Massey paused. He must have seen the lookof 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. Thepeople who interrogated you think you haven't told them everything. You see, atleast if I know the full story of your background my embassy can best judge ifyou're a suitable case for political asylum. You understand what I'msaying?"

She nodded. Massey leaned forward in hischair. "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 youkilled the officer at the camp. Anything that you can remember that might beimportant."

Suddenly it felt like a terrible griefflooded her mind, as if to remember was too painful. She closed her eyes andturned away, unaware that the man noticed the bruises on her neck, the pinkpatches 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 FieldMarshal 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 theRed Army had swiftly and brutally annexed each of the tiny independent Balticcountries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Thousands were tortured, executed,or shipped off to labor camps by the invading Russians. And so the Germantroops arriving in the summer of 1941 were seen as an army of liberation bymany of the citizens of the occupied states. People lined the streets towelcome the crack Wehrmacht soldiers. Women threw garlands of flowers at theirfeet@ while every road north and east was clogged with a defeated Soviet armyretreating from the mighty German blitzkrieg.

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

One of these Russian officers wasBrigadier Yegor Grenko.

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

Along the way Grenko had met and marriedNina Zinyakin, the daughter of an Armenian schoolteacher. Grenko first met herwhen she gave an impassioned lecture on Lenin at the Moscow Institute, and hewas smitten at once. She was a resolute, fiery young woman of remarkable goodlooks, and not unlike her husband in temperament. Within ten months of marriagetheir first and only child was born.

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

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

Yegor Grenko saw it differently.

Ordered by Moscow to retreat, he hadsteadfastly refused. In his opinion, Stalin as a strategist left much to bedesired. Grenko didn't believe the Germans would hold back at the Russianborder. Convinced that within a week the battle orders would change to anoffensive, Grenko decided to fight a rearguard action and for days wasbombarded with cables from Moscow military command ordering him to retreat. Hetore up every signal and even returned one in reply. "What the hell am Isupposed to do? Sit back and allow the Germans to massacre my men?"

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

When the train pulled into the RigaStation, Yegor Grenko was arrested and marched to a waiting car. When AnnaGrenko's mother tried to intervene she was brushed aside and told bluntly thather husband's arrest was none of her business. The following day came the visitfrom the secret police.

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

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

For Yegor Grenko, the order had come aday too late.

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

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

On the third day she packed what meagerbelongings she had into one small suitcase and moved out of the apartment intoa 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 thecity under constant bombardment there was little to buy or eat and almost nofuel; anything that could be burned had long ago been burned. People devouredwhat 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 bombersmade life impossible in freezing sub-zero temperatures.

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

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

Fighting from street to street and factoryto factory, holding out against the Germans in a siege that was to last forover six months, crossing enemy lines at night in the mud and snow andattacking their positions, the fighting so savage and close she was often nearenough to the enemy that she could hear their whispered voices in nearbytrenches. The shelling so heavy that every leaf fell from the trees in the cityand dogs drowned themselves in the Vol a rather than endure the horrendousnoise of battle that went on day and night.

Twice she was wounded and twice she wasdecorated. In the battles that raged in pockets in and around Stalingrad thekilling was merciless.

On the fifth incursion behind the Germanlines she was captured by a detachment of Ukrainian SS. After interrogation,she was brutally raped.

Left for dead in a bomb crater, she hadlain there in the freezing cold, a terrible pain between her legs where thefive men had torn her flesh in their savage lust.

On the second morning she had woken tothe touch of snow on her face.

When she crawled up the gully she saw theUkrainians on the far side, the same men who had raped her, standing around alighted brazier, warming themselves and laughing.