“I know his family well, sir.”

“A personal stake in this?”

Alexander blinked. “Yes, sir.”

Colonel Stepanov was very quiet, playing with his pen, looking at the pages in his journal, not looking at Alexander, even when he spoke at last. “I wish I had something better to tell you, Alexander. The Germans ran over Novgorod with their tanks. Remember Colonel Yanov? He perished. The Germans shot soldiers and civilians indiscriminately, they pillaged what they could, and then they burned the town.”

Not backing away from the table, not looking away from Colonel Stepanov’s face, Alexander said steadily, “Let me understand. The Red Army sent underage boys into battle?”

Stepanov stood up behind his desk. “Surely you’re not telling us how to run our war, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t mean to be disrespectful.” Alexander struck his heels together, saluted the colonel, but didn’t move. “But to use untrained boys along with battle-trained, command-experienced officers as fodder for the Nazis is sheer military madness.”

Colonel Stepanov did not come out from behind the desk. The two men were quiet, one young, the other already old at forty-four. Then the colonel spoke. “Tell the family their son died to save Mother Russia,” he said, his voice cracking. “He died in the service of our great leader, Comrade Stalin.”

Later that morning Alexander was called to the entry gate. He made his way downstairs, fearing it was Tatiana. He couldn’t face her just yet. He was going to meet her at Kirov in the evening. He saw Dasha standing with Petrenko. She looked shaken and tense.

“What’s the matter?” he asked her, leading her aside, hoping she, too, wouldn’t ask him about Tolmachevo and Pasha, but she stuck a piece of paper into his hand and said, “Look at this, just look what my crazy sister has done!”

He opened the note. It was the first time he was seeing Tatiana’s handwriting. It was round, small, and neat. Dear Mama and Papa, the note read. I’ve gone to join the People’s Volunteers to find Pasha and bring him back for you. Tania.

Making every effort to control his facial expression, Alexander gave the note back to Dasha with careful fingers and said, “She left when?”

“Yesterday morning. We got up and she was gone.”

“Dasha, why didn’t you come to me right away? She’s been gone since yesterday?”

“We thought she was just kidding. That she would come back.”

“Did you hope,” Alexander enunciated slowly, “that she would come back with Pasha?”

“We don’t know! She gets these ideas into her head. I honestly don’t know what she is thinking. She can’t go to the store by herself, much less to the front. Mama and Papa are beside themselves. They were so worried about Pasha, and now this.”

“Are they worried, or are they angry?” asked Alexander.

“They’re frantic. They’re deathly afraid for her. She—” Dasha broke off. Tears were in her eyes. “Dearest,” Dasha said, coming close to him. She put her arms around him, but Alexander’s face remained as closed as a bank on a holiday. “Alexander,” she said, “I didn’t know who to turn to. Help us, please. Help us find my sister. We can’t lose my Tania…”

“I know,” he said.

“Please?” Dasha said. “Will you do this… for me?”

Patting her on the back, Alexander stepped away. “Let me see what I can do.”

Alexander bypassed his immediate commander, Major Orlov, and went straight to Colonel Stepanov. He got authorization to take twenty volunteers and two sergeants to drive an armored truck loaded with munitions south to the Luga line. Alexander knew that the line badly needed to be strengthened. He told Stepanov he would be back in a few days.

Before dismissing Alexander, Stepanov said, “Bring yourself back. Bring the men back, Lieutenant.” He paused. “As always.”

“I will do my best, sir,” said Alexander. He had not seen many volunteers come back to the garrison.

Before he left, he went to see Dimitri and offered him a spot on the squad. Dimitri refused. “Dima,” said Alexander, “you should come.”

“I’ll go where they send me,” said Dimitri, shaking his head, “but I’m not swimming voluntarily into the jaws of the shark. Have you heard about what’s happened to Novgorod?”

Alexander drove the armored truck himself. It was filled with men, thirty-five Nagant rifles, thirty-five brand-new Tokarev rifles, two boxes of hand grenades, three crates of field mines, seven boxes of ammunition, a stack of oval artillery shells, and a keg of gunpowder for the mortars. Alexander thought it was good that the truck was armored.

He wished he had one of the tanks Tatiana had made.

The three towns followed in order from Leningrad: Gatchina was first, then Tolmachevo, then Luga. By the time Alexander reached Gatchina, he could already hear the distant thunder of artillery. His fleet of men trembled behind him as he made his way down the unpaved road. He heard bombs exploding like fireworks, and as if in a dream his father’s face flashed before him, wanting to know what Alexander was doing near death’s door before it was his time. He said, “Dad, I’m going for her,” and Sergeant Oleg Kashnikov, a brawny young soldier, said, “What did you say, Lieutenant?”

“Nothing. Sometimes I do that. Talk to my father.”

“But, Lieutenant, that wasn’t Russian,” Kashnikov said. “It sounded like English, but what do I know?”

“Not English, just gibberish,” said Alexander.

When Alexander and his men got out at Luga, the noise of artillery fire was no longer distant. The land was flat, and in the horizon there was smoke and sound. It wasn’t a sound signifying nothing, thought Alexander. It was the thunder of anger and of death.

During the evening of one Fourth of July barbecue, the family had gone out sailing on the sea in Nantucket Sound and watched the fireworks from their boat. Seven-year-old Alexander lifted his head up to the sky, enchanted by the rainbow lights exploding loudly overhead. He couldn’t imagine anything more spectacular than these vibrant colors showering the sky with life.

Straight ahead was the approach to Luga River. To the left were fields, and to the right was a forest. Alexander spotted children who were maybe ten years old picking what remained of this year’s crops. On the perimeter of the fields, soldiers and older men and women were digging trenches. He knew that after the crops were picked, the fields would be mined.

Calmly, holding his rifle tightly, Alexander told his men to stay put while he went to find Colonel Pyadyshev, who was organizing the defense line for a twelve-kilometer stretch along the river. Pyadyshev was pleased about the extra arms and immediately had his soldiers unload them and prepare to divide them up. “Only seventy rifles, Lieutenant?” he said to Alexander.

“All we have, sir,” Alexander replied. “More are coming.”

Then Alexander took his twenty charges closer to the river bank, where they received shovels and dug for a few hours. With a pair of binoculars Alexander searched the forest on the other side of the river and determined that the Germans had already advanced to contact, though they had not yet brought themselves into full offensive position.

The men had a bite to eat out of the canned goods they had brought with them. They drank water from the river. Alexander then left his two sergeants, Kashnikov and Shapkov, in charge, and went to find the group of volunteers who had come with the Kirov Works over four days ago.

He didn’t find anyone that day. But the next day he found Zina. She was in the field, bent over with her shovel. She was digging out the potatoes and throwing them into the basket, dirt and all. Alexander suggested she clean the dirt off first, to make more room for actual potatoes. Zina glared at him, prepared to say something rude, but then looked at his red star and his rifle and said nothing. Alexander saw that she did not recognize him. Not everyone can have my memory for faces, he thought. “I’m looking for your friend,” he said to Zina. “Is she here with you? Young girl, Tatiana.”