Hugo, with no small reluctance, said, “My father designed locomotives.” And then, before he could stop himself, he added, “He was an engineer of engineers.” He grimaced, but then there were many calls as to how clever that phrase was, and Hugo was grabbed by the shoulders and arms and ordered by Lieutenant Gordon toward the railway yard to find a suitable locomotive to steal.

3

Hugo protested that he was behind on the new technology, that diesel had displaced steam. He was unfamiliar with the type of coal they used in Russia, Lord only knew what kind of electricity was necessary, and he’d really only worked on the tiniest shunters, shays, and switchers. But when he reached the train yard, his protests died in his throat.

There were a dozen locomotives in various stages of decay, all of them the most rudimentary design. After a moment spent in each cab, he found one that was in working order. He felt a protective tenderness toward it. It had been copied in a hardscrabble way from an 1870s American articulated-compound tender engine and reduced in scale for the three-foot-six-inch local rails. The result looked like a child’s drawing of a train, with an endearingly clumsy cowcatcher and a blunderbuss of a smokestack that flared out like an ice-cream cone. The twin domes were as dainty as a lady’s wrists, and the boiler couldn’t have held fifty gallons of water. The train was adorable.

“It burns wood,” he murmured, standing by the half-filled and rusty tender as if it contained a litter of mewling kittens. For once, he wished his father were with him.

He exclaimed that a child of nine could operate this train. Delighted that he, not Gordon, had to be in charge, Hugo directed his fellow men to examine the couplings, frail as hairpins. While the gunnery bolted a Lewis machine gun to the single flatcar, Hugo considered for a long moment whom he hated the most: Private Wodziczko. Wodziczko annoyed Hugo courtesy of his unwavering love for, in ascending order, God, his mother, the flag, the world’s largest stove, Lieutenant Gordon, his mother, and perhaps Lieutenant Gordon again. Hugo almost skipped like a schoolchild across the engineer’s duct, grabbing Wodziczko by the shoulders and forcing him to squat unblinkingly before the steam gauge in the cab, where it would be dirty, hot, and if fortune reigned, dangerous.

There were many other jobs up and down the train—tender handler, rail guard, splitter, brakeman, and so on—which Hugo, dizzy with pleasure, assigned targets for revenge. (There were Finch and Bryzinski, who’d stolen his chocolate rations; Gaulfeld, who had talked about jazz as if it were music; Wassily, who had asked him which breweries made champagne; Parker and Lyons, of disparate heights, who had shamelessly tried to nickname themselves Mutt and Jeff; the list was infinite.)