Sekret (24 page)

“The tunnel? There’s no way. They’ll be expecting it. And what about that, that
thing
working with Rostov?” I ask.

Valentin leans closer. His breath is so warm on my sizzling neck. It’s all I can do not to reach for him—but no. This is too important. “I’m still working on that part. But I know we can do it. Think about it, Yulia. If you’re willing to work with me…”

“I’m willing,” I say. My heart beats with the Beatles.
I wanna hold your hand, I wanna hold your hand.

Valentin draws a sharp inhale, like he’s catching one last scent of me, then stands. “We’ve been gone too long as it is. Please, do your best not to think of this.” His fingers trace a piano chord on my arm. “We have to suppress it. I know you’ve suppressed thoughts before.”

I shudder. Just knowing that bad thoughts lie deep under my skin makes me queasy. “I’ll do my best.”

“Especially around Sergei,” he says. “I’m afraid that if he found out, he might—”

“Tell Rostov. Right. They do seem to get on well.” I stroke the back of his hand. “I’ll keep our plan safe.”

“Our plan.” Valentin looks at me sideways with his cheeks burned scarlet. “… Yes. Don’t let Sergei know about that, either.”

CHAPTER 30

AFTER VALENTIN LEAVES
with Kruzenko, Misha, and Ivan to follow the scrubber’s trail, I settle into the parlor, desperate to numb the hyperawareness coursing through me, the receptors hungry for the taste and feel of Valentin. I can’t think about him, or the fact that even now he might be too close to the scrubber, getting his memories stripped away. I let the bland
KVN
skits on the screen wash over me, the heavy genetics textbook anchor me, and Masha’s rant floss through my ears.

“It’s just not fair,” Masha continues. “We don’t get any respect, do we, Sergei? I don’t think Kruzenko understands the importance of remote viewing because she isn’t a remote viewer herself. I mean, you’re kind of weak, but I’m mastering telekinesis, too—”

“She respects us just fine. If a project doesn’t call for us, she doesn’t take us.” Sergei’s knee tap-tap-taps beside mine. Up and down as he stares at
KVN
on the TV screen.

Masha slings herself over the back of the couch. “But they can always use us. We’re the best anyway, aren’t we, Seryozha?” She wedges her shoulders between Sergei and me and I’m more than happy to lean away to make room. “I guess I have to try to run away if I want to choose what projects I get to work on.”

Most mutations are recessive, but in a capitalist society that perverts Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” to control their citizens, mutated specimens may eventually gain dominance as the individuals lacking the advantageous mutation die out.

I keep reading. I do not think about Masha’s words. I will not let any anger bubble up in my head, or let my musical barrier warp and distend as it tries to contain that luscious bow-shaped curve of Valya’s lips—

“… and even though it’s Ivan’s specialty, I’m probably better at reading thoughts than he is, he’s so weak—”

“Masha?” Larissa mutters. “Go walk on a dick.”

Masha slithers off the couch’s back and narrows her eyes at Larissa. Their angry thoughts bounce back and forth, practically tangible in the air. “
Poshol na hui
yourself,” Masha manages to spit out, and storms away. The guards know better by now than to get in Masha’s way, and practically trip over themselves giving her room to pass.

I turn to Larissa to thank her, but instead of smirking at her success, she’s glaring at the television as if she means to telepathically turn the dial. “Lara,” I whisper, trying to catch her eye. “What’s the matter?”

Red stripes from dried tears still run down her face from her fight with Kruzenko this morning—I’ve never seen Larissa so eager to use her powers. Screaming, pounding on doors, guards dragging her away. “I should be there instead,” she says, shaking her hair forward to cover the cut on her temple. Her Vysotsky folk song keeps starting and stopping, stumbling over itself.

“They need you here, predicting what’s coming next. Sergei’s right,” I say. He snorts beside me; I force my gaze to stay on Larissa. “Not everyone is most effective out in the field.” With a twinge, I realize that I
am
needed most out there, yet I couldn’t be happier to be far, far away from the scrubber’s sound.

“
Bozhe moi.
” Larissa’s hand goes to her mouth.

I follow her gaze to the comedy sketch on TV. A frumpy comedian, dressed like Secretary Khruschev, is arguing with a man in a mouse suit. He offers the mouse a fistful of ration cards—the mouse shakes his head, and the audience giggles nervously. Something is not right in their laughter. They sound too guilty.

Khruschev tries a bottle of vodka; the mouse denies him again. Khruschev holds up a miniature
Sputnik
satellite—a round silver globe, ringed in spikes flying away in one direction as if swept by the wind. Enormous laughter. The mouse looks tempted here, and he almost reaches for the
Sputnik
, but stops himself and shakes his head furiously.

Khruschev reaches down, pulls off his loafer, and starts beating the mouse with it—really wailing on him. The audience is howling now, the kind of unselfconscious laughter when you realize your worst fears have not come to pass, that you are not crazy, that you are right to laugh, and saxophones bleep and blurt as Khruschev gives the mouse chase, and we all three stare slack-jawed at the screen until the image is abruptly replaced with a sickle and hammer and “Technical Difficulties”—

“I—I don’t understand.” I look at Larissa and her glassy eyes. “What is the mouse supposed to be?”

“Mickey Mouse. Because Walt Disney wouldn’t let the secretary onto his roller coaster rides when he visited America—”

“What’s a Mickey Mouse?” I ask.

Sergei shakes his head. “They shouldn’t have done that. If the secretary finds out—and he will—”

“They’re going to cancel
KVN
.” Larissa stands; kicks the television console. The sickle and hammer warp on the screen before settling. “And those stupid men will be shot and it wasn’t even that funny. Stupid, stupid, senseless. Everything is senseless!”

Larissa thuds out of the lounge, and her boots slam against the staircase. I hesitate for a second, wanting to follow her, if only for an excuse not to be left alone with Sergei. But then I have waited too long, and the moment has passed. The screen is still the sickle and hammer image, and the national anthem blasts through the lounge. One of the guards steps forward and turns down the volume knob on the TV. I stare hard enough at my book that I think I could set it on fire. I try to fill my mind with other songs. Valya’s songs.

“So,” Sergei says. His knee bounces fiercely against mine.

“So,” I say.

He laces his fingers together. “I was given tickets to the Spartak game on New Year’s. They’re playing Dinamo.”

“Sounds fun for you,” I say.

He catches his knee in his tangled hands. “I didn’t know if you liked … If you’d maybe want to go…”

Now I’m the one with the Russian shrug of defeat. How easily I can slip into the life the KGB has constructed for us. Taking entrance exams for Moscow State, going to hockey games. Just when I’m ready to surrender to it, Valentin and Mama spark that vile flame of hope. “I … I wouldn’t feel right. I don’t want—”

“No. No, I get it.” He tangles his fingers in his hair, making a fist. “You still won’t admit this is your life. Well, guess what, Yulia. You don’t
belong
anywhere else!” he laughs, cold and dry. “You think you can function out there, knowing what you are? Maybe you can be a factory girl, queen of the gossip hive because you can peek at your friends’ thoughts on the assembly line. But it’ll drive you crazy.”

“And who’s to say it won’t drive us crazy in here? Look at Larissa, losing her head over a TV show. Or Anastasia—I know all about that,” I say.

He smirks. “Do you? Are you sure about that?”

“I know enough.” I stand, tucking my book under my arm. “I don’t need you lecturing me.”

“But you’re so caught up in what you think your life
should
have been that you’re not living it the way it is!” He stands, too, towering over me. “I’m trying to protect you, don’t you see? But I can’t do it forever.”

“Enough, already! I’d rather take my chances than have you constantly trying to save me!” I stumble back from him. The ridges of the bookshelf, tacky with cheap paint, press into my spine.

“You’re vulnerable to sycophants like Masha. Dangerous revolutionaries like Valentin. He’ll get us all killed with his scheming, but he’s never let that stop him before.”

“Keep your voice down,” I hiss, but the guards are already watching us. We’re certainly more interesting than the static logo on TV.

“Valya’s plans would cost us our lives, when we have so much to give. I say we ignore it all and live a true Russian life as best as we can while dealing with this—this curse.” His voice drops low. Pulled taut. “But lately, your thoughts sound just like Valentin’s.”

The front door bangs open. Sergei and I look at each other—a threat to finish this later—and charge for the stairs. Larissa is already flying down them, her sloppy braid airborne behind her. Realization hardens and calcifies in my gut. Why she’s upset today. She knows something. She knows.

Kruzenko, Rostov, and a rash of uniformed KaGeBezniks swarm the foyers, crowding around a long, flat object. A stretcher. The lump on it moves—there is a person on it, bundled in blankets, but I’m not hearing any thoughts, even though I’m close enough that I should be hearing something. Something is horribly wrong. There are too many bodies and not enough voices. A black emptiness on the stretcher where someone’s thoughts should be. My chest constricts; my pulse rings too loudly in my ears.
Bozhe moi.
Please don’t let it be Valentin.

“Into the dining room. Quickly, quickly,
poshli
. The doctor will be here soon. You—bring in the other boys.” Kruzenko herds them out of the foyer and the doors slam shut.

Larissa curls around the banister, boneless, but her face is oddly serene. “What’s happened?” I ask, fighting to keep my voice calm. Her eyes, usually brilliant blue, look dead. They’re just fixed on the closed dining room door. I want to shake her, bring her back to life.

She unhooks herself from the railing. “Ivan,” she says. Her tone is hollowed out. “He’s been scrubbed.”

And she slinks back up the staircase, with no shock, no surprise, no panic, nothing at all.

CHAPTER 31

KRUZENKO AND ROSTOV DISAPPEAR
into her office after the doctor leaves. We can’t hear them argue, but the whole space around the door is electric, like if we reach for the doorknob we’d get shocked by the furious, heated thoughts buzzing around inside.

No one will say what happened when they tried to track the scrubber from the hotel room they’d found. Misha sequesters himself in the boys’ room; I try to catch Valya’s eye, but he retreats to the ballroom to tinker away at a tumultuous jazz melody. I sprawl on the ballroom floor, feeling worse than useless. He stitches new melodies, fragments of songs from his records, and other threads I don’t know into the fabric of the first tune, making an endless bolt that spools out as we wait for news. The cracked plaster ceiling overhead anchors me as the sea of notes beneath me rolls and shifts.

This is what it must feel like to wait for the atom bomb to fall. When the American cowboys tire of our angry leaders and our slipshod satellites, when they push a button and our klaxons wail a too-late warning that our molecules are about to pull apart like taffy, time must freeze with anticipation like this.

A guard storms over to the piano and rests his hand on the keyboard cover. Valentin yanks his hands back and the guard slams it down. “Dinnertime.” The guard jabs his AK-47 in the direction of the dining room.

Ivan is gone. The stretcher is gone. The table is set with one of the more lavish meals we’ve had here—smoked salmon, boiled pierogi smothered in sour cream, caviar spread on huge chunks of bread. Bottles of Sovetskoye Shampanskoye wait at each place setting. I sit between Sergei and Valentin; Misha and Masha are opposite us, with matching glum stares. Neither Larissa nor Ivan appear.

Major Kruzenko doles out pierogi for herself and starts shoveling them into her mouth. No one speaks. I plop slices of salmon onto my plate, but the nervous, fearful energy rumbling through the room keeps me from taking a bite. Even Sergei doesn’t do much more than push around his food.

Finally, Kruzenko drains the last of her Shampanskoye and scoots her chair back with an authoritative scrape. Beside her Rostov rubs his thumb idly against his Major General’s stars on his collar. I try to read his emotions, but it’s too painful to look at him straight. It makes my head throb.
Bang-bang.

“Children.” Kruzenko reaches to Rostov’s free hand and slips her fingers into the gaps between his. I expect him to tear free of her, strike her for such a display. I need him to, just to show that everything is normal. But his fingers tighten upon hers.
Bozhe moi
, Ivan might have been right. Once upon a dismal time, these two monsters looked to each other for comfort, strength.

“Children,” Kruzenko tries again, pitching her napkin on her plate. “Today’s incident is no one’s fault but the American coward who harmed our Ivan. Please do not blame yourselves. Sometimes these things cannot be avoided.”

“But what happened?” Sergei asks. “Why isn’t anyone explaining?”

Valentin stares down his nibbled bread roll as he speaks. “He’d checked out of the room two days ago. We thought we could glean clues off the hotel workers, but then he was there—he led Ivan away from us, and—”

“Valentin Borisovich, that is enough.” Kruzenko stands. “It is not important how this came to be. Now all we can do is hope for the best for Ivan and hunt this beast down.”

“You can’t keep throwing us at him. We’re clearly not prepared,” I say. “Why not send the more advanced operatives? Like—like your parents.” I gesture to Misha and Masha. “All the rest.”