In a solemn tone, Tatiana said, "I don't think people take me seriously. I color my hair black, I put on a little makeup, maybe they take me seriously."

"Dr. Flanagan," said Penny, "do you take Tatiana seriously?"

"Very seriously," replied Martin.

It was all the girls could do to keep from laughing.

Vikki, who went with Tatiana to the docks, would not let go of her for some minutes. "Please come back," she whispered.

Tatiana did not respond.

Martin and Penny stared. "Italians are so emotional," Tatiana said, walking up the plank with them and turning around to wave to Vikki.

Tatiana traveled in white slacks and a white tunic and a white kerchief with a red cross on it. She had gone to an army supply store and bought the best and largest canvas backpack, with many zippered pockets and an attached waterproof trench blanket/coat/tent. She packed another uniform for herself, sundries (toothbrushes for two), undergarments, and two olive drab civilian outfits-one for herself and one for a tall man. She packed the third cashmere blanket she had bought during her first Christmas in New York. She packed the P-38 gun Alexander had given her during the siege of Leningrad. She overstocked her nurse's bag with gauze and tape, and syringes filled with penicillin, and Squibb morphine syrettes. Into another compartment in the backpack, she put a Colt Model 1911 pistol and an outrageously expensive ($200) Colt Commando, apparently the best revolver, which fired not bullets but practically bombs. She also bought a hundred eight-cartridge magazines for the pistol, a hundred .357 rounds for the revolver, three 9-millimeter clips for the P-38 and two army knives. She bought the weapons at the "world famous" Frank Lava's. "If you want the best," said Frank himself, "you have to get the Commando. There is simply no heavier-duty, more accurate, more ferocious revolver in the world."

Frank raised his bushy eyebrows only once-when she asked for the box of a hundred magazines. "That's eight hundred rounds you got there."

"Yes, plus revolver rounds. Not enough? Should I get more?"

"Well, it depends," he said. "What's your objective?"

"Hmm," said Tatiana. "Better give me another fifty for...the Commando." She was doing so well with her definite articles.

She brought cigarettes.

She couldn't lift the backpack when she was done, plain could not lift it off the ground. She ended up borrowing a smaller canvas backpack from Vikki and putting the weapons into it. She carried the personal items on her back and the weapons bag in her hands. It was very heavy, and she wondered if perhaps she hadn't gone a bit overboard.

From her black backpack she took out their two wedding rings, still threaded through the rope she had worn at Morozovo hospital, and slipped the rope around her neck.

When she resigned from the Department of Public Health and Edward found out, he didn't want to talk to her. She went to say goodbye to him at Ellis, and he stared at her grimly and said, "I don't want to speak to you."

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry for that. But Edward, what else can I do?"

"Not go."

She shook her head. "He is alive-"

"Was alive. Nearly a year ago."

"What am I supposed to do? Leave him there?"

"This is crazy. You're leaving your son, aren't you?"

"Edward," Tatiana said, taking hold of his hand and looking at him with understanding eyes. "I'm so sorry. We almost...But I'm not single. I'm not a widow. I'm married, and my husband may be alive somewhere. I have to try to find him."

They sailed on the Cunard White Star liner, and it took them twelve days to reach Hamburg, Germany. The cargo vessel was filled with the prisoner medical kits from the United States, 100,000 of them, plus food kits and comfort parcels. The longshoremen spent half a day loading them onto large trucks to be transported to the Red Cross hospital in Hamburg and then distributed among the many Red Cross jeeps.

The white jeeps themselves were meant to be self-sufficient, to supply and feed teams of three Red Cross personnel-two nurses and a doctor, or three nurses-for a period of four weeks. The doctor was there to tend to the sick and wounded if need be, and there was certainly a need for tending: the refugees in the Displaced Persons camps they visited suffered from every malady known to man: fungus infections, eye infections, eczemas, tick bites, head lice, crab lice, cuts, burns, abrasion, open sores, hunger, diarrhea, dehydration.

In one such white jeep, Tatiana, Penny and Martin traveled to refugee camps scattered all over northern Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands. They may have had enough food to feed themselves, but the DPs didn't, and there were not nearly enough food parcels to distribute. Several times a day, Martin had to stop driving so they could help someone limping or walking, or lying by the side of the road. The whole of western Europe was reeling with the homeless and camps for them were springing up all over the countryside.

But one thing that was not springing up all over the countryside was Soviet refugees. Those were nowhere to be seen. And although there were plenty of soldiers, French, Italian, Moroccan, Czech, English, there were no Soviet soldiers.

Through seventeen camps and thousands and thousands of faces, Tatiana did not even come close to finding a Soviet man who had fought near Leningrad, much less to finding anyone who had ever heard of an Alexander Belov.

Thousands of faces, of pairs of hands reaching up, of foreheads she touched, desperate people infected and unwashed.

He was not here, she knew it, she felt it. He was not here. She walked each discouraging day from one camp to another, without Penny or Martin. The next camp was close-seven miles-and she did not want company, nor their chatter, she wanted to march herself into a life where she could feel for him and find him. Her heart sinking, fading in her chest, she could not feel for where he was.

She withdrew from Penny and Martin, wishing instead upon a New York sunset, wishing instead upon the face of her son, now three months going on forever without his mother. Wishing idly for warm bread, for good coffee, for the happiness of sitting on a couch covered up by a cashmere blanket reading a book with Vikki a nudge away, with Anthony a room away. Her blonde roots grew out faster than she could find a private bathroom with a mirror for her touch-ups. She took to wearing her nurse's kerchief at all times.

Three months. Since March, she had been driving the truck, handing out parcels, bandaging wounds, administering first aid, driving through destitute Europe, and every day bending to the ground in prayer as she bandaged another refugee. As she buried another refugee. Please let him be here. Another barracks, another infirmary, another military base. Be here, be here.

And yet...and yet...

The hope had not died completely.

The faith had not died completely.

Every night she went to sleep and every morning she woke up with renewed strength and looked for him.

She found another P-38 on a Ukrainian man who had died practically in her arms. She took his ruck which contained eight grenades and five eight-round clips. She crawled into the jeep and hid her new-found loot along with her weapons bag inside the hidden compartment underneath the floor, a thin, narrow hutch that held crutches and folding stretchers, or litters, and now held an arsenal of fire.

But when Tatiana finally realized that Alexander could not be where there was no trace of him, she quickly lost interest in this part of Europe and suggested they go elsewhere.

"What, you don't think the DPs need our help, Nurse Barrington?" said Martin. They were in Antwerp, Belgium.

"No, they do, they do. But there are so many others who need our help. Let's go to U.S. military base here and talk to base commander, Charles Moss." They had received from the International Red Cross the names and the maps of all U.S. installations and known DP camps in Europe.

"Where do you think they need us most, Colonel Moss?" she asked the commander of the base.

"I'd say Berlin, but I wouldn't recommend going there."

"Why not?"

"We're not going to Berlin," confirmed Martin.

"The Soviets have rounded up the German soldiers and imprisoned them," said Moss. "I hear the conditions there make the DP camps here seem like resorts on the Riviera. The Soviets have not allowed the Red Cross to distribute parcels in the camps, which is too bad. They could use the aid."

"Where are these Germans held?" Tatiana wanted to know.

"Ah, in a fitting irony, they're being held in the very concentration camps they themselves built."

"Why wouldn't you recommend going there?"

"Because Berlin is a ticking war bomb. There are three million people in the city that cannot be fed."

Tatiana knew something about that.

Moss continued. "The city needs three and a half million kilos of food-a day-and Berlin produces two per cent of that."

Tatiana knew even more about that.

"You figure it out. The sewers are out, the drinking pumps are out, there are no hospitals beds and almost no doctors. Dysentery, typhus, not our little eye infections. They need water, medical attention, grain, meat, fat, sugar, potatoes."

"Even in western zones?" asked Tatiana.

"A little better there. But you have to go to the Soviet zone to get to the concentration camps in eastern Germany. I wouldn't recommend it."

"Are the Soviets amenable?" she asked Moss.

"Yes," he replied. "Like the Huns."

After they left Antwerp, Tatiana said, "Dr. Flanagan, what you think? Should we head for Berlin?" The Soviets were in Berlin.

He shook his head. "Absolutely not. That wasn't on our agenda. Our mission is clear: the Low Countries and northern Germany."

"Yes, but Berlin needs us most. You heard the colonel. There is plenty for these parts."

"Not plenty. Not nearly enough," said Martin.

"Yes, but in eastern Germany, there isn't any."

Penny stepped in. "Tania is right, Martin. Let's go to Berlin."

Martin sniffed.

"Hey, how come you allow her to call you Martin?" asked Tatiana.

"I don't allow her," he said. "She just does it."

"Martin and I have traveled together through Europe since 1943," said Penny. "He was just an intern then. If he's going to make me call him Dr. Flanagan, I'm going to make him call me Miss Davenport."

Tatiana laughed. "But Penny, Davenport isn't your last name. It's Woester."

"I always liked Davenport."

All three of them were sitting in the front, squished together in the cabin of the jeep. Tatiana was squeezed between the stiff Martin, who was driving, and the soft Penny.

"Come on, let's see these work camps, Dr. Flanagan," said Tatiana. "Don't you feel needed? Berlin doesn't have enough doctors. You're a doctor. Go where you are needed."

"Doctor are needed everywhere," said Martin. "Why should we go into the quicksand that is Berlin? We're going to be sunk there."

But they went, first stopping off at Hamburg to replenish the supplies. Martin balked at filling the jeep with too many kits and food parcels, pointing out that regulations clearly stated that the trucks were not to be filled more than four feet high, but both Tatiana and Penny insisted, and their jeep was packed from floor to ceiling. Tatiana couldn't get to her stash under the floor. She figured if and when she needed it, the jeep would be less fully packed.

Tatiana could have firebombed the city of Berlin herself, so well armed and well stocked was she. She even brought a case of twenty liter-and-a-half bottles of vodka from Hamburg, buying it with her own money.

"Why do we need that? We don't need vodka!"

"You will see, Martin, without it, we will get nowhere."

"I don't want to allow that in my jeep."

"Believe me, you won't regret it."

"Well, I think drinking is a filthy habit. As a doctor I don't want to condone that sort of behavior."

"You're so right. Please don't condone." Tatiana slammed the doors of the jeep as if the matter had been closed.

Penny stifled a laugh.

"Nurse Woester, you are not helping. Nurse Barrington, did you not hear me? I don't think we should bring that alcohol."

"Dr. Flanagan, have you ever been in Soviet territory before?"

"Well, no."

"I didn't think so. Which is why you should trust me on this one. Just this one, all right? We will need the vodka."

Martin turned to Penny. "What do you think?"

"Tatiana here is the chief nursing practitioner at Ellis Island for New York's Department of Public Heath," said Penny. "If she says we should bring vodka, we should bring vodka."

Tatiana didn't want to correct her, she didn't want to say was the chief nursing practitioner.

In the DP camps as they traveled hundreds of kilometers through Allied-occupied western Germany, Tatiana found something else besides money, jewelry, pens and paper: the many hands of the desperately lonely-for-home soldiers. Nearly each one, as she bent over him, touched her and whispered something, in French, or Italian, or German, or in familiar warming English, about what a nice girl she was and what a dark girl and what a pretty girl, and was she lonely too, was she married, was she willing, was she, was she, was she, and to every one of them, Tatiana-who did not stop touching their heads to bring them comfort-would quietly say, "I'm here to look for my husband, I'm here to find my husband, I'm not one for you, I'm not the one."

Penny, however, was not attached and was not looking for her husband. What was she looking for? Tatiana was glad Vikki had not come to this cauldron of reckless male want. Vikki would have thought the gods were finally answering her prayers. Penny, less attractive than Vikki-and maybe therein lay the problem-could not stop herself from feeling flattered and from succumbing to their pleas, and every week or so, needed to take injections of penicillin to ward off sicknesses the thoughts of which made Tatiana a little bit sick herself.

There were some wards and some camps, in Bremen for instance, where things were so heated that the Red Cross nurses were not allowed to go into the wards by themselves, either without an armed convoy or without a male Red Cross representative. Trouble was, the convoy sometimes was paid to look the other way, and the Red Cross male reps were unreliable. In all honesty, who could Martin have stopped?

Tatiana took to carrying the P-38 on her at all times, tucked into her belt at her back. Often she did not feel safe.

To get to Berlin, they had to pass through a number of Soviet checkpoints. Every five miles or so, they were stopped by another military post on the road. Tatiana thought of them not as checkpoints but as ambushes. Every time they looked at her American passport, her heart thumped extra loud in her chest. What if one of them was alerted to the name Jane Barrington?

As they pulled away after one checkpoint, Martin said, "Why do you call yourself Tania if your name is Jane Barrington?" He paused. "Rather, why did you name yourself Jane Barrington if your name is Tania?"

"Martin! Don't be such a clod," exclaimed Penny. "Don't you know anything? Tania escaped from the Soviet Union. She wanted to give herself an American name. Right, Tania?"

"Something like that."

"So why would you be going back into Soviet-occupied territory if you escaped from the Soviet Union?"

"Oh, that is a good question, Martin," said Penny. "Why, Tania?"

"I go where I'm needed most," said Tatiana slowly. "Not where it's most convenient."

Every other checkpoint, the Soviet soldiers asked to inspect the jeep. Since the truck of the jeep was packed to the gills, all the soldiers did was open the doors and close them again. They did not know about the hidden compartment so they never requested to look in there, nor did they look through the personal belongings. Martin would have had a conniption if he saw how much morphine Tatiana was carrying in her nurse's bag.