Skandal (16 page)

Who’s the mole, Sergei?
I hesitate.
Please—either help me, or don’t. Stop leading me on.

I don’t have long. They’ll know I’m—

Silence. The pressure in my head starts to fade.
Sergei?

Then he weighs in again, slipping one last message against my shield before vanishing again.
Check the stovetop.

Please, Sergei, wait. I need to know—
My shield softens.
I need to know if my mother’s all right.

But he’s gone. Cindy watches me, arms crossed, one eyebrow creeping up as she waits.

The stovetop. Check the stovetop. And don’t tip anyone off about Sergei’s help. What is it they say at the jazz clubs when Valya and I catch a show? Stay cool. I take a deep breath and reach for the door.

As soon as I put my hand on the doorknob, the vibrations reach for me from the walls, shuddering and shaking my molecules apart. White sparks dance across my eyes as the door falls open. My ears fill with needling noises, like a too-silent night.

I step inside. I see the room, I hear the room, but I am not part of the room. I am walking on a tightrope. If I were to fall off on one side: the reality of this dead body, stretched across the rug, thick red liquid dried in a trail from its ears to the floor. The reality of that smell, pressing into my chest cavity with its rotten stench. But if I were to fall the other way: a vast white plain, stretching as cold and heartless as Siberia.

“There’s definitely been a scrubber here. Probably the man who lived here.” I walk in a wide arc around the body, breathing through my mouth. “And he is definitely the man I saw with Anna Montalban. He warned her, though. That if she didn’t do what she was supposed to, the next one would come after her.”

Cindy hovers beside me. “The next what?”

Papa scratches his chin, his stubble sounding like sandpaper. “The next. The next scrubber? The next body? How far apart have these deaths been occurring?”

Cindy checks the stack of papers in her hand. “Between six and nine days apart. It’s fairly consistent.”

“Like it’s a chain,” I say.

“Or like a relay race,” Cindy offers.

I nod, reaching my hand out for the black telephone sitting on the floor. Only then do I notice how empty this apartment is. The Murphy bed pulled down from the wall, a telephone, an ugly rug, a radio—nothing else. I sink down next to the telephone and brush my fingertips across the receiver.

White static ricochets through me—the scrubber’s lingering aftereffects and the crackle of a bad connection, all tangled up together like a ball of barbed wire. If this man is part of a chain, a relay, a ring of spies, carrying out orders in succession, working for Rostov’s unknown plan, I have to fight past this residual noise. The hot smell of copper tickles my nose. I have to uncover the memories. I have to push past this hungering white and reach beyond—

“C-21.” The slimy voice, interwoven with fuzz, must be Carlos Fonseca’s. Slowly, he coalesces around me, though he’s blurred, too much for me to see clearly.

“We are growing impatient, C-21.”

Carlos tugs at his too-tight shirt collar; a sheen of sweat runs down his jaw, though it’s still cool for April. “Relax. I’ll make the drop with H-22, in case Montalban fails us. But it won’t be necessary. I’ll get to him, I promise.”

“You do not have long,” the voice says. I strain to hear it closer, but the static is too strong; all I can tell is that it’s a man, speaking too slowly and precisely to betray an accent. “We need you to make the drop now. It must happen before Saxton departs.”

“Two more days. I still have two more days. I’ll reach him, I swear.”

The voice on the other line cuts through the static like a whipcrack. “We will call again in one.”

I jolt back from the telephone as the room swims back into view. “He told them yesterday he had two more days. But they’re going to check on him again soon. We have to work quickly.” I swallow. “He talked about reaching Saxton before he departs.”

Cindy grimaces. “All right. Let’s keep looking. Quickly.”

There aren’t many other places to look. I let my fingers hover over the walls, the stained and twisted bed sheets, but the static crackling off of them warns me away like an electrified fence. This place is too empty to offer us much in the way of memories. Whatever Fonseca was up to, he must have conducted it outside of this apartment.

I glance toward Valya, who’s standing closest to the kitchenette in the far corner. I start toward him, but guilt and fear over turning to Sergei for help have cemented me to the spot. “Check the stovetop.”

He pokes around the range top. “Yes—looks like he tried to burn something.
Molodtsa
,” he praises me. Using the tip of a pen, he lifts charred bits of paper out of the crevices of the gas range top. One looks like the corner of a photograph, by the way it’s melted from the glossy paper backing; another bears the spiderweb markings of a map. Just scraps, but scraps, I can work with. Even a scrap can hold the memory of the whole.

“Bag it. We can look at them more closely back at the offices.” Cindy’s speaking through a silk scarf she’s wadded up over her mouth and nose. I squeeze my eyes shut. What’s Sergei playing at? Why on earth is he helping us now?

Papa touches my arm gently, but his scrubber noise is like a spark jumping from him to me. “Yulia. We’ve got to know who this next scrubber is. What they want with Saxton. You’re sure there isn’t anything else you can glean?”

I look away from his narrowed stare, like a spotlight sweeping across me during a midnight escape. “Not with a scrubber of this power. It’s so empty here—I can’t imagine there is much more—”

“I’m not talking about reading the objects,
devochka
.”

A fly buzzes past us to fling itself against the grimy window. The overripe smell of fermented meat thickens in the space between Papa and me. Yes, I know exactly what he means. My stomach whines in protest.

“Andrei.” Cindy folds her arms, bangles clacking together. “We do
not
need to subject the poor girl to that.” The Metro police officers at the doorway step back, as if they’re afraid Cindy might volunteer them instead.

“And why not? Why, she was just demonstrating to Valentin and me the other night how very confident she is in her abilities.” Papa shoots me a glare. “Apparently she’s all grown up now, and perfectly capable of handling whatever we ask of her.”

Damn it, Papa. Heat surges up from within me, pressurized. This is the same father who took the blame for me when we were playing hide and seek, and I knocked Mama’s figurine off the bookshelf?

Valentin steps between Papa and me. “Andrei Dmitrievich,” he pleads. “Please don’t make her do this.”

Papa’s face is perfectly, irritatingly blank. “She thinks she’s mastered her powers. So let her,” he says.

Cindy and Valentin both look to me for a response. But I shove past all of them and step right up to the body, the toes of my boots pressing into the too-pliant flesh. I bend down into a squat, keeping the weight off my bad ankle, and study Carlos’s face. The darker skin along the cheek that rests on the ground, where his blood has pooled. The splotches of rot.

“Yulia,” Valya says. “Don’t listen to him. You don’t have to do this.”

But if I want to follow the trail back to Rostov—and therefore Mama—then I have no choice.

I spread my fingers wide and press my palm against the corpse’s shoulder.

Carlos’s skin gives way under his shirt with a sickening, sloshing sensation. For once, I’m grateful when the chattering white fog envelops me. Somewhere, on the other side of the mist, a man is screaming. I walk toward the noise, ignoring the way the mist stings at my bared arms. An invisible wall presses back at me; trying to force my way through is like trying to strain myself through a sieve. But I have to see what’s on the other side. I have to know what these scrubbers want.

Carlos Fonseca thrashes around his bare apartment, clutching at his throat as blood pours from his ears and eyes. The screams are his—his agonized howls. He didn’t take the cyanide pill. He’s fighting whatever’s killing him to the very last, and it’s making his power go haywire, filling the air with its deadly isotopes—

I do not need to see this man die. I need to see what happened before.

The mist weighs against me as I push backward in time. I can only see fragments, tenuous and watery. Carlos entering the Stratford building. Carlos riding a bus through downtown Washington. Carlos at the market, his shoulder pressing too hard against a man’s as their hands meet, just for one second—

There. Something passes between their hands. I need to see the other man—is this the H-22 he said he made the drop with? Passing information or an object along. Like a relay race. Who is he passing it to? What’s being passed?

The man’s face is turned away from Carlos. Tan skin, short-cropped blond hair, a few inches taller than Carlos. I cling to the memory, trying to stay locked inside it, but I can feel hot blood tickling at my nostrils again. The whiteness seeps into the image, the scrubber’s static trying to force me away, but I have to resist. I have to see H-22.

The telephone’s shrill ring pierces the air. I’m thrown out of the memories, my hand uncurling from the corpse’s shoulder, and I sprawl backward on the rug. There’s blood running down my nose again. Valentin rushes to me and cradles my head, but Papa lays his hand on the telephone receiver and looks at me, expectant. For a moment, I can almost imagine he’s putting his trust in me. The phone rings again.

“How did he identify himself on the phone call?” Papa asks.

“C-21.”

Cindy’s face looks stricken. “Andrei, you can’t—”

Papa offers me a brief smile, quick as a camera flash, and picks up the phone in the middle of the third ring. “C-21.”

Neither Valentin nor I move; the only thing I feel is blood curling its way around my upper lip. Papa holds the earpiece away from his head. In the held-breath silence of the apartment, the voice on the other end of the line is painfully loud.

“You are still alive.” There is a pause, though it doesn’t sound like hesitation. “What about H-22? Will he make the trip?”

Papa glances toward me. I manage a weak nod. “Say that you made the drop,” I whisper.

“H-22 has the materials he needs for the trip.” Papa’s stance is too relaxed for this terrifying game he’s playing. His free hand hangs motionless at his side.

“Why are the police at your building?”

“The old lady next door,” Papa says, without a moment’s pause. “She’s complaining about us again.”

The silence grows and grows, like a rubber band stretching too tight. Pressure builds up inside of me as I force myself to sit up. I wish I knew something else to tell Papa to say. There has to be something we can fill the silence with. Valentin’s hand tightens around mine, and Cindy leans forward, head drawing down to her chest. But Papa remains stony, unmoved by their stalling tactic. Is he doing this for the same reason I touched the dead man? Is desperation to find Mama fueling his courage and bluster, or is this just another of his careless games?

“You told us you would kill the old woman,” the voice finally says. It’s burnt around the edges now, hot and angry. “Who is this?” Then, lowering almost into a growl, “You cannot stop us.”

The dial tone pierces the oppressive quiet. Papa slams the phone back onto the cradle.

“
K chortu
,” Valentin says, snarling.

I drop his hand and scrub at my nose with my sleeve. “We have to find more information.” My fingers hover over the rotting man before me, this bag of flesh and bones that should hold all the answers we need. “The man he passed something to. Details about the trip. If we can find this H-22—Or if we can find Anna Montalban—”

Cindy shakes her head. “There’s nothing more we can do here. Yulia, I won’t have you endanger yourself any further. If you can’t salvage any more memories from him…”

I look to her, pleading, but I know she’s right. Another drop of blood splashes onto my knee. “We can’t lose the trail.”

Valentin catches my gaze, his dark eyes hooded. Cindy may not realize what this means to me, but in an instant, I see in his stare and in the wave of his music pouring over me that he understands my need to hunt Mama.

“Don’t worry,” Cindy says. “I have a feeling I know exactly where they may be headed.”

CHAPTER 14

“I UNDERSTAND
—now listen to me, I under
stand
, Winnifred, why you’re doing this.”

I pause midway to the restroom and lower my foot to the ground, silently. My head swivels toward the circle of harsh lemon light radiating from Cindy’s desk lamp, spilling into the darkened hallway ahead of me. I can see Cindy and Winnie more easily than they can see me. I breathe slowly and keep Shostakovich in my head at a dull thrum. Cindy had left me alone this morning to read the items we recovered from the stove in the apartment while the rest of the team hunts for Carlos’s new contacts. It’s nice to know I can melt into the shadows as easily I once did on the streets of Moscow, forgotten. It makes mole hunting easier, whether I’d planned to or not.

“If you really understood, you’d be out there with me.” Winnie’s voice is harsher than I’ve ever heard it. It brings out her Southern drawl. “This is your fight, too. Just because you snuck by with your daddy’s lighter skin—”

“What I
understand
,” Cindy hisses through her teeth, “is that it’s goddamned hard enough for us to prove our worth as it is—be that as a woman, as a member of any given blend of races—that there’s no sense complicating it with rebellion.”

Winnie snorts. “Is that how you see it? Asking for some basic human decency is an act of rebellion?”

“The way I see it…” Cindy’s voice lowers. “The McCarthy days aren’t so very far behind us. There are men who will use any excuse they can to claim you’re threatening the nation’s security.”

“So what? I’m good at my job—the best. I’d have to be, to get my foot in the door here.”

Cindy clicks one heel against the linoleum. “They overlook it for now
because
you follow orders and do your job well. If you value that uniform you wear, you’d be wise not to risk that.”