Beautiful Assassin Read online

  I tried to gain control of my breathing, but each breath sent a new wave of pain knifing through me. I hoped that my act was convincing. From somewhere behind me, I could hear Zoya calling. She couldn’t see me where I lay, not without leaving the safety of the foxhole and exposing herself.

  “Tat’yana! Tat’yana, are you all right?” When I didn’t answer, Zoya called again. “I’m coming for you.”

  “Don’t!” I hissed through clenched teeth.

  I would wait until dark and then crawl back to safety. However, the pain in my side was fierce, and coupled with an intense throbbing that commenced at the back of my skull, I felt my head reeling. I saw a flickering shadow pass overhead, crossing between myself and the sunlight. I thought of that poem by the American poet Dickinson that one of my teachers back in school, a Madame Rudneva, had had me recite in English: With blue—uncertain stumbling buzz—between the light—and me. I thought at first it was a plane or a bird, but then I realized I was losing consciousness. I shivered, feeling cold creep suddenly over my limbs, as if I were slipping into frigid water. My eyesight began to fail. After a while, darkness stole over me completely. In that darkness I remember calling out Masha’s name.

  When I came to—minutes? hours? later—I felt a burning thirst. My tongue was swollen and dry in my mouth, like an old piece of leather. It hurt to swallow. After a time, I chanced opening my eyes a crack, the light which poured in scalding my brain. Was I in the land of the dead? I wondered. When my eyes had had a chance to adjust, the first thing I saw was an old, weathered gravestone. It was that of a woman—Elyzaveta Fedutenko. Next to hers was another headstone, what I assumed was her husband, and next to that, two others, their children, I guessed from the dates of their births. They had all died in the same year: 1932. Doubtless they’d perished in the Holodomor, the great famine that had swept across the Ukraine when I was a girl.

  As I lay there looking at the stone, I thought again of my own child, my Masha. Perhaps because my head was still dazed, for a moment her memory came as a thing of undiluted joy. I pictured her in the park near the Dnieper, not far from where we’d lived. I saw her running toward me, her hair, blond and fine like Kolya’s, bouncing as she ran, calling out to me, “Mama, Mama.” As I lay there, I felt the sun’s warmth waning, saw that its angle had changed. It had slid off toward the western horizon, beyond the sea. From the lengthening shadow of the nearby gravestone, I guessed it to be six, maybe seven o’clock. If only I could make it a little while longer. More time passed. Who could say how much? When you are lying half dead, waiting for your executioner to come, time has little meaning.

  But as twilight settled in over the cemetery, out of the corner of my eye I caught the faintest movement toward the northeast. A figure in khaki detached itself from the woods and approached stealthily over the uneven terrain, moving up the hill through the now sparse orchard. Moving toward me. I could make him out only from his chest up. He carried a rifle and moved quickly but cautiously in a crouch. I wondered what to do. Where Zoya waited, she might not see him approach from this angle. I remained still until the German dipped momentarily out of sight, then I grabbed my rifle and rolled behind the headstone of Elyzaveta Fedutenko. I flicked off the safety and fixed my sights on the general area where I’d last seen the kraut. It was barely a hundred meters, so I wouldn’t need the scope.

  I didn’t spot him for a while and panic seized my chest. He was a clever one. What if he were trying to outflank me, come around from the side? But just at that moment, I saw the top of his head bobbing as he approached from the northeast. He was flitting from tree to tree, moving cautiously. He waited at the last tree, surveying the cemetery. From this vantage point, he still couldn’t quite see the ground beneath the tree from which I’d fallen. He paused there for a moment, and I found myself doing that odd thing I sometimes did—entering my enemy’s thoughts, trying to imagine what he would be thinking. The Russian whore thought she was so clever! The Germans were a prideful lot, I’d come to understand. They did not like to be bested, and certainly not by a mere woman. It brought out in them a boyish bravado, a recklessness that made them vulnerable. If I had been a male sniper he’d have been satisfied, I’m quite sure, to leave things as they were, simply to chalk me up in his kill log and call it a day, go back to his German lines and celebrate with some warm food. But my being a woman compelled him to want to stand over my dead body, to take something that was mine. My cap, my Red Banner medal, my leather case containing my personal effects, the letter from Kolya, the lock of hair of Masha’s. Something to possess, to show his mates.

  So this led the German to make his own foolish mistake. Without seeing my body, he took several quick steps into the cemetery, out into the open. When he could finally view the ground beneath the tree and he didn’t see me, he froze. Nervously, he scanned the area, his gun swung up to his shoulder, his knees bent in a position to fire. It took him only a moment to understand the full measure of his error, but when he did, he whirled and started to run back toward cover. He and I shared one thought: he was a dead man. Before he’d taken three steps, I had him in my sights. Quickly but calmly, I aimed the rifle and kissed the trigger. As always when a bullet strikes true, I could feel it before I saw its effects, could feel it in my right shoulder and in my trigger finger, in my bowels, in some part of my brain, too. I could usually tell as soon as I fired, the sweet certainty of putting a bullet exactly where I’d meant to. The impact spun the German halfway around. He staggered sideways and dropped to one knee. His rifle had fallen to the ground before him, and he struggled to get to it. Even now he was a soldier, and I felt a grudging admiration for that, despite the hatred I bore him. Without thinking, I worked the bolt and chambered another round. I was prepared to put a second bullet into him, but he suddenly collapsed onto his face and lay still. As our ammo was becoming scarce, we Soviets knew to be frugal. This one was dead. Then I told myself what I always did after killing a German: For you, Masha. For you, my love.

  I got up and trotted to where he lay, keeping my rifle trained on his prone figure, my head low so as not to be exposed to the enemy lines below. Up close I nudged him with my boot, ready to shoot him again if he showed any sign of life. He didn’t move, so I rolled him over. The bullet had entered through his left shoulder blade and exited the middle of his chest, tearing away his NCO’s breast eagle and leaving a jagged, bloody hole in his tunic. A dark, wet stain had spread out over the front of his uniform. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted and forming what looked like a vague smile. Up close, I saw that my adversary was younger than I by a few years, perhaps only twenty-one. Good-looking in that frugal, Aryan sort of way, with angular features, straight white teeth, close-cropped, light brown hair. At his neck he wore the Iron Cross, which he’d no doubt won for his marksmanship. I could just imagine this King of Death in some beer hall back in Berlin or Munich bragging to all the pretty fräuleins about how he’d got the better of some Red whore who was supposed to be such a deadly sniper. And yet, lying there, he didn’t look much like a king now. Merely a cocky boy who needed to be taught some manners. Am I your whore now? I thought with a prideful anger. What surprised me about war wasn’t the fact that killing had become so easy. No. It was that one grows to actually enjoy it, to savor it, as you would any other hard-earned skill. Writing poetry or winning a footrace.

  I knelt and lay my weapon down and began riffling through his clothes. I found some letters, one or two pictures, which I tossed aside. I didn’t want to know his name, his past, anything about him. He was just a cipher to me: 288. Nothing more than that. Another number to chalk up in my kill log. In one pocket I came upon a half-eaten piece of chocolate, his teeth marks scalloping the edges. Zoya loved chocolate, so I stuffed it in my tunic as a gift to her. Next, I stripped him of his ammo pouches and his bayonet. A comrade of mine named Kolyshkin, a radioman, liked to collect German souvenirs, so I leaned down to take the Iron Cross from about his throat. The pin was fastened tight, an
d I struggled getting it free. That’s when an odd thing happened—the dead man opened his eyes and stared at me.

  Startled, I was forced backward onto my heels. I grasped his bayonet and brought it toward his throat, prepared to finish him off. But for some reason I paused, curiously watching him. He didn’t move, just stared up at me. It had been a definite kill shot and by rights he should have been dead. And yet he wasn’t. His breathing was shallow and labored, a sucking noise rattling from lungs slowly drowning in their own blood. A fine red froth began to gather at the corners of his mouth. He lay there looking up at me, a peculiar expression in his light-blue eyes. It wasn’t hatred or fear or even desperation. He seemed well beyond such earthly concerns. His eyes were almost calm, and there was in them a kind of resigned understanding, the sort that sometimes—though not always—comes to one about to die in battle.

  I wondered what to do. This had never happened to me before. Should I just turn and leave him there to die, as I knew he would shortly? Or should I use his bayonet to give him the coup de grâce? Even a German should not die such a death, I felt. As I made a move with the knife, though, he reached out and grasped my wrist. For a moment I thought he intended to fight me. So I switched the bayonet to my other hand, was about to plunge it into his throat, but I realized he had no fight left in him. The color had already left his face, and while I thought to pull away, I didn’t. For some reason, I permitted his hand to remain locked on my wrist. I don’t know why. To this day, I don’t know why. Perhaps I was just too startled to do otherwise. His lips came together, and he appeared to be struggling to say something.

  “What?” I asked, my tone impatient. I wanted him to get on with this business of dying. I was hungry and tired, my body aching from the fall, and I wanted only to get back to my own lines. To warm food and the comforting banter of my comrades around me, and to the oblivion of sleep.

  He tried again, but nothing came out save for that rattling sound in his chest. So I leaned down and placed my ear near his mouth. His breath had the metallic odor of blood on it, the stink of the grave.

  This time he said something. It sounded like a name: “Senta.”

  “What?” I asked.

  He said it again, staring up at me, his eyes pleading. “Senta.”

  I knew only a few German expressions, so I decided to try the little English I possessed. “Your wife?” I asked.

  But I could see the humanness rapidly ebbing from his eyes, the pupils seeming to relax, to widen, as if to allow his soul room to exit through them. He repeated the word a third time, staring up at me imploringly. “Senta.”

  “What do you want?” I cried.

  He stared at me silently. I brought the bayonet to his throat, unsure whether it was to put him out of his misery or to end my own discomfort. But his eyes glazed over and his end on this earth came.

  Only then did I realize that his hand was still locked on my wrist. I had to pry his fingers off. Freed of them, I could see their imprint still in my flesh. I stood then, staring down at my dead foe. I didn’t exactly feel remorse, but something closer to anger, a sudden, inexplicable anger. Don’t blame me, I felt like saying to him. You brought this on yourself. But he merely continued to stare up at me with his dead, accusatory eyes, like the stony eyes of a statue.

  It was getting dark, and I didn’t want to be mistakenly shot by my own sentries, so I collected his rifle and the other spoils of the victor, and trotted quickly back toward where Zoya was waiting.

  “It’s me,” I called as I approached.

  “Mother of Jesus,” Zoya replied, crossing herself. She threw her arms around me and hugged so hard my bruised ribs hurt.

  “Easy,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “I injured my side when I fell.”

  “For a while there I thought you…”

  “That’s what he thought too,” I said with a nod of my head back toward where the German lay.

  “Did you get him?”

  By way of answer I handed her the Mauser.

  “Wait till they hear back at camp!” she exclaimed. “You killed the King of Death, Tat’yana! You got him.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “I got him.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, little mother, I’m fine.”

  As we headed back to our lines, though, something didn’t sit right with me. Though I should have been exalted and proud of what I’d pulled off, that I was still alive, I couldn’t get the image of the German out of my mind. The way he’d stared at me, how he’d insisted on telling me the name of his wife or sweetheart or whoever the hell it was. I could still feel the pressure of his hand locked on my wrist, a cruel reminder that even the Germans were human.

  2

  That night when we got back to our lines, word quickly spread that I’d gotten the King of Death. The news buoyed our company’s spirits immeasurably, so little had we to celebrate over the past several months. Many of my comrades came by to offer their congratulations. Kolyshkin, the radioman, thanked me for the Iron Cross I’d brought him as a memento, and some looked at the German’s Mauser, touching the rifle reverently, as if it were a religious relic. Our company commander, Captain Petrenko, even broke out a bottle of vodka he’d been saving and toasted the two of us.

  “To Levchenko and Kovshova,” he said. “For getting the son of a bitch.”

  The troops whooped and hollered, and gave us a cheer, which embarrassed me a little but also made me feel quite proud. I bathed in the sweet afterglow of victory.

  Zoya delighted in relating the story of how I’d managed to pull it off. The way I’d fallen from the tree, how I’d tricked the King of Death into believing he’d shot me, then lured him into my trap and sprung it when he got close enough.

  “You should have seen the look on that Fritz’s face,” she said, mimicking the surprised expression of the German. A number of us were in an underground bunker, the ceiling of which was reinforced with heavy timbers and several meters of earth against the Germans’ bombing runs. It was lit by several smoky lanterns that made the eyes burn. Zoya held the Mauser and pretended she was the King of Death sneaking up on me, taking exaggerated steps, like a character in a dumb show. She was quite the little actress. The other soldiers laughed heartily at her antics. Even I couldn’t help but smile, this despite the fact that the image of the German continued to sit uneasily in my thoughts. I kept seeing his blue eyes staring at me, his whispering that name to me. Of course, I hadn’t told Zoya about any of that. The fact that she hadn’t even seen my shot didn’t stop her in the least from embellishing the story. She was always bragging about my marksmanship, which made me a bit uncomfortable. Though I worked hard at being a good soldier and was proud of my accomplishments as a sniper, I didn’t want my comrades to feel jealous about the acclaim I’d received, especially from the higher-ups.

  “The kraut comes walking toward the sergeant and realizes he’s fucked,” Zoya explained. She’d come to the unit a simple country girl, modest and plainspoken, in some ways as pious as a nun. But now, especially in front of the others, she swore like a fishwife. With me, though, she was still the same innocent girl. “And the German takes to his heels. The sergeant here”—she glanced over at me, winking—“puts a round in the kraut’s back from three hundred meters. Three hundred meters, without a scope!”

  “She exaggerates,” I said. “Not a third that distance.”

  “It’s the God’s truth,” pleaded Zoya, crossing herself.

  And so it went.

  Over the next several days, each time she would retell it, the difficulty of the shot as well as the distance grew. Nonetheless, the troops enjoyed hearing the story about the killing of the German, and so I thought, let her tell her story. They could use some good news for a change. There was a collective sigh of relief that the King of Death could kill no more. It was as if we’d won a great battle, instead of defeating just one stinking fascist. Several of the other snipers in the un
it came up to me to offer their congratulations.

  “Good shooting, Sergeant,” said a young man named Cheburko, who came from Donetsk after that city fell to the Germans. There was among the other snipers and myself a friendly sort of competition. We joked and chided one another, playfully bragging among ourselves of our exploits, the difficulty of certain shots, the number of our kills. In the first months of the war, when I’d started to make a name for myself as a sniper, some of them, I must say, begrudged my success. What does a woman know about sniping, I knew they sneered behind my back. But as time went on, most grew at first to accept, then to respect, me. Among snipers there is a certain camaraderie, as among members of a football squad.

  “Thank you, comrade,” I said. “Our team was successful.”

  “What team?” scoffed Zoya. “I didn’t do a thing. It was all the sergeant’s doing. Such shooting you would not believe.”

  Later, Yuri Sokur, the company medic, tended to the laceration along the back of my scalp.

  “I guess congratulations are in order, Sergeant,” he said to me. Yuri was a small, wiry man with a pinched and contemplative face that reminded one of a very brooding monkey. Before the war, he’d been an undertaker, and with his knowledge of the body they had sent him for medical training. He was known for his poor bedside manner, perhaps owing to the fact that his previous patients weren’t able to complain very much. But for some reason he liked me, looked out for me like an older brother.