nina was disappointed, but she wasn’t going to quibble. It was enough just to be here.

“Pilot for me. I can’t wait to get my hands on the new Pe-2s.” Yelena looked at Nina’s old coat. “Have you got your uniform yet?”

“No—”

“I’ll show you where. It’s horrible, the same standard issue they give the men. The bigger girls are all right, but little ones like you are swimming. And we’re all clumping around in the boots, even my new roommate who has feet like pontoons.”

Nina’s uniform came in a bulky packet, and she began to swear the minute she unfolded it. “Even men’s underwear?” Unfolding a pair of vast blue briefs.

“Even men’s underwear.” Yelena laughed. “Wait till you’ve worn it for a few hours—”

“Or walked a runway in it in zero degrees,” grumped another woman’s voice. “You would not believe the chafing.” Several more trainee pilots had gathered, looking interested. To a chorus of “Go on, get suited up!” Nina went into an empty storeroom and shuffled out shortly afterward. Even more girls had clustered in her absence, and they all went into a unison gale of laughter at the sight of Nina’s massive trousers puddling over huge clumping boots.

For a moment Nina bristled. Normally when she heard female laughter it was unkind or it was uncomprehending: girls like Tania mocking her flyaway hair or provincial accent. But this laughter was merry, and looking around, Nina saw that a good many of the girls looked every bit as ridiculous in their own enormous uniforms.

“We can cuff and stitch the hems, but you are out of luck on the boots.” Yelena shook her head. “Have you got some cloth to stuff into the toes?” Nina’s scarf went into the right boot, as Yelena unwound her own.

“I can’t take yours.”

“Nonsense! What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine, Ninochka.”

Another reflexive bristle—Nina never heard fond nicknames except from men trying to get her into bed. But Yelena had finished stuffing Nina’s boots and was making introductions, and everyone seemed to be on a first name basis. “Lidia Litvyak, we call her Lilia … Serafima here is from Siberia like you—”

“Not as far off as the Old Man, though!” came the friendly reply. Cautiously, Nina smiled back. Yelena kept rattling off names, and Nina knew she would hardly remember any of them, but there was a similar look to these women Raskova had recruited, no matter how different they seemed on the surface. Some looked barely eighteen and some approached thirty; some were little like Nina, others tall and strapping; some had city accents and some had provincial burrs … But they all looked like they were used to the feel of engine grease under their nails, Nina thought as they crowded around her bright-eyed and friendly, welcoming her to the ranks.

Questions were pelting now, as they asked Nina how she had come to flying. “I saw my first plane, and I fell in love with it.” Heads nodded.

“My father was furious when I went to pilot school in Kherson,” one girl said. “The women in our family all work in the steel factory—”

“I told my mother I’d fly someday,” another said. “She asked me ‘Where, from the kitchen stove to the floor?’”

Something in Nina’s chest expanded. Sestra, she thought, giving the plain word the twist that had made it something unique when she heard it in Yelena’s voice. Nina had not felt this burgeoning warmth since the day she walked singing with Vladimir and the other pilots to enlist—the warm feeling of belonging. Only these women would not leave her behind.

Nina’s fellow pilots hauled her off to find a meal then, talking away, and they were still talking three days later on the train platform, on their way out of Moscow. To some unknown airdrome for training, where the first female pilots of the Red Air Force would learn to be lethal.