The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 47: The Correspondent

The Volga froze on January 16. Jillian watched it change. She'd thought it had frozen a week earlier. Then its surface had been an uneven jumble of frozen snow, the icebergs forming into a treacherous landscape like a field of broken granite boulders.

She'd suggested they leave then, but Sgt. Pavlov shook his head "no". "Watch the icebergs," he advised her, "and pay special attention to their starting positions."

"Starting positions?" Jillian wondered. "What does that mean?"

"You'll see," assured Pavlov.

And she did see.

The craggy surface of the river was moving. When she first looked, the tallest berg was in the very center of the river. But when she looked again, several hours later, it was now close to the far shore. That meant that despite appearing to be a solid surface, the icebergs were actually constantly shifting. If they tried to cross a hole could open up and swallow them into the river's frigid depths.

As the days progressed, however, the surface of the river began to smooth. By the morning of the eighteenth it had turned glassy. White lines curled across its surface, marking the river's current, freezing its waves in place.

That afternoon new supplies arrived: hard biscuits, beef bouillon, canned spam and herring, pickled eggs, loaves of real, soft, black bread, and, most luxurious of all, butter.

That night they feasted in celebration. The soldiers worked together to brew a big kettle of stew, rich with bouillon and thick with spam and eggs. They used the German soup pot, and threw in two entire sticks of butter to fatten the broth. They crumbled the hard bread into crumbs and stirred it into the pot. Then the served it with black bread, some soldiers choosing to dip the slices into the stew, others choosing to eat them separately, spread with herrings.

There was no liquor left, but they became drunk on the feast. They became intoxicated with life and survival and optimism. The Volga had frozen, the Germans were surrounded, the worse was behind them, they might actually survive Stalingrad! And when their bellies were full – which didn't take long, as emaciated as they were – they got drunk on music. They cranked the radio's battery full and danced through the night.

Alone among the residents of Pavlov's House, Jillian remained sober with worry and responsibility. She didn't want to, she wanted to celebrate with the others. But Dr. Parsons and the O.S.S. wouldn't allow her. They sent message after message to her, the Turkish radio announcer hiding coded meaning behind his announcements of bands, songs and records. Jillian heard her activation code over and over again, but she had to pretend these messages were meaningless. She had to pretend that she was as drunk and carefree as the soldiers and orphans. She and Karen were the only women in the house, and so they were forced to dance to exhaustion, passed from partner to partner late into the night.

Jillian kept her smile plastered to her face. She laughed automatically when she heard others laugh, and she mechanically moved her feet and body to the rhythm of the music.

Inside, however, her mind was reeling and her heart was racing. She tried to translate the codes in her head but they were too complex. She tried to memorize them, but there were too many. There was nothing she could do but wait.

By the time the celebration finally wound down, it was only a few hours before dawn. As soldiers settled down to sleep or to sentry duty, Jillian brushed past Bobby in the hall. "Meet me on the roof in an hour," she told him. Even though they hadn't spoken to each other he knew who she was – he knew she was the O.S.S. operative that had activated him over the radio.

Then she walked away without giving him a chance to respond.

Jillian took a circuitous route to the roof, herself. She recovered her radio from the hiding place through a bomb hole and beneath the rafters. Then she lay on her belly, placed the radio headset over both ears, and opened her code book.