“No, I’m so sorry,” she said inaudibly. Then louder, “Dr. Sayers,” she said. “Matthew . . .” She tried to keep her voice from cracking. “I beg you — please tell me what happened to my husband. Did Dimitri betray him? Was he arrested? We’re in Helsinki. We’re out of the Soviet Union. I’m not going back. I want so little for myself.” She bent her head into his arm. “I just want a little comfort,” she whispered.

“Go to . . . America, Tania.” His voice was fading. “That will be his comfort.”

“Comfort me with the truth. Did you really see him in the lake?”

The doctor stared at her for a long moment with an expression that looked to Tatiana to be one of understanding and disbelief, and then he closed his eyes. Tatiana felt his hand trembling in hers, heard his breath sputtering in his chest. Soon it stopped.

Tatiana didn’t let go of his hand until morning.



A nurse came in and gently led Tatiana away, and in the hall she put her arms around Tatiana and said, in English, “Honey, you can do your very best for people, and they still die. We’re at war. You can’t save everybody, you know.”

Sam Leavitt approached her in the hall on the way to his rounds, asking her what she intended to do. Tatiana said she needed to get back to America. Leavitt stared at her and said, “Back to America?” Leaning toward her, he said, “Listen, I don’t know where Matthew found you, your English is pretty good, but it’s not that good. Are you really an American?”

Paling, Tatiana nodded.

“Where is your passport? Can’t get back without a passport.”

She stared at him mutely.

“Besides, it’s too dangerous now. The Germans bomb the Baltic mercilessly.”

“Yes.”

“Ships go down all the time.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you stay here till April, work until the ice melts? Your face has to heal. The stitches need to come out. And we could use another pair of hands. Stay in Helsinki.”

Tatiana shook her head.

“You’ll have to stay here anyway until we get you a new passport. Do you want me to take you to Senate Square later? I’ll take you to the U.S. consulate. It’ll take them at least a month to issue you new documents. By that time the ice will have melted. Getting to America is hard these days.”

Tatiana knew that the U.S. State Department, digging around to find a Jane Barrington, would discover only that she was not Jane Barrington. Alexander told her they could not stay a second in Helsinki — the NKVD had a long arm. Alexander said that they had to get to Stockholm. Shaking her head, Tatiana backed away from the doctor.

She left the hospital, carrying her backpack, her nurse’s bag, her Jane Barrington travel documents. She walked to the semicircular south harbor in Helsinki and sat on the bench, watching the vendors at Market Square pack up their carts and their tables and sweep the square clean.

Calm descended again.

The seagulls screeched overhead.

Tatiana sat on the bench and waited interminable hours until night fell, and then she got up and walked past a narrow street leading up to the gleaming Church of St. Nicholas. She barely glanced at it.

In the dark she meandered up and down the harbor until she spotted trucks with the blue-and-white Swedish flag, loading small amounts of lumber lying in piles on the ground. There was quite a bit of activity in the harbor. Tatiana could see that night was the time for the supplies to get across the Baltic. She knew that the trucks did not travel by day, when it was easy to spot them. Though the Germans generally did not bomb neutral trade vessels, sometimes they did. Sweden had finally started sending all its shipping and trucking trade with protective convoys. Alexander told her that.

Tatiana knew that the trucks were headed for Stockholm because one of the men said the word “Stokgolm,” which sounded like “Stockholm” in Russian.

She stood at the edge of the harbor watching the lumber being loaded onto the back of an open truck. Was she scared? No. Not anymore. She approached the truck driver, showing him her Red Cross badge, and said in English that she was a nurse trying to get to Stockholm and could he please take her across the Gulf of Bothnia with him for a hundred American dollars. He didn’t understand a word of what she had said. She showed him a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Stokgolm?” Gladly taking the money from her hands, he let her ride with him.

He didn’t speak any English or Russian, so they barely talked, which was fine with Tatiana. On the way through the white-out darkness, illuminated by the convoy’s headlights and by the gleaming northern lights above her head, she remembered that the first time she kissed Alexander when they were in the woods in Luga, she was really afraid that he was going to know immediately that she had never been kissed before, and she thought, if he asks me, I’m going to lie, because I don’t want him to think less of me. She thought that for the first second or two, and then she couldn’t think about anything, because his lips were so abundantly passionate for her, because in her hunger to kiss him back she had forgotten her inexperience.

Thinking about the first time they kissed took up much of the trip. Then Tatiana slept.

She didn’t know how long the journey took. The last few hours, they meandered on the ice through the small islands preceding Stockholm.

“Tack,” she said to the driver when they stopped at the harbor. “Tack sa mycket.” Alexander taught her that, how to say thank you in Swedish. Tatiana walked across the ice, careful not to slip, walked up granite steps and was out on the cobbled seaside promenade. I’m in Stockholm, she thought. I’m nearly free. Slowly she meandered through the half-empty streets. It was morning — too early for the stores to be open. What day was it? She did not know. Near the industrial docks Tatiana found a small open bakery, and on its shelves there was white bread. She showed the woman her American money. The shop owner shook her head and said something in Swedish. “Bank,” she said. “Pengar, dollars.”

Tatiana turned to go. The woman called after her, but in a strident voice, and Tatiana, afraid the woman suspected she didn’t belong in Sweden, did not turn around. She was already on the street when the woman ran around to stop her, giving her a loaf of warm crusty white bread, the likes of which Tatiana had never smelled, and a paper cup of black coffee. “Tack,” Tatiana said. “Tack sa mycket.”

“Varsagod,” said the woman, shaking her head at the money Tatiana was offering her.

Tatiana sat on the bench at the docks overlooking the crescent of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia and ate the whole loaf of bread and had her coffee. She stared unblinkingly into the blue dawn in front of her. Somewhere east of the ice lay besieged Leningrad. And somewhere east of that was Lazarevo. And in between was the Second World War and Comrade Stalin.

After eating, she walked around the streets long enough to find an open bank, where she exchanged some of her American money. Armed with a few kronor, Tatiana bought some more white bread and then found a place that sold cheese — in fact, all different kinds of cheeses — but even better, she found a café near the harbor that served her breakfast, and not just oatmeal, and not just eggs, and not just bread, but bacon! She bought three helpings of bacon and decided that from now on that was all she was going to have for breakfast.

The day was still long. Tatiana didn’t know where to go to sleep. Alexander told her that in Stockholm there would be hotels that would rent them a room without asking for their passports. Just like in Poland. She found that beyond belief then. But Alexander, of course, was right.

Not only did Tatiana rent a hotel room, not only did she get a key to a room that was warm, that had a bed and a view of the harbor, but it had its own bathroom and in the bathroom was the thing that Alexander had told her about, the shower thing that poured water on her from above. She must have stayed under the hot stream for an hour.

And then she slept for twenty-four.

It took Tatiana over two months to leave Stockholm.

Seventy-six days of sitting on the pier bench looking east past the gulf, past Finland, to the Soviet Union, while the seagulls cried overhead.

Seventy-six days of—

She and Alexander had planned to stay in Stockholm in the spring while waiting for his documents to come through from the U.S. State Department. They would have celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday in Stockholm on May 29.

Austere Stockholm was softened by spring. Tatiana bought yellow tulips and ate fresh fruit right from the market vendors, and she had meat — smoked hams and pork and sausages. She had ice cream. Her face healed. Her stomach grew. She thought of remaining in Stockholm, of finding a hospital to work in, of having her baby in Sweden. She liked the tulips and the hot shower.

But the seagulls wept overhead.

Tatiana never did go to Riddarholm Church, Sweden’s Temple of Fame.

Finally she took a train across the country to Göteborg, where she easily slipped into one of the holds on a Swedish trade cargo vessel bound for Harwich, England, carrying paper products. As during her passage from Finland to Sweden, she and her vessel were surrounded by a heavily armed convoy. Since Norway was German-occupied, there were quite a few incidents of bombings and sinkings in the North Sea. Noncombatant Sweden wasn’t having any of it, and neither was Tatiana.

All was quiet as she crossed the North Sea and docked in Harwich. To get to Liverpool, Tatiana took a train, which had the most comfortable seats. Out of curiosity she bought herself a first-class ticket. The pillows were white. This would have been a good train to take to Lazarevo after burying Dasha, thought Tatiana.