Page 4 of The Fire Beneath the Frost

Let’s see what handsome stranger the night had in store for me.

ChapterTwo

Dimitri

The cold came in before Leningrad’s skyline did, creeping through the train’s worn seals and settling into the bones of the cabin like a second skin.

It was the first thing I noticed, how different the air felt this far north.Sharp, metallic, tinged with damp and smoke, like the breath of something ancient.Leningrad was still just a blur through the frost-laced window, gray buildings sliding closer as the train groaned its way into the station.I watched them come, but felt nothing.

This was the moment I’d imagined a hundred times while lying awake in that stinking barracks in Termez, too hot to sleep, my skin crusted with dust and old blood.I used to picture this return like a film reel—me stepping off the train, my mother rushing to meet me, my father standing behind her with some rare softness in his face.There would be warmth.Relief.A sense of something beginning again.

Instead, I sat in a half-broken seat with a squeaky cushion and a stubborn spring biting into my back, staring out at the city of my childhood like it was someone else’s home.

I wasn’t glad to be back, because I felt nothing.

The train jerked slightly as it slowed, the usual dance of wheels on rails, the hiss of brakes, the occasional barked Russian from the next car over.Across from me, an older woman in a scarf printed with fading sunflowers crossed herself and murmured a prayer.Her breath fogged in the cold.Someone in the back lit a cigarette, and the smell of cheap tobacco joined with the aroma of pickled cabbage, sweat, and engine grease.

The perfume of Soviet travel.

Outside, the Leningrad skyline emerged: rows of gray, blocky buildings under an iron sky, their edges softened by a dusting of early snow.Smoke piped steadily from chimneys, blending with the mist.Cranes dotted the distance like frozen metal insects, hunched and unmoving.The sun hadn’t truly risen, and probably wouldn’t.It just hovered somewhere behind the clouds, diffusing light across the horizon without ever showing its face.

It looked exactly the same.That was the strange part.

The conductor, a red-nosed man in a lopsided cap, pushed through the aisle.“Leningrad station!Ten minutes only!Passengers disembarking must do so now!If you are continuing to Siverskaya or Pushkin, move to the forward car!”

I stood automatically, grabbing my battered duffle from the overhead rack.The strap was frayed; the canvas stiff from weather and sweat.Everything I owned fit inside it—uniforms I’d burn the second I could, a pair of cracked boots, and a few photos that somehow survived two years of war and sand.

At least I’d done my duty in Afghanistan.Served the Motherland.Survived.That was supposed to mean something.

Now what?

I had no skills except the kind no one wants in peacetime.I could disassemble a Kalashnikov in fifteen seconds, and I could kill a man quietly.Also, I could march, salute, and follow orders, and that was about it.My grades in school had been average at best—I wasn’t clever, not like the boys who escaped the draft with university placements or Party connections.School had always felt like a waiting room anyway, some gray purgatory before my actual life began, though none of it ever felt real.

But the war had been real.Terrible, but real.

I slung the duffle bag over my shoulder and looked out the window one last time as the train creaked to a stop.A line of waiting relatives clustered at the edge of the platform, bundled in coats like old beetles, clutching flowers or newspapers or children’s hands.

And there he was.

Ivan.My father.

I hadn’t expected him.He was always working—repairing train engines, moving freight, climbing under machines that growled and hissed like monsters.He hadn’t sent a single letter the entire time I was gone.My mother had written, of course, her cramped handwriting filling up blue postcards with small, ordinary updates: what she made for dinner, who died, which neighbor got a new water heater.

But my father?Silence.Just like always.

He looked the same as I remembered him—tall, stern, dressed in his old leather coat, his hair graying at the temples and his eyes hidden behind a scowl that might have been permanent.

I stepped off the train, the cold immediately slicing through the thin fabric of my coat like it had been waiting for me.My boots hit the concrete platform with a dull thud.I paused, unsure of what to say, or what to do.

He said nothing.

I nodded, once.He turned without speaking and began to walk.

So I followed.

Around us, the station buzzed with movement—soldiers home on leave, women clutching suitcases, the occasional cry of a child, the echo of announcements over crackling speakers.The tiled walls were cracked, stained by decades of exhaust and footsteps.A giant mosaic of Lenin looked down from above, faded but still watching.

We moved through it all in silence, like ghosts.

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