: Karl Marlantes
: Cold Victory
: Grove Press UK
: 9781804711071
: 1
: CHF 6.30
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 368
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. At an embassy party, Finnish-American Arnie Koski and Russian Mikhail Bobrov drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly - but clandestine - cross-country ski race. But the stakes becomes higher than either could imagine. While the two skiers are unreachable in the arctic wilderness, news of the race is leaked to the media, with Russia's brutal secret police awaiting the outcome... Another masterful novel from the author of the modern classic Matterhorn.

A graduate of Yale and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten Air Medals. He lives in Washington state, USA.

Tuesday, December 10, 1946
Ferry Terminal, Turku, Finland


She’d followed Arnie Koski a long way from Edmond, Oklahoma. Louise Koski was now standing on the open passenger deck of the Stockholm-Turku ferry as it formed a channel through the thin, early December ice leaving floating shards reflecting the wan sunlight in its wake. The angle of the somber sun in a clear comfortless sky was only a held-out fist above the southern horizon.

Wrapping herself against the cold in her stylish but inadequate coat, Louise watched the low snow-covered shoreline slowly pass behind on both sides as the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings of Turku grew into distinct shapes, interspersed with occasional gaps where a now-bombed-out building had stood before the war.

Arnie came up from behind and hugged her. She snuggled into his chest, shielding herself against the slight but icy wind. Arnie was wearing civilian clothes under a heavy wool army greatcoat. He kissed her hair, and she turned to look up at him. His eyes shone with the excitement that he wouldn’t allow himself to show on the rest of his face. “Is it like coming home, somehow?” she asked.

“In a way.”

Three words made an average sentence for Arnie.

They entered the open water of the harbor and the icebreaker that had been preceding them moved aside to let the ferry nose into the terminal.

The line going through customs wasn’t long. Travel between Finland and Sweden was only just beginning to revive so soon after the war. A Finnish customs official examined their passports and Arnie’s diplomatic papers. The customs official looked up at them. “Is this all of you?” he asked in accented English.

“Just two,” Arnie replied.

Louise felt a twinge. She was thirty and despite several army doctors declaring that she was perfectly healthy, she’d already suffered two miscarriages in five years of trying. She desperately wanted children, and the clock was ticking. The family remained, as Arnie said, just two.

When they emerged from the terminal, a young man in his early twenties with thick blond hair walked up to them, his breath showing a bright white cloud. He asked in English, “Lieutenant Colonel Koski?”

Arnie nodded and answered yes in Finnish.

“Pulkkinen,” the man said and g