Sekret (31 page)

I stop at the entrance to the main administrative building. The faded mosaic over the door depicts a black eagle, fringes of feathers dangling from its wings, clutching a swastika. I cringe. I’m not looking forward to whatever memories I stir up on my sweep.

Rostov and Valentin head off to question the guards and look for any of the tell-tale electrified thought patterns my father leaves in his wake. I trail down one thick plaster wall and back up the other side, fighting to keep my observations grounded in this decade, but nothing leaps out at me. Uniformed officers and men zipped up in flight suits running back and forth, heeled secretaries shuttling stacks of folders, the crackle and beep of radar, Morse code,
Sputnik
satellites screeching from the vacuum of space.

A tense moment in the control room: a woman’s voice screaming through the speakers, begging and pleading and crying out for mercy. I pause and tilt my head. When did we try to send a woman into space? It must have been another secret launch, much like the one we’re about to witness. Victories get slathered across the front page of
Pravda
and bragged about across the globe. Failures are erased, blipped from existence, a speck on the radar one moment and gone the next.

“Find something?” Pavel asks, appearing behind me. I lurch nearly out of myself, then clamp my fists. Of course he’s here. I’ve had too little sleep and there are too many thoughts racing around in my head.

“It’s nothing,” I tell him, and storm down another corridor.

I take a wrong turn into the locker room, where Misha is chatting up a group of flight techs as they help the cosmonauts strap into their elaborate suits. A pale blue thermal costume, then a bright orange padded enclosure. The techs scrub at their faces, attaching wires and nodes and strange caps, doing their best to work while answering Misha’s ramblings with pointed one-word replies.

One of the techs glances up at me as he snaps on the cosmonaut’s bulky glove. Familiarity itches at me: something in that quick flutter of eyes, up and then back down. Papa? No. This man isn’t a radioactive wave scouring through me. I can see his features just fine. No rolling tide of faces and shapes.

“Come on,” Pavel says, nudging me in the back. “Lots more to examine.”

Someone yelps on the other side of the row of lockers beside us. The gasps spread like a contagion, followed by thundering footsteps. “Fire!” someone shrieks. The techs hop up and pry fire extinguishers from the wall before darting over as well, Misha hot on their heels.

My heart pounds. The fire Larissa had seen. It has to be Papa’s doing. I squash my hand against the locker, digging too deep, desperate to find his trail—

“Help them!” the familiar-looking tech shouts at Pavel, and shoves him in the direction of the panic. Then he seizes me by the wrist. “Yulia,” he says, starring right at me.

Another layer of fog sloughs off inside my mind as a three-note melody rings out. He’s Papa’s teammate—the man in the fedora who worked with Natalya Gruzova. “Where’s my father?” I whisper.

“Not now.” Another quick glance in the direction of the fire. I can smell it now—charred paper and rubbish. “Mozart Café, three blocks south of the hotel. Three o’clock this afternoon. Don’t be late. We can’t afford to wait around.”

He strides back to the cosmonauts and kneels down to buckle their boots.

After a few seconds of hissing fire extinguishers, the noise dies down and Pavel charges back toward me. “Probably some idiot throwing his cigarette in the trash,” he says. “Come on. Lots more to check.”

The American’s words simmer inside me as we finish our sweep, though I keep Shostakovich at his normal intensity around my thoughts. I’ll have to wait until we’re back at the hotel to tell Valentin. Everyone’s on high alert today. I only hope Masha and Sergei weren’t looking in remotely when the man passed his message to me.

We turn up nothing; Rostov orders us to stand guard in the observation deck, a balcony over the main control room where Comrade Secretary Nikita Khruschev and Yuri Gagarin will watch, along with a handful of Party officials. Larissa catches my arm outside the observation room and pulls me away with widened eyes.

“What is it?” I ask. I lower my voice. “Your vision with the fire—”

She laughs, brassy and bright. I think it’s the first I’ve heard her laugh since Ivan’s accident. It melts away some of my fear. “No, nothing bad has happened. But did you see Comrade Gagarin in there?” She giggles again. “Oh, Yul, he is a sight for sore eyes.”

I dig up a weak smile for her—more because I’m relieved to see her happy again. Unconcerned. But I need to ask her about her visions, find out what she sees about us meeting the CIA man. If Masha or Sergei overheard. I can’t risk it here, but as soon as the launch is over we’ll need to talk.

By late morning, we shuffle into the back of the observation room, with stadium seating and a massive plated-glass window covered by metal slats that can lock shut like blinds. I join Larissa against the back wall. On the airstrip, the
Veter 1
rocket assembly lies flat on the ground, encased in metal scaffolding and hydraulic lifts ready to pull it upright once the cosmonauts are on board. They stride across the field now, carrying their kits beside them like suitcases, escorted by the medical techs. Is the American among them? I swallow hard, wondering if he went to all this trouble just to bring this message to me, or if his real purpose here is yet to come.

The cosmonauts are sealed into their capsule. At this distance, the circular window on the capsule is only a speck; the whole conical capsule is nothing compared to the swooping cylinders attached to it, ready to fling the men into space. Then the hydraulics slowly lift the capsule end, bringing the entire rocket upright.

Larissa snorts next to me. “If Ivan were here,” she says, “he’d be making a dirty joke right now.”

I glance back out the window, then cover my mouth. “That’s terrible.” I stifle a laugh. “Now I can’t unsee it.”

Valentin slinks up to us and flattens against the wall next to me. “What’s so funny, ladies?” he asks. Larissa and I look at each other and giggle again. Valentin smirks and shakes his head. “Well, it’s sure nice to see you both in good spirits.”

Masha twists around from the seat in front of us. “Real mature, girls.” Her chilly gray eyes take me in. “Not that I’d expect better from someone who lurks in men’s locker rooms.”

Stomach acid burns at my throat.
Bozhe moi
. She saw, she must have seen. I toss her a condescending grin and keep Shostakovich level, but I’m burning up inside. Valentin snakes his hand into mine—does he know I’m panicking? I clench his hand with all I can, trying to drain this terror away.

Suddenly, the sounds of chair seats flapping upward ripples across the observation deck. The military officers are standing, ripping off their hats and tucking them under one arm as they strike a salute. We straighten and salute, twisting toward the back door. Comrade Secretary Nikita Khruschev enters, surrounded by several scowling men in his orbit, a blob of flesh and tweed, concealed by his entourage. So this is our fearless leader. The man who condemns Stalin with one hand while the other condemns thousands more to die. Mama said he’s better than Stalin; more progressive. Papa said that even Hitler fit that description.

He approaches a microphone at the front of the railing that peers down into the control room. The microphone shrieks as he leans in. “I trust that today will be a great day for Soviet scientists. For the workers of the world!” He pounds both fists against the railing. “You may begin!”

The operations room beneath us buzzes with men shouting back and forth in clipped Russian syllables: technical terms like “parallax” and compacted acronyms I couldn’t possibly untangle, calling these terms back and forth in a musical round. Orange lights glow beneath the cylindrical rockets under the capsule; the airstrip tarmac shimmers from the sudden heat. The rocket itself quivers on its launchpad like a dog straining at its leash, shedding chunks of ice and paint. The metal scaffolding around it folds open like a flower.

“Five.”

The Party officials and military officers around us lean forward, just a fraction in their seat. The air goes still with collective held breaths. I lean forward, fear and excitement buzzing under my skin.

“Four.”

Valentin’s hand tightens around mine.
We’re meeting my father this afternoon,
I tell him, concealing the thought in our songs.
Café Mozart, by the hotel.
My pulse patters fiercely in my ears as the rocket’s rumble reaches us.

“Three.”

Three notes, waltzing around in my head in three/four time. Papa’s sad smile as he glanced over his shoulder before vanishing from our lives. How will it feel to see him again? Will he melt away my fears and doubts, or try to scrub them away like a monster?

“Two.”

The technicians lined up on the tarmac fold their hands behind their backs. One man glances backward, just for a moment—the American. He’s too far away to see clearly, but I’m sure he’s smiling.

“One.”

Larissa gurgles beside me, strangling off a scream. Her whole body radiates terror. That inevitability whipping toward us like a tundra wind. I am petrified, unable to look away.

“Null.”

Fire billows from the thrusters. The rocket lurches upward. The applause is already starting as the rocket clatters up its track.

Then the second gout of flame bursts out of the capsule window.

Metal screams against metal, audible through the quadruple-plated observation window, as the rocket tips over, fire blazing from both ends, hungering to meet in the middle. The cheers melt into screams. Fireman charge onto the tarmac, bundled into bubbly bomb suits, but they’re too late. The flames grow fatter on the fresh winter air, the whole rocket shaking with explosive potential—

The metal slats clatter shut, submerging us in darkness, though the blossoming explosion is seared into my eyes. I blink it away madly, staggering toward the door, but it’s blocked by the guards. The overhead lights flicker on to reveal the room in chaos.

Cold sweat runs down my back. Either the rocket was flawed from the beginning, or my father and his friends have just killed our cosmonauts. I search that snapshot in my mind of the American on the tarmac, smiling back at me.
Bozhe moi,
what have they done?

“Stand back!”

“Secretary! Quickly, this way!”

Khruschev’s guards all but carry him out the door, then seal it back up, leaving us in the panicked dark. His second-in-command Brezhnev raises his hands. “I will ask you all to please calm down. There has been a slight technical problem, but I assure you—”

“Sabotage,” Rostov growls. I didn’t even notice him approach me. “The bastards got through somehow. And Khruschev is too much of a coward to confront them.”

But the plodding brass of the national anthem swallows up his words. Everyone snaps to attention and crosses their hearts—everyone but Rostov.

An unbreakable Union of free republics,

Long live the will of the free people,

The united, the mighty, the Soviet Union!

Rostov is a generator about to fry. His hat crumples in his fist.

The great Lenin has lit our path,

Stalin taught us faithfulness,

To labor! To greatness and beyond!

The air around us sizzles with Rostov’s rage. He was looking for Papa—a scrubber, like him. But he didn’t see the real saboteur, just like Sergei said—because he wasn’t looking for him.

Workers of the world, unite:

Flag of the Soviets, flag of the people,

Lead us from victory to victory!

Rostov clamps down on my arm.
Yulia.
My own name becomes a traitor in my mind, slithering around me, circling.
I have a special mission just for you.

Something snaps in me—like a rubber band stretched to breaking point. I slump into him as pops of color flood my vision.
Bang-bang.
I can’t break free.

Valentin turns toward us, his mouth a round O of panic. All color flees from Larissa’s face. “Yulia, wait!” But I can’t. I can do nothing but obey.

Rostov shoves past the guards—rather, the guards fly back from him, on jerky mechanized legs. A dizziness like deep hunger keeps me off balance. I am dimly aware of the building around us, then winter air like a slap. I scan the airstrip for the American, but he’s long gone; the air reeks of metal and smoke. Rostov shoves me into a military truck and we rumble along the road. Sirens whirl in front of us in hypnotic syncopation all the way back to the hotel.

One foot after the next. I am Rostov’s marionette. Back into the swelter of Hotel Kepler. The radiator blasts me like a prison cell slamming shut. Sweat rolls down my spine, between my shoulder blades. My puppet master steers me into the elevator. The face I see reflected in the brass trimming is not my own; it is the loose skin of a girl with all her insides scooped out.

“Come, Chernina,” Rostov says, as the elevator gates latch shut. “We must set Secretary Khruschev straight.”

CHAPTER 40

NIKITA SERGEYEVICH KHRUSCHEV
, the general secretary of the Communist Party and the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, is slick with sweat from his bald dome to his sagging gut. His shirt is half unbuttoned, and wiry chest hair spills from it like white worms. “Don’t issue anything yet,” he yells into a telephone. “I’m not pointing a finger at the Americans until we decide if we want this to be public at all.”

“Comrade secretary,” Rostov says. “A word, please.”

Khruschev slams down the phone and whirls toward us. “General Rostov.” The tumbler of vodka slides out of his hand; from his shining red Rudolph nose, I’m guessing he had a few on the truck ride back here. “Of the Committee for State Security, yes? KGB? I’m sorry, but as you can imagine, I have some rather pressing matters to deal with right now. I was not expecting you.”