The place is sniperland, the place is Russia, and I can even tell you the time: 1939–1945. That’s the Soviet telescopic sight they mounted on their Mosin-Nagants, turning it into what I believe was a pretty good sniper rifle. The Russians really believed in the sniper as a strategic concept and sent thousands of them out against the Nazis. Much killing. The scope (3.5 means a magnification of 3.5) was solid, robust, primitive, nothing like the computer-driven things we have today. Range probably limited to under 500 meters and more usually way under that. Anyhow, if you see Mosin-Nagant 91 in conjunction with PU 3.5 in conjunction with any year between ’39 and ’45, you are most definitely in the sniper universe. I have to ask: What is Reilly doing in the sniper universe? It ain’t her usual neighborhood.
It didn’t take long for the reply. Five minutes.
That helps a lot. Thanks so much. It’s beginning to fit together. As to why, well, long story, work-related. I’m on deadline now, get back to you tomorrow with a long explainer.
So another full day passed, then at last came word from Reilly.
Let me apologize now. It’s really dull. Nothing to get excited about, just a feature. They’re always interested in feminist heroes, you know, the crooked lib press pro-feminist anti-male meme and all that stuff, so I pitched something to them and they bought it, and it gets me off the *&^%$))&! Siberian pipeline beat. I was in the Moscow flea market a few weeks back and I bought a pile of old magazines. I do that, looking for story ideas. I got one from 1943 called Red Star, a war thing, all agitprop as hell, all the pro-Joe stuff to make you throw up. Anyway there were four women on the cover, arms locked together, all in uniform tunics festooned with medals. Three looked like Pennsylvania Dutch lesbian cow milkers but the fourth was—you didn’t hear this from me—really a doll. As in knockout. She just blew the poor other three gals away. I read the story and the four were Russian snipers. Many kills, as you say, in Leningrad, two in Stalingrad, one in Odessa and all this stuff about the Mosin-Nagant and the PU 3.5. Anyhow got their names and the looker was called “Ludmilla Petrova” and she was the Stalingrad babe. Hmm, new to me. So I Googled “Russian women snipers” and got all kinds of dope and names—4,000 snipers, over 20,000 Germans killed, that sort of thing—but not a mention of Ludmilla Petrova. So I looked into it more and more, and though the other three survived the war and got fame and fortune, communism-style, out of the deal, there wasn’t a whisper about Petrova, whose nickname, from the ’43 mag article, was “Mili,” not “Luda,” as Ludmilla usually yields. So I dug deeper and deeper and indeed, sometime in mid-1944 it seems, Mili just disappeared. Not only as a person but as a personage. She ceased to exist. In fact, I found several other copies of the Red Star photo but she’d either been cropped or painted out. The Stalin people disappeared her. It happened back then. Orwell, remember: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
So now I’m interested. I’m poking around. Be neat to find out what happened to Mili, what she did to so infuriate the Red bosses that they redacted her from history. So that’s the piece, though I’m not having much luck with it, but in my dull Ohio way, I keep chipping away. I may have more sniper questions for you as I progress. Is that okay? Oh, and click on the attachment, I’ve scanned in that cover for you to see her.
He did as instructed, looked carefully at the woman.
Then he called his wife.
“I’m going to Moscow as soon as the paperwork clears,” he said.
Then he went to Amazon and bought about six hundred dollars’ worth of books on the Eastern Front.
CHAPTER 2
Moscow
On the Way to Red Square
JULY 1944
I know it’s hard to believe, looking at me,” the major said, “but I am an expert on beauty.”
Outside, the undamaged city rolled by, as the 1936 ZiL limo cruised down broad avenues under a scorching sun. Everywhere: neatness, tidiness, order, citizens about their business. Food seemed plentiful, the leaves of many trees rustled in a breeze, the sky was bright.
To her, cities were landscapes of ruins, inhabited mainly by corpses and rats and scrawny men crusted in filth. Survival was figured in units twenty-four hours long. The capital, by contrast, lay unscathed, though a few bombs had fallen in long-ago 1941. The Germans had gotten within eighteen miles and then the winter arrived, assisted by the 15th Guards Army. Not so Stalingrad, where she had spent the full six months of the battle. It was hard not to hate Moscow. One hated all headquarters towns, it was the soldier’s right and could not be helped in any case. Its wholeness was offensive. But such is war. Some survive, soldiers or cities; some do not.