Cold War

All she could do was sit and wait and think — think about the same things she had been thinking about ever since her encounter with her stepfather. She had been too ashamed of what had happened to tell Fl/Lt Boyd. He had warned her about this possibility, but she had thought she was so clever! She had been so sure she would not be recognised. She needed to find out who had betrayed her.

Mila was the obvious suspect — except she had never told Mila her real family name. On the other hand, Mila might have described her to the NKVD, who had put two-and-two together based on what she had said about her birthplace, her schooling, and her father’s fate.

Yet Galyna didn’t want to believe Mila had betrayed her. Mila was the best friend she’d ever had. Not to mention that Mila had said so many things that she could have been shot for!

Or had she said those things explicitly to win Galyna’s trust? Had she been able to say those things precisely because she was in the NKVD and had from the very first day been ordered to draw Galyna into a relationship? It was Mila, after all, who had approached her, not the other way around. Maybe it hadn’t been innocent curiosity after all. Maybe Mila had been set on her like a hunting dog.

The more Galyna thought about it, the more plausible this explanation appeared, and she started to picture what would happen when she confronted Mila. Maybe the Hero of the Soviet Union would joyously grab her hands (as she liked to do) and say something like: “At last, I can drop this pretence of opposing Comrade Stalin and the infallible Communist Party! Now we can work together for the greater glory of the Socialist Motherland! We will defeat the capitalists just as we defeated the fascists! We will crush them under our boots! Shall I teach you how to shoot? Imagine how much damage you could do with a machine gun in the control tower of Gatow! You could end the Airlift single-handed, and you’d become a Hero of the Soviet Union just like me!”

The door opened, snapping Galyna out of her daytime nightmare. Two Royal Military Policemen walked in and scanned the room with that suspicious and cynical look unique to military police the world over. They went from table to table demanding IDs. What the hell was going on? They came to her table and one barked at her: “ID!” She reached for her handbag and fumbled around inside. Meanwhile, the other policeman was speaking in threatening tones to one of the other customers. The latter offered excuses in a broken, heavily accented English. She handed her ID to the MP. Frowning, he looked from her to the photo and back as if comparing faces. Then he winked before returning it to her with apparent disinterest and the MPs tromped back out onto the street. With a rush of relief, she registered that Boyd must have told them to look after her.

Ten minutes later, Mila arrived. Her hair was windblown and the cold had turned her face as red as the cheeks on a Matrushka doll. She waved cheerfully at Galyna the moment she saw her and squeezed her way between the tables to give her a hug. She called for tea before she sat down and took Galyna’s hands to ask earnestly, “What is it? Has something happened?”

Galyna nodded but waited for the tea to be brought before lowering her voice. Then she described in chronological order and as clinically as possible everything that had happened the previous Saturday.

Mila listened intently. She kept her eyes fixed on Galyna’s face and her attention never wavered. When Galyna finished, she fell silent and waited for the outburst of joy and congratulations she had anticipated. There was dead silence instead. Eventually, Mila asked warily, “Colonel Maxim Dimitrivitch Ratanov is your stepfather?”

“Yes.”

Mila hesitated again before asking, “You know he is very high up in the NKVD?”

That didn’t surprise Galyna. She’d guessed that long ago — when he was able to get her a passport out of Russia to Finland. She’d hoped Mila could be more specific, but if she knew any more she chose not to share it. Galyna tried to explain, “I have hated him all my life, Mila — ever since he took my father’s place in our house and my mother’s bed. No matter who he is officially, to me he is the man who destroyed my father and took him away from me.”

Mila nodded slowly without breaking eye contact. They were probing and judging one another, and with each passing second Galyna felt hope returning. She didn’t know how her stepfather had found her, but she was increasingly confident it had not been through Mila.

At last, Mila spoke again. “I speak to you as a friend, Galyna. I am trusting you not to betray me.”

Galyna shook her head slowly and solemnly. “Would I be here if I did not trust you?”

Mila shrugged ambiguously and again considered her intently. Then she seemed to make a decision and announced, “Listen, Galyna. He is probably lying to you about your father, and even if he is not, he will not keep his word about improving his conditions. Nothing you do will help your father. Nothing. You must understand that. They lie whenever it is convenient. They think nothing of it. If you help them, so much the better, but they will not reward you for it. They will always want more. Today it is just information. Tomorrow they may want you to sabotage things — first little things, then bigger things. In the long run, they want to shut Gatow down because that would humiliate Britain — and it would end the Airlift. You must see that?”

“I understand that they would like to disrupt the Airlift, but I’m just a lowly translator. They can’t seriously think I could close the airfield!”

“Maybe not on your own and not straight away, but for now it is enough that you agreed to cooperate. The promise to ease the conditions of your father’s imprisonment was pure bait. You took it. Their next step will be to reel you in. That is, to make it more and more painful for you not to do what they demand.”

“But what else could I do?” Galyna asked back, feeling the snare closing around her already.

“You had no choice,” Mila agreed fatalistically. “You had to agree because you were in his hands. But you don’t have to comply. Walk out of that door, Galyna Nicolaevna, go back to Gatow,” Mila advised. Squaring her shoulders and speaking more forcefully still, she commanded: “Take the first aircraft out of Gatow and fly back to freedom.” Then she paused, and her voice faded away until it was almost inaudible as she added, in a low, wistful and infinitely sad undertone, “You are lucky to have such a choice.”