Skandal (30 page)

Come now, Yulia.
Sergei’s voice is all around me. I can feel him in the porous concrete walls of the tunnels, tugging me toward an opening.
Did you really miss me that much?

“Where are you, Sergei?” I step into the open chamber carefully, keeping my back angled toward the wall. The room is much bigger, and the dark concrete walls eagerly swallow up the light from the industrial sconces.

I’m right here.

A halo of sodium light spills around his golden hair as he steps into the room from the far end. His face is shrouded in shadow, but I’d know that hulking outline anywhere.

“Sergei.” I take a step toward him. Fear and relief and anger are roiling through me, but I breathe in, I breathe out.

No, that’s not right …
Sergei says. “Maybe I’m right here.”

A metal door clangs shut from inside some hidden recess; another Sergei looms out of the frame. I can barely make out the hint of a half smile carving across his face.

“This isn’t funny, Sergei.” I back against the doorway. Sweat lacquers my polyester dress against my skin; my bad ankle is throbbing, begging me to sit down and give up this foolish chase.

Or maybe I’m here?

Sergei swings through the doorway right next to me. For a brief moment, his face is right before mine, cool air swooshing across my cheeks as I catch a glimpse of his maniacal grin. I jump back with a yelp.

“What do you want?” I cry. “What have you done to yourself?”

The Sergei in front of me reaches toward me. I hear the static crackling across his skin before I feel it, hungrily jumping back and forth between the diminishing distance between his hand and my cheek. His caress on my face is like the scrape of a dull razor blade.

I want to make you understand, Yulia. This is the only way.

White smears the edges of my vision. It corrodes the harsh corners of my emotions and my thoughts; it begs me to surrender to that empty calm at the eye of the storm.

Yes. Surrender. Don’t you see?
The other two Sergeis slink toward us, both smiling, striding at the same confident clip.
Life is better when we don’t fight against what we’ve been given. Look at how my powers have grown and changed, the more I work with them instead of fighting them. You never would listen to me, but I always knew what was best. Rostov has given us a good life. He’ll make the world safe for us.

“How can you give up so easily? What happens to you the day your dreams don’t align with Rostov’s?”

But how could that ever happen? Why would I ever want anything other than this?

The scrubbing white has ensnared me, as sure as any vine. I’m rooted in place. I can feel my voice weakening, the words drying up and falling away like dead leaves. I will be reborn again with the coming spring. But first, I must shed these silly thoughts. I must clear out the weeds so the truth can grow.

As the other Sergeis surround me, touching my shoulder reassuringly, cupping my head like a comforting brother, I can see the logic in his argument. I see him smiling and laughing with Larissa, running through Gorky Park as the snow thaws and fresh green shoots emerge from the filthy ice. The Moskva River flows again through the heart of the city, rumbling with the lifeblood of the Soviet Union as it carries ships, as they in turn carry food, medicine, clothing, machinery to all the workers of the world.

It is the Moscow I left behind; without me and my poisonous, traitorous thoughts, it has thrived. Larissa has thrived, no longer subjected to Valentin and me with our devious, ungrateful schemes. Sergei has thrived—he scored the winning hockey goal for Spartak in their most recent game. I can hear the ice swishing beneath his skates.

There are conflicts, still. Secretary Khruschev is too weak to do what is necessary to safeguard such a life, but there are courageous men—General Rostov, Chairman Brezhnev, and Rostov’s good friend in the KGB, a man named Andropov—who will do what is necessary to correct the Soviet Union’s course. They pity the capitalist workers beyond their borders, who labor with no guarantees, who must scrounge for change to buy homes, cars, food. But the Soviet leaders will uphold the promise of Marx and Engels. They will bring revolution to these downtrodden souls.

They will force it upon them, if they must.

“No.”

I shove my palm into one of the Sergeis’ faces. That memory of him and Larissa, his fingers gingerly tucking back her hair—what darkness waits in the shadows of that gentle sunlight? There it is—he watches Larissa in a tiled interrogation room, strapped into a chair as a record player drills the guiding tenets of Rostov’s philosophy into her brain. Bright bursts of static disrupt her thoughts and keep her focused on absorbing the lesson. Sergei hunches over a radio transmitter as it broadcasts the twinkling, brainwave-syncing music from Papa’s radio station. Rostov and the Hound stand in the doorway, reshaping Larissa’s thought waves as they fall into frequency. She must pay for her disobedience in Berlin. She must be shown the error of her ways. And if we cannot teach her, Rostov says, we must remake her mind.

You’re lying
, Sergei cries.
We didn’t really hurt her. It was for her own good—

What other memories can I find? Here we are, a much older one—younger Sergei, maybe eleven or twelve, weeping hysterically as his father—Rostov—brandishes a folded-up belt. “You must not be my real son,” Rostov snarls, as Sergei tries to curl up in his mother’s arms—Lyubov Kruzenko, another KGB officer—but she shoves him away. “A real son of mine would have a better grasp on his powers by now,” Rostov says.

Everyone loses their temper, Yulia, and he was right. We must perform our very best to make his vision real.

His thoughts push back, the static shattering like ice, splintering and shredding at my concentration. But I am the Star. The pain needn’t stay with me. I fight through the static haze and search for more.

The locker room at Luzhniki Stadium, after Sergei’s goal-winning hockey game. Sergei slams his locker shut and looks up into the leering face of his team captain. “Maybe if you didn’t waste all your time with those Party sycophants,” the captain growls, “you could play like that every game, instead of muddling around half asleep.”

The memories build and build. Sergei and his brother as little children, the Hound already showing signs of his genetic disease, and Rostov exploiting it to the fullest. Larissa sobbing hysterically in Sergei’s arms with a fear, an echoing memory, that she can’t put into words. The faces of hundreds of Soviet citizens whom Sergei has exposed for their treasonous thoughts; they were packed up and shipped into the far reaches of Siberia for reeducation, hard labor, and death.

This anger, confusion, pain—they are not my emotions to cling to. But they are Sergei’s, still raw and open.

And so I take hold of them. And make them burn.

The Sergeis fall back from me with a howl.
Dammit, Yulia!
The voice comes from all around me.
What have you done?

Tears stream down their faces. Unlike me, they have no other release for the pain. Unfortunately, they have something stronger—a scrubber’s pulse, throbbing through me. I back into a wall, searching for an exit, but I can barely see through the white haze that’s enveloped me like a shroud. It’s drawing tight around me; it’s laced through my blood and filling my lungs. It would feel so good right now to be empty, to let it consume me. The memories hold no power over me, but the scrubbing, churning white is too much for me to fight.

I’m sorry, Yulia,
Sergei whispers through the fog.
I’m sorry it has to end this way.

Just before I collapse into oblivion, the shadow of a fourth figure stretches across the chamber. Then everything is blissful, empty white, encasing me in its permafrost, its silence, its calm.

CHAPTER 27

“YULIA.” A GIRL’S VOICE
cracks through the frosty layer that’s encasing my thoughts. “Yulia. You have to wake up.”

My arms and legs are filled with shards of ice that scrape and snap as I try to move. Slowly, a blond girl emerges from the blizzard—hair draped around her pale face, blue eyes rounded with fright. “Larissa?” I ask, almost certain she’s another memory shaken loose, come to taunt me for my failure.

“Yulia. Yulia, it’s me.” She squeezes my hand in hers. Solid. Warm. Her Russian is soft and fluid.

The white haze evaporates; I’m starting to see the contours of the concrete chamber. I’d been chasing Misha, hunting for the Russian delegation—and found Sergei. There had been three Sergeis pressing in, trying to persuade me to let Rostov’s plan continue. And now Larissa is here—

“Where are they?” I force myself to my feet, but my skin still feels crunchy from disuse; my bad ankle has swollen up and presses fiercely against my boot.

I scan the ground. Three bodies are crumpled in a ring around me. Larissa stands up and moves over to one of them, then snaps a metal circlet into place around its throat. The body wavers, like a television channel going out of focus, then transforms—instead of muscular, Slavic Sergei, it’s a frail, elderly Asian woman, hands clenched into tight fists as the rest of her body goes limp.

I check the other two bodies—eyes staring dead ahead, breaths shallow and labored. Neither of them wear Sergei’s face, though they both have the same metal rings around their throats. “Where’s Sergei?”

“It wasn’t really him,” Larissa says. “It’s Rostov’s new army. They’re designed so that Rostov can take control of them any time he likes. Sergei can access them, as well.”

“So they were puppets on Sergei’s string.” I grimace.

Larissa tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Sergei is … not the same as he once was. The old Sergei is still there, but he’s wrapping himself up more and more in the Party teachings. I’m trying, Yul, but every day, I have a harder time foreseeing a future where he rejects his father’s path for him.”

Bozhe moi
, have I missed Larissa. Always finding the good in everyone—always dedicating herself to helping people find their most optimal path. She gave up her own freedom to give me mine. But what about her? “Are you all right? The image I saw—Did they really—”

“Lefortovo Prison.” The KGB prison in the heart of Moscow. Larissa smiles somehow; that brave smile pains me more than a frown could. “They sent me there after you escaped. I … survived. It wasn’t Siberia, yeah? I could see my future, the light at the end of the tunnel—I could see what choices would allow me to leave with my mind more or less intact. Your mother showed me a few tricks to keep my sanity.”

I force myself to sit up. “You’ve been working with my mother?”

“Of course. Our powers are—are similar.” But Larissa’s voice softens, like she’s covering up a secret. “We figured it out, together. What needs to happen.”

“Yes!” I could cry. I’m so relieved. “I knew she had a plan!” I look up at Larissa and take a deep, steadying breath. “Tell me what we need to do.”

“How about I show you?”

I trail behind Larissa through the twisting tunnels. In between empty chambers, they narrow so much that we have to turn sideways to squeeze through, but then it widens into halls with three or four metal doors branching away from them.

“The KGB has been building these tunnels for years,” Larissa explains as we walk. “They branch away from the Soviet embassy at the top of Connecticut Avenue and stretch all over northwest DC—perfect for shuttling spies into or out of the embassy and evading your friends up top.”

The walls hum with electricity, but I can’t find any signs of the scratchy psychic radiation I felt coming off the scrubbers that Sergei had controlled. “You don’t have to help me, you know. I saw what it cost you, the last time you did.” I hesitate. I can force emotions onto people, but I’m no good at expressing them in words. “I can’t bear to see you get hurt again. Not on my account.”

Larissa smiles sadly, her gaze looking toward a future I can’t see. “You’re not making me do anything. This is what I need, too.”

“What about Sergei, Misha, everyone else? Aren’t they watching us right now?” I glance upward. “You stopped the scrubbers with that—that metal thing, but—”

“I’m sure you’re familiar with ‘that metal thing,’ seeing as how we stole the tech for it from your team. Those little current boxes you place in a room to block our remote viewers?” Larissa nods. “Same principle.”

“So it keeps them from being taken over by Rostov or Sergei or—or whoever. Protects the target from any psychic interference. Then, you just have an angry controller to deal with. Does Sergei know it was you who blocked him?”

“Yes, but we used some slightly more primitive espionage techniques to settle him down.” Her grin broadens. “Amazing what a little chloroform and a kerchief can do.”

I could hug her right now. “How the hell did Rostov let you get ahold of chloroform?”

“Oh,
Rostov
didn’t.” Larissa slows and turns to face me, expression suddenly solemn. “Your mother gave it to me.”

Bozhe moi.
Mama. “She’s here?”

Larissa grips my arm to steady me. “She needs you, Yulia. We both do. She’s taught me so much about making sense of the future, but there’s only so much we can do together.”

“But it’s simple. Surely Mama and I can figure out a way to reverse the effects of the serum, right? We can take away Rostov’s army of scrubbers and cure Valentin. And free you and Mama.”

“Yulia…” Larissa stops in front of a metal blast door. The corners of her dainty mouth twitch downward; I remember that look in her eyes, the one she gets when she’s seen a possibility in the future looming large, and is weighing how divulging her knowledge will affect its course. She did this to me when we were planning our escape from East Berlin. Did she see, back then, that she wouldn’t be able to escape with Valya and me? Or was it something worse she saw then, but was able to deter it by staying back? It makes my head hurt to imagine it.

I meet her stare, impassive, accepting of whatever she needs to say.