The Witch of Stalingrad

by Justine Saracen

  Alex dropped down on the far end of the sofa. “Yes, I assumed that’s what she meant. So I said I’d meet her at midnight at the Brandenburg Gate.”

  “Good grief,” Terry exclaimed. “That’s all you could think of? The Gate’s surrounded by ruins and is hardly accessible. It’s probably patrolled, too.”

  “I…I didn’t have time to plan anything. The words just came out of my mouth. I passed it coming into Berlin, so I knew it’s still standing. Anyhow, it’s done and I’m going to meet her, assuming she can get away tonight. If I can, I’ll bring her here.”

  “Here? We’re not really equipped to handle Red Army deserters,” Terry said, obviously caught off guard.

  “Why not? Isn’t that what you’re always going on about? How the organization specializes in getting people in and out of places? Secretly? Those are almost your exact words.”

  “She’s got you there, Terry.” Elinor snickered. “But, Alex, we usually operate with a little more information than you’ve given us. You don’t know her circumstances. Who she reports to. Who’s watching her. Where she wants to go. As much as we’d like to help you, we can’t rescue someone at the snap of a finger. It’s not like in an adventure novel.”

  Alex stood up and paced, too excited to remain seated. “We’ll find out more after I bring her here tonight.” She took a few steps in the other direction. “Anyhow, we have to help her. That’s the condition of my staying on with you.”

  “Ah, now who’s blackmailing whom?” Terry said.

  Alex halted and turned toward him. “Blackmail is such an ugly word.”

  *

  “Jesus! Alex, what were you thinking?” Terry blustered as he halted their jeep before the mound of twisted steel, masonry, and wrecked vehicles. “Unter den Linden ends here. We can’t get anywhere near the Brandenburg Gate, not on wheels anyhow.”

  She climbed from the jeep and eyed the blockage nervously. “You’re right. It was a mistake to choose this place. But she took me by surprise. I had only a split second to think of a place we both could find at midnight. Can we climb over that stuff?”

  “I suppose you’ll have to.”

  She glanced back at him. “Oh, so you’re going to make me go alone?”

  “Of course I am. Do you think I’m going to leave a US jeep unattended? All kinds of desperate riffraff are wandering around Berlin. Someone would be here in two minutes to siphon out the petrol and strip off the wheels, if they didn’t haul the whole thing away.”

  “All right, I’ll go. Give me the flashlight.” She shone the beam onto her watch. “Almost twelve. I’ve got to start climbing.”

  “Watch out for rats, though. They’re all over the place,” Terry said, and she thought she heard a note of sarcasm in his voice.

  She struggled on hands and knees over the loose masonry and miscellaneous steel, taking care to shine the flashlight low to the ground to minimize visibility from a distance. Dislodged gravel fell away beneath her, and the squeaks and scurrying away of black spots told her Terry had been serious about the rats. She wondered for a moment what they ate, and then she remembered. That also accounted for the noxious odor.

  The mound she climbed revealed itself as part of a ring of rubble, as if it had been deliberately cleared outward from the monument.

  At the center, the great columns of the Brandenburg Gate towered overhead, an eerie spectacle. In peacetime they’d probably been illuminated, but now they were black against the night sky. Alex shook her head at the excruciating irony of a triumphal arch in the midst of a gargantuan defeat.

  She shone her light on one of the columns, noting that the fluting was chipped and broken by small-arms fire all the way to the top. Every surface that could be inscribed, on wall, column, and base, held slogans and names, incised with a bayonet or knife blade, or scribbled with chalk.

  Victory to the Russian people!

  Down with Fascism!

  Hitler kaputt!

  Ivan and Sasha from the 46th Guards stood here.

  The foot soldier’s share in glorious victory.

  “Alex.”

  She spun around, and her flashlight beam swung with her, lighting a small figure some ten feet away. The raised hand that blocked the light beam obscured her face, but it was Lilya, who ran into her embrace.

  Alex held her for a long moment, holding back tears. “I knew you were alive. I just knew it,” she choked out.

  Lilya ran fingers over Alex’s face, as if to ensure she was real. “I was so afraid you’d gone, that I’d never find you. It’s been so hard.”

  Alex kissed her breathlessly, clutching at her, gripping her so that she could never be lost again. “I have so much to tell you, to ask you.”

  “Aleksandra! What are you doing?” A woman’s voice, outraged, broke the tender moment. They jerked apart and Alex swept her flashlight toward the speaker. Zhukov’s other female guard.

  “Olga. Why did you follow me? You shouldn’t have,” Lilya said.

  “So this is your mysterious friend. A woman. I never would have thought.” The stranger eyed Alex, though in the dim glow of the flashlight it was impossible to see her expression.

  “You shouldn’t stay here, Olga. It’s dangerous for you. They’ll charge you with desertion, too.”

  “Desertion? Is that what this is? You don’t have to do that, you know. We can go back to Moscow together and they won’t call us cowards. We’ll vouch for each other, tell the truth about what it was like as POWs, how we fought in the Ukraine and at Kursk and Berlin. We were so brave, they’ll give us medals. ”

  Lilya shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t go back. There’s nothing for me now in Moscow. They’ll arrest me as a collaborator.”

  Olga’s shoulders dropped. “Please, Aleksandra. Don’t leave me. I don’t want to go back without you.”

  Alex flinched, hearing her name spoken by the stranger, but said nothing.

  Holding out her hands, Lilya stepped toward her comrade and spoke something into her ear. Whatever it was, Olga took a step back and appeared disconsolate.

  “Go back, before they discover you’re gone.” Lilya urged gently. “Please, I couldn’t bear it if you were arrested because of me.”

  “Aleksandra, please.” When Lilya didn’t respond, Olga covered her face, then spoke with a voice broken by weeping. “Don’t forget me.”

  “No, my dear. I never will.”

  Dumbfounded, Alex simply waited until Olga clambered over the mound of rubble and disappeared in the dark. Lilya stepped into her arms again, and this time she also cried, confused tears of both reunion and loss.

  Alex held her for only a moment. “Come on,” she said, tugging on Lilya’s arm. “A jeep’s waiting for us.”

  *

  The jeep bumped over the thousands of ruts and obstacles as Terry rushed them back to the house in Dahlem. In the front next to him, Alex sat sideways, unwilling to tear her eyes from the strange creature in the rear, who was still Lilya. In the dark her face was nearly invisible, but Alex held its outline fixed in her sight, as if to ensure she wouldn’t disappear again.

  They were silent, for it wasn’t the time to talk. Yet the moment itself was precious, when she floated in a sphere of hope and renewal with the person she loved most in the world. They weren’t safe yet, but it was as if they’d been held deep underwater and now were swimming toward air.

  In an hour, they were back at OSS headquarters. Elinor held the door open, her spectacles on her head. With her commando team safely inside, she set them back on her nose and studied Lilya for a long moment. Lilya herself stood awkwardly in front of her in her infantry uniform and with a sidearm, obviously not knowing what to do with her hands.

  “So you’re what the fuss has been about,” Elinor said in remarkably good Russian.

  Lilya glanced at Alex for reassurance, then answered. “I’m sorry about the fuss.”

  “Are you? In any case, I’m Elinor Stahl. I’m in charge here, and I understand you’ve ask
ed Aleksandra Preston to help you desert.”

  “Um, yes. I didn’t know that…” she glanced around the room, “that others would be involved.”

  “Really? You assumed you could just join hands and run away to the West?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I just thought—”

  “Why are you grilling her like that?” Alex snapped. “You know nothing about her or what she’s been through, and already you’re insulting her.”

  Elinor remained aloof. “Insulting? Not at all. But desertion is no small thing, and we’re not in that business. We’ll need a lot more information before we decide how to proceed.”

  “Please, everyone, sit down.” Terry broke the tension, herding them toward the sofa and chairs. “I’ll make us some…I don’t know. What do people drink at…” He looked at his watch. “At two in the morning?”

  “Anything at all.” Lilya looked up at him weakly. “I’m very thirsty.”

  “How about beer? It’s cleaner than the water and won’t keep everyone awake.” Everyone nodded, and he disappeared into the kitchen while they sat down.

  Lilya surveyed the room timidly. “May I ask where I am?”

  Elinor leaned back, the monarch of her domain. “You’re with us now, and for the moment, the less you know about us the better. Alex tells us that the Russian press reports you as dead. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Well, I crash-landed during an air fight in September 1943. I think it was September, though I’m not sure any more. I suppose the air force found my plane, or at least the wreck of it after the fire. They didn’t find me, though, and I don’t know why they declared me dead. Maybe it makes better propaganda. In fact, I was captured and held in camps in the Ukraine. I didn’t want the Germans to make their own propaganda about capturing a famous pilot, so I gave a false name.”

  “When was the camp liberated?” Elinor’s eyes narrowed.

  “I was there only for about four months, when partisans attacked. A few of us managed to escape with them. The camp was liberated much later.”

  Elinor persisted. “But you ended up with the Red Army. How did that happen?”

  Terry was back with a tray and four glasses of beer, which he handed around. Lilya downed hers in a single long drink, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “The partisans often work with the army, even wear their uniforms. Later they handed us over to an official military unit.”

  “I thought the official line was that there are no POWs, only deserters.”

  “It was…is. But they needed fighters, so they took me on under the name I gave them.”

  “And that was Aleksandra Vasil’evna Petrovna,” Alex said. “Which explains why that soldier kept using my name.” She snorted. “And now I’m listed as a deserter in the Red Army.”

  Terry set his glass down and crossed his arms, taking his turn at interrogation. “How could you conceal your identity? You were famous. I saw your picture in Pravda several times.”

  “The Germans didn’t know me, and when they captured me, I was covered with blood and dirt and isolated with prisoners they expected to die. The Russian doctor who saved me did recognize me, but he was shot. And then, when we arrived in Vinnytsia, I’d gotten very thin and my dark hair had grown in.” She fingered the hair over her ear. “I guess I still don’t look like myself.”

  Elinor tilted her head, studying her, a hint of sympathy in her expression. “I can imagine that life in a POW camp would undermine the appearance of any attractive woman.” She toyed with a strand of her own gray hair. “How did you end up in Berlin?”

  “The troops that got us out of the camp were with the First Ukrainian Front, but they moved us around wherever we were needed. At some point they transferred us to the Belorussian front, and we advanced with them. That was first to the Elbe and then to Berlin.”

  “We? Who were the others?”

  “Four of us escaped alive from Vinnytsia, including my friend Olga. Two of the women fell in battle, but Olga helped me stay alive, both in the camp and in the months of fighting.”

  “The woman who followed you to the Gate, that was Olga?” Alex asked.

  Lilya nodded.

  Elinor’s face darkened. “You mean someone witnessed your being picked up?”

  “Yes, but she won’t tell, and even if she did, she only knows I deserted to go with a woman who spoke Russian. She didn’t even see the jeep.”

  “I don’t think anything will come of it, Elinor,” Terry added, suddenly supportive. “Dozens desert every day. It’s complete disorder out there.”

  Lilya shifted her attention back to Alex. “We almost met at Torgau. I chased you, but you drove away too fast. They told me you were a photographer with the Third Army, and I guessed that you’d want to get to Berlin. But even then, I didn’t know how to locate you.”

  “Berlin is a big, chaotic place. How did you manage to track her down?” Elinor’s suspicions surfaced again.

  “I knew I couldn’t. I just tried to be where I thought she might want to be. You know, as a photographer.” She glanced again at Alex. “I alternated waiting at the Reichstag building and at the Brandenburg Gate. A lot of photographers came, but none of them was you. I even volunteered for guard duty with Zhukov because he seemed to have journalists around him all the time. I never did see you, but at Zhukov’s last meeting, I recognized him.” She pointed at Terry.

  “But you never spoke to me,” he said, clearly puzzled.

  “No, I couldn’t get close to you. I could only steal a moment to talk to the woman who was with you.”

  “And lucky for you, I recognized the name,” Elinor said. “So, tell me why you refuse to go back home with the Red Army. You were a star aviator and your government will be happy to have you back, even if you were a despised POW.”

  “Not at all. I gave false information about my identity, but worse than that, I worked as a servant in the house of the commandant at Vinnytsia.”

  “Plus, she was already a suspicious person,” Alex added. “Her father was executed as an enemy of the people.”

  “I see.” Elinor rested her chin in the curve of her thumb. “Well, you’ve put us in a very delicate situation. The four powers have a major conference soon at Potsdam, and if it were to come out that we’d aided in a desertion, it would damage our negotiations with the Kremlin.”

  Alex reacted instantly. “Of course the Kremlin won’t know. Secrecy is what you do, isn’t it?” She softened her tone. “Besides, Elinor, think about what you’re getting. You place so much weight on having Soviet specialists and native speakers in the organization. I should think Lilya could be quite useful to you.”

  Elinor leaned toward Lilya, getting to the heart of the matter. “You’re willing to give us information about the Soviet Air Force?”

  Lilya hesitated for only a moment. “Why shouldn’t I? We’re allies, aren’t we? We flew your planes, drove your trucks, ate your food. The things I know aren’t secret anyhow. Everyone knows how to fly a U-2 or a Yak.”

  “It would be a coup, wouldn’t it?” Terry said. “I mean, getting one of their aces. Though we couldn’t reveal it while the negotiations are going on, of course.”

  “You can’t reveal it ever,” Alex said. “If they can’t punish her, they’ll punish her mother. She told you what happened to her father.”

  Elinor crossed her arms and leaned back, suggesting she’d made a decision. “Much as we’d like to, we can’t get you out of Europe on such short notice.”

  “But can’t you at least hide her?”

  “Yes, that we can do, though not in Berlin. The Soviets have too much control here. It would have to be in American-held territory. Wiesbaden, perhaps.”

  “Good idea.” Terry nodded. “Allied headquarters. Traffic going in and out of there all the time. We just have to fly her there.”

  Elinor shook her head. “Only with permission. The brass might not like getting involved with a runaway pilot, even if she’s of high val
ue to us.”

  “Brass? You mean General Eisenhower?” Alex brightened. “That shouldn’t be a problem. We met at a party. I bet he’d approve. Wait. I have an even better idea. If you call Allied Headquarters, you’ll probably get Jo Knightly, his secretary. Tell her Alex Preston needs a favor. She offered once, and this is the sort of thing she might be able to pull off.”

  Elinor chuckled. “That has possibilities. Why bother with a general when you have a general’s secretary? I’ll contact her and all the other relevant people in the morning.” She glanced down at her watch. “That will be in just a few hours.” She took a deep breath, signaling the end of the discussion. “So now, I think we’ve done just about enough for one day and should all get a bit of sleep.”

  Terry gathered up the beer glasses. “The bathroom’s over there, Lilya, if you’d like to wash before going to bed. In the meantime, Alex and I will make up the sofa for you.”

  At the word sofa Lilya shot a quick glance at Alex, and the question was obvious. Alex shrugged weakly. Against all odds, they’d found each other again, but propriety still kept them apart. Even if Terry knew their relationship, they couldn’t flaunt it. It was probably just as well. She needed time to get to know this stranger.

  *

  Alex lay on her little bed unable to sleep, every nerve taut. So much had changed so quickly. The war was over. She was safe and Lilya was safe, and they were together. She should have been delirious.

  But the ongoing war had normalized her fear and yearning, and when peace and the longed-for reunion came, she’d forgotten how to be happy. In two years, she had idealized the image of the beloved, and the woman lying in the next room no longer matched it. Two years of malnutrition and countless battles seemed to have both hardened her and broken her spirit. The audacious and slightly glamorous pilot now was taciturn and passive.

  She recalled their afternoon of brief and explosive passion in the Metropole, which had left her panting. Now, the strongest feeling she had for Lilya was the urge to protect and nurture her. Was the original Lilya still inside this subdued stranger, and could she coax her out again?