The Sniper's Kiss

Chapter Twenty

Ferocious pain from her ruined shoulder, despair for Alexia, and shortness of air kept Mia awake all night. She kept trying to recall what had happened to bring down such multiple disasters but couldn’t piece together the fragments. At the first glimmer of morning, the nurse came to help her to the toilet, then left her to tend to the ones more gravely injured.

She lay in a stupor, concentrating on taking each breath, trying to shut out the pain and the questions, until a figure loomed over her.

“Kalya. Thank God… Tell me… what happened. Alexia, desertion? Not possible. Must be… mistake.”

“Klavdia and I couldn’t really tell what was going on. We got our targets on tower two right away and came to back you up at tower one. It took us a while to crawl close to your position because we could see a hand with a mirror and were afraid he might spot us in it.”

“The mirror… yes.”

“From what we could see, you exchanged fire with the German, and you were hit. Alexia dragged you out of range, and that was the problem. We got the sniper, but it should have been Alexia. That tower was her job.”

“But… who… reported it? Not you!” The thought of their betrayal horrified her.

“Of course not. How can you ask? No, Commissar Semenova was watching, to see if we carried out the order.”

“Semenova. Bitch… And I saved her life. So… what’s… the punishment?”

Ominously, Kalya did not answer.

Galina appeared behind her. “Sorry, Kalya. You’ll have to leave. The ambulances are here.”

The vehicle rocked along the pitted roads toward Novgorod, and she recalled her first ambulance ride with Marina. This time German Stukas were not going to save her. She stared at the metal roof, body and soul in purgatory. The lack of morphine meant ferocious pain rushed through her at every jolt in the road. In moments of lucidity, all she could think of was that she’d found Alexia and lost her again, perhaps to execution. And she was the cause of it.

Injustice rang through her pounding brain. Her torment, the moaning of the others in the ambulance, Alexia’s condemnation, Sasha’s death, Marina’s death, the countless other deaths along the Soviet advance. This, surely, was purgatory. Ivan’s words came back to her. “It’s not God that I don’t accept. Only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”

It made no difference now whether she got home or Molotov found her and finished her off. In the middle of the Eastern Front, she had found the love of her life, and all was taken away.

She longed suddenly to talk to Harry Hopkins, or Lorena, or even the First Lady. They seemed so wise. Abruptly, she recalled the happy Christmas celebration at the White House and the pious little speech the visiting pastor had given. What was his name? Pastor Bain… something. It made no difference. The man was a fool.

He’d insisted that free will was the cause of suffering, that people inevitably made bad choices. How facile that was. People didn’t choose war; their leaders did. The Christmas lesson, he’d said, was to love one another, to counter argument with a kiss.

If every movement and breath didn’t hurt, she would have laughed out loud. A kiss, the mere talk of a kiss, had gotten her shot and Alexia, possibly, condemned to death.

She fell into a haze as close to sleep as she would experience for the next several bleak days.

The diagnosis at the hospital in Novgorod was no surprise: pneumothorax caused by penetration at the shoulder. Air entering the thoracic cavity caused a partial collapse of the top right lobe. The Moscow surgeon inserted a tube between the second and third ribs to draw out the air that prevented the full inflation of the right lung.

The surgeon, a gray-haired woman, came to visit her briefly when she regained consciousness. “How do you feel?”

“Breathing’s a little better, but not a lot. I still can’t take a deep breath. Will it ever get any better?”

“It should. We’ve relieved some of the pressure.” She indicated the loop of clear plastic that rose from a hole over Mia’s right breast. “But it will take a while for the lung to reattach itself, and in this case, you have other damage from the bullet to that area, so it will go very slowly.”

“Other damage? It feels like someone’s hammering on an anvil inside my shoulder.”

“We had to clean out a lot of debris from the wound—bits of bone from the broken clavicle, fibers from your uniform, a little dirt as well. Any of those can cause an infection. The X-ray also revealed that your shoulder blade is fractured, so we’ve bandaged you tight to keep the shoulder immobilized. As soon as the pneumothorax begins to heal, we’ll put you in a cast and move you back to a facility near Moscow. Your pay book shows that Moscow’s your home, so you should be glad.”

“Home? Uh, yes. Moscow. Right. So how long before that happens?”

“A week, ten days? Depends on you. Sorry. I’ve got to leave now. Call the nurse if you need anything.” With a reassuring tap on her good shoulder, the doctor strode away.

Having at least a slight improvement of air intake, and the knowledge that her broken bones would eventually heal, Mia could move on to the next source of anxiety, Alexia.

Desperate to find out what had happened to her, Mia sought any source of information about events at the front, even asking the nurse for a copy of The Red Star.

But the Red Army newspaper held only propaganda and news of advances, medals awarded for heroism, and an endless stream of victories. No mention of courts-martial, desertions, or executions. Of course not. What was she thinking?

She sent a field post to Kalya asking what had happened to Alexia but never received an answer. The following week a letter to Klavdia met the same silence. If Alexia had been executed, would they even have dared to contact her?

For lack of news about Alexia, she concentrated on being Marina Zhurova. From Marina’s pay book, she’d long ago learned the details of her life. She reviewed every entry, built up a life from it, and could almost imagine Marina’s childhood. It was probably not much different from her own, although Marina had joined the Young Pioneers at the age of twelve, while Mia was on her way to America.

After a week, she could indeed breathe better but had to return to surgery for another cleaning of the wound, which simply refused to heal. Perhaps her lethargy was the cause. Why recover? Who would she be recovering for?

But ten days after that, the hospital made it clear she was no longer in danger and more gravely injured soldiers needed her bed. So they encased her shoulder in a cast that held her bent right arm out from her body and ordered her removed to a recuperation facility outside Moscow.

Transport was by hospital train, though, as an ambulatory patient, she enjoyed no benefits. A nurse simply helped her up the steps into a normal second-class railroad car, ushered her to a seat, and handed her sausage and bread wrapped in newspaper for the five-hundred-kilometer ride to Moscow.

The men and few women around her talked and smoked cheerfully, knowing they were on their way home and that almost no chance remained of their train being strafed en route. She smiled when smiled at, replied in desultory fashion when spoken to, but she was so very weary of the war.

Sixteen hours later, the train pulled into Belorussky Station north of Moscow, and nurses helped her down from the car. She lined up with the others on crutches and shuffled along to the square outside, where trucks waited to take them to a convalescent facility. She briefly contemplated fleeing but simply lacked the strength.

Only when she was assigned a bed in a large ward did she learn the name, Botkin Hospital, where a wing had been adapted as a rehabilitation center, with the intention of returning lightly injured soldiers to the front.

She sat for a long while on the edge of her bed before a nurse came to assist her. The nurse perused the shoulder cast, then ensured that the side table held a pitcher of water and that her belongings were stowed in a straw bin under the bed. “Looks like you’re pretty much able to take care of yourself,” she observed.

“How long will I be here?”

“Until the army decides you can go back to the front,” the nurse said, scribbling something on her chart.

“You mean rejoin the unit I was in?” How could that be? She couldn’t hold a rifle. She could barely get her pants on and off to use the toilet.

“I don’t know. They may just reassign you where they can use you. That’s up to the army to decide.” She helped Mia lift her feet and lie back on the bed. “The toilet’s over there.” She pointed toward the end of the ward on the right and strode off.

Mia glanced around. The ward held some forty other patients, and they seemed to range from mobile patients with damaged limbs or faces to others who appeared comatose.

Mia herself lay back, morose and defeated, until she dozed off. She was awakened by the distant sound of a telephone ringing. Somewhere on the floor was a telephone. Could she get to it at some point and call the embassy? If she could reach Harriman, he could send Robert with the embassy car, and once she was out of the control of the military, under the protection of Harriman, Molotov wouldn’t be able to touch her.

But she had never needed to call the ambassador on her visits to Moscow and would have to locate a telephone book for the number.

When the nurse came again at the end of the day, she asked innocently, “I heard a phone ringing. Is there a phone on this floor?”

“Yes, the internal line, between the nurses’ stations.”

“Can the nurses call outside the hospital?”

“Heavens, no. That would never be permitted. The only line to the outside is through the director’s office. Why do you ask?”

Mia thought fast. “Oh, I thought if I can’t shoot my rifle any more, I might volunteer as a telephonist. But I have to learn more about telephones first.”

The nurse patted her hand. “You have plenty of time to think about that, my dear. So just rest and let your shoulder get better. The men in charge will know what to do with you.”

That’s exactly what I fear.

What about simply revealing her true identity and asking the hospital to contact the embassy? But the doctor in charge would certainly notify the military authorities of the false identity—a serious military crime—long before contacting the embassy. By the time word got to Harriman, if it ever did, she would again be in the hands of the NKVD.

As she lay brooding for another night, she wondered how far Botkin Hospital was from the embassy. She knew it was somewhere in the north of Moscow, but even if she could figure out the route, could she walk the distance? Certainly not in the next days. But maybe in a week? She touched the plaster cast that fixed her shoulder in place, with her elbow awkwardly elevated. That would be the main problem. Her uniform trousers and boots were under the bed in her original pack, which had followed her from the medical station in Pskov, but her tunic, which she’d kept, was cut from waist to armpit, and she wore a hospital gown. Her coat was also in the kit, but she could slide it on only over one arm, and the rest hung down her back. Even if she didn’t chill in the breezy September weather, it would be impossible to walk along Moscow streets without attracting attention.

She was trapped.

A day passed, and then another, and the monotony made them all seem the same. She knew the dates only when The Red Star was passed around. Only the patient population changed. It was a convalescent hospital, so most were reposted to the front, as the man next to her had been.

But a few souls belonged in intensive care and not convalescence, having obviously arrived by mistake. One such man was installed in the neighboring bed during the night. One of his arms was amputated at the shoulder, and bandages covered his eyes and the top of his head. He was unconscious.

The nurse came by to check on him, and when she noticed Mia watching, she shook her head mournfully. This one wouldn’t last long.

But during the night, he gained consciousness, and his moaning woke Mia from her own troubled sleep. “Where am I? My arm hurts so much, and my head. Why can’t I see?”

Mia sat up and faced him, then bent forward to touch him. “You’re in a hospital in Moscow, and they’re taking good care of you. They’ll take off the bandages soon, and you can go home.” She was amazed at how easily the lie came.

To her shock, he reached up with his good hand. “Olga, is that you?”

With only the briefest hesitation, she clasped his hand with her own good one. “Yes, it’s Olga.”

“Oh, I knew you’d come. I’ve missed you so much. I had to leave for the front without ever kissing you. But we’re together again. Can I kiss you now?”

She was struck by a sudden flood of affection and sorrow for the man who was going to die without ever having loved. “Yes, of course.” Keeping his hand in hers, so that he couldn’t reach up and feel her plaster cast, she bent over him and pressed her lips against his.

It was a gentle, timid kiss, but it seemed to make him happy. “Oh, Olga,” he said feebly. Do you still want me after all this?”

She didn’t even know the poor man’s name and so just whispered, “Yes, I do.”

He clutched her hand again, and his head dropped back. She watched his chest rise and fall a few times in labored breathing, and then he fell still.

She lay back on her bed and broke into quiet sobs.

Another week went by, and she followed the course of the war in The Red Star, allowing for the fact that it was mostly propaganda. Still, while the paper always glossed over losses, it did report that Paris had been liberated in August. The first great victory of the Western Allies. She felt a rush of joy imagining American troops parading down the Champs-Élysées.

The new battle reports made vague references to “rapid advances” through Latvia and Romania, and she could more or less guess the location of Col. Borodin and his patchwork division. The Romanian army had just capitulated, abandoning its alliance with Germany to fight alongside the Soviets, and that, too, seemed a good sign, though she wondered how that worked out in real terms on the battlefield. Did the local commanders call their troops together and announce that henceforth they were to shoot only at the green uniforms and not at the brown ones?

She wished she could laugh but was too deep in ennui and despair.

“Good news!” the nurse chirped as she made one of her rare appearances by Mia’s bed. “We have a visitor. Someone to cheer us all up.”

“Really? Who is that?” The sudden thought it might be someone from the Kremlin caused her to panic. It would be the end of the charade. Could she hide in the toilet the whole time he was present?

“A great hero, and she’s coming especially to see the infantrymen.” The nurse brushed smooth the sheet at the end of Mia’s bed.

She? The word took away some of the fear, and Mia searched her mind to find someone who fit the description. One of the ace pilots, perhaps? They were in the headlines a lot. Her attention was suddenly drawn to the far end of the ward by the mix of voices and footsteps. The double doors of the ward opened, and the hero strode in.

“Major Lyudmila Pavlichenko,” the nurse announced.