The Diamond Eye

by Kate Quinn

But here, unlike in England and France and America, a woman’s fight was not limited to hospitals.

“Eyes in the back of your head until you make yourself some friends who will watch your back.” We didn’t have to say why. All women know why.

“On the contrary,” the girl sniper replied in Russian once the question was translated. “Our women were on a basis of equality long before Hitler rose. Our full rights were granted from the first day of the revolution—that

“The only thing I was shocked by was the sign on the carriage saying FOR WHITES ONLY.”

The girl sniper forked a mushroom off her plate. “It’s a strange thing to see in a country that started with ‘All men are created equal.’”

For the love of Lenin, I thought. Men.

We Americans are used to viewing war from a distance—the privilege of living, as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said, with less powerful neighbors to the north and south, and nothing to the east and west but fish.