“MIKHAIL! SOMEONE’S COMING!” MY BROTHER, NIKOLAI, SHOUTED, RUNNING INTO THE BARN. “IS SHE HERE?”

“No,” I answered, barely breathing. “I just put her in the hiding place and came back to get some food.”

The sharp, grinding sound of a vehicle on the gravel road at the front of our farm grew louder. A battered yellow truck pulled to a stop, and two men jumped out.

The driver, a heavyset man who looked like he forgot to shave, said, “Hello, boys,” in a friendly way that I knew was not friendly at all. His passenger, a pale-eyed young man, carried a pole with a leather loop on the end. Nikolai and I stood still and silent. They walked through the open barn door uninvited.

“What do you want?” my brother asked, using his most grown-up voice. The driver didn’t answer right away. He walked slowly around the area where my father had built pens for the geese and the pigs, although it had been four years since we sold our last pig. It seemed very little escaped his attention. The man with the pale eyes stood quietly, but he, too, was looking closely at everything in our barn.

As casually as I could, I picked up a bucket of feed and walked to the goose pen. “Excuse me, it’s their breakfast time.” The driver reached out and grabbed my upper arm as I passed him, making me stop. I tried not to show my fear as I looked at his hand and then into his eyes.

“I understand you have a German shepherd here.”

“You’re wrong. May I?” I asked, looking toward the mother goose and her three little ones as if our conversation were over and I wanted to finish my chores. He let go of my arm.

“We have no dogs at all. Not since the year before the war started,” Nikolai said. I was just two years younger than my fifteen-year-old brother, and together we had learned to lie well. Not because we were dishonest, but because Russia had been at war for four years and it was sometimes necessary to keep you out of trouble.

The man with the pale eyes stared hard at us, as if willing and ready to do whatever his companion told him to do. The driver lifted the lid of a grain storage box and peered in.

“Many dogs starved during the war,” my brother continued, which was unnecessary because everyone remembered how little food there had been and how many people and animals had died of hunger. The pale-eyed man looked at the driver as if to say, These two are idiots; they have nothing to tell us.

The driver ignored him, then stopped in the middle of the barn, hands on his hips. He looked up at the ceiling where slivers of light came in through the cracks between the planks of the roof.

“Why, I wonder, would anyone tell us lies about such a thing?”

My brother and I looked at each other and shook our heads, as if we couldn’t imagine.

“Not just a dog,” he said, looking at each of us as if we were confidants, “but a German shepherd. Very specific.”

“Only traitors would keep a German shepherd,” his companion said, practically shouting at us. “Or maybe you are traitors. Maybe you are hiding a German, and not just a German dog.”

“Stop!” my brother yelled at him. “How dare you accuse us of such a thing! Our father was killed in the war — by Germans!”

“We’re not sure he’s dead, Nikolai,” I said, angry that he would talk about our father in front of strangers. Even when it was just us together, we never talked about him as if he were gone for good. My voice got louder. “He could be in a prison camp, or a hospital, or —”

“Settle down, boys,” the big man snapped. To his partner he added, “Pavel, go wait in the truck.”

Now that Nikolai and I were alone with the driver, my hands started shaking. To keep him from noticing, I put down the feed pail without finishing the chore, walked to the wall where a rake rested, picked it up, and began to tidy the hay on the floor.

“If you have a German shepherd, we will find him.”

“We told you,” I said. “We don’t have a —”

“And when we find him …”

“We have no dog,” my brother repeated patiently. “We would love one, my sister especially. The war was hard on us. We lost many things.”

“Yes, well,” he said with a sniffing sound a little like a laugh. “The war was hard on all of us.” Clapping his hands together suddenly, he said, “All right. No dog here. But we’ll be back. Just in case.”

“Who are you?” my brother demanded.

“Who do you think we are?”

“The Red Army?”

“Do you see an army uniform?”

“No, but —”

“A dogcatcher?” I said. “Gypsies? Dog thieves? Show us your identification.”

His eyes narrowed. “Here’s my identification.” He pulled his coat back to reveal a gun in a holster under his left arm. “And that’s who I am. You figure out the rest.” With one last, angry glance around the barn, he left.

As he climbed into his truck, he stood momentarily on the running board. “If you are lying, and I find the dog … well, let’s just say there are labor camps that could use the help of two strong young boys such as yourselves. Out in the eastern provinces.” He laughed as he said this last sentence. There was no laughing in my heart, because as everyone knew, few came back from Russia’s eastern provinces.

“Come on, Yuri,” his passenger called out, which finally got him in the truck. They sped out on the narrow road, spewing dust and pebbles in their wake.

My brother and I, as if by agreement, collapsed on a bale of hay in the corner of the barn. “If they’d come earlier, they might have found her,” I said, kicking at a wet lump of mud on the floor.

“I know,” my brother replied softly, as if still recovering from the scare they gave us.

“How many German shepherds do you think have been killed by now?”

Nikolai looked at me, but seemed to be far away. “I saw one shot in the street in Leningrad.” He was visiting an aunt when the artillery bombardment began, and barely made his way back home before the city was surrounded and one million died.

“But that was in the city, and the Germans bombed the people there. How many do you think they’ve killed here in the country?”

“All they could find.”

“But the war is over now,” I argued, “and I’m sure Zasha’s never hurt anyone, and never would.”

“It doesn’t matter. Even though the Germans lost the war, people are angry that they started it. Did you hear that some people are even destroying cuckoo clocks?”

I laughed for the first time since the men arrived. “Because they’re made in Germany? That’s ridiculous. What’s next — accordions? Nikolai … do you hate the Germans?”

“Yes, of course…. I don’t know. I’ve promised myself that if Papa comes home, I won’t hate anyone ever again.”

“I’m going to go see Zasha right now,” I said, getting up, still chilled by the visit from the strange men.

“No! Wait until we’re sure they’ve gone. They could be watching.”

“But I know she’s hungry, and —”

“If you want her to live, you must be clever. And patient.”