“I had to look it up, didn’t I? Although your red face that night said it all.” Nick stroked my cheek, his eyes full of sincerity. “I have never looked up so many words in my life…. You’re good for my vocabulary.”
I frowned, feigning dismay. “That’s all?”
He ran his hands down my slippery body. “Let me think. What else are you good for?”
“I could whip you with a birch branch?” I proposed, slapping him teasingly on the gluteus maximus. “That’s what the Finns do when they go to the sauna. It’s very refreshing, apparently. And then they dash out and roll in the snow afterward. Sound good?”
Nick gave me a wicked smile. “We’d melt all the snow in Finland.” Then, turning me around, he drew me against him with mischievous, indulgent hands and murmured over my shoulder, “I have a much better idea. And we won’t even need a birch branch.”
It wasn’t until we were ready to go out for dinner that I noticed the envelope that had been slipped underneath our door. It was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Panagopoulos and contained a folded piece of heavy bond paper with a hand-drawn map and a brief message at the top:
Please come and see me right away.
Vabu Rusi
Nick was the first to recover from this little game changer. “Congratulations,” he said, kissing me in the neck. “You found the Amazons.”
I examined the directions with apprehension. “Would they really make it that easy? Suppose it’s Reznik? His men did find me in Kalkriese…. At least I assume they were sent by him. The Geneva plates.”
We talked about it for a while and decided that what had made it possible for Reznik to track me down in Germany was precisely what had enabled Nick to do the same, namely Rebecca’s blurting out my interest in the Kalkriese Museum over the phone. Undoubtedly, Reznik had been screening her calls ever since the night of the party. The fact that he had now resorted to threatening my parents—if indeed that was him and not the Amazons—was a good indication that presently he had no idea where we were.
Assuming the letter really was from the Amazons, the big question was whether they truly wanted a friendly meeting, or whether they were leading us into a trap. Their directions had us driving out the Raate Road, past the Winter War Memorial, heading for the same black void in which the motorcycle had disappeared. I knew I had to go.
“You don’t have to do this, though,” I said to Nick when we walked to the car together. “It’s my grandmother, my problem.”
He opened the trunk and dumped in our luggage. We had decided to pack up everything, just in case things went awry and we had to get out of Suomussalmi fast. “You’re not really getting it, are you?” he said, slamming the trunk. “I’ve already found what I was looking for. This is my happy ending, and I’m going to enjoy it even if it kills me.”
I leaned over to kiss him. “Don’t say that.”
As we drove off through the sleepy town and continued out toward the desolate Russian border, the forest closed in around us with sinister resolution. Gone was the backdrop of beaten paths we knew so well; before us lay the Cimmerian no-man’s-land at the end of the world. We were entering true Amazon territory at last.
“You didn’t happen to bring any of those guns from Istanbul, did you?” I asked Nick, mostly to break the silence.
But he was preoccupied with something in the rearview mirror, and when I turned in my seat I saw two faint sets of headlights on the otherwise empty road behind us. “Are they following us?”
“I think so,” he said, grimacing. “Let’s see if we can’t get rid of them.”
We drove another kilometer or so, until we came to an intersection. Vabu Rusi’s directions said to continue straight, but as soon as we had done so, Nick suddenly turned off the headlights and pulled into a narrow, rutted trail going straight into the forest. As soon as we were hidden by the trees, he pulled the handbrake and turned off the engine.
We halted so suddenly I didn’t have time to brace myself before flying forward and being caught with a jerk by the seat belt. “Are you okay?” he asked, touching me in the darkness. “Sorry about the bumpy ride.”
Moments later, two cars went by on the road behind us. “Now let’s see.” Nick twisted around in his seat. “We’ll give them three minutes.”
But less than a minute later the cars came back the other way, going considerably slower this time. “Stay here!” said Nick, opening the door.
Getting out of the car, too, I followed him back along the rutted trail until we were within eyesight of the two cars. They were idling in the middle of the intersection, their drivers evidently discussing where to go next.
When they finally sped off, choosing the road going west, Nick put his arms around me, and we stood like that for a while, just breathing. Without a word we returned to our vehicle and drove on, chastened by the close call. There was no need to discuss who had sent the two cars; we both knew it must be Reznik. The night before, Nick had persuaded a northbound trucker to take the tube of toothpaste all the way to Lapland … but too late, it seemed.
Turning my focus to Vabu Rusi’s instructions, I had Nick go down one side road, then another, all the while marveling at the fact that anyone had bothered to put up legible street signs in this forsaken place. It wasn’t until we pulled over to check a capsized sign that I realized they were merely temporary ones made out of wood.
I am not sure how long we had been driving when we finally rolled down a long snow-swept driveway. Something about the moonlight shadows and the deserted forest roads made me lose all sense of time. And the gnarled branches clawing at the car as we wound our way through a ghoulish honor guard of trees did nothing to dispel the sensation that we were entering a place hovering on the very edge of the physical world.
The two-story mansion at the end of the winding trail looked just as abandoned as the unkempt driveway would have us expect. In the bouncing beam of our headlights I saw a grand but peeling clapboard façade with boarded-up windows; only when we got a little closer did I notice the half dozen pairs of skis leaning against the wall. While clearly not completely deserted, the building certainly did not strike me as the unassailable fortress we had both been expecting.
“That’s it?” Nick leaned forward in his seat with a grimace of wary incredulity. “Where’s the raptor fence and the piranha moat? Can I see the directions?”
But there was no mistaking Vabu Rusi’s map; this was indeed where we were supposed to go.
“It’s obviously just some random meetinghouse,” I said, hoping my disappointment didn’t show. “They’d never give away the location of their actual headquarters.”
Getting out of the car, I walked ahead up to the house. The front steps were cracked from decades of unrelenting winter, and the brass horseshoe knocker had long since surrendered to green old age. What exactly went on in this dilapidated building? I wondered. Was its purpose to greet people … or to say good-bye to them? As soon as Nick joined me on the front steps, I shook off my doubts and knocked firmly on the door, making it clear that, no matter what happened, I was responsible.
We waited for a while. When the door finally opened, my worries dissipated as if they had never been, for the light that emanated from the house was warm and abundant, and the woman who greeted us exuded nothing but the friendliest of intentions. Tall and trim, she wore jeans and a chunky sweater with a pattern of white reindeer, her gray hair gathered in a tight ponytail. At first glance her open, lively face suggested a woman in her sixties, but the gaunt, sinewy feel of her handshake made me suspect she was older than she looked. “At last!” she said, in what I now knew was a Finnish accent. “Come inside. And do excuse the look of the place. Winter here is a crushing thing.”
She let us into a grand hallway with a curved staircase going up to the second floor. A few pieces of antique furniture and a large painting of grazing cows suggested we had entered the home of a cultivated family. And yet, something told me it was all for show.
“Ar
e you Vabu Rusi?” asked Nick, unzipping his ski parka.
The woman smiled. “My name is Otrera.” She took our coats and hung them from brass hooks on the wall, right next to a gun rack with six standing rifles. “Bears, wolves, wolverines,” she said, in response to our silent observation. “I bring a shotgun when I take out the garbage. Or this.” Our hostess pulled a rusty rapier out of the umbrella stand. “The wolverines know that this one doesn’t feel so good up their nose. But come.” She put the rapier back where it belonged and walked ahead of us into a high-ceilinged parlor with an antique three-tier woodstove at one end. “Let’s warm up.”
As we entered the large room, a handful of teenage girls immediately got up to slip soundlessly out another door. Dressed as they were in sweatpants and long-sleeved T-shirts, and with worn textbooks and pencil cases tucked under their arms, they gave the impression of being a study group meeting casually in someone’s home. Moments later we could hear them talking loudly among themselves as they bounded through the house. A book left behind on a chair gave away the subject of their meeting: advanced Russian.
Despite the stately dimensions, the parlor had a utilitarian feel to it; all the windows were covered by shutters, and the only furniture was a collection of mismatched chairs. Some were plush, some were straight-backed, others were mere stools; all, however, were oriented toward a large map of the world hanging on one wall with a whiteboard right next to it.
“Sit down!” urged Otrera, swiftly erasing the multicolored scribbles on the whiteboard. Then she grabbed a side chair and straddled it, casually resting her arms on the back. I couldn’t help marveling at her physical confidence and felt a little flutter of hope. Had Granny aged as well as Otrera? I wondered. And if she was indeed still alive, could she possibly be here, in this house, waiting for the right moment to come and greet me?
Just then, I heard something approaching the house with a long-winded growl before coming to a roaring halt right outside. Glancing at Nick, I saw he had heard it, too. The motorcycle.
Eyeing the door to the hallway, I waited nervously to see what manner of person would enter. But no one came. All we heard were heavy steps going upstairs, a burst of agitated voices, and a door slamming.
How many people were in the house? I wondered. And who exactly were they? So far I had seen no one who fitted my image of an Amazon, nor did the house give the impression of being a meeting place—never mind command center—worthy of a powerful, international organization. Glancing at Otrera, I saw her staring at Nick with a speculative frown before finally saying, “You have a question for me.”
“I have many questions.” Nick leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I’m assuming it was you who summoned us here.”
Fine strings of amusement—or maybe nerves—pulled at Otrera’s lips. “Let me start by telling you about the woman in whose name you were invited tonight,” she said. “As you learned at Raatteen Portti, Vabu Rusi and her little daughter, Enki, were among the civilians taken hostage by Russian partisans in retribution for Stalin’s defeat here in Suomussalmi in the Winter War. Most of the time, the partisans simply killed the civilians—women, children, babies—but Vabu and Enki were taken by truck into Russia and put into a prisoner camp called Kintismäki. I was there, too, with my sister, Tyyne. Our father had died in the war, and our mother was killed when they took us.” Otrera plucked a piece of fluff from her sweater sleeve and let it fall to the floor before continuing more softly, saying, “Vabu’s little Enki died in the camp. She had not eaten a full meal for many weeks—none of us had—and her mother could no longer keep her warm. When two guards came to take away the body, Vabu stabbed them both to death with a kitchen knife.”
I was so shocked by Otrera’s curt, matter-of-fact narrative that I could scarcely believe she had really been there. Once again, something in her manner reminded me of Granny, who had also been able to speak of gruesome things with uncanny detachment, as if the words were merely utensils in a drawer.
“This caused a great uprising in the camp,” Otrera continued. “During the fighting, Vabu gathered some of us girls who had no parents, and in the confusion she was able to get us out through a hole in the fence. We walked all day and all night, and by morning we had no strength left. We just wanted to sleep, and Vabu could not make us go on. But we were lucky. A Russian lumberjack saw us lying in a snowdrift by the roadside, and he picked us up and brought us home. He and his family gave us warm clothes and food, and when we were strong enough, they smuggled us back across the border.”
At this point Otrera took a deep breath, and now at last, in that forced, trembling inhalation, did I begin to grasp the extent of her self-control. “I was only eight years old,” she explained, with renewed calm, “but I remember it so well. I remember that Vabu did not want to go back to her old house, because she knew the partisans had burned it down. In fact, there was so much fear here in Suomussalmi that many people had moved away. Whenever we went to a house, we found either a ruin or strangers living there. It felt like the end of the world. My sister Tyyne took it very hard. ‘Why can’t we go home?’ she kept saying. ‘What did those men do to Mommy?’ “
Otrera sat for a while with her eyes closed, as if the narrative fatigued her. But just as I felt compelled to suggest we save the rest of the story for later, she looked up again, a spark of fresh energy in her eyes. “What I didn’t realize,” she went on, “was that, all this time, Vabu was searching for someone: a woman she had met at the hospital during the Winter War, just after her husband died. This woman—a violinist by profession—had told Vabu that if she wanted a new beginning, she and little Enki could come and join her traveling circus, which was wintered that year just outside Ämmänsaari.” As if sensing our skepticism, Otrera hastened to add, “I know it sounds unusual, but Vabu had nowhere else to turn. After losing all the people she loved, she was now responsible for seven orphaned girls—me and Tyyne, and five others. And this violinist had told her the circus took in young women who had no other place to go and taught them more than just acrobatics—taught them how to get by in the world without having to depend on anyone. Oh, indeed, when we found it, it was heaven!” Otrera finally smiled, relishing this tiny palatable part of the past. “The horses, the music, the costumes … It was such a different way of life, so exotic for a young girl like me. The contortionists and trapeze artists could do incredible things; I remember watching them and thinking, how is it possible to make your body do that? And of course”—she gave us the conspiratorial eye—”they were all women.”
Clearly enjoying our engrossment in her story, Otrera dismounted her chair and walked over to the three-tier woodstove to add more logs. There was a new spring to her step now; seen from behind, in her jeans and high-heeled boots, she certainly did not strike me as a woman in her eighties.
Behind her back, I glanced at Nick but found him preoccupied with the sounds of the house. There were distant voices … the clanging of pots and pans … even piano playing … and yet he was staring at the door to the hallway as though he fully expected an ambush.
When she returned to us, Otrera flipped the chair around and sat normally. She was more stern now, her emotions once again exiled to the distant past. “You, of course, know where I am going with this,” she said. “The traveling circus was the Baltic chapter of the Amazons.”
I was so agitated, I couldn’t help exclaiming, “So, you are the Amazons?”
Otrera smiled cryptically. “We are some of them, yes. For generations, the Baltic chapter had been living like Gypsies, never committing to one place and rarely connecting with their Amazon sisters elsewhere in the world. The war, of course, made life so much more uncertain for them—”
We were briefly interrupted when a young woman wearing a sports bra stuck her head through the door to make an announcement in Finnish. “Ah, yes,” said Otrera, waving at the girl to leave again. “There is someone who wants to speak with you before dinner. But let me finish my story first. Y
ou see, it was Vabu Rusi who convinced the Baltic Amazons—our chapter—that it was time to settle down and think strategically about our potential contribution to the modern world. We, the new generation, didn’t just want to perform for money and get into a random fistfight here and there. Instead, we wanted to join forces with the other Amazon chapters to fight for the liberty and safety of women worldwide. So, after World War Two we started organizing ourselves and strengthening the contact with our sisters in other countries. We’ve been so successful in streamlining the mission of our organization and facilitating communication between the different divisions that the international Amazon headquarters were eventually moved here twenty-five years ago.”
“How many chapters do you have all in all?” asked Nick.
Otrera shook her head lightly. “I obviously can’t divulge any details, but rest assured we have people on the ground from Alaska to Fiji. Each of our chapters has its own organizational chart and its own queen. We don’t believe in centralization, but we do need to work together; it’s a difficult balance. Human trafficking, rape, and other atrocities do not abide by borders and jurisdictions, and neither do we. It is our hope, however, that young women living in open, tolerant societies, such as yourself, Diana, will need us less in the future—that you will become your own Amazons. You have the freedom to learn, the freedom to train.” She smiled wryly. “You just need to wean yourselves off the State and its false pledge to protect you. Stop taking the bait; the hook will rip out your guts. But come.” She rose and walked over to the door ahead of us.
Nick and I exchanged puzzled glances as we followed our hostess across the hallway and into a spacious library with a grand piano in the center. There were several sofas in the room, surrounded by jam-packed bookcases, but the only person present was a brush-cut woman sitting at the piano, playing a melancholy sonata with her eyes closed.