When she headed home after the second day of searching, she was filled with despair. Russia was such a vast country. Was she kidding herself to think she would just stumble across them? Yet if she was methodical enough, surely she must? They had to be somewhere. She put crosses beside the places she had checked, then circled the ones she would travel to next.

“Mama, you’re exhausted,” Irina exclaimed when she arrived home weary and footsore. “Let me go instead.”

But Maria shook her head. They were her children. She would find them.

Her search for relatives of the children abandoned in the homes was largely fruitless. She knocked on doors but got no replies. It seemed they were orphaned and must stay where they were until they were old enough to look after themselves. Only once did she find a young girl’s aunt.

“She’s alive?” the woman screamed, unable to contain her joy. “I must go to her immediately. Thank you a million times.”

When Maria lay in bed at night, she felt bitter anger with the state that had swallowed her children into a vast impenetrable system; with the NKVD officers who had executed Peter for no good reason; and with Stalin, who had coldly abandoned Leningrad to its fate. Her ancient anger for the men who had killed her family still lingered in the background. Sometimes she felt her rage spilling over until she wanted to stand in the street and scream at the top of her voice against the injustice of it all. Instead she took a deep breath and channeled it into her determination to find her children. For her friends and colleagues, life began to return to normal, but for Maria there would be no normal until Mikhail and Katya were home once more.

Chapter 49

Leningrad, January 1944

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE PALACES, MAMA?” STEPAN demanded when he returned one evening.

Maria looked up at her normally placid son’s tone of outrage. “What about them?”

“The Nazis ransacked and burned them. All that artistry—up in smoke.” He was clearly furious.

“Really? Why would they do that?” It puzzled her, but she supposed pillage had always been a part of war.

“They must be animals!” Stepan ranted. “They stole the panels of the Amber Room at the Catherine Palace, the gold fountains from Peterhof, and any works of art that were not hidden. What they could not carry, they destroyed. All the trees were chopped down in the park at Pavlovsk. At Peterhof, the building itself is partly exploded.” He shook his head in outrage.

Maria felt less concerned at this than she did at the loss of human life, but decided it was not the time to say so.

“Anyway, I’ve applied to be part of a team working on the restoration,” he told her. “They think my languages could be useful if they have to source materials from overseas.”