7
TO MOSCOW
He’d never been farther than the regional rail station in Tayga. Now, dawn was coming on in slow, purplish degrees beyond the windows of a plush, empty train car, and a part of Siberia he’d never seen was flying past the window.
Monsieur Philippe sat across from him, talking animatedly, gesturing with his hands. Sasha didn’t register most of what he said, because the strangest sense of calm had come over him once the train started moving. His thoughts were slow, like tree sap in winter, his limbs heavy with an exhaustion that didn’t feel natural. True, he hadn’t slept, but this was a cottony, heavy stillness that would have bothered him if he’d been awake enough to care.
“…I’ve found the healing properties of herbs to be–” Philippe was saying.
Ivan leaned onto the back of the seat, chewing some sort of food. “Go away, old man,” he said with the casualness of a man used to being minded. “You’re yammering. The young one doesn’t want to listen to you.”
“Well, I…” Philippe stuttered, getting to his feet. He looked at Ivan and blanched. “Yes, well. Alright.”
He walked away…and took with him Sasha’s sense of calm. Like a hand or foot that had fallen asleep and had the blood flow returned, his body went cold and tingly with needles. Anxiety spiked in his gut, a slow-churning nausea. His lungs tightened and he took a short, sharp breath through his mouth.
Ivan flopped down into the abandoned seat across from him and smirked. His big frame was settled in a boneless sprawl. This was someone who answered to very few, in good favor with the Vozhd and confident to boot.
The smell of cold grease and stale pastry wafted over. Ivan lifted a mashed bit of pirozhki and shoved it into his mouth, talking around it afterward. “What does the old fuck want with you?”
Sasha shrugged. “Don’t you know?”
The smirk stretched into a full-on grin. “You’re brave. I like that.”
But he wasn’t. He was terrified, and growing more so by the second. Fear crawled like ants down his arms, tingling painfully in his palms. He clenched his teeth and tried not to let his breathing show; the last thing he wanted was to look like a cornered animal in front of these men.
But Ivan saw. Doubtless he’d seen untold frightened Russians in his career. He chuckled. “What do think I’m going to do to you?” He brushed crumbs off his shirt; he had a grease stain above one pocket.
He shrugged again. Sasha had a few ideas about what the men dressed in black did to suspected anarchists, but he’d never seen them in action. He didn’t want to reveal his backwater ignorance…or give the brute any ideas. He thought about skinning a deer carcass – the sharp knife sliding between the skin and fat of the animal – and a lump formed in his throat.
Ivan groaned. “Don’t you think if we were going to kill you we would’ve already done it?”
Oh. Well, there was that.
“Ah.” Ivan tapped his own temple with a thick finger. “You have to be smart, wolf pup. Think about it. I could have killed you at your kitchen table,” he said, casually, like it was something he did all the time. It probably was. “But we’re taking you to Stalingrad.”
“Stalingrad?”
“Yeah. First to Moscow, and then south to Stalingrad. And why do you think that is?” He narrowed his eyes, searching.
“I – I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know!”
Ivan stared at him another moment, Sasha’s heart pounding behind his ribs, and then he let his head fall back and relaxed, once more unconcerned. “You’ve never met him before? The old man, I mean.”
“No. How could I have?” Mama would have rapped his knuckles with a spoon. He couldn’t help it; his temper came out when he was scared.
Ivan didn’t seem to mind, though, shrugging lazily and staring out the window as the first rays of sunlight stabbed upward along the horizon. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I don’t trust him. What would he want with you, huh? A country boy who’s never seen the capital? Why are you what he needs?”
Sasha slid down further in his seat and didn’t answer.
“Ivan,” a voice said, and Sasha was startled to see the captain standing beside their seat. He’d removed his hat and coat, but was no less sinister in his black shirt and waxed pants, his worn black boots and gaiters that buckled up to his knees. He tipped his head and Ivan got to his feet. Said, “Pyotr’s trying out the card tricks you showed him on Monsieur Philippe.”
“Oh shit,” Ivan said, and lumbered away down the aisle.
Sasha fought the impulse to grab at his sleeve, ask him to stay. Ivan was huge and hapless and intimidating, yes. But the captain was somehow more so.
It was because he was so put-together, Sasha decided, as the man settled gracefully in the seat across from him. He’d taken the train from Moscow to Tomsk, was now headed back, and looked fresh from morning ablutions: his clothes spotless, his jaw clean-shaven, his dark hair parted and styled neatly. If it weren’t for the sludge of melted snow and mud on his boots, Sasha wouldn’t believe this was someone who’d walked down the pathways of his hometown. This was a city man, elegant and refined.
But he held himself as still as the best of hunters, present in his body in a way that spoke not of drawing rooms…but of combat. And his stare. He was terrifying.
As with any predator, Sasha didn’t want to risk glancing away. Turn your back on a wolf, and it was the last mistake you’d make.
The wolf in that scenario was never worried, though, and neither was the captain, casting his gaze toward the window. The sunlight rose in discreet spokes, white-gold against a pink backdrop. The tundra glittered, gilded and magic-kissed as light struck ice.
Sasha had always wanted to see the rest of the world, but not like this, never like this.
“It’s Sasha, right?” the captain asked, gaze still trained on the window.
Sasha groped for the defiance he’d shown Ivan, but found it had abandoned him. “Yes, sir.”
“Have you ever been outside of Siberia, Sasha?”
“No, sir.”
“This must be overwhelming for you.”
“I…yes.”
He turned to face Sasha, then, expression unreadable. “Are you frightened?”
He swallowed. “Yes. A little.”
The captain’s face softened. He didn’t smile, but the tension in his jaw eased, and his eyes grew warmer – summer storm clouds rather than winter. “You don’t need to be frightened of us. My men and me.”
Sasha felt his brows go up.
A corner of the captain’s mouth twitched; Sasha thought he almost smiled. “We’re just following orders. It’s Monsieur Philippe who has ideas.”
“What…what sorts of ideas?”
The captain propped an ankle on the opposite knee. His boots were very worn, Sasha now saw, the leather cracked along the line of stitches at the sole. But beneath the dampness of snow, they had been lovingly buffed and oiled.
“I don’t actually know,” he admitted. “Our orders were to retrieve you and take you to the lab in Stalingrad. No one told us what for. I guess we’ll learn at the stopover in Moscow.”
The lump in his throat swelled. His voice came out choked and halting. “What kind of weapon is he making?”
The captain shook his head. “I don’t know. He won’t tell us.”
“He said…he said if I didn’t come with you, you would have hurt my parents.”
“I probably would have, yes.”
He’d figured as much, but hadn’t expected such brutal honesty.
The captain snorted. “I’m not a nice man. But I always tell the truth.”
Sasha gulped. A truth of his own slipped out. “I don’t want to join the Red Army.”
“No one does,” the captain said, tone almost soothing. “But I think it’s better than some alternatives.”
“Like?”
“Like being dead.” A smile, bare but unmistakable, graced the man’s face. It made him look younger, friendly even. “Get some rest, Sasha. I think you’ll need it.”