They did an about-face and strode from the room. Just before stepping outside, Kalya swept off her pilotka cap and wrung out a thin stream of rainwater over the threshold. “Do you think it was the supply plane?”

“A Tupolev. Had to be. The storm must have blown it south. Damn. I thought the Luftwaffe was down to bare bones now, but obviously not.”

Kalya was more hopeful. “They didn’t explode, though, so that’s a good sign. C’mon. Let’s grab our tea and then look for Sumarov.”

Chapter Fourteen

Mia hunched in her coat on a steel bench in a Russian transport plane, her knees drawn up to her chin. In front of her lay bales of telephone wire, crates of guns and ammunition, and other boxes whose contents she couldn’t identify. Only the massive burlap sacks on both sides of her were marked RUBBER BOOTS MEN’S LARGE. Lend-Lease supplies, being delivered to the Novgorod front.

The moment she’d been picked up, she demanded to know if she was under arrest. “I have diplomatic immunity,” she’d insisted.

But they had ignored her until they reached the office of Lavrentiy Beria, Commissar of State Security, and he informed her, “No, no. Of course you are not under arrest. We simply feel that your investigation would profit greatly if you take part in one of our Lend-Lease delivery transports. As it happens, one is going out just today, and you will have the opportunity to see how efficiently it is done. We will of course inform Ambassador Harriman of your departure.”

“But I don’t wish to go, Commissar Beria,” she’d said. “Not on such short notice.”

“Oh, come, come. What kind of investigator does not jump at an opportunity such as this? The next flight is not scheduled for some time, so it is imperative that you accompany this one. We also feel it is a matter of honor to show you our work.”

He paused, evidently enjoying his mastery of the argument. “Besides, your message is already on its way to the embassy.” He turned to the two agents who had brought her in.

“Please escort Miss Kramer to the airport.”

The two goons had delivered her to the airport and handed her off to two others. The whole story was strange, and she didn’t like it one bit, especially not the coercive part. Was she being kidnapped? If so, what was Beria’s reason?

Presumably it had something to do with Nazarov’s fraud. Was Molotov involved? It was bewildering. If the Lend-Lease theft was at the core of her forced removal, and they feared exposure, how did sending her to Novgorod solve their problem? If her suspicions were correct, she could not be permitted to return. What did that imply?

She tried to reassure herself. Molotov and Beria knew her personally, had sat with her at the negotiating table and at the dinner table in the presence of Stalin. Would they actually go so far as to… she forced herself to think the terrible word… to murder her to conceal the crime?

Then she recalled that, following the Bolshevik program, Molotov had left millions of his countrymen to die of famine by seizing most of the grain of the Ukraine, had condemned thousands more to labor camps, and had played an active part in hundreds of purge-executions. Making her disappear would be like brushing away a fly.

She was free to move around on the plane, but it did her little good. It wasn’t like she could hijack it. She’d sized up the two men accompanying her and knew one was called Ilya and the other Yevgeny. They both smoked the usual crude mahorka tobacco.

She turned to Ilya, who sat closest to her. “We send millions of cigarettes to you, but you’re still smoking that horrible tobacco? Who gets the good ones?”

He scowled at her and turned away.

She persisted. “No, seriously. I’ve got a pack of American cigarettes. Here. Have one on me.” She slid the pack of Lucky Strikes from her jacket pocket and tapped one out into his hand. He glanced toward his colleague for approval, but Yevgeny looked away.

Once Ilya was well into his smoke, Mia brought her voice down to its softest, most casual level, as if they were all old friends simply stuck in a bad place together. “So, c’mon now, Ilya. Level with me. Are we really going to Novgorod?”

Yevgeny interrupted. “Of course we are. You think all this cargo is fake?” He kicked one of the bales of boots, and his foot bounced back.

“And what are you going to do with me? Leave me there to find my own way back to Moscow? That won’t go down well with the American State Department.”

“Leave you there? No, not like that.” Ilya snickered, and the dreadful thought crossed her mind that leaving her there free was not the plan.

Yevgeny picked his fingernails with a tiny pocketknife and glowered at him.

A sick feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. Her heart pounded, and with a dry mouth, she said, “Tell me the truth. What have you got to lose? Are you supposed to dispose of me?”

“Shut up, Ilya. Just shut up!” Yevgeny snarled.

“Why should I shut up? What’s the secret? She’s going know what’s happening sooner or later. You think if she knows now, she’s going to run away? Ha, that’s a good one!” He took another long toke on his cigarette, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

“I am sorry to inform you that you will be leaving us just before we land at Novgorod. You understand?” He turned away and resumed smoking, no longer interested in the conversation.

“You mean… you’re going to throw me out of the plane?” She couldn’t believe the words that came from her own mouth.

He didn’t reply, and she closed her eyes in silent desperation.

Suddenly the plane seemed to halt in midair, then tilt and drop, and she was sure now they’d run into a storm. The wind threw the plane violently up and down, and rocked it from side to side. Now the terror of crashing overshadowed the dread of being murdered.

Twenty minutes of such violence made her nauseous, and she feared vomiting. How grotesque, to vomit just before dying.

Yevgeny and Ilya were doing no better. Worse, even, for Ilya unbuckled his strap and lurched toward the toilet cubicle to empty his stomach. Only the roar of the airplane engine kept her from hearing the repulsive sounds of regurgitation, which surely would have set off her own.

He re-emerged, clawing his way along the crates as he staggered back to his seat, when suddenly another threat struck. The plane seemed to turn on its axis, raising one wing and lowering the other, as if to bank away from something. Then she heard it. The boom and crash of explosive fire.

Dear God. Why were they being attacked? The storm must have blown them into enemy air space.

Though her stomach rebelled and her mouth was dry with terror, a tiny, lucid part of her grasped the absurdity of being threatened with death by the NKVD, then a storm, and then the Luftwaffe. Something like panicked laughter erupted from her.

Then panic overtook her completely as the plane swerved in a wide curve, losing altitude, and she knew she was falling to her death. It was so unjust. For a brief moment she mourned that no one would miss her.

More explosions detonated outside the plane, though they seemed not to affect the wide spiral that took them inexorably to the ground. She curled up, sobbing, in the middle of a hundred pairs of men’s rubber boots and, upon impact, blacked out.

Her next sensation was of cold and blackness and a terrific headache. Rough hands dragging her. Shouting. Choking oily smoke. The sudden terror of burning made her realize she was alive, and she tried to open her eyes. She couldn’t. Something was wrong. Bits of color and light struck her, but no images formed, and something warm and wet sealed one eye shut. Hands slid her onto some kind of cloth and dragged her over slippery ground. Then she blacked out again.

She came to again on a wooden floor lying on her face, her head pounding. Still sightless, she tried to make sense of the sounds around her. Heavy footfall. Voices, and this time she could hear they were German. She was captured.

And the others? What had happened to the others?

“Ja ja,” someone said. Funny how Germans always said Ja ja. Three men? Four men? A chair being dragged. Shouting again. “Ruskie!” Did they mean her? No. They had someone in the chair. An interrogation. Who was it? The pilot? A crewman? Or one of the NKVD men? Fully conscious now, she listened.

“Heh, Ruskie,” the voice said again. A low moaning followed. The interrogator appeared to know a few words of Russian. “Where from? How many boom-boom planes?”

Now she understood. The retreating Germans wanted to know if more planes were on their way. They had probably already figured out that the Tupolev was merely transporting supplies but worried that bombers were to follow.

More shouting and the thumping of the chair legs told her the prisoner was being knocked about. He gave no information, though. And when he finally said in clear Russian, “Go fuck your mother’s ass,” she recognized the voice of Yevgeny.

Whether or not they understood him, the Germans resumed battering him, and his cries of pain told her their blows had become more brutal.

The torture continued for what seemed hours, and his reply to all of their shouts was a simple “Nyet.” Each Nyet was followed by a cry of pain, and each one was weaker. Yet his interrogators were getting nothing from him. He had been prepared to kill her, but at this moment, Mia felt a certain admiration for him, along with the terror of knowing she was next.

A final gunshot ended the interrogation, and another set of hands hauled her up into the same chair, her feet hitting the dead Russian as she fell back. Her eyes still didn’t seem to work, so she couldn’t see the tormentors, and her cringe was deep, animal-like.