Skandal

by Lindsay Smith

  “Behave yourselves, my little hooligani,” Papa says as he struts past us. “English, too, please!” He throws open the door to Frank Tuttelbaum’s office with a cheery whistle on his lips. “Still no signs of Anna. She’s spooked enough to really run.”

  Tuttelbaum’s and Cindy’s chairs screech against the linoleum. “Get inside,” Tuttelbaum shouts. “And close the goddamned door.”

  “I think this concerns the whole team,” Papa counters, the cheery melody still laced through his tone.

  “Watch it, Andrei, you’re still on thin ice with me after that horsecrap you pulled in Moscow and Berlin.”

  I raise an eyebrow. Did Papa disobey orders by rescuing Valya and me? He’d hinted at it, but I thought surely the value in stealing two more psychics from the KGB was more than enough to outweigh the risk. Is he still being chastised for it?

  “Be that as it may,” Cindy says, “we’ll find her sooner if we involve the whole PsyOps team.”

  There is a long moment of hesitation, then Cindy and Tuttelbaum emerge with Papa. Frank Tuttelbaum is short and compact, almost like he’s the product of a genetic experiment to design the most efficient homo sapiens; dark sideburns frame his etched and tanned face. He’s not a psychic himself, but powerful enough to be placed in charge of all of us. “All right, everyone, gather around. We’ve got a situation.”

  Situation. Some euphemisms transcend language.

  Donna stops chatting with the two boys at the corner of the room, one lanky with fiery red hair, the other olive-skinned, tossing his gaze every which way as if looking for unseen assailants. Judd and Antonio, Valentin tells me, hand still on mine, though he prefers Tony. Marylou was sprawled on the floor, but she squashes her clove cigarette into an ashtray and sits up with a groggy blink. Al Sterling clasps his hands behind his back and stands at attention. The small gesture, so effortlessly echoing a military training, reminds me of Winnie. Winnie. Where is she? My throat tightens up as I scan the room for her and come up empty.

  Papa pops his hands into his jacket pockets and leans back against the wall. “Anna Montalban, secretary to Senator Saxton and a recruited spy—”

  “Suspected spy,” Tuttelbaum corrects.

  “—has gone on the run after Yulia and Donna determined that someone, probably an enemy agent, had trained her how to shield her thoughts. Given the recent targeting of Senator Saxton and other NATO representatives, it’s very likely someone recruited her to provide them with access to Saxton.”

  “Thank you for that summary, Andrei.” Tuttelbaum makes no attempt to turn Papa’s name into anything remotely Russian sounding. “Marylou—start projecting to all the known commie beatnik clubs in the District. If she’s running in the usual crowds, I wager she’ll turn up at one of them.”

  Cindy bats her eyes to interrupt him, the way some people might raise their hands. “I beg your pardon, chief, but I don’t think a trained agent—and Anna has been trained—is working with the ‘usual crowd’ of harmless beatniks you insist on watching like a hawk.”

  “Harmless? You think Jack Kerouac’s harmless, him and all his drug-addled pinko friends? A bunch of agents provocateurs, mark my words.”

  Cindy’s smile pulls tighter. “It’s one thing to write poetry griping about capitalism while playing drums and smoking reefer. It’s quite another to wage an elaborate plot against the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”

  Tuttelbaum and Cindy glower back and forth while I sort through the unfamiliar terms. Reefer—some sort of drug, I’m pretty sure; I’ve seen posters warning against its dangers. Beatniks—those cool cats who dress in black and snap their fingers at the jazz lounges Valya and I frequent. Pinko—pink—a watered-down communist?

  “It’s still worth checking into,” Tuttelbaum says, with a look toward Cindy like a guillotine dropping to cut off any protest.

  “I think they’re horrible people,” Donna pipes up. “I’d be happy to help, too, Mister Tuttelbaum.”

  Tuttelbaum waves her off with his hand. “Nah, this is a job for the men. A tough job.” Donna opens her mouth to protest, but he keeps going. “Tony and Valentine, you’ll go with Andrei to check into Anna’s circle of friends. We want to know who she went steady with, if any of the guys gave off a creepy foreign vibe, whatever seems relevant. And check out that sob story about the grandma back in San Juan. I’d bet my hat our little secretary is from goddamned Cuba, not Puerto Rico.”

  “Good luck, Valentine,” I whisper, nudging him with my shoulder. He rolls his eyes as he climbs to his feet.

  “Donna, Judd, Al, you’re going to make friends with the commies we’ve already got locked up. See if they know Anna or who she’s working with.” Tuttelbaum rubs his hands together, as though he’s ready to dive into a feast. “Work fast and we can still be home for dinner.”

  “What about me?” I ask, glancing around the room. Did I miss my name?

  “If they’ve got a grade-A scrubber working with them, then I don’t think you’re going to be of much use, tsarina. We’ll bring you in once we start pinpointing locations and collecting evidence.” He draws his shoulders to his ears—for a moment, the gesture reminds me of Sergei, and his Russian shrug of surrender and acceptance—then he storms back into his office and slams the door.

  I stare at the thick whorls of wood on his office door, waiting for my heart to stop knocking against my ribs. Useless. No, I am worse than useless—I have a power, but it’s been neutralized, because they scrubbed away any possible memories that I could find. Even the items Cindy showed me this morning took all of my ability to glean anything useful from them.

  “Are you all right?” Cindy Conrad sits down beside me, her face a convincing mask of pity: eyebrows drawn down, lips tiny and twisted. Like everything else about her, it feels deliberate. “I promise we’ll have work for you soon.”

  But that scares me even more—objects full of that angry desert of white, stinging sand when I try to look past the scrubbers’ noise, eroding my thoughts as I fight to see through the storm. “What about you?” I ask. “Aren’t they sending you off somewhere?”

  Her expression pinches. “My talents don’t always work on command.”

  I laugh hoarsely. I thought the same about mine, another lifetime ago, when I was a scared little girl trading goods on the black market to feed my fugitive family. Back then, my power was a fluke, just a whisper and a glance of memories. I didn’t know about the danger and the power—the pain pushing from my fingertips like an electric shock.

  Cindy’s gaze darts to Frank’s office door. “I’m sorry if the chief upset you. I know he’s curt, but he has a lot of experience working the Soviet mission. He was chief of station in Moscow for seven years—quite an honor. He helped bring your father over, too. They were great pals.”

  I try and fail to imagine any situation in which Papa’s personality and the blustery man’s I just witnessed might possibly work together. “My father was a different man back then.”

  “I’ll say.” Cindy grins wider. “You know, your father’s very proud of you.”

  I tilt my head, catching a thread of her lilac perfume, as flawless as it smelled first thing this morning. I’m sure the day has caked itself onto me with sweat and Marylou’s cigarettes, but Cindy’s still ever fresh. “What makes you think that?”

  “You’re all he could talk about when he first came to us. How quick you were in school, how you took care of your brother, your ‘science experiments’…” She makes little quotation marks in the air with her fingers, and laughs. “He may not show it, but he’s thrilled to have you back with him. I don’t think we ever would have taken the risk on pursuing the Veter 1 plans if he hadn’t insisted. All for a chance at finding you.”

  Is she sure we’re talking about the same Andrei Chernin? Papa has barely even hugged me in weeks. He calls to me when he comes home from the bars—on the occasions when I’m still awake—like I’m a pet dog, but by the time I creep downstairs he’s passed out on the c
ouch.

  “He tells me you and Winnie have been translating a number of genetics research papers,” she continues. “He actually contacted the Georgetown genetics professor, who agreed to let you work in his lab for the rest of the spring and summer, and then you can enroll as a college freshman in the fall.” She tilts her head. “Of course, it’s your choice.”

  I stare at her as if she’s just offered me a spot on the next Gemini flight. A deadly, rare, incredible opportunity. I hadn’t much considered my future since we made it to America—I was too busy trying to catch up to the present, the language, the culture. But part of me is desperate to pursue my lifelong dream of mastering genetics, just like my mother.

  The other part is terrified of becoming just like my mother.

  “I’d love to,” I say, wrestling the scared part of me back.

  Cindy hops up. “Perfect. I’ll let Professor Stokowski know. But I think you’ve worked hard enough for today. Go dig through my record collection, if you want. Don’t worry too much about Anna—I promise, we’ll find her soon.”

  She promises. I watch Cindy sway away on her heels, all confidence and sunlight. I wonder how she can promise a thing like that—how any of us can. Sergei’s warning weighs on me, threatening to crack and shatter me. If he’s telling the truth, regardless of his motive, then the mole could be any one of my teammates, and trusting the wrong person could mean losing it all.

  CHAPTER 9

  I AWAKEN WITH A SCREAM, my throat already dry and my nerves leaning eagerly, ready for action, so much so that it’s several seconds before I realize the scream is not my own. I’m already standing, bare feet on springy wood floors. Where am I? I blink away the fuzz of sleep from my vision. A hulking piano to my left; a blanket pooling at my feet. I must’ve fallen asleep in the conservatory. That’s right. Valentin was practicing different jazz riffs for open mic night, and I curled up to listen to him while I puzzled through Sergei’s warning, safely ensconced in our disruptor-shielded Russian enclave in the heart of Georgetown. I must have fallen asleep, and Valya covered me with the blanket.

  Another scream. It’s not coming from me. I bolt up the stairs, passing Papa’s room on the second floor (door flung open, empty), swinging around to the next flight, cresting it to the third floor, where Valentin’s and my bedrooms are. Valentin is wedged into the far corner of his bed, a crust of salt along one cheek and his raw, jagged scream collapsing into a whimper under its own weight. I coil around him like a compression blanket. “Tikho, tikho,” I urge him in Russian, though I have no idea if he can actually hear me right now. It can take minutes for his nightmares to break and recede.

  He curls into my embrace for a moment, then pries back one of my hands, studies it, then drops it. “She’s burning up,” he tells me. “It’s never enough.”

  I wince. We’ve lingered at the start of this trail before. None of my usual questions ever succeed in coaxing him down the path, so I stay silent.

  “She never meant—” He slurps down air. “She wouldn’t want Boris or anyone else to know—”

  Boris, yes; Boris Sorokhin. Valentin’s father. A Communist Party member who once lived along the gilded Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow’s heart, in a sprawling apartment, where he drank high-grade vodka with generals and ministers while little Valya entertained them with his piano wizardry. Past tense, Valya was always very clear on that point, though I don’t know what brought an end to it. The usual reasons, I suppose—maybe he fell out of favor with the party. Maybe he was found to be a traitor or a dissident or a miscreant or just plain irritating, and was sent to the Siberian prison camps, or else a tiled basement with a drain in the floor.

  Valya shudders, once, sharp, then goes limp in my arms. Now that the adrenaline is working its way out of my bloodstream, I can hear and sense his shield more clearly, and I feel the moment when it changes from noise to signal: from a shotgun torrent of scrubber-flavored pain to a constant hum, his musical shield threaded along its central note. I let those same melodies course along my skin, but I’m careful to hold my fear and concern and, if I’m being completely honest, irritation inside of me like a held breath. I’m a two-way valve of emotion, and I can’t risk burdening Valya any further.

  “Yulia.” He leans back from me, head bumping against the wall. “Bozhe moi. I’m so sorry. Again.” One hand flops against his nightstand until it lands on his glasses. “Sleeping pills. I’ll take them tomorrow night—I promise.” He closes his eyes for a moment, but then he opens them again, without meeting mine. “Yulia, I want to ask you something, but I … I’m not sure how.”

  There is a pulse thudding between us, and I’m not sure whether it’s his or mine. I miss this—this closeness, this heat between us that evaporates my fear. I catch my lower lip in my teeth and feel my skin melting into his. “You can ask me anything.”

  He nods, smiling to himself, like he’s embarrassed of his own foolishness. “It’s about what you did in Berlin.” He traces a slow circle on my arm. “Your hands. Pushing out all those emotions…”

  And like that, our heartbeats fall back out of sync. I back away, suddenly aware of the impropriety of me being here, in this warm and sweat-dampened bed, though I come here more nights than not. What would Papa think? asks the voice in the back of my mind. Then I realize the question’s absurdity. If Papa were home already, which he clearly is not because he is off somewhere doing whatever maddening things I’m afraid to know about, he wouldn’t possibly care.

  Valya clears his throat. “I wondered if it could work in reverse. If you could draw away the pain from me.”

  I stare at my palms, curled around my legs, imagining there is a beast inside them, just waiting to open its jaws. What he says makes sense, but where would I put these things? I’d draw them into me, but would they stay there, lurking under my skin? Pacing like a caged animal?

  He bows his head, cheeks darkening. “I’m sorry. It’s too much to ask.”

  “No. It isn’t that.” I jerk my knee away from him. Suddenly the heat of my own skin is unbearable to me. “But what if I—What if it doesn’t work that way—?”

  The look he gives me makes me want to melt. Makes me want to give in. But there are holes in my memories that I’ll never recover. I can’t just fill them with Valya’s pain.

  His hand hovers near my shoulder, like he’s deliberating between clapping my shoulder or pulling me into an embrace. “There’s something else troubling you.”

  I can’t suppress the bitter laugh that bubbles out of me. What isn’t troubling me? I study Valya through the fog of exhaustion. I can’t tell Valya about Sergei’s warning, not yet. It’s not that I think Valya’s the mole—not willingly, anyway. But what if, when Rostov ripped open the wound in Valya’s thoughts, he left something else behind?

  “Maybe,” I say, my mouth thick with sleep. “Maybe it could work. Do you remember what you did for me on the train?”

  He nods with a wince. “I helped you recover some of your memories that your father suppressed. I could have permanently damaged your mind. This is different. What if you could just draw out the emotions, not the memories themselves?”

  Every now and then, I stumble upon another gap in my brain where the past ought to be, and I wonder whether it’s another memory scratched out by my father, or something I’ve simply forgotten. “So I wouldn’t be trying to recover your memories. Just ease them—remove whatever these strong emotions are you’ve attached to them.”

  He watches me for a few moments, expressionless. “Like you did to the Hound. Drawing out his emotions.”

  “Right. But without the—the using them against you part.” I smile weakly, but neither of us finds it funny.

  Valentin’s hand hovers near my shoulder, wanting to land on me, but he pulls away. “There are things that should have stayed forgotten, Yulia. I’d managed to keep them buried for years. But now they’ve been dug up and it’s unbearable.”

  “I want to try.” My voice wavers as I stare into hi
s glinting glasses lenses. If the resurgence of Valya’s memories is part of Rostov’s plan—if he’s somehow been turned into a mole, I have to try. I won’t let Valya be made into Rostov’s unwilling tool.

  He stretches his fingers wide, sucking in a deep breath. “Just a moment,” he says. “Please, only a moment. If it’s too much—if it hurts you at any point—”

  “I’ll stop. I promise.” I swallow hard. “I want to help you.”

  “I know. I trust you. It’s myself I can’t be sure of.”

  We lock our fingers together. Our pulses thud against each other, and we breathe at the same pace. At first, all I hear is Valya’s shield, dense layers of Dave Brubeck jazz, and our shared Beatles song all marbled together, but note by note, it stretches like a knitted scarf, until I’m able to slip through the gaps.

  Waves lap against a distant shore. Breathe in. The waves crash. Breathe out. The waves retreat, foamy fingers clawing uselessly at the sand as they slip away. The sun has already melted into the sea and only its afterimage hangs above the horizon, orange and pink and increasingly navy, salted with bright stars. I breathe in and out, inhabiting Valentin. We dig our bare toes into the sand, letting it slurp around our feet. Our legs are already salt-stained and smeared from a long day of running through the surf.

  “The Black Sea is a gift from God, meant just for the Georgian people,” a woman’s voice says. “Sometimes it is the only way we have to cool down.”

  I want to smile at her words—I know the wet roast of southern Russian summers all too well—but a different emotion stirs in Valentin. He tenses his stomach like he’s bracing for a blow.

  “We have to cool down, Valya,” the woman continues, from somewhere behind us. “We have to wash this out.”

  A new smell cuts through the briny air. It smells like burning meat.

  Valentin’s fear floods through me as an arm wraps around our waist. It’s too hot to the touch, like it’s been left in the sun far too long. He’s a tiny boy still—this woman slings him effortlessly into the air and tucks him under her arm. He’s screaming. His skin crackles with terror—my skin. My bones. The terror of eyes squeezed too tight and lungs that won’t fill with air. I try to breathe in, but my lungs are on fire and my nose is filled with that awful charred smell—