“Well,” Krivosheyev grunted, not bothering to hide his impatience. “Where are your lists?”
As they walked to the conifer tree, devoid of its summit, Ulya concentrated on the sounds and noises of the wood, the hardly distinguishable rustle of leaves, the cracking of twigs by their every step and, against her will, thought of Rita. When crows rose from a tree with ominous, throaty cries, she wondered what kind of sign it was. It became obvious in seconds. In the dugout’s place, now a crater gaped open. Nothing was left, even from the boxes. “Here it was.” She turned to see Krivosheyev’s eyes narrowing and his mouth pulled into a sour grin.
“So, no traces of your proof,” he said as a statement, his shoulders stiff, most likely with anger.
“We’ll see.” Ulya took ten steps to the tangled birches now cracked in half. A mound of earth and twigs covered the place where the smaller dugout used to be. “I need a spade.”
“Yeremenko, a spade!” Krivosheyev turned to the driver who stood behind at some distance from them.
“Yes!” A brisk salute came, and the next moment he was running to his car. In minutes, he returned and Ulya pointed where to dig, herself grabbing and throwing away the twigs.
“Let him work.” Krivosheyev motioned her to stop.
Deftly, Yeremenko dug and soon his spade struck metal, which was the box.
“And this is . . .?” Krivosheyev’s eyes caught and held hers.
“In it, I stored the spent artillery shell casings with the duplicates of my reports and the mini camera with my last, not dispatched, roll.”
“Ah-ha.” Krivosheyev rubbed his hands in jubilation. “Yeremenko, clean the shells and carry them to the car.”
Back at the SMERSH headquarters, her—as she understood without asking—new superior invited her to his room and, after opening the shells with his penknife, dumped the notes on the table.
As they sorted the notes, sitting side by side, Ulya recording them in a ledger, Krivosheyev’s features grew relaxed. Already he looks forward to being praised by his superiors, maybe even awarded for his diligent work, came a resentful thought. Let him, as long as it gave her time to deliberate her next move, the thought of which had sprouted in her. But she didn’t know yet what it would be.
All of a sudden, Krivosheyev became official. “Senior Lieutenant Kriegshammer, you’ll handle the population. People keep returning to Vitebsk. We expect there will be German agents among them. The registration of the returnees will give you a chance to discover the collaborationists, former Polizei, all the vermin. We will appeal to the locals for help too. You’ll get a separate room in the building so nobody can have access to your files, except the trusted officers.”
“Trusted?”
He shrugged. “Were you not taught to distrust?”
“I was. In this case, why should I trust you, Comrade Lieutenant-Colonel?”
For the first time since their encounter, a smile found its way through the mask of harshness. “Enough for today.” He put the notes in the safe and, pushing the shells into a corner of the room, ordered, “You go to Major Matveyev. Anybody will show you where to find him. He’ll assign you to a women’s officer’s tent. As soon as some houses are restored, you’ll get a better accommodation.”
Ulya saluted and stepped into the corridor and yes, the lieutenant-colonel was right: the first person she asked how to find Major Matveyev pointed her the way.
In a big room with stuffed shelves, boxes, and packages, she got all the necessities for a little while, a signed order for a cot in a women’s tent, and a referral for the canteen.
After she settled in the tent and shook hands with her new neighbors, young uniformed women of different branches of the armed forces, she went to look around the violated city. Now and then, she saw civilians, mostly women—in rags, faces skull-like from starvation—queuing around military mobile canteens.
The first thing she wanted to do was check on her girl. Navigating through the heaps of debris, she reached Kommunisticheskaya 11 and sighed in relief that the hut had survived all the hell of the last weeks. On a blanket on the grass in the front yard, the girl, all skin and bone, lay. As Ulya inched closer, she saw the little one’s brilliant green eyes staring unmoved into the sky. The child tilted her head at the noise but showed no reaction.
Ulya felt a pulling in her chest and something caught in her throat. For a second, she wondered if the child she had lost was a girl or a boy, and then realized with bitterness, there won’t be three Ks for me. No children, no kitchen, no church.
The woman Ulya had met at the train station on the day of Ewald’s departure to Germany—to his death, she flinched at the memory—stepped into the yard and scooped the girl into her hands. Perhaps the child, at two-and-a half years of age, was too famished to learn to walk or even crawl.
The very next day, after work, Ulya headed to Kommunisticheskaya 11 again.
At her knock, the woman opened the door. “What do you want?” She peered at Ulya as though trying to summon up where she had seen her face.
“We met,” Ulya saved her the attempt.
“Did we?” Suspicion and, perhaps, fear hardened her haggard features.
“In February. At the train station.”
“Ah, yes, you didn’t feel well. You thanked me for something I remember. What was it?”
“Your care.”
“Care?” As on that day, a glint of curiosity flashed in her eyes.
“My name is Ulya. I knew your niece.”
A frightened uncertainty appeared in the woman’s tired but beautiful gray-green eyes. To spare her more suffering, Ulya added, “I was with the Underground too.”
“Ah, you do know Natasha was not collaborating with the fascists?” A cry of relief broke from her lips. “Can you confirm
