Sekret (11 page)

We fall into an uneasy silence as we feel our way down the dark corridor. I tug my sweater sleeves down around my hands to muffle the memories on the narrow walls; I’m not ready just yet to see the nobles’ fate at the hands of Lenin and his Bolshevik army. “Who else knows about this passage?” There’s a hope beating its wings inside me, but I don’t dare open its cage just yet.

He scowls. “Enough people. So don’t get any ideas.”

“The guards don’t follow us in here?”

“Nah, they know it’s a dead end. Here we are.” He stops abruptly in front of me, and in the dim light I crash into him, our arms tangling together as I try to push off. “Careful there.” He brushes a lock of dark hair from my face, my skin radiating heat where he touches me. I swallow hard and turn away.

“Great,” I say. “So it’s dark and smells like mold.” I can make out vague shapes lurking around us, but little else.

“So impatient!” With a sharp click, dull amber light floods the room.

Dozens of ornate frames lean against the far wall of the expansive chamber. Fringes of canvas dangle from their interiors where paintings have been cut out, and the wood frames are scarred where looters—or Lenin’s thugs—stripped away gold leaf, but even ungilded, the frames are beautiful. I stride across the room and run my hands along one carved with interlocking seashells. A vibrant painting springs into my mind of tsarist-era Moscow, the hills ablaze with autumn leaves. Beyond the frames, bits of furniture are shrouded like cartoon ghosts. Sergei peels back the cloth on a sofa like he’s unwrapping a mummy; green and gold brocade shimmers in the light.

“The old owners’ leftovers,” he says, before plopping onto the sofa, issuing tufts of dust into the air. He pats the spot beside him.

I saunter over and perch on the far end of the sofa. “I’m surprised there’s anything left.”

He shakes his head. “Just stuffy bourgeois junk. Hey,” he says, face lighting up with a grin. “I wonder if you can read this stuff. You know.” He runs his hand along the fabric. “Their memories.”

The blond woman flickers through my mind, chased around by her desperate thoughts. If it weren’t for my powers, Rostov wouldn’t be plotting right now to use her as bait. “I … Some other time.”

Sergei leans toward me, though he’s far from touching me. I’m grateful for that. I’ve met too many Russian boys who, like all us ration rats, long to take what’s not been given. I learned early how to fend them off with sharp words and flattened fists, but it didn’t keep the shame at bay when a black market trader offered a barter I wasn’t willing to make.

“I know you’re only going along with this for your family,” he says. “But it’s what’s best for you, too. You have to be safer here than you were on the run.”

He’s right, and that’s without knowing about the American scrubber out there. I’m safe from starvation, strange men, and the hungering cold. But like most tough trades, the cost is far too steep. “I worry about my brother,” I say. “He didn’t get all the care he needed when we were fugitives, but he had my mother and me. His mental difficulties…” Gooseflesh rises on my arms. I can’t bear the thought of Rostov dealing with him, ripping out his thoughts like he just did mine.

“What’s he like?” Sergei asks, still half grinning. It thaws away some of my fear.

“Zhenya’s brilliant. I’ve seen him write down the score for an entire symphony after listening to it once. It’s only that he’s … he’s not quite engaged with the world around him. He lives in his own world inside his head, and it’s very tough to pull him back into ours.” I shake my head. “My parents were working with him at their old lab, researching his disorder or whatever it may be. He was better then,” I admit.

“You must be good at coaxing him out, though. You can hear his thoughts, see his world…”

“I didn’t have enough control over it at the time, and everything about his thoughts was so foreign, you know? Like another language.”

Sergei pulls his knees up on the couch. “Sure, but foreign languages can be learned. I speak a little German …
Eine kleine Englisch
, too—I’m learning it for our work.” His German is like chewing stale bread. “Listening to the Beatles helped me.”

I stare at him blankly. “Beetles?”

“You’re joking, right? Everyone knows who the Beatles are, even in Russia.” He shakes his head, sending a spray of blond hair across his forehead. “This wicked British rock band. Valentin’s got their record if you want to listen. All the lyrics are simple, but so clever.”

“How did Valentin get their record? Isn’t Kruzenko worried it’ll brainwash him into a British sleeper agent or something?”

“Rostov gave it to him for good behavior. Some project they’re working on.” He shifts abruptly on the couch, his face tightening though he’s still grinning. I’d taken his charming smile for a weapon, but I’m starting to think he uses it as a shield instead.

“Listen … When I first saw Rostov … Through the training exercise we did.” I swallow, hard. The Russian thing to do would be to cling to every crumb of knowledge I’ve got, but information is currency, and Sergei seems like a good source. If he can lead me to the knowledge I need … “He was thinking about making our minds ‘belong’ to him.”

Sergei shrugs, like this is nothing new. “He resents what the psychic program has become. Most of the spies from the Great Patriotic War are gone. He doesn’t think we’ll live up to their glory days. Stopping the Germans, saving thousands of lives. Now we pick at the bones for tiny victories here and there. I suppose he wants to make us in his own image, like the old guard.”

“Hunting down spies and making dissidents vanish are only ‘tiny’ victories?” I ask.

“Compared to singlehandedly saving an entire city by guiding food supply trucks into Leningrad during the siege? Of course.” Sergei drops his voice. “He’s not a fan of Khruschev—says we appease the Americans too much now.”

My eyebrows raise. “You mean he doesn’t agree with the Party line? That sounds dangerous.”

“It’s not that he disagrees; he takes a more extreme approach. He’s too impatient for cold wars. Thinks we should confront the Americans now, get it over with.” Sergei leans back. “He wants the Party to do more to police our own, too. You know the old-guard types—they long for the glory days under Uncle Stalin, when people did as they were told, and didn’t complain about ‘freedom’ because they had better things to worry about, like gangrene and Nazis.”

Stalin, who—if whispered rumors are to be believed—sent more of his own people to die than Hitler ever did. Yes, a perfect model for reclaiming the Soviet Union.

“I don’t see why he needs us at all,” I say. “He’s a much stronger psychic than any of us.”

“Ah, but you’re wrong. He’s good at what he does—ripping people’s brains open—but it only goes so far. He can’t read the past like you or see the future like Larissa. And he can’t spy on Johnny Kennedy getting a little kiss-kiss bang-bang in the White House, eh, if you know what I mean?” He elbows me in the ribs.

“
You
can remotely view inside the White House?” I say, dubious.

That half grin. “All right, so not yet. I’m working on it, but I have a harder time with places I’ve never been. Anyway, my point is, Rostov is only one man, and the more power he gets, the more people working for him, the more he wants. You know what they say about the security services—we have a third of the country keeping an eye on the other two-thirds.”

“The more minds out there searching, the better,” I say.

“Exactly. And between you and me, Rostov has always had one big problem. He never sees what he’s not looking for.”

I tuck that ripe little morsel away. Stamp it, seal it, wrap it in Shostakovich.

“Yulia…” Sergei stares at a tacky headless cherub sculpture for a long, heavy moment. The longer it takes for him to speak, the more his music swells. “I know you think there’s a better life out there, somewhere, but it’s safer here. I’m lucky—my parents always prepared me for what I was. I know it’s harder for you, but won’t you trust me?”

His music is suffocating me, crowding out my own music and thoughts until nothing is left. “It’s not my parents’ fault. They didn’t know. I—I’m a wildling. Like Larissa.”

“They didn’t tell you,” he corrects me.

“They didn’t know!” I cry. “They would have told me. They couldn’t have known.”

A phantom dreamscape: Mama and Papa, bickering at the kitchen table. They’re talking about monitoring someone. About me.

“Fine, so they didn’t know. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No. I want to be rid of this,” I say. “I don’t want this power. All it’s good for is hurting other people.”

He tilts his head at me, studying me with the vacant, yet all-knowing stare of the saints on old Russian religious icons. “Is this about what happened with that woman in Red Square?”

I jam my fisted hands into my thighs, kneading away the static haze surrounding her memories. “She had a chance to escape, and I’ve ruined it for her.”

“Yul. She’s a
traitor.
It was the risk she took when she decided to break the law. At least this way, you get to look like a hero for the KGB, right?” He twists toward me, reaching for my knee. “You can’t be afraid of what you are. You’ll end up like Valentin, barely talking to anyone because you’re afraid of yourself. That’s no way to go through life.”

“You told them,” I say quietly. I want rage to flood my veins, but I feel nothing. I’m all hollowed out. “You told them that we saw her.”

He winces and scoots back. “Rostov would have found out one way or another. I didn’t want him to hurt you.”

“Maybe that’s not for you to choose,” I snap.

“I only reported what I saw, all right? Nothing more. It’s not like you asked me to lie.” He scrubs a hand through his hair. “You’ve got to make peace with what you are, Yul. People with our abilities … we aren’t fit for life outside of here. Can you imagine working at the factory, surrounded by the noise of machinery and everyone’s dumb thoughts? What good would it do? You’d go mad like Anastasia did.”

I slump back onto the sofa beside him, and a memory pricks me like a hidden straight pin. Images of women huddling in this room; the stifling pain of a corset packed with jewels, rubles, fine silverware. Panic constricts their chests tighter than the corset lacing.

I close my eyes and suck down a deep breath. He has a point. I don’t want to be so vulnerable, waiting for the memories to overtake me, waiting for Rostov to pry them out of me.

“Those aren’t my only choices. There has to be another way.” I stand up. The narrow walls of the room are closing in. This isn’t a hiding place. It’s a morgue.

“
Bozhe moi
. Forget it. You want to be miserable, you go right ahead. Just thought you might like to have a friend.”

“I don’t need friends.” I shove off the couch toward the concrete hallway. With the light on, I can see the mouse droppings lining the floor, the dead insects in stagnant puddles of water around the leaking pipes. I squeeze my way through the half-open panel into the back of the closet. I don’t need anyone. When our livelihood is prying away secrets, I have to cling to every last scrap of me that I have left.

CHAPTER 14

“YULIA? YULIA, DARLING
, wake up.”

Mama shakes me out of a milky haze. Her face is only light and shadow at first; slowly, my eyes focus on her plump lips, her narrow nose, her sparkling diamond necklace like a smear of stars between her collarbones. I’m dreaming again, I tell myself, but it feels like a memory, just out of reach. We are still Party members. I glance down at my hands, punctuated with knobby little wrists and the countless phantom scars and bruises accumulated from playing childhood games with Zhenya. I can’t be older than twelve.

“I’m awake.” I force a smile through my stupor. But she doesn’t smile back. That wrinkle appears between her eyebrows, hitching my heartbeat. “Mama? What’s wrong?”

“It’s time for us to go.” She stands up from my bed with a twinkle of jewels, and that’s when I see that she isn’t just wearing her prized diamond necklace. Her strand of pearls, another ruby pendant, her St. George medallion, an emerald and gold bracelet, her Swiss watch … Her thick wool coat bulges with several layers of sweaters and blouses, and little round circles along its hem hint at kopecks tucked into the lining.

I struggle to sit up. My muscles aren’t yet working, and my synapses are firing as if through tar. Outside my bedroom window, the night is still thick with indigo. “Where are we going?”

“I’ve already packed your things. Come on, Zhenya’s waiting for us in the car.”

“What about Papa?” I ask. My feet thud against my heavy winter boots at the side of my bed. Mama holds out a woolen dress and tights for me.

“Your father has already left. He won’t be going with us.” Her words catch as she says it, like someone tugs on them with a bit of string. “He’ll be looking elsewhere. Finding us help.”

I stare at her, arm tangled up in the dress’s sleeve. “Finding help,” I echo. I try to reach past the fog in my brain. I’m certain there’s something important here that I should already know, but my thoughts keep glancing off of it.

“There has been a change in our situation at the clinic,” she says, voice flat, like when she transcribes charts into her Dictaphone. “Your father will be looking for a way to change it, but in the meantime, we’re going to go on a little trip.” Her lips twist strangely, though maybe it’s just the moonlight. “Don’t you remember?”

Remember. The word feels like a taunt, like another tendril of fog added to the heavy mist already shrouding a part of my brain. Why can’t I shake off this exhaustion? “No.”

“Good,” she says. “Let’s keep it that way.”

An empty mind is a safe mind, Papa always said. As the dream scatters and fades, I wonder how safe my mind really is.

CHAPTER 15

A GRAY SWEATER APPEARS
in my clothing trunk the next day, identical to the one that had gone missing, but where the old one had a moth hole in the left armpit, this one has none. That rules out Masha as the culprit. She’d never have bothered to find me a new one.