Backing away, Dimitri opened his mouth and stammered, “I said I was very s—”

“I don’t want to hear your fucking lies!” she yelled, her arms still being held by Dr. Sayers. “I don’t want you to speak to me ever again. Do you understand?”

Dimitri, mumbling nervously that he didn’t understand why she should be upset with him, got into the back of the truck.

Dr. Sayers got behind the wheel and stared wide-eyed at Tatiana.

“Ready, Doctor. Let’s go.” Tatiana buttoned up her nurse’s white coat with the Red Cross badge on the sleeve, and she tied her little white hat over her hair. She had all of Alexander’s money, she had his Pushkin book, she had his letters and their photographs. She had his cap, and she had his ring.

They drove into the night.

Tatiana held Sayers’s open map but could not have helped him get to Lisiy Nos. Through the northern Russian woods Dr. Sayers drove his small truck, as they made their way on unpaved, muddy, snowy, liquid roads. Tatiana saw nothing at all, staring out the side window into the darkness, counting inside her head, trying to keep herself upright.

Sayers kept talking to her nonstop in English. “Tania, dear, it will be all right—”

“Will it, Doctor?” she asked, also in English. “And what are we going to do with him?”

“Who cares? He can do what he likes once we get to Helsinki. I’m not thinking about him at all. All I’m thinking about is you. We will get to Helsinki, drop off some supplies, and then you and I will take a Red Cross plane to Stockholm. Then from Stockholm we’ll ride the train to Göteborg on the North Sea, and we’ll take a protected vessel across the North Sea to England. Tania, can you hear me? Do you understand?”

“I can hear you,” she said faintly. “I understand.”

“In England I’ve got a couple of stops to make, but then we’ll either fly to the U.S. or take one of the passenger liners from Liverpool. And once you’re in New York—”

“Matthew, please,” whispered Tatiana.

“I’m just trying to make you feel better, Tania. It’s going to be all right.”

From the back Dimitri said, “Tania, I didn’t know you could speak En-glish.”

Tatiana did not reply at first. Then she picked up a metal pipe from under Dr. Sayers’s feet that she knew he kept in case of trouble. Swinging her arm, she smashed the pipe hard against the metal divider separating her from Dimitri, startling Dr. Sayers nearly off the side of the road. “Dimitri,” she said loudly, “you have to stay quiet and stop talking. You are a Finn. Not another Russian syllable out of you.”

Dropping the pipe onto the floor, she folded her arms around her stomach.

“Tania…”

“Don’t, Doctor.”

“You haven’t eaten, have you?” the doctor asked gently.

Tatiana shook her head. “I’m not thinking about food at all,” she replied.

In the middle of the night they stopped by the side of the road. Dimitri had already slipped on the Finnish uniform. “It’s very big,” Tatiana heard him say to Dr. Sayers. “I hope I don’t have to stand up in it. Anyone will see it doesn’t fit me. Do you have any more morphine? I’m—”

Dr. Sayers came back a few minutes later. “If I give him any more morphine, he’ll be dead. That arm is going to give him trouble.”

“What happened to him?” Tatiana asked in English.

Dr. Sayers was quiet. “He was nearly killed,” he said at last. “He has a very nasty open fracture.” He paused. “He may lose that arm. I don’t know how he is conscious, upright. I thought he’d be in a coma after yesterday, yet today he is walking.” Sayers shook his head.

Tatiana didn’t speak. How could he still be standing? she thought. How could the rest of us—strong, resolute, spirited, young—be falling on our knees, be demolished by our life, while he remains standing?

“Someday, Tania,” Sayers said in English, “you will have to explain to me the—” He broke off, pointing to the back of the truck. “Because I swear to Christ, I don’t understand at all.”

“I do not think I could explain,” whispered Tatiana.

On the way to Lisiy Nos they were stopped half a dozen times at checkpoints for papers. Sayers presented papers on himself and papers on his nurse, Jane Barrington. Dimitri, who was a Finn named Tove Hanssen, had no papers, just a metal dogtag with the dead man’s name on it. He was a wounded pilot being taken back to Helsinki for a prisoner exchange. All six times the guards opened the tarpaulin, shined a flashlight in Dimitri’s battered face, and then waved Sayers on.

“It’s nice to be protected by the Red Cross flag,” said Sayers.

Tatiana nodded.

The doctor pulled over by the side of the road, turning the engine off. “Are you cold?” he asked.

“I’m not cold.” Not cold enough. “Do you want me to drive?”

“You know how to drive?”

In Luga, when she was sixteen, the summer before she met Alexander, Tatiana had befriended an army corporal stationed with the local village Soviet. The corporal let Tatiana and Pasha drive around in his truck for the whole summer. Pasha was annoying because he always wanted to be behind the wheel, but the corporal was kind and let her behind the wheel, too. She drove the truck well, better than Pasha, she thought, and the corporal told her she was a quick learner.

“I know how to drive.”

“No, it’s too dark and icy.” Sayers closed his eyes for an hour.

Tatiana sat quietly, her hands in her coat. She was trying to remember the last time she and Alexander had made love. It was a Sunday in November, but where was it? She couldn’t recall. What did they do? Where were they? Did she look up at him? Was Inga outside their door? Was it in the bath, on the couch, on the floor? She couldn’t remember.

What did Alexander say to her last night? He made a joke, he kissed her, he smiled, he touched her hand, he told her he was going across to Volkhov to get promoted. Were they lying to him? Was he lying to her?

He had been trembling. She had thought he was cold. What else did he say? I’ll see you. So casual. Not even blinking. What else? Remember Orbeli.

What was that?

Alexander often told her fascinating little tidbits he picked up in the army, names of generals, stories about Hitler, or Rommel, about England or Italy, about Stalingrad, about Richthoffen, von Paulus, El Alamein, Montgomery. It wasn’t unusual that he would say a word she didn’t understand. But Orbeli was a word she hadn’t heard before, and yet there was Alexander—asking her to remember it.

Tatiana nudged Dr. Sayers awake. “Dr. Sayers, what is Orbeli?” she asked. “Who is Orbeli?”

“Don’t know,” Sayers replied sleepily. “Never heard of it. Why?”

She said nothing.

Sayers began driving again.

They got to the silent, sleeping border between the Soviet Union and Finland at six in the morning.

Alexander had told Tatiana it wasn’t really a border, it was a line of defense, which meant there was anywhere from thirty to sixty meters between the Soviet and Finnish troops. Each side marked its territory and then sat and waited out the war.

To Tatiana the Finnish conifer and willow woods looked like the Soviet conifer and willow woods they had been driving through for the last long hours of the night. The headlights from their truck illuminated a narrow strip of unpaved road ahead. Sunrise was slow in coming toward the ides of March.

Dr. Sayers suggested that if everyone was sleeping, maybe they could just drive across and present their papers to the Finns instead of to the Soviets. Tatiana thought that was an excellent idea.

Suddenly someone yelled for them to halt. Three sleepy NKVD border troops came up to the doctor’s window. Sayers showed them the papers. After thoroughly looking over the documents, the NKVD soldier said to Tatiana in accented English, “A cold wind, isn’t it?”