Maybe it was the whiskey, maybe it was having the reassuring song of a rifle back in my ears, or maybe it was the fact I’d finally, finally managed to wipe the serene look off Alexei’s face—but something went through me when I found myself in the park on yet another flag-draped stage, looking out at yet another crowd of middle-aged men.
“The floor is yours, Mrs. Pavlichenko—”
“Lieutenant Pavlichenko, spasibo.” I stepped forward and began my speech, painting the war raging in my far-off home as Kostia translated. One of the men in the front row stood jingling his hands in his pockets, watching me with a cold gaze; a journalist stood fiddling with his camera and looking bored; a cluster of city officials were eyeing my uniform as though it were a costume. None of you believe I’ve really fought in a war, I thought. The men I’d met at the range today, they believed me. Many of them had been veterans; they knew a real soldier when they saw one pull a trigger. But these audiences I faced in city after city, these people I faced armed with nothing but my voice—what did they know?
Let them know now, I thought, and the thought for once was not bitter or angry. It filled me with a fierce pride.
“Gentlemen,” I called sharp and loud, abandoning my planned speech. I waited until I had all the eyes that might have wandered, and then I planted my boots wide on the platform with a sound like a coffin knock, clasping my hands behind me in parade rest. “Gentlemen, I am twenty-six years old. At the front, I have already eliminated 309 fascist soldiers and officers. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding for too long behind my back?”
I let the challenge hang in the air.
For an instant, the crowd was silent. Then a roar of applause drifted out across Grant Park, men surging to their feet, ladies waving their hats, journalists raising their cameras. I looked at Kostia, and meeting his eyes through the flashbulbs, I could have sworn I saw Lyonya at his shoulder.
He was smiling.
THE BITCH CAN shoot.
The marksman hadn’t been able to think anything else since watching Lyudmila Pavlichenko sink ten superb shots at 100 meters with an unfamiliar weapon in three minutes. He’d gone through the motions of admiration with the rest of the crowd at the range, but the words had pounded through him over and over: The bitch can shoot.
He couldn’t even tell himself he was watching a target shooter, a gun-club competitor. There was range expertise and there was real expertise, the cold kind practiced until it was part of the blood. He’d seen a flash of it when she first handled her rifle—and then she’d taken position on the firing line, and he’d seen Lady Death unhood her eyes. The sparkling brunette with her warm gaze had disappeared; the sniper with 309 enemies on her tally flared to life. By the time she sank that last bull’s-eye, he believed she’d bagged every one of those kills on the eastern front.
God damn, the marksman thought numbly, watching her stand on this Grant Park stage as half of Chicago howled her name, she’s the real deal. A hundred small impressions were slotting into place now: the way she held her cigarettes in a reversed, cupped hand, to keep the ember from showing; the way her eyes flicked as she entered new rooms, establishing exits and movement lines. Why hadn’t he realized?
You didn’t want to, the answer came. You didn’t think it was possible.
Well, it was. Lady Death, here in the flesh. A pint-sized Russian woman who had just thrown back her head on an American stage and told every red-blooded man in that audience to stop hiding behind her back.
I would happily shoot you face-to-face, the marksman thought, watching her fierce eyes prowl over the wildly applauding crowd like those of a predatory lynx. But tomorrow I have a president to kill in Los Angeles, and a slip of a Soviet girl to pin it on.
Chapter 29
The headline: IN THE WAKE OF HER NOW-FAMOUS CHALLENGE TO THE CITIZENS OF AMERICA, LYUDMILA PAVLICHENKO TRAVELS TO THE CITY OF ANGELS. HOLLYWOOD ROYALTY THE LIKES OF DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR., MARY PICKFORD, AND CHARLIE CHAPLIN ARE LINING UP TO HOST THE GIRL SNIPER . . .