Sekret (7 page)

I saw myself.

Larissa seizes my wrist, her hand oozing with her Vysotsky song, and yanks me away from him. “Let’s get a good seat.” Valentin stands motionless at the base of the stairs, staring at us and adjusting his glasses like I’ve stunned him. The folk ballad circles lazily around Larissa. “Be careful with Valentin,” she whispers. “He’s powerful, but sometimes, he has trouble controlling it.

“And the rest of us don’t?”

She grunts; a dizzying blur of images drifts off her skin to mine, too fast for me to sort through. “Not like him. He’s going to end up just like the colonel someday.”

“Who is the colonel—” But I stop short as we round the corner to the dining room, painted in caustic baby blue. Staring us down from the opposite end of the banquet table is the gaunt, too-tall, furious man I saw through the documents. The man who knows my mother’s name.

I hear Kruzenko’s voice behind him. “You must be cautious with her. We aren’t used to guarding against touch,” she says, the angled double doors sheltering her from view. “There is far worse she could have learned.”

“Colonel Rostov,” Larissa squeaks. He turns away from Kruzenko. Larissa drops my hand and stands straight as a piston, snapping gearlike into a salute. The colonel strides down the length of the dining table.

Something about him makes it hurt to look at him—it’s like looking at the sun, too bright to stare at directly, searing my eyes, making me itch all over. The closer he draws, the more the feeling swells. My stomach churns and there’s this sharp, twisting pain in my head.

It’s the buzzing I heard in Kruzenko’s thoughts this morning, cutting through her mental shield like a bone saw. Is this his power, this way of splitting straight through someone’s mind, so they’re exposed even after they’re away from him? No mental barrier could possibly repel that. I’m trying to focus on Shostakovich but this pain, this noise—it’s like someone’s scrubbing the inside of my skull with steel wool. Those onyx eyes flash at me from the deep recesses of his face. He walks like a tiger—sinuous, confident, crisp.

“Comrade Chernina. I am pleased to have you join us.” He stops half a meter from me. I try not to double over as my stomach protests. “A shame your mother is not seeing reason, like you have.”

“What are you doing to my mother?” It’s all I can manage to say. That awful steel scritch-scritch-scratch consumes all sound. His words are trimmed in razor wire.

“It’s very sad.” He examines his fingernails, though they’re perfectly clean. “She does not want to resume her old research. Who knows why? It was good, fulfilling work, helping the mentally ill. She was a Party member, she received extra rations, all the medical access she required for your brother. He really needs special attention, doesn’t he? A bit of a borscht-for-brains.” His gaze rakes over me. “Maybe you can convince her.”

He smells like hot tar, burning rubber. It’s the stink of the fresh Leninskoye Highway as they built it past Aunt Nadia’s block. And still, that abrasiveness, scouring my brains … He reaches out and grips my chin, tilting my head from side to side. Admiring the welt Kruzenko gave me with her slap? Or inspecting me like a cow brought to the butcher? He lets go, and my skin feels raw where he touched it, like he splashed it with bleach.

“Anyway.” He makes a little laughing noise with his mouth closed. “I know you’ll serve us well. She’d want you to, eh? Her skills are still valuable to the State, and they won’t do us much good at the bottom of a ditch. But, if she refuses to cooperate…”

If I didn’t feel like someone was scooping me hollow like a melon, I’d be taking a swing at him right now.

“I trust she’ll come around. She’ll realize how good life was when they played by our rules.” Rostov grins like a toad. “And so will you.” He turns to Larissa. “Larissa Maksimovna. I hear a rumor that your brother might be released soon for good behavior.”

Larissa flashes him a venomous smile. “Don’t worry, I know exactly how to make that come true.” She puts her arm around my shoulder and turns me gently toward the table.

Rostov and Kruzenko sit at the head of the table, but Larissa steers me to the far end, thankfully, since my nerves are shot from being near him. I wonder if it’s his way of shielding his thoughts, if he’s too much of a machine to use music, or if it’s like what Kruzenko said this morning about Valentin—he slips into your head and shreds it apart.

I’m hoping to talk to Larissa during dinner, as I’m starting to think she’s the only decent one of the bunch. Despite her ballad’s best intentions, despite Ivan at her other side leaning against her, her shield is slipping. Her arm nearly brushes mine as we eat. I see her first encounter with Rostov: tearing her down, mocking her powers, sending her brother away to work far beyond the Urals … How selfish I am, to worry about my family so much. I’m hardly alone in my suffering. I prop my elbows on the laminated tablecloth and stare down at my cabbage soup.

“Cheer up, tough girl. It’s only the first course.” Sergei, on my other side, grins at me over his steaming spoonful.

“Of how many?” I scan the table—baskets full of bread, trays of sliced kielbasa and cheeses; sardines, cucumbers, tomatoes, jams and jellies, and sugar and cream for our coffee and tea, all in tarnished silver platters and chipped chinaware … It’s probably more food than I’ve seen in the past three months combined. I don’t care if Masha calls me a ration rat—I’m going to stuff my pockets tonight.

Sergei adds a dollop of sour cream to his soup and stirs it in. “Not the best food, of course, or the freshest, but they take care of us here.” He jabs his spoon at me. “Beats splitting one ration three ways, huh?”

I imagine Aunt Nadia and Cousin Denis back at their apartment. As worried as they might be, they must be relieved to eat a whole ration for dinner tonight. Sleep in separate beds, separate rooms once more. No longer fear the KGB’s head popping out from every cupboard …

I lift a spoonful of soup, then let it dribble down into the bowl. Sure, I’m starving, but I’ve been starving for months, years even. I’m afraid of eating too quickly, filling my shriveled stomach with more than it can bear. I need this food to last. I grit my teeth and slurp up a bite, but the psychic noise from Rostov nearly makes me choke.

“How can you stand to eat around him?” I ask Sergei, glancing toward Rostov.

“Oh, you learn to tune it out.” His brow furrows. “You can’t let him get to you. He’s just like Valentin—he can scrub away thoughts, memories, whatever he needs to change, but Rostov’s not permitted to do it to us.”

“And that actually stops him?” I ask.

Sergei shrugs. “Sometimes I can tell when he’s been around. That static noise he gives off—it lingers, you know? On the people he’s been manipulating. So it’s obvious where he’s been.”

Like Mama’s necklace—that wall of noise that kept me from looking deeper into the past.
Bozhe moi
. “How do you do it?” I ask Sergei quietly. “Put up with this. You don’t want this life, either.”

He pushes away his empty bowl. “I’m in no hurry—Spartak will still be there next season.” He half smiles at me, revealing a dimple in his right cheek.

“But if you’re working for the KGB, how will you have time to play hockey, too?”

“We can buy our freedom in bits and pieces. I finished a major exercise, and now they let me practice at the Luzhniki Stadium rink three mornings a week. Eventually, I can live the life I want most of the time, working for them only when they need my particular skills.”

But I’m not so easily convinced. The Party only dangles enough freedom in front of us to keep us moving forward. What might they offer me, to convince me to stay? More time with my family? A chance to study at Moscow State, learning about genetics to decipher my brother’s sickness?

I’d rather free Mama and Zhenya for myself.

I steal a glance at Rostov, sitting like a tsar in his high-backed chair, the disheveled chandelier illuminating every last medal pinned to his officer’s uniform. His painful power seems well suited to torture. Is that what awaits Mama and Zhenya if I disobey? I need patience—I’ll need to play the KGB’s games until I have all the information I need.

I take careful, small slurps of soup as Sergei works a tower of toast into his mouth. My stolen knife presses into my calf, tucked into my woolen sock, but I’m afraid to break into Kruzenko’s office now that Rostov’s around. I uncross my legs under the table, trying to get comfortable, and accidentally kick Valentin across from me, but he keeps his laser sight trained on his plate.

“All right, children,” Rostov says, “I believe Major Kruzenko promised you all a surprise this evening.” He throws her a tight, mirthless smile. “Though we were given a splendid opportunity in Cuba to halt America’s aggression once and for all, Comrade Secretary Khruschev chose not to take it, and of course I respect his decision.”

That smile never wavers, but I recognize his tone. Saying one thing when you mean another. I suppose even KaGeBezniks deviate from the Party line now and then, but what sort of man regrets that we didn’t start a nuclear war? Just a year ago, the United States and Russia were staring each other down in Cuba, fingers hovering over the nuclear triggers, waiting for the other to flinch. A “missile crisis,” they called it in the news. My stomach turns to think Rostov craved something more severe.

“But we are asserting our supremacy in other ways. Comrade Yuri Gagarin has already dealt another blow to America’s space program by becoming the first man in space, but Khruschev wants us to aim higher. We have been asked to investigate the secret
Veter
program, which is designed to circle the moon. Unfortunately, despite the secrecy, there is some concern that members of the spacecraft’s design team have been compromised by foreign agents who want to steal our superior Soviet technology. Which is where you come in.”

Masha squeals. “Our first real assignment?”

Rostov nods. “I believe you have proved yourselves ready for field work, though you will continue with training missions, as well. Once I am satisfied everyone is prepared for this task—” He glances toward me. “Then we will begin the operation in earnest.”

Sergei lifts one eyebrow, like he’s excited despite himself. Valentin’s face is sharp as ever, but his foot brushes against my shin under the table. I can’t tell if he did it on purpose—there’s no message in the jazz music he leaves on my skin. Larissa and Ivan’s faces are blank, but they lace their fingers together on top of the table. “Whatever the Motherland requires of us,” Ivan says. Larissa nods once, decisively, at his words.

Rostov spends the rest of the meal deflecting questions from Misha and Masha, assuring them that he’ll tell us more about the operation once we’re ready. “But
we’re
ready now,” Masha insists, gesturing to her brother and herself.

Sergei nudges me when Major Kruzenko excuses us for the night. “Want to listen to the radio? Spartak’s playing Dinamo tonight,” he says.

I hesitate. Ivan and Larissa are already slinking off, and I know better than to follow. Misha and Masha are latched on to Major Kruzenko like thistles on a sock. If Rostov leaves, it might be my perfect opportunity to break into Kruzenko’s office, if I can ditch my spider entourage. Or I could approach Valentin, who’s watching me from the doorway—this morning he hinted at knowing something and information is the most valuable currency.

But then Colonel Rostov approaches us. “Come, boys. We must work on our special task, yes?” He laughs, but Sergei and Valentin both abruptly hang their heads, as if he’s just scolded them, and—even I am not paranoid enough to imagine this, I swear it’s true—both their gazes dart toward mine for one guilty, piercing second before they follow Rostov into Kruzenko’s office.

In this moment, I decide to trust no one. I can’t count on Larissa and Masha, who won’t tell me the truth of who, what I am. Not on Ivan and Misha, too absorbed in their own success to consider breaking free. Not on Sergei who gives up his life for a morning on the ice. And especially not Valentin, with his heavy, lovely, intrusive eyes.

I will have to find freedom for myself, though I fear it will take longer than I’d first hoped. I can bide my time until I find out where Mama and Zhenya are being held—I can smile and mimic Masha’s enthusiasm until I have everything I need to make my escape. But as Rostov’s psychic noise echoes through my skull, I’m not certain I can even trust myself.

CHAPTER 9

IT TAKES ME SOME TIME
to fall asleep. I listen to the silky sighs of Masha and Larissa, but fear Rostov’s steel wool scrubbing my shield raw. When exhaustion finally claims me, I find myself in a strange dream: I am sitting around the table in our summer dacha with Mama and Papa. Mama with her hair still long like when I was little, and Papa—almost unrecognizable in his old glasses and ill-fated attempt at a beard. Zhenya sits with them, so tiny and frail—he doesn’t look more than five or six. He is whistling three notes to himself over and over like a sniper calling his comrades out of hiding. His lips are glossy with spittle but he doesn’t quit. Mama keeps pinching the bridge of her nose—she is getting a headache from the whistling—and Papa pours himself a glass of vodka—he refuses to look Zhenya in the eye.

“No,” Papa says after too many minutes staring into his drink. “I don’t care what Anton offers. We can’t go back to that, Antonina. We can’t.”

“They’ll find out one way or another. At least then, we’d be close—we could keep an eye on her…”

Wee-oo-toot.
Zhenya giggles to himself. My heart aches just watching my little brother. His high cheekbones, dusted with a fine powder of freckles just like Mama and me; same straight black hair and wispy frame we inherited from Papa. His face is one of pure bliss. He finds perfection in those three notes.

Papa looks at him, skin too tight around his eyes. “He needs us more, Nina. All the children like him at the clinic do.”

“It’s glorified brainwashing.” Mama’s lip curls. “They’ll never be cured of their illnesses.”

“Then let me try it my way,” Papa says, and reaches straight for me.