Justine Saracen - The Sniper’s Kiss

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.

Mia cursed to herself and tried uselessly to slip farther down under her bed covering. The irony was excruciating. After months of fighting on the front and some four weeks in various hospitals, she was about to be exposed by someone she knew and liked.

Like friendly fire, identification by a cheerful comrade could be just as lethal as by the enemy. In the few seconds that passed as the major strode down the central aisle of the ward, a half dozen thoughts zipped through Mia’s mind.

Would she be arrested? Almost certainly. Would Pavlichenko vouch for her? Why would she? All explanations would lead back to Molotov. Would she notify the ambassador and embroil the State Department in a charge of spying? That line of thought was bleak indeed.

The inner debate ended when Pavlichenko stepped up to the foot of her bed, ready to be introduced to “our own sniper, Marina Zhurova.”

The hero of the Soviet Union must have been weary of introductions and of shaking hands and muttering encouragement, for she scarcely glanced up. Even after Mia held out her own good hand to shake, and they exchanged pleasantries, Pavlichenko looked at her for several long seconds before confusion clouded her expression.

Mia’s hand shook, and she withdrew it while the nurse chattered on about what an honor it was, surely, for a beginner to meet the most famous woman sniper in all of Russia. Pavlichenko’s face seemed to dull, and Mia dared not take her eyes from her.

After what seemed like hours, Pavlichenko nodded blandly and wished her a good recovery.

As the star sniper stepped back and resumed her circuit from bed to bed, Mia dropped back onto her pillow and released a long exhalation. Had the visitor recognized her? In the context of the hospital, apparently not. As the major disappeared through the door of the ward in the company of the hospital administrator and a coterie of military officers, Mia lay embittered by her helplessness.

She had to get out. Soon, perhaps within days, someone would come from the army, check her medical chart, and realize she was fit for duty of some sort. The next day, they’d send her off to some unit, where she would be trapped indefinitely. Alone. No. She returned to her escape plan. Not a good plan. A dreadful plan, in fact, but the only plan she had.

During the night, she would simply leave and walk as far south as possible. Judging by the way the light passed from one side of the ward to the other, she could roughly guess which way was south. Her field canteen was still in her pack under her bed, and she could fill it from the hospital pitcher. Food? Well, she could do without food for a couple of days. Without sleep, too, if necessary. And she would keep walking, asking directions judiciously, from children perhaps, and she would continue walking. At some point, she would reach Red Square, where the large hotels were, which were filled with Western journalists. And one of them would help her get to the embassy.

There, that was settled. Encouraged at finally having made a decision, she allowed herself to doze off.

Someone shook her foot, awakening her. She opened her eyes to Lyudmila Pavlichenko.

“You have one minute to tell me what the hell you are doing here and why I shouldn’t denounce you. Start talking.”

Mia took a breath, clearing her head, forming her thoughts to a sixty-second summary. “I came to Moscow for the White House, to investigate the theft of Lend-Lease materials. I found the thieves, a chain of command starting, I’m pretty sure, with Molotov. But when I tried to report them to the ambassador, Molotov had me arrested and put on a plane to be killed. But the plane was shot down, and I survived by joining a Red Army unit fighting in the area. I actually fought as a sniper, which you’ll find ironic, and I’m here because I was wounded in action.”

Pavlichenko blinked in disbelief at the fantastic tale. “Who is Marina Zhurova?”

“A comrade killed in the ambulance carrying us both to the hospital.” She opened her mouth to add more detail, then realized it was unnecessary. “And I’m desperate to get back to the embassy.”

Pavlichenko frowned as some of the narrative sank in. “Molotov? Theft? Are you sure?”

“Yes. You have to believe me and help me get out of here.”

Pavlichenko shook her head. Nonetheless, she leaned forward and spoke softly. “Whatever the truth of your story, you see those men standing in the doorway at the end of the ward? That is Major General Kovpak and three officers from STAVKA. They are watching me talk to you, so I have to denounce you.”

“What? I thought…” Mia stammered.

“Hush, and listen. So you have to act quickly. In about three hours, when I get back to my quarters, I will send someone with a motorcycle to the laundry exit on the south side of the hospital. You must be there at, say, ten o’clock. If you are not, he will leave again. At ten o’clock, I’ll telephone my superior officer and say I saw you here, and after a lot of thought, I finally remembered who you were, and I’ll give him your real name. After that, I have no idea what will happen, but by then you should be at your embassy. That’s all I can do for you. Do you understand?”

Without waiting for an answer, she turned and marched back to the officers at the door.

* * *

Mia had no watch and so asked the nurse the time when she came by with the usual soupy stew that was supper. Seven o’clock. When the activity on the ward died down and it seemed like more than two hours had passed, she slipped on her boots, gathered up her coat and field pack in her good arm, and slipped through the doorway toward the toilets. There, she changed out of her hospital gown and back into her military trousers and boots. The tunic that had been cut open under the right arm up to the armpit hung like a shawl on one side of her, but her belt held it shut.

She had no idea where the laundry was but had at least determined north from south, and pressed on toward the south side of the hospital. She wandered endlessly along corridors, stepping out of sight whenever she heard someone approach.

Finally, on one of the lower levels, the smell of disinfectant and the creaking of cylinders turning told her she’d found the laundry. She waited as long as she dared, hoping for a chance to slip through the room unseen, but each time she peeked around the edge of the doorway, she saw women working. Finally, she simply stepped inside and strode past them.

The four haggard women with red hands and faces tending the machines glanced quizzically at her as she marched past them, but apparently they cared only about their duty to sterilize laundry and bandages. Security was outside their purview, and while they would certainly report seeing a woman in a shoulder cast pass through, they had no interest in stopping her.

Then she was outside. Because her coat covered only one shoulder and half of her chest, she shivered in the cool night air. It was also the first time in weeks she had walked any distance, let alone hurried, and she trembled with the exertion.

She waited, with no idea of the time. Surely she wasn’t late, but would her rescuer be? She dared not pace, for fear of attracting attention, and so she huddled near the closed door, shifting from one foot to the other. How, she wondered, would she fit on the back of a motorcycle with her awkwardly protruding elbow?

Finally he arrived. Without stopping his motor, he turned off the headlight and glanced around, obviously searching for her. Relieved, she stepped out where he could see her.

He putted toward her and stopped. “Get in, quickly.”

With a silent thanks to Major Pavlichenko, she saw it was a sturdy old M-72 motorcycle with a sidecar. She’d seen them at the front, usually with some sort of gun mounted on the sidecar, but this one was bare. All she had to do was clutch her coat and pack around her and step in.

The backward lurch as he took off jolted her shoulder, and she grunted. He careened around the corner in the darkness, and only when they were some distance from the hospital grounds did he turn on his headlight.

He was silent most of the way and she assumed he knew the route, but as they came close to the inner city of Moscow, he asked over his shoulder, “Where do you want to go?”

“The American Embassy, please,” she replied, as if to a taxi driver.