Sekret (30 page)

The images change. We’re trapped inside a metallic room, no larger than a closet; sirens keen around us, lights flashing on a control panel. Something sinister thrums through the room’s bones: a threat like a held breath. I brace myself for whatever is rushing toward us.

Larissa rips her hand from mine and screams. I jump up from the bench, untangling myself from the images, and seize her shoulders, but she’s too hot to touch. Her head’s tossed back with one long, endless stream of terror pouring out of her.

Major Kruzenko charges toward us from the bar, Masha on her heels. “What? What? What?” she shrieks in staccato Russian. I stagger back, trying to shake off the electricity skittering across my skin.

Masha whirls on me. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing!” I cry. “She was trying to look forward, is all.”

“Lara. Dear child. You must calm yourself.” Kruzenko glares over her shoulder at the medal-encrusted Red Army officers and their wives, regarding us suspiciously. “Apologies, comrades, this one has been suffering from a fever.” She presses her face close to Larissa. “What did you see? Is it something about the CIA team?”

“Yeah,” Larissa mumbles. “It must have been.”

“Well, tell me, then! Quickly!” Major Kruzenko glances at me. “Get to the banquet, tell me what is said there. I have to take care of this.”

But Larissa looks straight through me. Terror hardens in my stomach like a bad omen for our escape. I march toward the banquet hall, three notes in my head taunting me.

CHAPTER 38

THE BANQUET DRAGS ON AND ON
, chronicling the many successes of the Soviet space program and praising the
Veter 1
scientists for designing a rocket with sufficient capacity to reach the moon. Tomorrow’s launch will be conducted in secret, we are told, but if it succeeds in circling the moon, then the subsequent
Veter
launches throughout the year should give us a lunar landing by 1964’s end.

“I must credit the
Veter 1
engineering team for this remarkable feat,” declares Soviet Chairman Leonid Brezhnev, Secretary Khruschev’s second in command. He’s a stocky black-haired bear of a man, curled over the microphone protectively as he growls into it. “You have put our men into space. You defend us with your missile designs.” I’ve never heard someone sound so angry while giving a compliment. “The Americans are nowhere near our level of capability! Everything they create is a crude replica of our groundbreaking work! We remain unbeaten—a beacon for the workers of the world!”

Except the Americans have stolen the
Veter 1
plans. Except they are lurking in the streets of Berlin right now—to spy on the launch, to steal more information, and hopefully, to help us escape, though I’m still rattled from Larissa’s vision. I crank up the Shostakovich in my head until it’s suffocating me.

When he concludes, the audience applauds politely in our eerie Russian way: all clapping in unison, as if we’re cheering on a dancer as she teeters on the edge of control, like in Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring
.

I toss and turn in the matchbox bed all night, trying not to think about Larissa’s cryptic visions or Valentin’s possible betrayal. I will escape with him if I can, without him if I must.

Finally, sometime past five in the morning, my growling stomach overtakes my need for sleep, though I’m not sure my nerves will allow me to keep anything down. I stumble through the still-darkened corridors toward the elevator. I need something to drown out this terror in my gut. I need a drink. Maybe I’ll start smoking as well, unfiltered cigarettes like Papa, drawing death into me and blowing it back out. The elevator rushes to greet me, and I’m so relieved by its grinding gears that I don’t hear the boots clicking on the wood behind me.

Major General Rostov slips into the elevator behind me, and as the door closes, he locks the grate in place and pulls the emergency stop knob.

“You are keeping something from me.” His hand shoots straight to my throat and clamps down hard. “I do not enjoy being deceived.”

Dear God who lies at the bottom of unmarked mass graves, dear Saint George and Saint Sergei, my mind is slipping away from me, Rostov is siphoning it away with each bit of pressure he applies.

One. Two. One. Two. A bullet shatters my sternum and nestles into my heart like a kitten nestles into your arms. A second enters my temple. I am a KaGeBeznik. I dared to challenge the status quo. I am a puppet on Rostov’s strings, and I will pay for serving god and country, if god is Karl Marx.

“Very interesting.” Rostov’s voice is an icebreaker ship, plowing through the crust of my brain. “And I thought I’d covered my tracks so well.”

One. Two.
Bang-bang
: a gun firing, echoed by the double-thump of fallen bodies, ringing out over and over as he pulls the memory loose. It’s bone fragments, shrapnel, casualties of war.
Bang-bang.
Something I’d rather forget.

“You managed to cling to this,” he says, almost admiring. “Misha, Masha, Sergei—none of them could recall, even under extreme duress.”

He dangles the memories before my face. The Chief of the First Directorate of the KGB is struck by the first bullet and falls forward over his desk. The blood spills onto the manila folder, which Rostov snatches away. The gunman—the poor soldier—then turns his pistol on himself, and his brain matter paints a lovely picture on the office wall. Rostov storms from the office—his office, now. He sees Misha slumped against the wall, and with a snap of his fingers, Misha now dances on his strings. Lurking behind them is the silhouette of the Hound, amplifying Rostov’s power.

“How can you remember this? Why are you different, Yulia Andreevna?”

Rostov’s hatred pours into me, scraping against the raw patches in my head where scrubbed-out memories remain. My own father’s doing. I have to shove Rostov’s hatred out before it consumes me, crushes me more fiercely than the hand on my throat. I have to reverse the flow. Focus, Yulia. White heat takes root in the dark soil that’s choking me. It writhes past the worms and drinks up the moisture. And then it’s draining away, away—

The elevator lurches. Rostov drops me to the ground with a yelp and stares at his bright red hand. “What are you?” he hisses. He bashes his fist against the button panel but we continue to move, up or down, I couldn’t say.

Sharp hot blood runs down my nose.

The doors open; the grate opens. “Comrade Rostov!” I recognize the voice—it is not the usual voice of Valentin, but the suave, sexy psychopath he can become. “What a lovely surprise. I believe you’re needed in your room.”

Rostov staggers out of the elevator. I cannot tell if he is dazed or drunk. Perhaps I am one, or both. Static crackles all around, Rostov is on marionette wire, I am on wire, I do not know who commands whom. All I know is that I am on the floor, and then I am in Valentin’s arms, propped against the elevator foyer of the boys’ floor. Valentin pats my face, too gently to really wake me up. A door slams in the distance, Rostov pushed away.

“Yul. Yulia. Please, talk to me.” Something warm sizzles against my cheek, and it occurs to me that it might be a tear. Valentin’s? But his eyes seem so impenetrable. Nothing goes in or out. “What did he do to you?
Bozhe moi
, show me that you’re okay.”

“The murder,” I mutter. “He pulled it out of me.”

“What murder? Yulia, please, look into my eyes.”

Adrenaline is still thumping in my veins as I look at him. He is not Valentin. He is that molten god of confidence and lust that I first met in Natalya Gruzova’s building. But as the haze in my brain clears, I realize I don’t care anymore. They are one and the same. I reach for his face to caress his cheek, to strip away his glasses, to taste his lips once more.

“Concentrate, Yul. I need to make sure you’re all right.” He brushes his fingers through my hair. “Let me check your thoughts.”

“Relax. I’m fine.” Damn his gorgeous, huge, dark, mournful eyes. Even though I’m furious with him, all I want is to kiss him until he smiles. “Rostov. Are we safe?”

“For the moment, but let’s hurry.” He helps me to the far end of the hall, a round room at the corner of the building that smells like dust and fancy cigarettes. I settle next to him on the couch, acutely aware of his warmth beside me.

“What was he after?” Valentin asks. “We can’t run if he knows what we’re planning.”

“No. He doesn’t know.” I draw a deep breath and explain the murder I’d seen and how Rostov tried to make us forget, Valya’s face darkening as I do.

“We have to leave. Now, if we can,” he says.

I shrink back into the couch. “Valya … I want to run. But I’m scared.”

He tilts his head, a sustained rest, waiting for me to go on.

“I’m afraid for my mother and brother. She’s researching again, yes, but she’s a prisoner still.” I lean forward, and it’s like I’m coming up for air. “They were going to send me to Moscow State, Valya. My dream. And Sergei thinks that I—”

“I don’t give a damn what Sergei thinks,” he snarls, and stands up to pace.

I clench my hands into fists. “But it scares me. You left Anastasia behind before. I’m offering you a way out. Is that what draws you to me? Am I just another puppet for you to use, like your scrubbing victims?”

Valentin cringes. “I wouldn’t … I could never…” He circles behind the sofa, shadow falling across me. “I didn’t ask to be this. I know I haven’t always made the right choices with my powers, but … Please, Yulia. Hear my side.”

I don’t move, though I’m still shaking from frayed nerves and too little sleep.

“Anastasia was my friend,” he says. His hand falls to my shoulder. “
Just
my friend. We’d come under the KGB’s care around the same time. We’d both lost parents, and…” He exhales. “She wanted a romance when I needed a friend. But she was so volatile and wanted a lot of things that simply couldn’t be.”

I shiver as his other hand joins the first at my shoulders, massaging away months of paranoia and tension in my bones. “You tried to ‘fix’ her,” I say. “Her jumbled thoughts. Just like I asked you to do for me.”

“I knew it wouldn’t work, deep down. I was too weak then, and too afraid of becoming a monster. Like Rostov. I don’t want to use people this way—you have to believe me. But she begged me to, and I thought I could at least do
something
.”

My head lolls with a weary nod.

He sighs. “So I tried. But Anya was already long gone by then—mentally. I waited to run, waited until I thought I might be strong enough to help her sort through whatever had her head so messed up. But every day in that place was like a noose tightening. And she slipped further and further away.”

Exhaustion slumps me forward, saps me straight through. “I’m not sure I’m ready myself.”

“You deserve freedom. You deserve … so much more than the KGB could give you. You’re too powerful to keep caged.” He sits back down beside me, pulls off his glasses, and rubs the sweat from his nose. “But I can tell you that I have faced similar choices. And when I stayed, I have regretted that decision ever since.”

“What, you regret not trying to run from the mansion again?”

“No.” His eyes cloud as early dawn sunlight filters into the hotel. “This is something else. When my father and I came to Moscow…”

I close my hand around his wrist as he stares forward with unfocused eyes. “Show me. If it’s too painful—”

He shakes his head. “Everyone needs their secrets. Just as you didn’t want me stepping into your dreams, I can’t just show you these things.”

“You are asking for a lot of trust,” I say. The blood from my nose has dried; I can feel it crackling as I move my lips to speak.

“It has always been your choice.”

I look out the window, at the weak orange hue of morning reflected on endless concrete hell. My last morning as a prisoner, if I choose it. My last morning of keeping my mother and brother safe. “Valentin.”

He runs his finger along my arm. “Mm?”

“Did you really write that song for me?” His touch makes me dizzy. It makes me believe, foolishly, that we can accomplish this mad plan.

“Of course,” he says. “It’s what you sound like.”

“But my music barriers don’t sound like that.”

“I didn’t mean your barriers,” he says. “I meant you.
Yulia.
”

It’s too personal, to let the sound of me be exposed. My essence shouldn’t be out in the open for any passing hotel guest to hear. But what could they know? Only Valya knows me. Only Valya hears the silences that I can’t hide.

I twist around and kiss him fiercely, desperately. I want to kiss him now in case I may never again. It tastes like a beginning, but I fear it’s farewell.

“Yulia,” he murmurs, pulling back. “Someone might see us.” His voice doesn’t indicate that this is a remotely terrible thing.

I seize him by the arm and slide down to the floor in front of the sofa with him. “Is that better?”

He wraps his arms around me and pulls me against him. His elbow was tailored for my palm; my nose was crafted for the hollow of his collarbone. He’s searing hot, a coal just plucked from the fire. I want to keep that warmth for myself. I want Valentin’s music in my veins.

“Let’s run away,” he whispers, soft as silk.

He kisses like the dawn. My hands stroke his stomach, his arms, and he sets me on fire; he claims my hair for his own as his lips explore my neck. The music dripping off him like fervent sweat mingles with my own and we are protected, sealed, locked forever in this symphony, in the sounds of Yulia and Valentin.

CHAPTER 39

WE ARRIVE AT
the Krampnitz air base later in the morning. Its iced fields are glossy in the sun, and the brick and concrete buildings cluster around the airstrip like hunch-shouldered guards. The smell of jet fuel sears my nostrils as soon as Rostov rips open the van’s door. “All personnel are on duty today, patrolling the perimeter and the observation rooms,” Rostov explains as we climb from the van. “But if the scrubber is here, or any of the Americans, your duty is to find them at all costs.”