“You come from Irkutsk?” Raskova prompted when it became clear Nina wasn’t going to speak first.
“Yes. No,” Nina blushed. “Baikal. Then Irkutsk.”
Raised eyebrows. “You’ve come a long way to see me.”
More than four thousand kilometers. From train windows Nina had seen vast gold sunsets over stretches of taiga, followed by endless kilometers of towering dark trees where it was all too easy to imagine Baba Yaga’s witch house moving along on stalky chicken legs. Country stations where women in flowered shawls herded goats off the tracks were followed by city stations where railway officials rushed about in brass-buttoned coats. Farmland and pastureland, factories and tenement blocks, horse carts and cars, all whisking past Nina’s wide eyes.
“Your first time in Moscow?”
“Yes.” Her first glimpse of the city had been so terrifying—the vast spread of boxlike buildings, the peaks of distant spires and domes from old imperialist palaces and cathedrals, the spread of Three Stations Square where trains fed their passengers into the city—that her overwhelming urge had been to leap back onto the railcar. You do not belong here, the panicky thought pounded, looking at the overwhelming crush of uniformed soldiers, kerchiefed women, and slab-booted men. It wasn’t just the size and scale of it all, it was the pulsation of fear at being so much closer to the advancing enemy. Houses were draped with camouflage; flak guns crowned rooftops like long-legged cranes; streets were lined with barricades of welded railway girders. There was nothing like it in Irkutsk. You don’t belong here, go back east—
But she wasn’t going east again, not ever. You don’t belong here, Nina Borisovna, she had told herself, pushing through the crowd. You belong up there, in the sky. And if going through here is the only way there, then through here is where you’ll go. So she tunneled her vision, shut out Moscow, and stamped out into the sour-breathed cold-hunched press of humanity to find the aviation headquarters. “I didn’t pay much attention to Moscow,” she managed to tell Raskova. “I won’t be here long enough to make it worthwhile.”
“You won’t?”
“I’ll either join your new regiment, or go home.” Though Nina had barely a ruble left in her pocket, so how she was going to manage fare back to Irkutsk if she was rejected, she had no idea.
Raskova laughed, the sound warm and easy. “Why didn’t you apply through your Komsomol or your air club?”
“They would have said no. They were picking university girls, educated girls.” Nina heard her voice coming stronger, but her hands still had a death grip around the sealskin hat. “So I came direct to you.”
Raskova leaned against the edge of the desk, peeling off her gloves. She looked like she’d come right in from the airfield, still wearing boots and overalls. Her hands were fine and white, but she had oil smudges across her knuckles just like any pilot. “Colonel Moriakin says you camped in the chair outside his office for four days until he agreed to see you.”
“It was the fastest way to get an appointment.” Nina was surprised when Raskova burst out laughing. “He said I was crazy, but that I should talk to you, Comrade Raskova.”
“You’re not the first girl to come to me directly rather than through official channels.” Raskova folded her arms. “How many flying hours do you have?”
Nina embellished her record by a few hundred hours, presenting her certificates and detailing her training. Raskova listened with warm attention, but her next words hit Nina in the gut.
“Good numbers. But do you know how many girls have applied with numbers just as good or better?”
Nina’s hopes went into a tailspin, but she persisted. “I’m a born pilot. Made for the air.”
“So are all the girls I’ve picked. So are many of the ones I’ve turned away.”
Raskova was gearing up a gentle refusal; Nina could feel it. She stepped forward, pushing down the dread. “This is about more than a flying record.” Fighting to find the right words. “The girls in your regiments won’t be training students or flying mail routes. They’ll be bombing fascists, making nighttime runs, dogfighting with Messerschmitts. Your girls need—” What was the word, the right word? “They need to be tougher than old boots,” Nina finished.
“And you’re tougher than old boots?”
“Yes. You are too, Comrade Raskova.” Nina lifted her chin. “Three years ago, making the cross-country flight for the long-distance record, when your team couldn’t find the final runway due to visibility, you parachuted out. You were separated from your pilot and copilot and spent ten days alone in the taiga. No emergency kit. No food.”
“I made do.” Raskova said it easily, well accustomed to gushing girls and their hero worship—but in a moment’s sudden reminiscence, she wrinkled her nose. “I still remember the cold. Like sleeping cheek to cheek with Father Frost.”
“I grew up in that taiga.” Nina took another step. “You survived ten days there. I survived nineteen years. Cold, ice, a landscape that wants you dead—none of it scares me. Flying at night doesn’t scare me either, or bombs exploding, or fascists trying to shoot me down. Nothing scares me. I am tougher than any university girl with a perfect record and a thousand hours of flying time.”
“Are you?” Raskova studied her. “Think twice about what you’re asking for, Nina Borisovna. Going to the front—it’s a very hard thing. Many think it a waste, giving planes to girls when there are already more than enough men to fly them. I have told Comrade Stalin himself that my women will be better, and so they must be.”
“I am better.” Nina could feel her heart beating hard in her chest, like a propeller whipping up to speed. “Let me prove it.”
Another long moment. Nina hung suspended in agony. There’ll be a chance, her father had said. Don’t ask, when you see it. Just fucking take it. But Marina Raskova was the end of her chance—beyond this room, there was nothing to seize. It either all ended here, or all began here—and drowning in Marina Raskova’s blue eyes, Nina began to feel desolation choking her throat.
The most famous aviatrix in the Motherland rummaged through her colleague’s desk, found a pen and some official-looking paper, began to scribble. “This is a pass to the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy. You’ll have to follow the rules once you get there,” she warned with a twinkle, “but at least there’s tea to go with the rules.”
Nina felt her wings lift. “What else is at the academy?”
“Aviation Group 122.” Raskova pressed the pass into Nina’s outstretched hand with one of her knee-buckling smiles. “Your sisters-in-arms.”
NINA STOOD A MOMENT gaping at the academy’s palatial redbrick facade and imposing gates before braving the steps. Inside she found a rushing mass of trainee pilots dashing everywhere: women in flying caps and overalls, girls with curled hair and heels as though they were going dancing, female officers with cigarettes and taut faces shouting orders. Nina showed her pass and identification to the nearest officer and received a grunt. “We leave for training in a few days. You’ll be issued a uniform—”
“Where do I sleep?” Nina asked, but the officer had already turned away. Nina wandered for a while, having no idea where to go, still dazed with her triumph. She had done it; she was here. A bone-cracking yawn overtook her as she meandered down a vacant corridor; after sleeping four nights in a chair, she was desperate for a nap. Throwing her coat down beside an unlit heating stove, Nina curled up on it and dropped into sleep like falling into a black pit. It seemed only seconds later when a girl’s laughing voice said, “You look lost, sleepyhead!”
Nina pried open her eyelids. She’d been having some hazy dream of dogfighting through piled clouds as Marina Raskova’s voice whispered encouragement in her ear, and she said the first thing that came into her mind. “Are you my sister?”