Val was intrigued. The box was so small, it couldn’t contain anything of major significance, but she imagined there might be something sentimental inside. A baby tooth, perhaps? She kept all Nicole’s baby teeth in a little wooden box. She would have to do some research and try to find an expert. It was yet another mystery associated with her father that she was determined to solve.

Chapter 41

Leningrad, September 3, 1939

MARIA WAS AT WORK IN THE PIG-IRON FACTORY when there was an announcement over the radio that Britain and France had declared war on Germany. Everyone stopped and looked at each other, eyes wide. Maria felt a knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. She remembered visiting soldiers in the hospital in Tsarskoe Selo in 1914, the last time Britain and France went to war with Germany. She could still see those men with bandaged heads and oozing stumps where limbs used to be; men whose minds had wandered because of the horrific sights they had witnessed. Peter’s father had been killed during that conflict, and he had told Maria firmly that no good came from war. Not ever.

She had arranged to meet Yuri after work. They saw each other every month, always in his van, always parked in the same quiet street between the park and a warehouse. Maria’s reputation for finding information on people arrested by the NKVD had spread, and desperate strangers often accosted her at Peter’s graveside and thrust into her hand pieces of paper with names and addresses written on them. They spoke of arrests in the dead of night, no information on charges, no word of where their loved one might be, no help from the authorities, and maddening waits at inquiries desks; all too often the glass partition was slammed shut and the officers went off duty just as they neared the front of the line.

Yuri could usually find some news, but Maria had to act as go-between. The worst times were when he said the individual concerned had been executed. It took her straight back to the moment she was informed of Peter’s death. The people she told—usually women—surprised her with their courage. It was as if they had been expecting it. They stooped under the weight of their grief, but generally did not cry out loud.

When Maria and Yuri met on the third of September, she asked him what he thought about the war in Europe. He liked to chat before they got down to business. Annushka had never returned and she could tell he was lonely.

He chewed the inside of his cheek before answering. “Some wars have to be fought. They should never have let Hitler get so powerful, but there was no appetite for another conflict.”

“It’s lucky we are not involved this time,” Maria said. Hitler and Stalin had signed a nonaggression pact just the previous week.