“Sergey, what are you doing here? Where are Nikolai and Papa?”
“Called to defend the Winter Palace. The Bolsheviks have broken in. I knew it was only a matter of time before they came here. I’ve come to take you to safety.” His heavy breathing echoed in the tight space as they fumbled their way down the darkened stairs. The barest light seeped through the cracks to keep them from complete treachery. “Where is this leading us?”
“To the gardens.” If they weren’t caught.
The tunnel grew steadily brighter, but the night they emerged to was far from clear. It was red, exploding with horror and treason. Behind them, the palace, their home, shimmered with rage as dark figures raced along the windows. Their torches and guns refracted against the glass. Mama sobbed as Marina whimpered. Svetlana turned them away and out through a rusty gate. The street was quiet and slick with rain from the day before.
The day before their world ended.
Sergey herded them away. “We must hurry to the train station.” He took Svetlana’s hand and tucked her close to his side.
It was only a few blocks to the train station, but the distance seemed a hundred lifetimes as they darted around buildings and ducked behind carts to avoid the roaming mobs of citizens crying hateful threats of violence to anyone daring to cross their path.
A mass exodus of nobles swarmed the train platforms as women in jewels and men in fur hats crammed their panicked selves into already full cars.
“This way! Up front.” Tall, with long arms and legs, Sergey pushed his way through the crowd holding tight to Svetlana. Marina and Mama hooked their arms through hers as they wound through the sea of desperate humanity.
Svetlana’s travel case was ripped from her hand. A young woman with frayed clothing clutched it tight in triumph. “Give that back at once!”
The woman grinned, revealing rotting teeth. “It belongs to the People now. Your time is over,
Grubby hands reached out and snagged Marina’s case. “Long live the People! Long live the Revolution!” They disappeared like smoke.
Svetlana caught glimpses of the train through the teeming bodies. Of people standing cheek to jowl inside. Of men kicking women off the ladder as they attempted to board the crammed cars. All of Petrograd was fleeing, but not all would make it. Fear curled cold and hissing in Svetlana’s stomach. They would make it. She would ensure her sister and Mama made it.
The crowd thinned to allow for a gasping draw of breath as the engine belched its black smoke. A whistle trilled. The crowd screamed and plunged toward the train in final desperate flings to find space.
Sergey pushed them to the front car. Grabbing Marina, he shoved her onto the ladder before hoisting up Mama. The train wheels started to turn.
Soldiers with red arm bands flooded the platform, striking at men and woman alike with clubs and trampling anyone knocked under their black boots. The Bolsheviks. “Get them! Don’t let them flee like rats.”
The soldiers rushed forward and ripped people off the train as it started to move. Sergey grabbed Svetlana, kissed her on both cheeks, and threw her up the ladder. “Paris. I will find you.”
“Sergey!” Svetlana hoisted herself to the rail and held out her hand, begging him to take it. “Sergey!”
Arms striped with red bands locked around him and dragged him back where he was swallowed into the rioting of chaos.
Chapter 1
July 1918
Paris, France
Edwynn MacCallan poised his scalpel over the beating heart. A wonder of sheer beauty with its miraculous chambers and thin veins coursing with life. The bullet pointing directly at the left ventricle threatened to end it all.
“Heart rate is falling, Doctor.” Gerard Byeford, Wynn’s colleague and surgical assistant, shifted uneasily on the opposite side of the operating table.
“A minute more.”
“We don’t have a minute.”
“Fifty seconds, then.”
“Wynn. You arrogant—”
Wynn heard nothing more as the bullet slipped free from its place of intended death, captured in the forceps’ unrelenting grip. It clanged a solid peal of demise as it dropped into the sterile metal tray, rolling back and forth until it came to a final stop among the smears of blood.
Gerard wiped the blood trickling from the incision as Wynn handed the forceps to a nurse who then placed a needle driver with a suturing hook into his hand. Wynn made quick work with the catgut thread in a neat row of stitches that would leave the patient with a slightly puckered scar for his Blighty badge. Proof of honor earned on the battlefield. Lucky blighter. Too many of the Tommies claimed theirs with an eternity box or a mud pit in no-man’s-land.