Tatiana and Alexander (the Bronze Horseman, #2)

Paullina Simons's Tatiana and Alexander alternates between Alexander's captivity in Soviet Russia and Tatiana's new life in America, weaving extended flashbacks through both timelines to reveal the history of the Barrington family's emigration to the Soviet Union and its devastating consequences.

In a prologue set in Boston in December 1930, 11-year-old Alexander Barrington stands before a mirror as his family prepares to leave America permanently. His father, Harold Barrington, a committed communist, believes the Soviet Union offers a more meaningful life. Alexander does not want to go. He looks at his reflection one last time, wanting to remember the boy he is. Thirteen years later, in Stockholm in May 1943, 18-year-old Tatiana, Alexander's wife, stares at her own unrecognizable reflection. She is pregnant and grieving, convinced Alexander is dead. She contemplates stowing away on a barge to Helsinki. A dockhand named Sven urges her to move forward. She walks away, muttering that it is no longer the ice but the pyre.

The main action begins in March 1943 at a military hospital in Morozovo, near Leningrad. Alexander, who has lived for years under the assumed name Alexander Belov, lies wounded, awaiting arrest by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. His former friend Dimitri Chernenko has denounced him as an American. To save Tatiana, Alexander has orchestrated an elaborate deception: Dr. Matthew Sayers, an American Red Cross doctor, will write a fake death certificate, give Tatiana Alexander's officer cap, and secretly hide his Hero of the Soviet Union medal in her backpack. Believing Alexander dead, Tatiana will leave with Sayers for Finland and eventually America.

When the NKVD comes for Alexander, he blows up the transport truck on Lake Ladoga with a grenade, creating the appearance of a German attack. The explosion allows Sayers to write the death certificate convincingly. Alexander is thrown into a freezing cell and interrogated by Leonid Slonko, the same NKVD chief who years earlier destroyed Alexander's parents. Slonko taunts Alexander with obscene lies about Tatiana, claiming she is in custody. Alexander, knowing from his commanding officer Colonel Mikhail Stepanov that Tatiana has disappeared and may have reached Finland, kills Slonko by injecting morphine into his heart. The death is ruled a heart attack.

Extended flashbacks reveal the Barrington family's disintegration in the Soviet Union. Harold lost job after job as foreigners were deemed security risks. Alexander's mother, Jane Barrington, turned to alcohol. Alexander registered for the Red Army at 16 as a small rebellion, then assumed the Belov identity. Jane tried to obtain asylum for Alexander at the American consulate in Moscow but was turned away. Before his parents were taken by the NKVD, Alexander hid the family's remaining American dollars inside a copy of Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman in the Leningrad public library.

Meanwhile, Tatiana arrives at Ellis Island, gives birth to a son, Anthony, and takes the name Jane Barrington from Alexander's mother's identity documents. Dr. Edward Ludlow, who delivers the baby, becomes a steady presence in her life. Tatiana befriends Viktoria Sabatella (Vikki), a brash nurse who becomes her closest companion. She works as a nurse caring for wounded POWs, carrying Anthony with her on rounds, living in a small white room and resisting all attempts to draw her into the wider world.

Alexander denies being Alexander Barrington before a military tribunal and is sentenced to a penal battalion, a unit of convicted men sent on suicide missions. At Sinyavino Heights, his men die daily rebuilding a railroad under German bombardment. He steals a mortar to destroy the German position, then fights westward through Pulkovo, Byelorussia, and Poland with his lieutenant, Nikolai Ouspensky, knowing his only hope lies in reaching the advancing Americans.

In the Holy Cross mountains of Poland, Alexander captures the commander of a Vlasovite unit, Russians fighting for Germany. The commander is Pasha Metanov, Tatiana's twin brother, presumed dead since 1941. Alexander absorbs Pasha's men into his unit. The two fight side by side until, during their escape from Colditz Castle, a maximum-security German fortress, Pasha develops a raging fever from an infected wound. Alexander carries him on his back for days. Pasha dies on a dirt road in Saxony on February 25, 1945. Alexander digs a shallow grave, carves a cross, and refuses to leave until German police find them and return them to Colditz.

In New York, Tatiana slowly builds a life, moving into an apartment with Vikki, working at Ellis Island and the Red Cross, and raising Anthony. On her 20th birthday, she empties her black backpack and discovers Alexander's medal hidden in a secret compartment. She reasons that Sayers must have hidden it at Alexander's instruction, meaning the death was staged. She also remembers Alexander's final words: "Remember Orbeli." Months later, listening to the Nuremberg trials on the radio, she hears a witness named Josif Orbeli, Director of the Hermitage Museum, the same man Alexander met on the eve of war. She finally understands: On the night war began, Orbeli sent away his beloved art crates not knowing if he would see them again, wearing the same heartbroken expression Alexander wore when he sent Tatiana away. Alexander was telling her to have faith.

Through Sam Gulotta, an under secretary at the State Department, Tatiana learns that a U.S. soldier named Paul Markey reported encountering Alexander at Colditz. Markey had been ordered to hold Soviet prisoners for the Red Army. After learning Alexander was indeed American, Markey took his own life. Tatiana presses Gulotta to secure Alexander a U.S. passport.

After Germany's surrender, Alexander is sentenced to 25 years under Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code. On the train east, Ouspensky confesses that the NKGB, the Soviet state security police, recruited him in 1943 to spy on Alexander in exchange for extra rations and military pay for Ouspensky's wife. Alexander is imprisoned at Sachsenhausen, now Soviet Special Camp Number 7, where he attempts to escape 17 times. Kept in solitary confinement, shackled and starved, he watches his memories of Tatiana fragment and fade. He nearly gives up.

Tatiana signs up with the International Red Cross, dyes her hair black to avoid recognition, and ships out to Europe carrying an arsenal of weapons. After months searching displaced-persons camps, she reaches Berlin. At the Soviet garrison, she recognizes the commander: Stepanov. He whispers one word: "Sachsenhausen."

At the camp, Tatiana works through barracks housing 16,000 prisoners. In the camp prison, she hears Alexander's voice from cell seven. She finds him bearded, shackled, and emaciated, cleans his wounds, and slips hairpins into his palm for the manacle locks. He tells her he is being shipped to Kolyma, a remote Soviet forced-labor region, the next day. That evening, she returns with dinner for Alexander and a drugged vodka for the guard. When the guard collapses, she injects morphine into the camp superintendent, Lieutenant Karolich, who has accompanied her into the cell, while Alexander knocks him unconscious. Wearing Karolich's uniform, Alexander salutes the sentries and Tatiana drives them out of the camp. They jump from the Red Cross truck, swim a river, and flee west for days, fighting off Soviet pursuit forces in a series of firefights.

They reach the American embassy in Berlin, where they learn the Soviets are demanding their extradition. Alexander is questioned for six hours by U.S. military officials, telling his full story from 1930 to Sachsenhausen. When asked what name he would use if his citizenship were reinstated, he answers: "Anthony Alexander Barrington." The doors open. Alexander walks out and tells Tatiana, "We are going home." She runs to him and is in his arms. The novel closes with Tennyson's words: "Though much is taken, much abides."