They embraced quickly and Inna disappeared down the corridor to the stairwell.
Alex tore open the letter, deliberately unsigned, to protect them both, but she recognized the sweeping handwriting.
My dearest. Forgive my silence, but I dare not send too much field post to you. The censors read everything and it would draw attention to us both. And I could never say that I long for you terribly. I must force you from my mind when I take off in pursuit of the enemy, but always I return thinking only of you. The ground troops cannot move forward for the mud, so our air strikes are all the more important. And since we lost more pilots recently, none of us can take any leave. Stay safe, my dearest, and please wait for me. One day I will come back to you.
*
Alex kept the letter beside her on the night table while she slept and carried it on her person on her trip back to the front. Soon the low-quality paper began to fray and disintegrate inside her pocket, so she folded it inside another paper to preserve it.
But no more letters came, and no more field posts, and by the end of June, when she again returned to Moscow, her optimism had evaporated. Weekly messages arrived from George at Century magazine, but they became increasingly dreary, and the only relief she had was a cable from Terry Sheridan.
ARRIVING IN MOSCOW WED AFTERNOON STOP STAY AT HOTEL SO WE CAN MEET TERRY END.
Now she at least had something to look forward to, and in the morning, she allowed herself a brisk walk along Red Square and then past the Bolshoi. The great theater was officially closed and its company transferred eastward to safety, but a few brave souls stayed on in a subsidiary company and gave an occasional performance. Now someone had tacked up an announcement of an orchestral concert: Borodin, Prokofiev, and Rimsky-Korsakov.
Checking her watch, she noted it was already noon and so hurried back to the Metropole. The traffic on Theatralny was always sparse, so the car that pulled up caught her attention immediately. She brightened when she saw Terry climb out. The driver, as far as she could see from a distance, was an older woman, but when Alex ran toward him, waving, the car pulled away.
She embraced him cheerfully. “The OSS has old ladies chauffeuring you around?” She laughed.
“Who? What? Oh. That was Elinor, my…uh…secretary.” He linked his arm in hers. “I’d have invited her in, but she had to rush off to finish a report.” He led her toward the dining room and signaled for coffee as they sat down at a table.
“What brings you to Moscow this time?” she asked.
“Well, for starters…” He pulled a bulky package wrapped in brown paper from his canvas sack. “I knew better than to get nylons and girly things like that, so I settled on the socks and a new set of trousers. They’re wrapped around the four cartons of cigarettes you asked for.”
She laughed and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Good man. You know how to treat a woman right. Even if she doesn’t sleep with you any more.”
He made a cartoonish pout. “Is that your final decision?”
“I’m afraid so. Anyhow, you didn’t come to Moscow simply to seduce me. What’s going on?”
He drew a pack of Chesterfields from his pocket and tapped one out. “It seems we have a troubling issue with the Soviets. Remember all the bodies they found in the Katyn forest?” He lit the cigarette with a handsome Zippo.
“Of course, all those Polish officers the Gestapo killed in 1940.”
“That, precisely, is the issue. It’s looking more and more like the Russkies did it. Ordered by Stalin, of course.” The waiter set down their almost-coffee.
“Isn’t that what Goebbels wants the world to believe? That the Russians are savages?” She sipped the hot drink with little enjoyment. It needed more sugar.
“That’s the tricky part. Yes, the Germans love it that suspicion is falling on the Russians, and that makes our alliances with them…um…sticky. But more and more evidence is coming to light that it was the NKVD. Churchill seems to think it was, and so does Roosevelt. No proof yet, but there’s a stink in the room. Rather than make public accusations against our allies, the War Department has the OSS looking into it.”
“How very complicated.” She glanced around the dining room. “Speaking of the NKVD, I wonder what happened to Victor.”
“Victor? Who’s that?”
“One of the NKVD watchers. A rumpled fellow who usually sat over there and who was very bad at tailing me. The last time we met he warned me not to contact the Drachenkos, but he wasn’t terribly menacing about it, as if he was losing his taste for the job.”
He leaned back in his chair and waved to the waiter for another coffee. “If you don’t see him, that’s not a good sign. They’ve almost certainly replaced him with someone who’s better at it. And if he warned you not to do something, you’d better not do it.”
“I can’t follow that advice, Terry. Lilya Drachenko is more than just a good story. She’s like a…a sister to me. She’s even smuggled letters through me that she couldn’t send through field post. I care for her a lot, and her mother thinks of me as a daughter.”
“Oh, Alex. Don’t fall into that trap. They tell you that because they’re all so miserable, they’re hoping for a handout. Not to mention that if the NKVD had caught you delivering secret information, they’d have expelled you. It would have been the end of your credentials as a foreign journalist, if you were lucky. You might have also found yourself in jail for a few years. Promise me you won’t go near that family again.”
“Got it,” she said, without actually promising, and finished her coffee. “Listen, I’ve got nothing to do until my photos dry.” Let’s go for a walk.”
“You mean instead of sex?” The pout appeared again.
“Sorry, old friend. That ship has sailed. Come on and sublimate that horniness in a little exercise. She stood up, then sat down again. “I have an even better idea. The Bolshoi affiliate has a concert today.” She looked at her watch. “In just about an hour, in fact. Why don’t we go?”
“A concert instead of a roll in the hay?” He sighed. “All right. For old time’s sake. Where do we have to go to buy the tickets?” He slid his chair back.
“We don’t have to go anywhere. Georgy, the desk clerk, will sell them to you, though I think at this late date, only the most expensive ones will be left.”
“This is a loyalty test, isn’t it?” He stood up from the table.
“Don’t worry, dear. Any man who accepts ‘no’ for an answer and still agrees to go to a concert passes with high marks. You’re going to make some woman a wonderful lover.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Alex and Terry stood by the side entrance of the Bolshoi while he finished his cigarette. “Nice of you to agree to this,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to see something here since I arrived in Moscow.”
“Why didn’t you? You were always only twenty yards away.”
“Because they weren’t here. The portico was bombed, and the main company was evacuated in forty-one to Kuibyshev. Their affiliate gives the occasional concert, but I’ve been too busy. Until now.”
“Uh-hunh.” It was obviously more information than he was looking for. “Ah, there’s the buzzer.” He stubbed out his cigarette butt on the ground and took her by the arm.
Alex glanced around when they arrived at their seat. The theater was in poor condition, the chandeliers removed and the upholstery threadbare, but for all that, the old grandeur of the hall was still evident. They were in the first mezzanine, to the right of the Tsar’s Box, and several seats in their row were still vacant. She recognized a few of the other correspondents sitting across from them on the other side of the hall and realized that a good part of the audience was foreign. It made sense. The Russians were all in their factories working fourteen-hour days.
The musicians filed into the pit and tuned their instruments, and a chorus lined up onstage. Then the lights went out.
The concert started with Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances and she tried to concentrate o
n the sound, but the war was too much on her mind. She couldn’t warm to the idea of dances, and the women’s voices in the chorus made her think of the “witches,” who were probably taking off just then for another night of bombing.
She shut them out of her mind and tried to let the music affect her, but her flimsy attention was disrupted by the sound of someone entering the hall behind them. She glanced over her shoulder, annoyed.
A soldier stood at the rear of the box, peering into the semi-darkness. A small, slender soldier in an air force uniform broke into a smile.
How did she find them? How did she know? The unanswered questions evaporated, and she rose from her seat. She felt Terry’s eyes following her as she stepped to the rear of the box.
Wordlessly, she took Lilya by the hand and led her back to the front row, offering the empty seat next to her. Lilya sat down, the grip of her hand tightening, and Alex almost ached with joy that she’d appeared. If only they could be someplace other than here.
Alex wove her fingers in among Lilya’s and held their joined hands on her lap. She caught the whiff of Lilya’s skin and hair that smelled of military soap and tried to reconstruct how she’d miraculously appeared. Had she finally been granted leave and stopped first to see Anna again, then gone to the hotel? So many questions and no way to talk.
No matter. In the absence of speech, she had the pressure of Lilya’s hand, the smell of her skin, and the delicious music washing over them to make her dizzy with desire.
The music rose to a climax, then fell away again as the first piece ended. The applause began, and they unclasped hands only long enough to join it.
Terry leaned forward to acknowledge Lilya’s presence. He nodded a brief greeting, and she smiled timidly back at him. Seated between them, Alex realized that they barely knew of each other’s existence. She would have to introduce them formally later.
The orchestra tuned again and began the second piece, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite. Lilya closed her eyes and slid her foot sideways so their lower legs just touched.
Alex stole a sideward glance at the radiant young face with blond curls that poked out from under her military cap. She slid her glance down to the swell of breasts in the khaki uniform, and a tiny portion of her mind registered the third medal pinned over the left pocket. Another enemy shot down, no doubt. Strange that medals for killing were worn over the heart.
The ballet piece seized her attention momentarily as the staccato melodies danced around her, and she imagined the two of them gamboling in a sunny meadow. The fantasy made her smile; Lilya Drachenko, decorated annihilator of enemy planes, didn’t seem the meadow-dancing type.
The piece ended with enthusiastic applause while Alex bent toward Lilya and whispered, “How are you, darling? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, now that I’m with you,” she whispered back, and brushed her lips over Alex’s ear.
Another tuning of instruments followed, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture began with the haunting theme sounding in the distant horns. Flutes answered in bright tremolos, hinting of birdsong and sparkling dew.
The horns called again, nearer, heralding something magnificent, but the other brass instruments followed, darker, almost ominous, as the musical narrative seemed to contradict itself. The rhythmic brass suggested armies, but were they invading or parading in victory? A brief tumultuous storm arrived that gave way to a melody of celebration.
The curious back-and-forth of menace and elation seemed to speak to her. Thrilled by the crescendo of the music, but also gripped by the tension of Lilya’s imminent departure, she understood. The passions of the music were their passions, hers and Lilya’s, and the magnificent overture seemed to tell their story in a sound painting.
The full orchestra was playing now, the bass instruments pulsing like a great machine that rolled over the landscape. Alex remembered it was a paean to the Resurrection, and the final climax of fanfares was an affirmation of the absolute triumph of good.
When it ended, she didn’t wait for the applause but turned to the bewildered Terry and blurted, “We’re going to the ladies’ room.” Then she sprang from her seat and urged Lilya from the box along the corridor and into one of the bathroom stalls.
Deeply grateful for the floor-to-ceiling doors on each cubicle, she drew the slightly giddy Lilya into her arms and covered her mouth in a long, breathless kiss.
Finally she broke off, panting, and whispered, “How did you find us?”
Lilya nibbled at her ear and murmured back. “Twenty-four-hour leave again. Stopped by my mother’s house.” Another kiss. “Then asked for you at the hotel.” She bit her chin. “Clerk recognized me, said you were here, even knew the seats.”
Alex threw her head back, amused. Of course, the clerk. He would have melted like wax before Lilya’s beauty and told her everything. “How much time do you have left? Can we go back to my room?”
Suddenly somber, Lilya shook her head. “No. Travel takes so long, and returning late is treated as desertion. I’d be arrested. I’m just glad to find you. Especially since it could be weeks…months, before we see each other again.”
Alex studied her, trying to memorize the details of the pale-blue eyes, the full muscle around the mouth. “And we wasted a precious hour listening to a concert.”
“Not wasted. We were together, and happy.”
Alex took Lilya’s face in her hands. “Yes, we were. We are. I love you, you wild, reckless woman. I can’t bear the thought of losing you to the war again.”
“You won’t lose me. I’ll stay alive for you, and I’ll come back, I promise. Wait for me.”
“Of course I’ll wait for you. How can you doubt it? And when you come back, when it’s all over, I want to fly with you. I want to learn how to fly the Yak. Do you think your air force will let me do that?”
“I can ask. It would be fun, wouldn’t it? You and me together in the sky. Almost as good as loving you.”
“Almost.” Alex kissed her again, hard, hungrily, but Lilya tore herself away. “I have to go.” She yanked open the cubicle door and left at a run, without looking back.
Alex stood dazed for a moment, then returned to the corridor. Terry waited by the door of their theater box, smoking again. He tapped the ash off his cigarette into a sand urn. “Who’s your friend? And what was that all about?”
“That was Lilya Drachenko, on short leave. I told you about her. We’ve become very close.”
“Come on, Alex. I’m not your granddad. I know romance when I see it. I’m not so much shocked by that as I am about your recklessness. What do you suppose the NKVD is going to make of it?”
“Do you think they were watching? Even here at the Bolshoi?”
“Probably not directly, but I’m guessing someone in the hall noted that she was here, and the information will get back to them.” He took another puff and blew smoke out of the side of his mouth. “So, you love this woman?”
She hesitated. “Yes, I do. And don’t tell me it’s insane. I know that already.”
“Insane and dangerous. So where are you planning to meet her next?”
“Nowhere. She’s leaving for the front tonight. And I’m about to go back with the other journalists.”
As they filed out through the side door of the Bolshoi, Terry put his arm around her. “Alex. Please don’t get involved with this soldier. You’re from different worlds, and she has nothing to offer you. Trust me. It can’t end well. There will be no going off into the sunset with this one.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
July 1943
Terry’s visit was short and easy to forget, and so was his advice on romance. Not that it made any difference in practical terms since Lilya was out of contact. Alex had only memory and hope to sustain the sense of being “involved.” And while she waited, she was still a photojournalist.
Each day she checked in with the other correspondents looking for leads, for openings, for news of what the Press Department w
ould allow. But the Red Army had suffered some defeats, gaining Kursk and then losing it again, and the Kremlin announced a temporary suspension of foreign coverage of the battlefield. Battle reportage would be through Soviet military reporters only, and the news would appear in Red Star.
“No matter,” Henry Shapiro assured her over their usual breakfast of powdered eggs. “They’re letting us cover civilian stories, and I’ve got permission to report on the new T-34 tank. Want to come along? It involves a long train trip to the Ural Tank Factory in Nizhny Tagil.”
“If the alternative is sitting here and rephrasing propaganda from Sovinformburo, then sure. I’ll apply this afternoon.”
*
The gargantuan production apparatus of Tank Factory Number 183 was all a photojournalist could ask for. The factory floor, like that of the aircraft plant she’d visited earlier, was hellish but made for spectacular photographs. And as before, the malnourished, mostly female workers who labored in shifts twenty-four hours a day in deafening noise weren’t aware of being photogenic. “Hard to believe,” Henry shouted over the din. “I bet enough metal passes through this factory complex to build a Midwestern American city.”
Alex nodded, trying to breathe in shallow breaths in air that stank of oil, hot steel, and rancid sweat.
While Henry engaged the foreman, she strode along the assembly line capturing the grime-covered women hauling steel. When she’d photographed every aspect of tank construction, she moved outside and got long-distance shots of the thousands of tanks lined up in the field depot awaiting transport. The scenes were powerful, and the self-evident message of the photos would be, “We are strong, we are steel, and we are endless.”
On the second day, the factory commissar caught up with her, and when he learned that she spoke Russian, he held forth on the creation and development of the T-34, the patriotism of its workers, and the inspiring productivity of the state factories under Stalin. She expressed her admiration and politely promised to spread the message to the West, along with her photographs.
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