Sekret (15 page)

I unravel the floor plan above me in my mind. That last train would have been coming from the north—from the direction of Kutuzovsky Prospekt. I’m afraid to touch the walls—the claustrophobic smell of the tunnels alone is enough to ward me off—but I’ll check at the next station to see if I’m off course. I head north, keeping to the shadows.

I’m almost to the next station when I see the headlights, swinging suddenly around a curve.

I check the tunnel alongside me for alcoves. It’s tight—really tight. I’m not sure there’s enough room for me, even if I flatten myself against the wall. The headlights wash over me. I shove off the tunnel wall, hard as I can, and go flying across the tracks in front of the train, into the other lane.

The breaks scream, too late, as the train careens across where I just stood. It skids to a stop over my shoulder. I’ve been seen. My heart hammers in my chest. I start running, as fast as I can in my bulky gear.

“Attention. Attention.” Loudspeakers crackle to life, flooding the tunnel with a booming voice. “Unauthorized personnel spotted on the tracks between stations 18 and 19.”

I keep running. Red lights flick on and off through the tunnel, timed with a low foghorn blast. A stitch twists the side of my gut. All the layers of sweaters are trapping my body heat, and I’m awash in fresh sweat. Please, please, let the next station be Kutuzovsky.

Finally I reach the platform of Station Number 18. I launch myself at the platform’s edge, just barely hooking my elbows on the lip, and swing my legs until I can roll safely onto the concrete platform. A bank of propaganda posters stare down at me from the far wall: a smith with his hammer slung over his shoulder, standing proud as sunrays erupt at his back. Smiling farmers, peasants with arms full of wheat. A woman snarling at me with one finger pressed to her lips: DON’T TELL!

“Hey! You!”

I don’t stop to look. I leap toward the door and slam it shut behind me. One breath, I just need to catch one breath. I don’t have powers like Valentin’s or Rostov’s to turn these soldiers away from me. I can’t predict their behavior or hear their thoughts from afar, like Larissa or Misha and Ivan. I can’t rely on my powers to get out of this. I can only rely on myself.

The stairs split into two. I take the left, then they split again. I’m touching the railing at intervals, trying to keep the gold and red building in my mind, hoping I’m picking the right path. I see it in flickers and gasps. Granite hallway, giant mural of Lenin. Please, be the right way. Enough Party officials live there. Surely they have their own entrance to the secret Metro line.

Boots thunder in the distance, drawing closer as I climb. I reach the final door and burst through the other side to the ornate main lobby, Vladimir Lenin’s mosaic beaming down at me, then slam the door shut on the approaching guards. Quickly, quickly,
poshli
. I jump into the elevator and sweep my hand across all the buttons, all eight floors.

My breath wheezes through tight lungs. The doors open and close on empty floors, each one another wild-goose chase for my pursuers. Finally I reach the fifth floor. Only a few more steps until freedom, until I can get the answers I need. The possibilities I’ve worked so hard for. Nervous energy crackles along my skin as I unlock Apartment 512.

CHAPTER 18

I OPEN THE DOOR
to find Natalya Gruzova pointing a revolver at me.

“Oh, God,” she gasps, as the door opens fully. “It’s you.” She lowers the gun, but not all the way. “Come in. Quickly.”

The door clicks shut behind me. “You know who I am?” I ask.

She beckons me across the parlor, into the kitchen. A bottle of vodka and at least five filthy glasses crowd her breakfast table. She holds up the vodka bottle, one eyebrow up as a question mark. I shake my head. She shrugs and takes a swig. “He said this might happen. Please, sit.”

I slide onto the bench. Nothing feels out of place in the table’s memories, the bench, the glasses. There are only echoes of this tornado madwoman, storming in and out of the kitchen, drinking, smoking, pushing around her uneaten dinner as her nerves overwhelm her.

“Why are they looking for us?” I ask.

She sits down opposite me with a sloppy sandwich of melted cheese and fish. “You think I have answers for you? We are all pawns.” Her hands quake as she tears off a corner of the bread. Something’s wrong with her thoughts; too much anxiety pulses through her hand to the table to me. Is this the scrubber’s work, or the work of paranoia, eating away all sense?

“I know what they offered you,” I say. She reaches for the revolver again. “No—please. I want the same thing. I’m not going to turn you in. You can…”

I was going to tell her she can trust me, but it’s not something I can guarantee. If I am caught, Rostov will rip her secrets from me again.

“They came to
me
.” She jabs her finger at me. “I didn’t ask for this. It was obvious to me what they were. I could have reported them, but I didn’t. They could see how unhappy I was.”

I spread both hands on the table. Her thoughts frizz like there’s an electrical short in them. Every time she circles a truth, it darts away from me. What a mess she is. Does she deserve this insanity? She sold her secrets for money, for safe passage. Envious though I am, it’s a fundamentally selfish act, when she already lives better than nearly every Russian citizen and is respected and regarded for her hard work. She’s put satellites, dogs, men into space, and for the most part, reeled them back to Earth safe and sound. Why subject herself to this pain?

“So they asked you to steal design plans for the
Veter 1
space capsule.” I have to keep her on track.

She tries to nod, but it sets her whole body shaking. She fumbles with a box of cigarettes. “They promised me they would get me to the West. Smuggle me out through Berlin, they said—it’s too hard to get someone out of the heart of Moscow. But then their new team member showed up.”

I lean forward. The scrubber. She can’t hold the match to her cigarette. I take it from her and wait as she puffs it to life.

“I knew him from…” She trails off, looking through me as she searches for a memory that’s no longer there. “He gave me these photographs, said they were priority targets, that he wouldn’t let me leave unless I helped him draw them out.”

“Why couldn’t he find them himself?” I ask.

She taps her temple with two fingers. “Something about his head. They could hear him? Were looking for it. I’m sure you understand better than me.”

“They. The KGB, you mean.”

“Of course. There was always this odd noise—” She taps herself again like she’s trying to break through the bone. “Like a drill—after we’d meet.”

“But what did he want with them? Us,” I correct myself.

She shakes her cigarette ash into one of the dirty glasses. “How should I know? He wants to eliminate you, I assume.”

My heart pounds in my chest. “But I could offer them information.”

“You’re not a scientist, a politician. What do you know? You stop the CIA from stealing our space technology. You turn in your comrades for thinking unsafe things. That makes you a threat, a tool with a very specific purpose.” She shrugs—a deft jab of her bony shoulders. “Who knows, maybe they could put you to work, but why would they use a man like that if not to scoop out your insides?”

The kitchen and all its filth spins around me. The plan I was so sure of an hour ago, climbing down those endless steps, feels more and more like a death wish. How could I think the Americans would help me? She’s right. My powers are poison to everyone around me, condemning them for their thoughts, their histories, and offering them up to monsters like Rostov whether I want to or not. I am a liability. At best.

“Where is he now?” I ask, suddenly drained. Sleep, I need sleep. But I have to keep moving. I have no other choice but to try my luck with the Americans. If I can convince them to take me in, and to rescue Mama and Zhenya …

“They operate out of some shops near the embassy, mostly. On Tchaikovsky Street.”

I pull off my hat; run my fingers through my hair, sticky with sweat. I’ve come this far. I can do this. “Thank you. I—I’ll find some way to repay you, someday.”

She gulps for air, gripping the table’s edge.
Hold on hold on just a few more minutes
her thoughts roil on themselves, a whirlpool of panic.

“It’s safer for you here,” she finally says.

“No—I have to leave. Why don’t you come with me? We’ll demand they find a way out for us both.” For my family, too, a voice in me pleads. “I’ve risked my life to come this far. We have to keep going.”

“I cannot leave!” Her voice is raspy with exhaustion. “I’m just another pawn.”

My hands contract into fists. “Pawn?” I ask, staring at her. Her eyes won’t meet mine. “I—I don’t understand.”

She stands up, knocking the chair over with an ear-shattering crack. A tear squeezes from her shut eyes as she takes one more drag on her cigarette.

“Rachmaninov,” she says—like it’s a prayer. Her head is a yawning void. No more fear. She might as well be dead.

The kitchen door crashes open on a wave of static. Colonel Rostov strides in, surrounded by a swarm of soldiers.

My blood is on fire, starting in my gut and spreading out through my veins. Every protestation in my head is cut short before it can become a full sentence. But she. But I. But why.

I lunge for the revolver, but my body isn’t listening to me. Something foreign fires the synapses in my brain now. My arms are cemented to my sides. I’m locked up like an unoiled hinge; a rising tide of noise fills my head.

“Do not bother to fight, Chernina. You will not be escaping us again.”

I pry open my jaw, but my throat is too dry, too unwilling to speak.

“I’m sorry,” Natalya whimpers. “I had no choice. Trust me, I know the Americans—it’s safer for you this way—” A sob chokes off her words, and she takes another swig of vodka.

Rostov wipes the tear from Natalya’s cheek as she flinches away from him. “Well done, comrade. I am certain the Tribunal will take your cooperation into account.”

“You’ll only put one bullet through me instead of two,” she says.

Rostov chuckles, then turns back to me. Against my will, I stand up and move toward him. I’m begging my body to obey me, but I’m gliding along. “Chernina, dear Chernina. How could you think I wouldn’t find you? You’ve been planning to escape since you first arrived. Why do you bother? We know everything.”

“You didn’t know about the CIA team. That they have psychics, too.” Every word is a struggle, though I don’t think for a moment I could speak if Rostov wasn’t allowing me to.

“You barely know them, what they’re capable of. Who knows what they would have done to you? You are much safer with us.” He flicks his hand back to the soldiers. Then he looks up, at no one in particular. “Thank you, Sergei, that will be enough.”

My stomach lurches like the floor’s dropped out from under me. Sergei. I fight the urge to vomit. Hot shame, molten shame flushes my face as the soldiers clamp shackles around my wrists. My mouth tastes coppery, like I’ve bitten my tongue. This body is not my own. It marches along behind the soldiers, Rostov behind me, guiding my moves, his steel-wool confidence chafing at what’s left of my mind.

CHAPTER 19

NATALYA’S SCREAMS KEEP ME
awake all night. Our cells are side by side, and the walls are too flimsy to keep anything out: noise, rats, smell, thoughts. My cot is pressed against the shared wall, so every fingernail they pull from her sends her agony shooting my way. Rostov drills into her brain with his powers, but her head is already Swiss cheese. There’s nothing left for him to find.

He is looking for the names and descriptions of the CIA team and their scrubber. He is looking for any accomplices she may have on the
Veter
team, who might have helped her steal the documents. He is looking for the names and faces the Americans sent her to find—other psychics they wanted to hunt down.

But the scrubber anticipated this. Despite his apparent wish to kill us, I almost admire his thoroughness. She is perfectly censored, perfectly blanked out. A perfect Soviet citizen.

Somehow, I succumb to exhaustion, and when I wake, the cell next to me is silent. No thoughts, no whimpers, no scrubbing, bleaching noise. I won’t ask why. Rostov is coming for me next, I’m sure. I won’t scream for him like Natalya did. I won’t mourn the loss of a finger, my kneecaps. I will tell him everything. I won’t fight it.

The KGB will kill me if I stay, and the CIA will kill me if I leave. I’d rather sink into that grave now, than wonder if I’ll stumble into it with every next step.

All I will ask is that he set Mama and Zhenya free.

*   *   *

My cell door opens.

It’s not Rostov, but another man, with fish eyes that refuse to settle on me. He’s been trained to shield his thoughts. “You are wanted this way.” He takes me by the arm—not as gently as he could, but not as rough as I expected—and pulls me from the cell.

They’re going to execute me. I’m certain of it. No questions, no second chances. I will stand against the wall and crumple. Clean, quick. I welcome it. A small mercy.

He pushes me into a room and locks the door behind us. “You have five minutes,” he says, and he melts into the dark corner.

I turn to my left. The room is divided in half by a partition wall, the top half made of Plexiglass. A woman steps forward to speak through slots cut into the glass, right at mouth level. “My Yulia.”

My heart plummets. “Mama.” Her eyes are black holes, but her wispy frame looks softer, all the jagged angles of starvation smudged away. She has pulled her black hair into a bun, showing off her perfect clavicles peeking above her sweater. Cashmere. “Mama. Where have you been? I thought you were—”

She smiles—a tired, well-fed smile. I’d never seen those dimples in her cheeks before. They used to be just divots.

“I am fine. Better than fine. We’re getting Zhenya the treatment he needs. I’ve been working with a wonderful doctor from the old clinic, and we have developed new methods—no more electroshock therapy or sedatives.”