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wouldn’t understand.
    Even Brenda couldn’t ruin breakfast—eggs and ham and tomatoes and milky coffee (dehydrated milk or no). Tatiana ate and drank sitting on her bed. She had to admit that the sheets, the softness of the mattress and the pillows, and the thick woolen blanket were comforts like bread—crucial.
    “Can I have my son now? I need to feed him.” Her breasts were full.
    Brenda slammed the window shut. “Don’t open the window anymore,” she said. “Your child will catch cold.”
    “Summer air will make him catch cold?”
    “Yes, moist , wet summer air will.”
    “But you just said me to go outside for walk—”
    “Outside air is outside air, inside air is inside air,” Brenda said.
    “He has not caught my TB,” Tatiana said, coughing loudly for effect. “Bring me my baby, please.”
    After Brenda brought the baby and Tatiana fed him, she went to open the window again and then perched herself up on the window sill, cradling the infant in her arms. “Look, Anthony,” whispered Tatiana in her native Russian. “Do you see? Do you see the water? It is pretty, right? And across the harbor there is a big city with people and streets, and parks. Anthony, as soon as I am better, we will take one of those loud ferry boats and walk on the streets of New York. Would you like that?” Stroking her infant son’s face, Tatiana stared across the water.
    “Your father would,” she whispered.

CHAPTER THREE
    Morozovo, 1943
    MATTHEW SAYERS APPEARED BY Alexander’s bed at around one in the morning and stated the obvious. “You’re still here.” He paused. “Maybe they won’t take you.”
    Dr. Sayers was an American and an eternal optimist.
    Alexander shook his head. “Did you put my Hero of the Soviet Union medal in her backpack?” was all he said.
    The doctor nodded.
    “Hidden, as I told you?”
    “As hidden as I could.”
    Now it was Alexander’s turn to nod.
    Sayers brought from his pocket a syringe, a vial, and a small medicine bottle. “You’ll need this.”
    “I need tobacco more. Have you got any of that?”
    Sayers took out a box full of cigarettes. “Already rolled.”
    “They’ll do.”
    Sayers showed Alexander a small vial of colorless liquid. “I’m giving you ten grains of morphine solution. Don’t take it all at once.”
    “Why would I take it at all? I’ve been off it for weeks.”
    “You might need it, who knows? Take a quarter of a grain. Half a grain at most. Ten grains is enough to kill two grown men. Have you ever seen this administered?”
    “Yes,” said Alexander, Tania springing up in his mind, syringe in her hands.
    “Good. Since you can’t start an IV, in the stomach is best. Here are some sulfa drugs, to make sure infection does not recur. A small container of carbolic acid; use it to sterilize your wound if all the other drugs are gone. And a roll of bandages. You’ll need to change the dressing daily.”
    “Thank you, Doctor.”
    They fell silent.
    “Do you have your grenades?”
    Alexander nodded. “One in my bag, one in my boot.”
    “Weapon?”
    He patted his holster.
    “They’ll take it from you.”
    “They’ll have to. I’m not surrendering it.”
    Dr. Sayers shook Alexander’s hand.
    “You remember what I told you?” Alexander asked. “Whatever happens to me, you’ll take this”—he took off his officer cap, handing it to the doctor—“and you will write me a death certificate and you will tell her that you saw me dead on the lake and then pushed me into an ice hole, and that’s why there is no body. Clear?”
    Sayers nodded. “I’ll do what I have to,” he said. “I don’t want to do it.”
    “I know.”
    They were grim.
    “Major…what if I do find you dead on the ice?”
    “You will write me a death certificate and you will bury me in Lake Ladoga. Make a sign of the cross on me before you push me in.” He shuddered slightly. “Don’t forget to give her my cap.”
    “That guy, Dimitri Chernenko, is always around my