Snow Wolf (6 page)

For a moment he seemed unsure of himself,
as if sensing something was wrong, and then he said, "I'm sorry, Captain,
but this is a restricted area. Your papers, comrade."

As the guard unslung his machine-gun, he
stared suspiciously at the young woman's face, but he didn't see the Na gant
revolver and that was his mistake.

It exploded twice, hitting him in the
chest, sending him flying backward. The air came alive with the noise, and
birds shrieked as they flew from the forest branches. Moments later the second
guard came running out of the sentry hut.

The woman fired, hitting him in the
shoulder, spinning him around, and then she started to run toward the bridge.

There was mayhem behind her on the
Russian side, sirens going off and voices raised, as the soldiers came rushing
out of the guardhouse. She was barely aware of a voice behind her screaming for
her to stop as she ran toward the Finnish barrier fifty meters away, dropping
the revolver as she ran, her breath rising in panting bursts, her lungs on
fire.

Up ahead, Finnish guards in gray uniforms
appeared out of nowhere, unslinging their rifles, one of them pointing over her
shoulder, screaming something at her.

She didn't see the Russian guard thirty
meters behind her take aim, but she heard the crack of a weapon and saw the
frosty cloud explode in the snow off to her right, before the bullet ricocheted
off the metal bridge.

And then another rifle cracked and she
was suddenly punched forward, losing her balance, a terrible pain blossoming in
her side, but she kept running, weaving across the bridge.

As she collapsed in front of the Finnish
barrier she cried out in agony. Strong hands suddenly grasped her and pulled
her aside.

A young officer, his face pale, barked
orders at his men, but she didn't understand the words. Other men fumbled at
her bloodied clothes and carried her toward the guardhouse.

There were sirens going off now but she
was aware only of the flood of pain in her side and a terrible feeling of
tiredness, as if a dam had burst inside her head and all the pent-up fear and
exhaustion had come spilling out. She was crying now, and then everything
seemed to go at once, vision fading, sounds muted.

The young officer was looking down at her
face and she heard the urgency in his voice as he screamed at one of his men to
fetch a doctor. She closed her eyes. All she remembered after that was
darkness. Sweet, surrendering, painless darkness.

Helsinki.

October 25th A man with gray cropped hair
sat beside Anna Khorev's bed.

She looked at him.

The rugged face that stared back at her
was pitted with fleshy skin and broken veins and his mouth looked set in a grim
impression of aggression. It was the face of a man who had seen a lot of
unpleasant things in life, cautious and wary and full of secrets, but the light
gray eyes were not without feeling and she guessed they missed nothing. One of
the Finnish intelligence officers had told her the American was coming and that
he wanted to talk with her. The Finns had questioned her, going over and over her
story, but she hadn't told them everything. Not because she hadn't wanted to
but because the memories seemed too painful just then, and the anesthetic had
made her feel sensitive. And besides, she had got the feeling that they were
only going through the motions of something that really wasn't their concern.
But the man seated beside her bed seemed different. She could tell that simple
answers were not going to satisfy him.

He looked in his early forties and as he
sat back in the chair his big hands rested on his knees. His Russian was fluent
and his voice soft as he smiled over at her.

"My name is Jake Massey. They tell
me you're going to make a full recovery."

When she didn't reply the man leaned
forward and said, "I'm here to try and fill in some of the gaps in your
story. Your name is Anna Khorev, is that right?"

"Yes." She saw the sincerity in
his eyes as he said, "I realize you've been through a difficult time,
Anna, but you must understand one thing. Finland gets a considerable number of
people escaping over the Russian border." He smiled again, gently.
"Not all so dramatically as you did, perhaps. Some of them are genuinely
trying to flee Russia, But others, well, let's just say their intentions are
not entirely honorable. Your countrymen send people over here to spy. You
understand what I'm saying Anna? I need to make certain you're not one of those
people.' She nodded and the man said, "You feel well enough to talk?"

"Yes.

"The doctors say they hope to have
you up and walking by tomorrow." He hesitated, then studied her face
again, the gray eyes gentle but probing, his voice suddenly soft.

"Why did you shoot the two guards on
the bridge?"

She saw the man was watching her eyes
intently.

"To escape."

"Escape what exactly?"

"From the Gulag."

"Where?"

"Near Ukhta."

"D( you know the name of the
camp?"

"Nicochka."

"The Soviet Embassy in Helsinki say
you murdered an officer at the camp, Is that true?"

She hesitated, then nodded.

"Why did you kill the man,
Anna?"

She had answered the question before when
the Finns had interrogated her, but she could sense the American was going to
be even more thorough. She went to open her mouth to speak but somehow, the
words wouldn't come. Massey looked at her.

"Anna, I think I had better be
completely honest and tell you the situation. I work for the American Embassy.
Your people are making all kinds of diplomatic noises to have you sent back to
face a trial, There's no extradition agreement between Finland and Russia, but
if your authorities put pressure on the Finns then they may have to agree to
return you. The only way they can avoid that is to hand you over to the
American Embassy. Once the Finns say you requested political asylum in America,
the matter is out of their hands. They want to do that. They want to help you.
Russia is not exactly their best friend. That's why I'm here. I was asked to
talk with you and help decide if my embassy can be of help. I'm assuming you
don't want to go back to Russia and that you would like to request asylum in
America. However, I think you ought to know that under the terms of the
Soviet-Finnish Treaty, there are grounds sufficient for your return to Russia
on a charge of murder."

Massey paused. He must have seen the look
of raw fear in her eyes because he shook his head quickly and said, "Anna,
that's not something we want to happen, but it partly depends on you."

"How?"

"On how cooperative you are. The
people who interrogated you think you haven't told them everything. You see, at
least if I know the full story of your background my embassy can best judge if
you're a suitable case for political asylum. You understand what I'm
saying?"

She nodded. Massey leaned forward in his
chair. "So, you'll help me?"

"What is it you want to know?"
Massey said gently, "Everything you can tell me. About your background.
Your parents. Your life. How you ended up at the border crossing. Why you
killed the officer at the camp. Anything that you can remember that might be
important."

Suddenly it felt like a terrible grief
flooded her mind, as if to remember was too painful. She closed her eyes and
turned away, unaware that the man noticed the bruises on her neck, the pink
patches of skin that showed through her tightly cropped hair. He said softly,
"Take your time, Anna. Just start at the beginning."

When the German Army panzers under Field
Marshal von Leeb's command swept into the Baltic States in the summer of 1941,
there were many inhabitants who were pleased to see them.

On Stalin's orders only a year before the
Red Army had swiftly and brutally annexed each of the tiny independent Baltic
countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Thousands were tortured, executed,
or shipped off to labor camps by the invading Russians. And so the German
troops arriving in the summer of 1941 were seen as an army of liberation by
many of the citizens of the occupied states. People lined the streets to
welcome the crack Wehrmacht soldiers. Women threw garlands of flowers at their
feet@ while every road north and east was clogged with a defeated Soviet army
retreating from the mighty German blitzkrieg.

But not all Soviet commanders chose to
flee the might of the Third Reich. Some chose to stay behind, fighting a fierce
rearguard action that was to give the Germans a bloody foretaste of what was to
lie ahead for them on the frozen steppes of Russia.

One of these Russian officers was
Brigadier Yegor Grenko.

At forty-two, he was already a divisional
commander. A daring officer with a reputation for being headstrong, he had
somehow survived the savage purges Stalin had inflicted on his army on the eve
of war, when more than half of the senior officer corps were either shot or
deported to Siberia, many without trial, simply because Stalin, acutely
paranoid, had falsely suspected that they were plotting to overthrow him.

Along the way Grenko had met and married
Nina Zinyakin, the daughter of an Armenian schoolteacher. Grenko first met her
when she gave an impassioned lecture on Lenin at the Moscow Institute, and he
was smitten at once. She was a resolute, fiery young woman of remarkable good
looks, and not unlike her husband in temperament. Within ten months of marriage
their first and only child was born.

By the time the Germans advanced on
Tallinn, Anna Grenko was fifteen years old.

The initial battle orders from Stalin
after the Germans had launched Operation Barbarossa had been to engage in the
minimum of conflict. Still foolishly believing that Hitler would not push deep
inside Russia and that hostilities would soon cease, Stalin had hoped to lessen
the conflict by not angering the Germans with a savage counterattack.

Yegor Grenko saw it differently.

Ordered by Moscow to retreat, he had
steadfastly refused. In his opinion, Stalin as a strategist left much to be
desired. Grenko didn't believe the Germans would hold back at the Russian
border. Convinced that within a week the battle orders would change to an
offensive, Grenko decided to fight a rearguard action and for days was
bombarded with cables from Moscow military command ordering him to retreat. He
tore up every signal and even returned one in reply. "What the hell am I
supposed to do? Sit back and allow the Germans to massacre my men?"

Yegor Grenko was convinced that history
would prove Stalin wrong, just as he knew that the first weeks of battle are as
crucial as the last. But when he could finally ignore the cables no more, he
and his men boarded a troop train near Narva and headed back to Moscow.

When the train pulled into the Riga
Station, Yegor Grenko was arrested and marched to a waiting car. When Anna
Grenko's mother tried to intervene she was brushed aside and told bluntly that
her husband's arrest was none of her business. The following day came the visit
from the secret police.

Nina Grenko was coldly informed that her
husband had been tried by a military tribunal and found guilty of disobeying
orders. He had been executed that morning at Lefortovo Prison.

A day later, fresh battle orders from
Stalin were made public. Every citizen was to repel the invading Germans with
every means, even to death, and no Soviet soldier was to retreat.

For Yegor Grenko, the order had come a
day too late.

After the death of her father, Anna
Grenko's family home in Moscow was confiscated on the orders of the secret
police. Her mother never recovered from the injustice of her husband's
execution and in the second month of the siege of Moscow, Anna Grenko came home
to find her mother's corpse hanging from a water pipe.

For two days after they had cut down the
body Anna lay in her bed, not eating and barely sleeping. There was suddenly a
terrible void in her life and no one to turn to. Relatives shunned her, fearing
guilt by association and the midnight knock on the door by the secret police.

On the third day she packed what meager
belongings she had into one small suitcase and moved out of the apartment into
a squalid, tiny room on the eastern side of the Moscow River.

The German army was ten kilometers away,
the golden domes of the Kremlin visible through their field glasses. With the
city under constant bombardment there was little to buy or eat and almost no
fuel; anything that could be burned had long ago been burned. People devoured
what meager rations they were allowed. Dogs and cats fetched a month's wages.
Bodies were piled high in the suburbs and the German shells and Stuka bombers
made life impossible in freezing sub-zero temperatures.

Too young to fight, Anna Grenko was sent
to work in an aircraft factory in the Urals. On her seventeenth birthday she
was finally called up for military service. Given three weeks' basic training,
she was shipped south to the front and General Chuikov's 62nd Army at
Stalingrad.

And it was at Stalingrad she was to learn
the real meaning of survival.