I hope, moving into the morning light to greet the Soviet delegation—a block of dark-suited inscrutable men, and one unexpected serious-eyed young woman （they say she is a sniper?）—that it will be enough.
Five Years Ago
November 1937
Kiev, Soviet Union
Mila
Chapter 1
I was not a soldier yet. We were not at war yet. I could not conceive of taking a life yet. I was just a mother, twenty-one and terrified. When you’re a mother, panic can engulf you in the blink of an eyelash. All it takes is that instant when your eye sweeps a room for your child and doesn’t find him.
“Now, Mila,” my mother began. “Don’t be angry—”
“Where’s Slavka?” I hadn’t even pulled off my patched gloves and snow-dusted coat yet, but my heart was already thudding. There was my son’s half-constructed block factory on the floor of the apartment, there was the small worn pile of his books, but no sturdy dark-haired five-year-old.
“His father dropped in. He knew he had missed the appointment—”
“Nice of Alexei to acknowledge that,” I gritted. The second appointment I had set up to have our divorce finalized; the second appointment my husband had missed. Each time it had taken me months to scrape up the required fifty-ruble fee; weeks to get an appointment with the backlogged office; then hours waiting in a cold, stuffy corridor craning my eyes for a glimpse of my husband’s golden head . . . all to lead to nothing. Anger smoldered in the pit of my stomach. Any Soviet citizen already spent entirely too much time waiting in lines as it was!
My mother wiped her hands on her apron, her big dark eyes pleading. “He was very sorry, malyshka. He wanted to take Slavka out for a treat. He’s hardly seen the boy these past few years, his own son—”
Whose fault is that? I wanted to retort. I wasn’t the one keeping our son out of Alexei’s life. My husband was the one who decided only a month or two after giving our son the name of Rostislav Pavlichenko that marriage and fatherhood weren’t really to his liking. But my mother’s kind, pretty face looked hopeful, and I bit back my hot words.
Mama’s voice was soft. “Maybe there’s a reason he keeps missing these appointments.”
“Yes, there is,” I stated. “To make me dance on his string.”
“Maybe what he’s really hoping for is to reconcile.”
“Mama, not again—”
“A doctor, Mila. The best surgeon in Ukraine, you said—”
“He is, but—”
“A man on his way up. Rooms of his own rather than a communal apartment, a good salary, a Party member. Not things to throw away.” My mother launched into the old argument. She hadn’t approved of how Alexei and I had come together; she’d said it happened too fast and he was too old for me and she was right—but she also wanted me safe and warm and fed. “You always said he’s no drunk and never once hit you,” she went on now. “Maybe he’s not the man you dreamed of, but a surgeon’s wife won’t ever stand in a bread queue, and neither will his children. You don’t remember the hungry years, you were just a little thing . . . but there’s nothing a woman won’t put up with to keep her babies fed.”
I looked down at my worn gloves. None of what she said was wrong, I knew that.
I also knew that a part of me was afraid to let my little boy be alone with his father.
“Mama. Where are they?”
THE SHOOTING RANGE wasn’t much, just a converted storage space: bars on the windows, a small armory, a line of wooden shields with targets, men on a firing line standing with braced feet and pistols raised or lying on their bellies to fire rifles . . . and in the middle, a tall blond man with a small boy: Alexei Pavlichenko and little Rostislav Alexeivich. My stomach flipped in relief.