Time and again she was imprisoned and released-barely, just for breath; time and again she burned for Alexander, in the hands of Alexander, and cried out again, Oh, Shura...endlessly, endlessly.

During brief respite, he continued to lie with his limbs over her, and again she was crying.

He whispered, "Tatia, what's a man to think when every time he makes love to his wife, she cries?"

"That he is his wife's only family," said Tatiana, crying. "That he is her whole life."

"As she is his," he said. "You don't see him crying." Tatiana could not see his face-it was buried in her breasts.

There was no night.

There was only twilight; the sky turned blue then lavender, then pink again within minutes that weren't long enough.

The night was not long enough.

Not long enough for the floor in Mathew Sayers's office, for Lisiy Nos, for the swamps of Finland, not long enough for Stockholm.

Not long enough for the punishment cell in Morozovo, for the ten grains of morphine in Slonko, for the drive across Europe with Nikolai Ouspensky.

Not long enough for the river Vistula.

And nothing was long enough for the forests and mountains of Holy Cross.

"Don't tell me another word." Tatiana's voice was defeated. "I don't have the strength to hear it."

"I don't have the strength to tell it."

After Tatiana heard about Pasha, she could not talk or look at Alexander, as she lay supine, her legs drawn up to her chest, while he lay behind her whispering, "I'm sorry, Tania. I'm sorry."

Just a gasp from a bereft Tatiana.

"I was dying in 1944 before I found him," said Alexander. "You can't imagine what stormed inside me as I pushed my penal battalion across every fucking river in Poland."

"Alexander, what I would have given for a penal battalion."

He kissed the soft flesh between her shoulder blades.

She rolled into a tighter coil, seeking to return to the place she had once shared with her brother.

Alexander didn't even bother uncoiling her to return to the place he shared with her.

Alexander was not so much sleeping as unconscious, while Tatiana was propped up on her elbow, tracing the scars on his body. She didn't want to wake him but she couldn't stop touching him. He had marks on his body that defied her understanding. How could a body bear all this yet live, thinner than before, less whole than before, raggedly tearing apart at the seams, yet live?

Her hand cupped him softly, then ran down to his shins, and up again to his arms, where it stayed, caressing him, while Tatiana stared at his sleeping face.

There is one moment, a moment in eternity. Before we find out the truth about one another. That simple moment is the one that propels us through life-what we felt like at the very edge of our future, standing over the abyss, before we knew for sure we loved. Before we knew for sure we loved forever. Before the dying Dasha, the dying Mama, the dying Leningrad. Before Luga. Before the divinity of Lazarevo, when the miracles you heaped upon me with your love and your body alloyed us for life. Before all that, you and I walked through the Summer Garden, and once in a while my bare arm touched your arm, and once in a while you spoke and that gave me an excuse to look up into your face, into your laughing eyes, to catch a glimpse of your mouth and I, who had never been touched, tried to imagine what it might be like to have your mouth touch me. Falling in love with you in the Summer Garden in the white nights of Leningrad is the moment that propels me through life.

He woke up, saw her. "What are you doing?" he whispered.

"Watching over you," she whispered back.

And he closed his eyes and reached for her, taking her almost without waking, and then slept.

The next morning at dawn, the farmer came in to milk the cows. They lay silently in the loft and listened to him, and after he left, Tatiana dressed, went down the ladder and squeezed some milk for her and Alexander into a cup she carried to dispense medicine. He came with her, holding both pistols in his hands.

They drank to bursting.

"My God, you're thinner than I've ever seen you," she said. "Have some more milk. Have all of it."

He drank. "You're curvier than I've ever seen you." He bent to her on the little stool. "Your breasts are bigger."

"Motherhood, I guess," she muttered, kissing him.

"Let's go up," he said, his hand on her.

They went up. But before they had a chance to undress, they heard the sound of an engine outside. It was seven in the morning. Alexander looked out the small, four-pane loft window. A military truck was outside and four Red Army officers were talking to the farmer in the clearing.

He glanced back at Tatiana.

"Who's there?" she whispered.

"Tania, sit back against the wall but not too far. Hold the P-38 and the ammo."

"Who's there?"

"They've come for us."

She emitted a cry, creeping to the window. "Oh, my God, there are four of them, what are we going to do, we're trapped up here!"

"Shh. Maybe they'll leave." Alexander readied the machine gun, all three pistols and the Commando. She watched them out of the corner of the window. The farmer was opening his hands, shrugging his shoulders. The soldiers were coming up too close to him, pointing to the house, the fields, and finally the barn. The farmer moved out of their way, motioning with his hand in the direction of the barn.

"The revolver, is it double action, or single action?"

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Double action, I think. I'm almost sure," she said, trying to remember. "Does it recock by itself you mean? Yes."

Alexander lay flat with two bales in front of him, the machine gun and pistols by his right side, the Commando in his hands pointed at the ladder. Tatiana, her shaking hands full of clips, sat against the barn wall behind him.

He turned around. "Not a single sound, Tania. Stop shaking."

Mutely she nodded. Tried to stop shaking.

The barn door opened and the farmer came in with one of the officers. Tatiana's heart was beating so loudly that she could barely hear. The officer spoke very poor German intermingled with Russian. The farmer must have told him that no one had been through these parts, because the officer yelled in Russian, "You're sure of this, you're sure?"

They went on in circles like this for a few seconds, and suddenly the officer stopped speaking and looked around. "Do you smoke?" he asked in Russian.

"Nein, nein," said the farmer. "Ich rauche nei in der Scheune wegen Brandgefahr."

"Well, fire or no fire, somebody has been smoking in your fucking barn!"

Tatiana put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out.

The officer ran out of the barn. She looked out the window. He said something to the rest of the men. One of them turned off the engine and they all retrieved their machine guns.

"Shura," Tatiana whispered.

"Shh. Don't speak. Don't even breathe."

The farmer was still standing in the middle of his barn when the four Soviets walked in with their weapons.

"Get the fuck out of here," one of them said to the farmer. He ran.

"Who's here?" they called.

Tatiana held her breath.

"There's no one here," said one of them.

"We know you're here, Belov," said another. "Just come out and nobody will get hurt."

Alexander said nothing.

"You have a wife you should think about. You want her to live, don't you?"

Tatiana heard the quiet creaking of the ladder.

Alexander lay so still you could have walked by him and not known he was there. There was another creak.

One of the officers below said, "If you come out peacefully, your wife will get amnesty."

Another said, "We are all heavily armed. You cannot escape. Let's do this reasonably."

Alexander barely even leaned over. He just tipped the Commando downward and fired a .357 bullet into the head of the man on the ladder. The man flew backward in a spasm, the other men crouched, raising their guns, but they couldn't raise them fast enough, nor hide. Alexander aimed fired, aimed fired, aimed fired. The men didn't have a chance to take cover, much less open fire.

He jumped up and turned to Tatiana. "Let's go," he said. "Can't stay here another second. If the farmer has a telephone, he's on it right now."

"Maybe he doesn't have a telephone," Tatiana muttered.

"Can't count on that, can we? Hurry."

She quickly collected their things while Alexander reloaded the revolver.

"Nice weapon, Tania," he said. "Some recoil on it, though. What's the muzzle velocity, do you know?"

"The man who sold it to me told me it was four hundred and fifty meters per second."

Alexander whistled. "Immense power. Almost like my Shpagin. Are you ready?"

They glanced out the window to make sure no one was coming, and then descended the ladder, stepped over the dead men at the door-though not before Alexander reached into their pockets and relieved them of their Soviet cigarettes-and were out. From their truck, Alexander took one light machine gun and one ammunition belt. Tatiana asked how he was going to carry another machine gun, this one with a bipod, plus a sub-machine-gun, three sidearms, and all the ammo.

"Don't worry about my end," he said, throwing the metal ammunition belt around his neck. "Just worry about yours."

"We could take their truck," Tatiana suggested.

"Yes, good idea, we'll drive it to the next checkpoint."

They ran through the fields, away from the farm, into the forest.

They walked until noon.

"Can we stop?" Tatiana pleaded. They were about to cross a stream. "You must be tired. We'll wash up, maybe have a bite to eat. Where are we, anyway?"

"Nowhere," he said, reluctantly stopping. "Barely four miles from the farm and the Soviet army."

"Four miles south?" she said with hope. "That would mean that we're only about-"

"West. We're not heading south."

She stared at him. "What do you mean, we're not heading south? Berlin is south."

"Hmm. That's where they think we'll be going."

"But eventually we have to go south, no?"

"Eventually, yes."

She didn't want to say anymore. They washed their faces and brushed their teeth. "Just don't give me any of that morphine toothpaste," Alexander said.

She unpacked a few things to eat. She had Spam-with a smile. And he actually smiled back, and said, "I like it. But how do you plan to open it?"

"Ah, because it comes from America," she said, "it has a little can opener built into the cap."

She had some dried bread, dried apple chips. They ate, drinking water out of the stream.

"Okay, let's go," he said, springing up.

"Shura," she said, glancing up at him. "I'd like to go in the water. Wash. All right? It won't take long."

He sighed.

After he had smoked two or three cigarettes, he undressed and went into the water after her.

They were sitting on a log next to the stream in the canopied and secluded woods. They were both astride the log, she in front of him, with her back to him. He was wearing his skivvies. She was wearing a white tank top and underwear. They weren't speaking.

Presently Alexander leaned down to her and, kissing her neck under her ear, whispered, "I want to see those freckles." Tatiana purred in a soft chime, and turned her head to him. They looked at each other a moment, and then they kissed. The brush fell from his hands as they went around her neck, touching the wedding bands.