Sekret (13 page)

A head appears from behind one of the columns, ant-sized against the massive portrait of Lenin at the far end of the foyer. “May I help you?”

Doormen?
I push my thoughts against Valentin’s.
They have doormen here?

“I’m Igor Gruzov, Natalya Gruzova’s brother,” Valentin says. “She asked me to fetch some things from her apartment.”

I look at Valentin, and in a fuzzy, glowing moment, even I can believe he is this brother, and not the meek, silent boy who hides behind his glasses with a head full of painful noise.

I force my eyes away, strip off my gloves, and run one hand along the smooth column, smearing its glistening surface.
Where are you, Natalya? Let me glimpse at your secrets. Tell me why you need my help.

“No, you aren’t. I’ve met her brother, and you don’t look like him.” The man darts back behind his desk. “Show me your papers or I’ll call security.”

Natalya’s curly hair gleams in a glamorously lit memory, her back to me, facing a man in a suit and hat. They converse in the foyer—this morning? Yesterday? Recently. I lean into their words. They speak Russian, but there is something off about the man’s voice, the slightest clip to his words. They’re too formal. Too stiff: I can see him practicing in the mirror, stretching his lips into those awkward Russian
oo
s, those deep guttural churns. She calls him “little brother,” but if she’s working with the CIA, he must be one of them.

“What do you mean, you do not know about his orders?” She’s hysterical in the memory. She won’t let her voice pass a certain volume, but it hisses and crackles. “He said the documents weren’t enough to buy my way out. He said
you
wanted me to find these people!”

“Calm down, Natalya. This is all just a misunderstanding. We’re gonna get you out of here, okay?”

“I found the girl in Red Square, like he said she would be. I know she saw me. And I found two more. One works at the ZiL auto factory—”

The man looks over his shoulder. There—narrow, long nose, bushy brows—I have him. I let go of the column and toss the man’s image to Valentin.
This man poses as her brother, but he must be one of the Americans. The doorman’s already suspicious. We must go.

Come to my side
, Valentin murmurs, and I’m startled by how seductive the words sound in my head, inviting as a stretch of sunny beach. My cheeks smolder. I replay it in my head with a tingle along my spine; yes, I want to hear him say this again. But logic intervenes. This isn’t really Valentin; it’s just a role he’s stepped into. I sidle up alongside him, on guard, questioning my sudden craving for this gorgeous, dark mystery whose eyes hold mine gingerly as if he’s afraid they’ll break. Through our thick coats, I feel an electric crackle in the quickly vanishing space between us.

“You don’t recall? I told you I’d come back. Here, you remember my wife, Svetlana—you gave her those mints.”

I creak back my lips in an awful sturgeon smile as Valentin lopes his arm around my shoulder. I’m liquid Yulia, hopelessly lost like I’ve never been lost before. His touch is suave, but not overly so. The only boy I’ve ever kissed—Vovan, such a terrible plodding name—was too bland a kisser, lips factory-stamped to fit with anyone else’s. If Valentin’s careful touch is any indication, his lips were tailored just for mine.

My face burns crimson. What am I thinking? And
bozhe moi
, do I ever want to think it some more.

“Of course!” The doorman clasps his hands, and the soft leather of his white gloves snickers. “I am so sorry for not remembering, comrade. Here, this is the spare key.” He unhooks it from the rack and holds it out to me. “May I take your coat and hat?”

Valentin isn’t wearing a hat, I think, looking up at him with dopey batting eyes. But couldn’t he be, maybe? Can’t I almost see a black fedora perched on his head, with its grosgrain ribbon band, just like the American man? Yes, I think I can, it might as well be there; it makes sense for it to be.

“No, thank you, comrade. We won’t be but a minute.” He turns toward the elevator bank, and I’m eager to follow, pulled along by this sudden radiance about him, a confidence he’s never before bared. Lenin smiles at us from the end of the hall as the ornate hand above the elevator clicks down the floors toward us. I’m bound to his side by the electricity dancing between us, me and this luscious man who has shed Valentin like a cocoon and taken flight.

CHAPTER 16

THE ELEVATOR IS SO WIDE
we could stand on opposite sides without touching. But we don’t. We stay shoulder to shoulder as it whisks us to the fifth floor. Valentin smiles at me—it might be the first genuine smile of his I’ve seen. My mouth hangs open as I gawk at this gorgeous, confident creature. Those gorgeous, confident lips. He brushes a clump of snow from my shoulder. A need too desperate for words makes me want to snatch his hand and kiss it hungrily.

The elevator stops. Too soon we’re stumbling out, and the strange man who slipped out of Valentin begins to buckle himself back in, one strap at a time. Someone snuffs the light out behind his eyes, and he hunches forward once more, closing himself off to the world. We are once again Yulia and Valentin; I’m an idiot with a flush on my cheeks like a scummy film, and he’s a monster like Rostov, buzzing with static. Realization slaps me like a blast of cold wind.

You just did it to me.
I shove him against the wall, in the fathomless space between apartment doors. My forearm braces across his collarbone.
You swore to me you wouldn’t mess with my thoughts, and you just did it!

I didn’t, I swear! I showed him what he needed to give us access. You might have caught some of that, but I wasn’t targeting you.
Those sad, pitiful eyes, barely able to meet mine. Like he’s not even the same man at all.
I promise you, Yulia. I won’t do anything to you.

Anger burns like a furnace in my mind. How can he be telling the truth? He made me feel so ridiculous, made me pathetic with admiration for him. I knew he couldn’t be trusted—no one can touch a power as strong as that without wanting to use it more than they should.

But there was something else about him when he tapped into his ability. It was the first time he seemed—open. Whole. For the first time, I saw those beautiful parts of him that he keeps safely hidden away, too dangerous to expose anyone to for long.

I don’t like this line of thought. I hate his power—it makes him like Rostov, like the American who’s hunting us down. There’s nothing beautiful in being able to cause such confusion, such pain. I let go of Valentin and look away from him, down the hall.
Make sure that next time, you keep it from reaching me.
Then I crank Shostakovich as high as I can and storm down the corridor.

We reach Apartment 512. As I jam the key into the brass knob, Valentin drops a hand on my arm.
Kruzenko assigned Sergei and Masha to remotely view in here, as well. Be careful what you do and say out loud. They can’t read our thoughts remotely, but they’ll be watching us.

I take a deep breath, pushing down my anger.
All right. Let’s get this over with.

Gruzova’s apartment is one part Hermitage Palace and two parts firebombing wreckage. I drop the key on her entry table as stale panic and terror crawl up from the floor on spider legs, barely dampened through my boots. Valentin steadies me with Tchaikovsky humming along his hand, then charges past me. Bozhe moi,
has she been robbed?
he asks, searching from side to side for intruders.

The windswept parlor is cluttered with half-eaten meals on plates, scattered papers, discarded clothing, and stacks and stacks of rubles and Deutschmarks both. Just out in the open for taking!
I think she did this herself.
I pluck up a discarded creamy wool skirt with a careless footprint stamped onto it. Natalya Gruzova flits before me, stripping the skirt off in haste, changing attire after a long evening in the office, and storming from the apartment just as quickly.
Looks like she’s barely been living here.

Then where is she going?
Valentin asks.

Somewhere with the CIA handlers?
Our boots squeak against the parquet wooden floors as we cross the parlor toward a closed door. I keep my fingers out to feel for more memories, but I find only cobwebs of thought: no substance, no weight, no context. Gruzova has spent very little time here, at least recently.

Wait
, Valentin says, urgency fraying the musical barrier around the thought. He’s hunched over a coffee table, looking at, but not touching, a stack of folders.
They’re all empty, but there’s a rectangle cut out of the top of each of them. Looks like someone tried to cut away whatever was written on it. There’s some red ink on the edge.

Act like you haven’t noticed anything
, I tell him. I want to stay a step ahead of Masha and Sergei; as much as the American scrubber frightens me, I have a theory about his teammates that I want to test.
I’ll look at them in a moment, and see what I can read.

My hand rests on the bedroom doorknob. Finally, I get something tangible. Natalya hesitates here each day before entering; she tucks back a lock of hair and presses her ear to the door. After a few moments, she opens the door slowly, staying pressed against it like it’s a shield, and listens for breathing—for the click of a cocking gun. Her American handlers have made her paranoid this way. But she doesn’t fear the KGB, awaiting her in silence. She’s resigned herself to that fate. It’s the one American—the one with the vanishing, noisy face—who scares her most of all.

I open the door.

It is as tornadic as the rest of the apartment. A bed so big it could fit my whole family sits, sheets rumpled, against the far wall in an eave framed by plaster molding of wheat and gold-flecked stars. The French reproduction dressers have been ransacked, and an ashtray holds a fully ashed cigarette corpse.

A heavy gold ring rests on the nightstand, bearing a symbol that looks like the Russian Orthodox cross. Why would a Party member, one as obviously well cared for as Gruzova, wear something so boldly religious? It seems dangerous to me. But then, everything about her is. I pluck up the ring and roll it around in my palm.

I see a handsome, smirking man in a soldier’s flight uniform—there’s a hint of Sergei, of Russian bluster, in that grin—wriggling the ring off his finger and dropping it in Natalya Gruzova’s hand. “Hold on to it for me, will you? Don’t want it flying off during testing.”

“Comrade Gagarin, I insist you not go through with this preposterous idea.”

Gruzova knows Yuri Gagarin? But of course she does—she works for the
Veter 1
team.

“Secretary Khruschev has forbidden you to enter space again. We would not want our national hero … damaged,” Gruzova says, voice stiff.

“Damaged.” He snorts. Even through the memory, I can smell the alcohol on him; already he’s preserving himself from the inside out, preparing himself for a waxy sainthood. “These are my friends you’re sending up in your death machine.”

“I assure you, comrade, we are doing everything to make the
Veter 1
safe—”

Gagarin reaches past her to flick switches on the control panel. “It doesn’t matter. If it were truly safe, why not publicize the program? Why keep it such a big secret?” He laughs, dry and bitter, and heads for a large metal crate that looks like a testing capsule. “I wasn’t the first man in space, comrade.” He tilts his head toward her, the charming grin gone, replaced with a look so sad it aches. “I’m just the first who lived.”

I set the ring back on Gruzova’s nightstand and back away. This won’t lead us to the Americans. Her private memories should remain her own, even if they are about the most famous man in the Soviet Union next to Khruschev himself.

Valentin stands in the bedroom doorway. “Anything interesting?” he asks, his voice steady but not demanding.

“It depends on your definition.”

He leans back, eyes hooded.
You can share your visions with me. You don’t have to let me through your shield to do it—just open them to me, like how we speak in thoughts …

My first instinct is to scream
No!
but something in the look on his face pauses me. He’s not the confident beast he was before, but he’s relaxed against the doorframe, watching me. His shoulders are taut, though. Like he’s expecting me to snap at him. I choke down my initial reaction.

All right. But stay out of my shield.

Understood.
He musters the tiniest smile.

I run my hands along clothing, sheets, chairs tucked into the alcove overlooking Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Only the dirty clothing—which is most of it, thanks to this madwoman—points at anything about the Americans. Unfortunately, what it points to is the scrubber. A sweater chafes with the scrubber’s static like it was woven with steel. The coat dangling from a lampshade is painful to touch, overwhelming me with that chaotic noise.

Valentin purses his lips. I sink against the window, the frosty glass numbing my forehead. The alcove window is narrower than the rest, and I see a flash of metal bars beyond it—a fire escape. My heart races, and a primitive need deep within me cries for me to go, go, go. I squeeze my eyes closed, hard, until spots dance on my eyelids. I can’t. Not yet.

I open my eyes, heart pounding, and see Valentin staring back at me. He’s not inside my thoughts—I’ve got Shostakovich woven ironclad; surely I’d feel him prying that hull open—but the tight line of his mouth, his widened eyes tells me he knows what I’m thinking all the same.

Yulia … You don’t understand. You can’t run.

I grip the windowsill, cold and clotted with dead gnats. Somehow, it scares me more that he can read me
without
looking inside my mind.
I know, I know. Sergei and Masha are watching.

That’s not all. Yulia—Rostov, he has this … man.
His thoughts waver.
The Hound. What he can do—it’s not like the others, it’s not something that can be outrun.