Skandal (11 page)

There is a pulse thudding between us, and I’m not sure whether it’s his or mine. I miss this—this closeness, this heat between us that evaporates my fear. I catch my lower lip in my teeth and feel my skin melting into his. “You can ask me anything.”

He nods, smiling to himself, like he’s embarrassed of his own foolishness. “It’s about what you did in Berlin.” He traces a slow circle on my arm. “Your hands. Pushing out all those emotions…”

And like that, our heartbeats fall back out of sync. I back away, suddenly aware of the impropriety of me being here, in this warm and sweat-dampened bed, though I come here more nights than not.
What would Papa think?
asks the voice in the back of my mind. Then I realize the question’s absurdity. If Papa were home already, which he clearly is not because he is off somewhere doing whatever maddening things I’m afraid to know about, he wouldn’t possibly care.

Valya clears his throat. “I wondered if it could work in reverse. If you could draw away the pain from me.”

I stare at my palms, curled around my legs, imagining there is a beast inside them, just waiting to open its jaws. What he says makes sense, but where would I put these things? I’d draw them into me, but would they stay there, lurking under my skin? Pacing like a caged animal?

He bows his head, cheeks darkening. “I’m sorry. It’s too much to ask.”

“No. It isn’t that.” I jerk my knee away from him. Suddenly the heat of my own skin is unbearable to me. “But what if I—What if it doesn’t work that way—?”

The look he gives me makes me want to melt. Makes me want to give in. But there are holes in my memories that I’ll never recover. I can’t just fill them with Valya’s pain.

His hand hovers near my shoulder, like he’s deliberating between clapping my shoulder or pulling me into an embrace. “There’s something else troubling you.”

I can’t suppress the bitter laugh that bubbles out of me. What isn’t troubling me? I study Valya through the fog of exhaustion. I can’t tell Valya about Sergei’s warning, not yet. It’s not that I think Valya’s the mole—not willingly, anyway. But what if, when Rostov ripped open the wound in Valya’s thoughts, he left something else behind?

“Maybe,” I say, my mouth thick with sleep. “Maybe it could work. Do you remember what you did for me on the train?”

He nods with a wince. “I helped you recover some of your memories that your father suppressed. I could have permanently damaged your mind. This is different. What if you could just draw out the emotions, not the memories themselves?”

Every now and then, I stumble upon another gap in my brain where the past ought to be, and I wonder whether it’s another memory scratched out by my father, or something I’ve simply forgotten. “So I wouldn’t be trying to recover your memories. Just ease them—remove whatever these strong emotions are you’ve attached to them.”

He watches me for a few moments, expressionless. “Like you did to the Hound. Drawing out his emotions.”

“Right. But without the—the using them against you part.” I smile weakly, but neither of us finds it funny.

Valentin’s hand hovers near my shoulder, wanting to land on me, but he pulls away. “There are things that should have stayed forgotten, Yulia. I’d managed to keep them buried for years. But now they’ve been dug up and it’s unbearable.”

“I want to try.” My voice wavers as I stare into his glinting glasses lenses. If the resurgence of Valya’s memories is part of Rostov’s plan—if he’s somehow been turned into a mole, I have to try. I won’t let Valya be made into Rostov’s unwilling tool.

He stretches his fingers wide, sucking in a deep breath. “Just a moment,” he says. “Please, only a moment. If it’s too much—if it hurts you at any point—”

“I’ll stop. I promise.” I swallow hard. “I want to help you.”

“I know. I trust you. It’s myself I can’t be sure of.”

We lock our fingers together. Our pulses thud against each other, and we breathe at the same pace. At first, all I hear is Valya’s shield, dense layers of Dave Brubeck jazz, and our shared Beatles song all marbled together, but note by note, it stretches like a knitted scarf, until I’m able to slip through the gaps.

Waves lap against a distant shore. Breathe in. The waves crash. Breathe out. The waves retreat, foamy fingers clawing uselessly at the sand as they slip away. The sun has already melted into the sea and only its afterimage hangs above the horizon, orange and pink and increasingly navy, salted with bright stars. I breathe in and out, inhabiting Valentin. We dig our bare toes into the sand, letting it slurp around our feet. Our legs are already salt-stained and smeared from a long day of running through the surf.

“The Black Sea is a gift from God, meant just for the Georgian people,” a woman’s voice says. “Sometimes it is the only way we have to cool down.”

I want to smile at her words—I know the wet roast of southern Russian summers all too well—but a different emotion stirs in Valentin. He tenses his stomach like he’s bracing for a blow.

“We have to cool down, Valya,” the woman continues, from somewhere behind us. “We have to wash this out.”

A new smell cuts through the briny air. It smells like burning meat.

Valentin’s fear floods through me as an arm wraps around our waist. It’s too hot to the touch, like it’s been left in the sun far too long. He’s a tiny boy still—this woman slings him effortlessly into the air and tucks him under her arm. He’s screaming. His skin crackles with terror—my skin. My bones. The terror of eyes squeezed too tight and lungs that won’t fill with air. I try to breathe in, but my lungs are on fire and my nose is filled with that awful charred smell—

Valya rips his hand away from me as his musical shield snaps back shut. “Enough.” Some of the white-edged fear has left his eyes, but concern twists the corners of his mouth. “That’s—that’s all I can do for now—”

I gasp for fresh air, but everything tastes stale and moist, and I can’t find a way to
breathe
through it, I can’t seem to get the air through my lungs and into my blood. My skull is too tight against my brain. Little Valentin’s screams are ringing in my ears. His fear is racing through my veins. Everywhere I look is dark, crushing me with emptiness, a heavy, bloating thing.

“You must learn to let go, little girl. You can’t carry all these burdens on your own.” Papa is leaning in the doorway to Valya’s room. “I’d hate to have to erase you again, just to keep you safe from your own foolishness.”

And then he is reaching through the air with his thoughts. His mind pushes into mine like a puppeteer. Air rushes back into my lungs. The terror drains away; the memory turns inchoate, like a faint dream. Whatever I was feeling and thinking before has turned to smoke and drifted away, and I’m left with a clammy sweat, a sense like I’ve walked into a room and forgotten what I came for.

“Well?” Papa asks me, folding his arms across his chest. His hair is raked back, stiffened with sweat and dried in unnatural whorls. “Are you pleased with yourself?” He tilts his head toward Valentin. “Took away an ounce of his pain to give yourself a pound?”

Valentin and I exchange a look. He looks pretty relaxed for a boy who’s been caught in bed with a girl (by her father, no less); some nameless fear lingers over my shoulder, but I can’t remember what brought it on. I’m not entirely sure how I came to this moment, in fact—one moment I’m whispering with Valentin, and the next—the next, Papa is looming in the doorway—

I grit my teeth and stare back at Papa. “Pleased with myself about what?” I ask. “I don’t even know what I’ve done! You’re always ripping my memories away from me!”

“It’s for the best. You could have gotten yourself killed.” Papa’s face is eased, but there’s a tension to his words as he looks at me. I feel emptied out; I can’t gauge how serious he is. “You don’t understand what you’re capable of. You’ll never understand.”

I clench my hand around a fistful of sheets. “Maybe because you take that understanding from me every time you erase parts of my mind.”

“It was for your own good. It took me twenty years to control my power, don’t you see? They aren’t static. They grow alongside us, and if you push too hard without mastering them, you’ll hurt yourself.” Again, those icy fingers sink into my brain; against my will, my head twists to face Papa. His face is like marble in the moonlight, hard and only a false attempt at portraying emotion. “You are a child still. You are toying with things you cannot possibly understand, and you would rather kill yourself than show a little common sense!”

If I didn’t feel so drained right now, I’d be yelling at him. Pointing out how unfair he’s being, what a hypocrite he is when he obviously had to learn to control his powers from somewhere, and how dare he try to make his point by using his powers on
me
. I’d be shaking with the urge to weep that this is what it takes to get my father’s attention.

But I am so empty, like the fear I leeched from Valentin has burned clean through me like rubbing alcohol. Papa forced it all away from me.

“Get some sleep,” Papa says, leaning back from the door frame. “Both of you. You’ll need your rest for tomorrow.”

I nod, numbly, and stagger to my feet. Whether it’s Papa directing me or my own will, I couldn’t say; I feel nothing as I plod down the hall and collapse into bed, too exhausted for words and thought.

But I’m no closer to understanding the nature of Valentin’s injury; the answer to the questions humming like a disrupter under the surface of all my thoughts. Is there a mole, and if so, who? Papa, with his hateful threats and casual comfort with taking control? Valentin, and whatever dark secret lies in the waves of his wounded thoughts? Or any of the other PsyOps team members, whose motivations and secrets I can’t begin to sift from the foreign, surreal faces they present to me. I’m no closer to grasping the answer, but as I drift off, Anna Montalban’s face stares back at me, laughing, victorious. One thing is for certain: our adversary has grown far cleverer than we’ve ever before seen.

CHAPTER 10

FRANK TUTTELBAUM IS A FORCE
of nature in the PsyOps office, and this morning, he’s pacing in front of us with all the calm of a hurricane. “Not a single hint?” he roars. “Not one imbecile in the lounge or the jail knows anything about this woman?”

Marylou stubs out her cigarette with a sigh. “She’s a ghost, man. She disappeared.”

Frank lurches to a stop in front of Marylou. His eyes tighten like a spotlight on her; his face is as red-raged as a Disney cartoon character. I’m waiting for the steam to shoot from his ears. “I was chief of Moscow station for seven years, sweetheart. The Russian target’s the toughest nut to crack there is. But nobody, and I mean
no
body, just disappears like that. There has to be some kind of trail you bozos are missing.”

Cindy drums her fingers against a pair of cards spread before her. “If I may, sir…”

But Frank is on a roll now. I don’t catch all his words, but I get the general idea: incompetent, fools, should have never let women like Cindy and Donna and me work in the field. I glance at Valya, but he’s stone-faced, as if this outburst is no surprise. Another day on the PsyOps team.

“Six of Pentacles, inverted.” Cindy cuts into Frank’s rant. “Anna is probably confused, lost, running out of options. We just have to keep digging until we can find where she’ll be vulnerable.”

“She mentioned a diner in Dupont Circle that she goes to a lot.” Donna smoothes her glare into a cloying smile for Frank. “We could ask around there.”

Judd shakes his head. “But what about Senator Saxton? Shouldn’t we be worried about him?”

I squeeze my hands together, one palm warring against the other, tension rolling back and forth. Someone here could be actively trying to sabotage us, if Sergei’s to be believed, though we certainly seem to be doing a good job of sabotaging ourselves, whether intentional or not.

“Or maybe there’s, like, a secret underground lair where all the commies hang out,” Marylou says. “Like in the James Bond movies.”

We have less than nothing, because we once had a trail and we lost it. I try to quiet the pounding in my head as they bicker back and forth, tossing out more and more ludicrous conspiracies. My mind is scraped raw with half-remembered fragments of last night—trying to help Valentin with his pain. Fearing Rostov had made a mole out of him. Papa, forcing me to stop. He took something from me—yet again, he found it easier to erase the past than dredge it up, examine it, accept the results, no matter how cruel. Whatever insight I’d glimpsed at in Valentin’s mind is lost, and Papa’s keeping the peace once more in his own selfish way.

Frank’s shouting, pointing—he’s giving out more assignments. Valya, Cindy, and Judd are to retrace Saxton’s steps and question his neighbors about the recent break-ins; Al, Donna, and Tony will interview the other NATO delegates. “Marylou and Yulia.” Frank scratches at the steel-wool stubble on his chin. “Get some practice in. Lord knows you two numbskulls need it.”

Unless Papa’s not doing it for himself at all, but for Rostov, the longest spy game imaginable to infiltrate the Americans—no.
Bozhe moi
, Yulia. You can’t let Sergei knot up your thoughts like this. Either there is a mole or there isn’t, but I can’t be distracted. I have to stop Rostov. I have to save Mama—

“Yul. Hey.” Frank snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Speaking to you here. Do I need to get Sergeant Davis?”

I wrestle back my first acrid response and force a smile to my face. “No, sir. I understand you.”

“You know how to work with remote viewers? Linking into their thoughts?” he asks.

“Yes.”

Frank snorts. “Well, time for you to learn the next step. Marylou?”

Smoke weaves out of Marylou’s nostrils and mouth. “Yeah, yeah, don’t be a cube. I’ll show her how it works.” She stubs out her cigarette and beckons me back toward the girls’ room. “Exciting first week, huh, Jules?”

“Maybe too exciting.” I settle into a nest of pillows while Marylou finds a new record to play. Harmonicas breeze along as a man and woman sing about deep purple fogs. “What is this next step?”