Skandal (2 page)

The general tilts his head. “Whatever her motivation, she
is
doing this work. And whatever they’re working on must be stopped. Do you understand this?”

Shostakovich marches through my thoughts with a slow, sturdy drumbeat. “I understand,” I say carefully, “that their work must be stopped.”

The general flips through the folder before him, his smile as thin as a knife. “Then we are in agreement.” He shoves it across the table toward me; black-and-white photographs flutter free. I bend down, my bad ankle creaking like a rusty hinge, and scoop up the photos. Then nearly drop them.

Crime scene photos. Dead men and women, staring beyond the camera with milky eyes. One victim is sprawled out on the pavement, his hat tilted upward, revealing his stunned face. A woman curls into the corner of a train car. Nothing similar links any of these people that I can tell—race, age, place of death—except they all wear the slippery skin of sudden weight loss and the dark pouches beneath their eyes of too many sleepless nights. And dark trails blaze from their nostrils, their ears.

Something tightens in my gut, clenches hard and ripe and refuses to let go. I’m thankful the images are in black and white, flattening down the gore into less jarring hues.

“What happened to these people?” I ask, hysteria bringing out my guttural Slavic snarl. What I mean to ask is why is he showing me this awfulness—what relevance does it have to our discussion about Mama? But that line of questioning bumps against a bruised and battered patch in my brain. He thinks Mama is behind this somehow.

And I’m scared he might be right.

The general clears his throat. “These bodies have turned up all over North America and Western Europe over the past six weeks. At first, we were afraid we had a biological attack on our hands. Anthrax, smallpox—every couple of years, we get double agents making a bunch of noise about how the Russkies are bringing back the Plague. But we called in the Communicable Disease Center, and their tests for every known disease came back negative. And the geographical distribution—London, New York, West Berlin, Toronto—made no sense for an epidemic.”

My ears turn redder and redder with each multisyllabic word. I wish I didn’t have to rely on Winnie. I glance toward her, eyebrows raised in surrender, and she translates in flawless Russian.

“They look like they are the victims of a psychic attack. But there are so many of them.” I keep shuffling through the photographs—there must be almost twenty people in here.

“That was our thought, too, after we ruled out biological causes. Then we came across another victim while investigating a possible mole in the State Department. The FBI went to the apartment of the mole’s handler and found him inside—just barely clinging to life. That one—that’s him, right there.”

I suck in my breath as I study the last photograph. The man’s spider legs curl under his chin; he lies on his side, blood collecting on the rug beneath him. Diamond-cut cheekbones and a pair of scars across one eye.

“I know this man,” I say.

The general’s eyes tighten like a camera lens focusing. “One of our PsyOps team members was with us when we found him. Said he’d never encountered such a powerful psychic before. I think you’ve got a name for them—psychics like your father?”

“Scrubbers.” Psychics who don’t merely read minds—they twist and bend thoughts into whatever arrangement they please. They can conjure entire memories out of nothingness or suppress a thought as if it never occurred. “But—but this man. Pavel. He isn’t a scrubber.” I tap the photograph. “He was one of our guards back in Moscow, just a low-ranking KGB soldier. He didn’t have any psychic abilities himself.”

The general squashes his lips together. “Tell that to the poor PsyOps team member. Just being around the guy gave him an awful nosebleed, his thoughts were so strong—said it felt like getting an ice-pick lobotomy.”

My hands are quivering like plucked strings as I drop the stack of photos on the table. I know what he’s describing all too well. I’ve been victim to a scrubber’s corrosive wave of psychic energy, wrenching my thoughts around, boring through my skull, filling my head with whatever maddening visions he pleases. Scrubbers are impossible to miss. Pavel couldn’t have been one—I’m certain of it.

“You said he was still alive when you found him.” I meet the general’s gaze, avoiding the dead eyes of the photographs as they stare up at me. “Did he tell you anything?”

“The PsyOps member was too busy trying to keep his brain from dribbling out of his nose to read the guy’s mind. But the perp said something before he expired.” The general peers down at his file. “‘Rostov. Chernina. They’ve gone too far.’”

The pain in my heart, sharp and piercing, dulls the lesser ache of my bad ankle. Chernina. Mama. Pavel didn’t have the abilities before, I’m certain of it. Could she really do these things—building a psychic army, amplifying their powers far beyond anything we’ve ever known? If she were only trying to survive, then she’d do the bare minimum necessary to keep herself and Zhenya safe. This has to be part of a ploy to get her and Zhenya out of Russia. But how?

The general glances to the panel members on either side of him, some sort of wordless, thoughtless language passing between their eyes. “Miss Chernina, we are here because we need your help to stop her. To stop … this.” He sweeps his hand toward the photographs. “We believe the Soviets may have found a way to activate or enhance psychic abilities, and your mother is the logical choice to head such an endeavor, though we don’t know what they intend to accomplish with these psychics just yet. The Psychic Operations team needs your skills and your knowledge to prevent whatever they’re working toward. I realize this is a lot to ask of you, but I suspect I don’t need to tell you how dangerous an army of these … ‘scrubbers’ … could be.”

What Rostov’s working toward. The last I saw Rostov, his brilliant plan was to force the Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev to start a third world war by launching nuclear missiles at American targets. It may have been a momentary act of desperation, an emotional retaliatory strike for the
Veter 1
rocket explosion. Maybe. But a man like him won’t rest until the whole world has bowed to his aggressive version of Soviet supremacy.

“It’s only the beginning,” the general says. “Rostov has allies around the world, now. Castro, Mao, Kim. Tito and Kadar. Ho Chi Minh.” A Who’s Who of the Red Menace. Cuba, China, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and North Vietnam. “We’ve caught their agents here and abroad, all of them carrying out the sort of marching orders we’d expect from a man like Rostov. But they’re always a step ahead. We have to learn what they’re working toward.”

But I’m not listening. I’m padding my way through the dark tunnels of my brain, feeling the edges of bruises that’ll never fully fade. Memories my father tried to scrub out; knowledge he and Mama wanted to erase. My parents—both of them—have done awful things before, thinking it was for the greater good. What greater purpose is Mama trying to serve now?

“I’ll do whatever I must to stop Rostov and my mother’s plan,” I say. “But if you mean to hurt my mother, you do it alone.”

CHAPTER 2

“LET’S GO TO DINNER TONIGHT,”
Papa says in Russian, the wind shredding his words. “To celebrate your joining the team.” He twists the car’s tuner knob from static to static. “That brasserie down on M Street. You love that place.”

Neither Valya nor I answer. We’ve learned, these past few months, that Papa prefers to talk to himself rather than carry on a genuine conversation. We will go to dinner at his French restaurant, and he will drive us home in this ridiculous British convertible, and he will probably be drunk, so we’ll park half onto the yard, and then he’ll convince Valentin to play piano duets with him, and we’ll sing all night long in the conservatory of his townhouse that’s so massive it
has
a conservatory. Is this what it was like for my friend Larissa when she peered into the future? Did she see life as this inevitable pantomime, this grim certainty?

“Why is Mama helping Rostov?” I ask, screaming to be heard over the static and the wind.

Papa settles on a fuzzy station playing “Surfin’ USA”, then throttles the stick shift to rocket us around an aquamarine Cadillac. The static scrapes at my thoughts, adding to my tension headache, but Papa’s head bobs and he whistles along. Right now he looks more like Mick Jagger than my father in his buttery leather jacket and black turtleneck. His face is too stubbly—Mama would have attacked it with a razor days ago. He’s wiry as ever, though a teensy belly peeks over his belt buckle from too many nights of rich food and drink and insomnia and cigarettes, but never smoking inside the house, no, because now his English vocabulary includes phrases like “property value” and “mortgage rates.” I wonder if Winnie taught him those.

“Papa?” I ask again. “Why didn’t you warn me? What’s Mama’s plan?”

“Do you want to invite Winnie to dinner?” Papa takes his hand off the stick shift just long enough to swat my knee. “I already told her to meet us there. You don’t mind, right?”

I turn toward Valentin in the backseat, but the wind throws my dark hair into my face. When I peel it away, he’s regarding me with a sad smile on his bow lips and eyes far away behind his thick black-framed glasses. I’m relieved to see him smiling at all. Last night was one of the bad ones. I awoke to find his nightmares twisting into my ribs, driven there by his scrubber ability—he was too distraught to keep it in check. I ran into his bedroom and curled around him, wishing I could somehow cushion him from the splintered edges of his past.

Valentin’s always kept some memories anchored firmly in the depths of his mind. I never pressed him on them; we all clung to our secrets like they were the most precious of jewels when we were controlled by the KGB. But as we were escaping East Berlin, Rostov’s scrubbing ability pierced his mind with a serrated blade. Whatever Valentin kept at bay before has washed ashore, bloated and rotten, refusing to stay forgotten. It torments him, I know, though I see him trying to fight it down. Most days, he suppresses it long enough to do his work for the PsyOps Team, and when he comes home with Papa in the evenings, he can smile and talk and cook and live with me. Today is not such a day.

I thread my arm through the gap between Papa’s and my seats and rest my palm on Valentin’s knee. No sense shouting over the wind. The tempest of the
Babi Yar
symphony calms, and I push my thoughts against Valya’s musical barrier so we can speak without words.
Why didn’t you warn me they’re going after my mother?

His mouth presses into a thin line.
They keep me in the dark about her, too. But I couldn’t tell you anything until they approved you. It’s classified.
He manages half a smile.
Believe me, I wanted to, but rules are rules.

That’s what we’d agreed on, when Valya and I first decided to work with Papa and his new American friends. We’d follow the rules this time around; try to trust our teammates and believe in their goals. We want the same things they do, after all—Rostov stopped and the world safe from people like him, people who’d make our very thoughts a crime.

But paranoia is a feeling, and then a habit, and then a part of me, no easier to extract than a vital organ.
Easy for you to say,
I tell Valya
. They let you start working for them immediately
.

Because I already knew English,
Valya says
. They wanted to give you time to learn, to feel comfortable here—

My comfort has nothing to do with this.
I clench my teeth.
They trusted you from the start, but not me. Why?

Papa clicks off the radio and laughs—a sharp, brusque sound. Too sharp. “Because of your mother. My poor little girl. You say you’ll help them now, but are you ready to make the hard choices? I don’t know if you’ll ever be ready.”

Oh, so now Papa wants to listen to me, when we’re having a psychic discussion that he shouldn’t be able to hear without using his scrubber skills. “This is a private conversation, and it doesn’t involve you,” I snap at him.

Papa shrugs as we clatter off the bridge and onto solid streets. “Guess it does now.”

Pearly granite monuments splay before us, rooted in hot green grass. Federal workers cross the street in riots of blue and orange; paisley, lace, and velvet; thick corduroy suits. To our left, cherry trees burst like pink popcorn around the rim of the Tidal Basin. Papa whistles to himself as he waits for the light to change, higher and higher, each note jabbing at my growing headache—

“Pull over!” I shout.

Another shrug from Papa; he swerves the car to the left and parks the wrong way along the curb, whistling while I wrestle out of my seat belt and hop from the convertible without opening the door. Bile burns at the back of my throat.

“Yulia?” Valentin calls as I charge into the snow of shock-pink petals with my uneven gait. I wrap my arms around my chest, the long bell sleeves of my black dress hanging limp like deflated balloons. The wind snakes across my exposed thighs. Why did I let Winnie talk me into this ridiculous mod clothing again?
Bozhe moi
. The heel of one boot snags on a tree root as I bob toward the Tidal Basin’s edge.

I wanted this,
I tell myself, breathing deep to quiet my roiling stomach. I wanted to run away with Valentin. I wanted America with its nauseating colors and impractical clothes and people who keep one eye trained on me like I’m a communist jack-in-the-box about to spring.

Everything has a price tag in America, and I suppose facing the truth of Mama’s work is my cost of admission.

Shostakovich’s symphony turns sour as it batters over my thoughts. I do not hate my life here; of course not. I couldn’t endure another day enslaved to the KGB, helping General Rostov push the Cold War to its breaking point. I’m no longer his puppet, helping him overthrow Nikita Khruschev and spread his brand of communism around the world. I did not lie when I agreed to stop his newest plan, and it was always my choice to make. My choice, everything is my choice in the land of the free. But I am not gifted with Larissa’s future sight to see how unhappy even good choices can make me.