Sekret (32 page)

Neither were his guards, when Rostov reduced them to knotted, convulsing lumps in front of his hotel room door.

“You have been allowed to desecrate our founding principles for long enough, comrade.” Rostov snatches the vodka from his hands. “We have abandoned the teachings of Marx and Engels. The guideposts of Lenin and Stalin.”

“Stalin was a monster. A murderer. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Khruschev says. “What’s your point?”

“At least he saw a blatant attack for what it was. The Americans were responsible for what happened today. They
must
be punished!”

Khuschev leaps from his chair, but he barely reaches Rostov’s sternum. “Punished? And where is your proof?” He sighs. “I have tried letting your kind of Party man steer the nation before. But what did it get us? We humiliated ourselves in Cuba. We have killed our best and bravest cosmonauts today,
we
have, in our haste, and—Yeargh!”

His rant dissolves into anguished screams as waves of pain radiate from Rostov. Were he not forcing me upright, I’d be doubled over from the piercing whine. The sick, sticky smell of death flutters its fingers under my nose.

“This humiliation cannot go unanswered.
We
must not appear weak,” Rostov says. Khruschev has a mental shield—it must be standard training from the KGB now—but it’s weakening by the moment. Khruschev marches back to the telephone, eyes dead, lips slack. He picks up the receiver.

“Yulia,” Rostov says. “Read the documents inside the secretary’s briefcase.”

As if I have a choice. My hands slam against the double-locked satchel. The secretary only carries one set of keys; the other must be back in Moscow. Rostov mashes my fingertips into the soft leather until memories of the daily work of filling this satchel leap out. Each morning, armed guards deliver a fresh set of papers. Strange, unrelated words, printed in equidistant spacing across each page. Codes.

My throat spasms as if trying to seal itself shut. Nuclear launch codes. Rostov means to make Khruschev recite them, input them at a distant missile launch site, and start a new world war.

“
Read them
,” Rostov hisses, his voice grating my mind as if it were cheese. This morning’s codes stream before my eyes. Rostov bores into my brain. A dial tone fills the air between Khruschev and us. Mechanically, he punches in a phone number.

“I’m listening,” a voices says on the other end of the line.

Dacha. Tributary. Concerto.

“Dacha. Tributary. Concerto,” Khruschev recites into the telephone, his voice deflated.

Alsatian. Thorax. Liquefied.

Row after row, Rostov funnels the code from me, working down the page from the memory, then pours it out of Khruschev’s mouth. The last ventriloquist act the world shall know, before we are bathed in white sunrise. The silos are opening with each row he recites; the missiles are warming up, ready to trot onstage for the grand finale as the last line draws near. My brain blisters under Rostov’s touch. I must fight back. I cannot fight back.

Bang-bang.
Here lies Yulia, who thought she could escape. You can’t outrun a mushroom cloud.

What was it that I tried so hard to forget? The deeper Rostov digs, the more wounds he rips open; the more long-buried pains are brought to the fore. I cannot hold them inside, hoarding them greedily, collapsing under the weight of the world’s emotions. I have to set them free.

And then, like an explosion in my chest and in my head, the memory reappears.
Bang-bang.

No, that doesn’t quite do justice to the detonated emotions surging out of me, memories and pain and gunfire and Papa and hatred and Rostov’s despicable smile. I fling myself at him, palms raised, and clamp onto his throat.

BANG.

His awful attack at the KGB headquarters, staged to look like a murder-suicide. It floods back out of me and into him, sharp as gasoline, and I am the match. I do not merely drink up emotions and memories. I push them away.

BANG.

Rostov’s control retracts from me. Khruschev slumps to the floor as Rostov loses that thread, too. I jam the pain under his skin. For every time he scrubbed our memories, every time he used our powers against our will. Every indignity I’ve suffered, whether from my parents trying to protect me or the KGB trying to exploit me. My fingertips are rage. My palms are vengeance. It all comes gushing out of me, overwhelming Rostov’s steel-wool thoughts with my own.

Blood trickles from Rostov’s nose as he collapses onto the secretary’s bed, head turned toward me, his breathing steady but shallow. I feel empty and purposeless, like the first day of summer after school ends, but I am free.

No—I am
almost
free.

I am trapped in a hotel room with two unconscious men, one the leader of the unfree world and the other its near-destroyer. “Allo? Allo?” cries the man at the other end of the telephone, waiting for the rest of the code that would lob destruction across the world. I slam the receiver back onto the cradle.

Think, Yulia, think.
Each thought is a colossal effort. The window. I lunge for the window. Please, don’t be sealed shut—

Valya’s face looms before mine on the other side of the windowpane, crouched on the fire escape. He motions me away from the window, and as soon as I’m out of the blast radius, he slams his foot through the glass. “Are you all right?” He peers around the bizarre scene.

“I will be. How did you find us?”

Larissa’s head appears next to his on the fire escape. “Please. It’s like you were setting off psychic fireworks in here.” She jabs her thumb toward Valentin. “He, ah,
convinced
Kruzenko to bring us back to the hotel after you left with Rostov.”

I approach the window, arms open, and Valya wraps me in an embrace. He rocks me back and forth, and I almost let myself cry. I feel like I could dissolve into him, what little of me remains. But we have to run. Valya kisses my forehead, then helps me climb out.

“You came back for me,” I say. The words sound stupid hanging in the air between us, but they mean so much.

“I always will.”

We soar down the fire escape. “Where’s everyone else?” I ask. “What about the guards?”

“I had Kruzenko give them some work to occupy them,” Valentin says.

Larissa nods. “We’re not sure how long the effect will last, though. I’m predicting it’ll break at some point between here and the next block.”

“Hopefully by then, we’ll be at Café Mozart,” I say. And then we’ll escape to the great, vast, unknown life on the other side of the concrete wall. We’re free. We’re almost free.

Our tufts of breath come rapidly as we continue down the street. The factories and sparse shops face us like headstones—flat gray, pocked here and there with premature decay and the occasional Democratic Republic of Germany flag that hangs listlessly over the door. The boulevard is more crowded than yesterday evening. Perhaps it’s the magical afternoon hour when all the factories close and everyone rushes home to barricade themselves against the East German secret police—whatever the case, they are the perfect cover for our escape. They’re shouting, exclaiming. It’s beautiful noise. Thoughts shoot around us, frantic, animated, terrified—

We reach the end of the block, ablaze with wonderful orange light. I weave through the crowd toward Café Mozart, another Baroque relic in the sea of modern cement buildings. Cherubs pucker their lips over the doorframe, and wrought-iron patio furniture lies in wait for warmer weather. It’s perfect—just what I’d expect from Papa as a Western gateway to our new life. I’m so transfixed that it’s a moment before I finally realize what’s happening.

Café Mozart is on fire.

CHAPTER 41

I CHARGE FOR THE FRONT DOOR
, but a gout of flame sputters in my path. Valentin and Larissa seize me by either arm. “Yulia, stop! It’s too late!”

“I have to get inside.” I wrestle against them, reaching for the doors. Never mind the glass panes already smashed out, or the wide display cases inside wreathed in fire. “I have to read the walls—find out where they’ve gone.”

“Give it up, Yul! We’re too late!” Larissa cries. Smoke spews around us as they drag me backward through the congealed snowdrifts on the sidewalk. “They’re already gone.”

I shove off of Larissa, but Valentin manages to tackle me to the sidewalk. Black snow slides down the neck of my sweater. Everything is happening as if underwater. People are pointing and shouting, their thoughts bristling all around us, but it’s so slow. Valya and Larissa are screaming at me wordlessly. Why can’t they understand? It’s our last chance—we can’t let it get incinerated. I just need a scrap of paper, a fork, anything that was in the café when this all took place.

A plaster column crashes through the front door in a cloud of ember and ash. I prop myself on my elbows, watching fresh flames swallow up the entryway. My throat is tight, and not just from the smoke. Foolish Yulia. Daring to think she could escape. Didn’t she learn her lesson in Natalya Gruzova’s palatial apartment?

I press my hands against the sidewalk, pushing myself to my feet, when three notes surge through me. I glance down and spot the crushed butt of an unfiltered cigarette.

“We have to go
now
.” Larissa tugs at my arm. The crowd is concealing us, but it won’t last.

“I need one second.” I scoop up the cigarette butt.

Papa is standing on the sidewalk corner, checking his pocket watch as he smokes. Half an hour to go, but never too soon to start a sweep. He watches the ration line across the street; he listens to the tailor next door pedaling her sewing machine. He isn’t nearly so fuzzy as he usually is. He must be keeping a low psychic profile.

A car screeches up to the curb and the other man jumps out. “Change of plans.” He’s speaking German, though his accent is all rounded corners and blunted
r
s.

“What’s the matter?” Papa takes another unhurried drag on the cigarette.

“Rostov left the base right after Khruschev—had your girl with him. I came as soon as I could. I don’t know if she’ll make it—”

“Then it’s too dangerous.” Papa reaches into his front coat pocket and pulls out a half-drank bottle of vodka. “I’ll have to trust the thoughts I put in her head.”

The man hands him a scrap of fabric, which Papa stuffs into the bottle’s neck. He holds his cigarette to the rag until it sparks, then catches, leaping up the rag.

“Get ready to run,” Papa says.

And he pitches the flaming bottle straight into the café’s window.

“Yulia.” Larissa shakes me back into the present. “If we circle back to the hotel now, we can go straight to Kruzenko, tell her what Rostov’s done. She’ll protect us. It’s not too late. The secret police aren’t here yet—the Stasi—”

The fire is too hot on my face. I look at her pleading eyes, at Valya’s dour expression. But I can’t give up now. Papa is counting on me.

“The Americans know this place is compromised but they haven’t given up on us.” I straighten my shoulders. “We have to run.”

We push out of the crowd just as a fire truck whines in the distance. I run my fingers along the building wall, seeking that three-note melody. “They turned down here.” I beckon Valya and Larissa around the corner, past the flaming café. The cold air is thick with smoke; the fire’s smell mingles with factory waste as we plunge deep into the industrial district along the Berlin Wall’s edge. There are no cars parked along the street to hide behind. No thick drifts of snow. Smoke scrapes through our lungs with a rusty spoon. But the melody in my head is bewitching, calming. I know we’re on the right path.

“The Stasi will be coming soon,” Larissa warns. “If not for us, then for the fire.”

Valentin glances at me, his face hardened. “Yulia—your nose is bleeding again.”

I reach up to dab it, but stumble forward as a chunk of rubble catches my foot. “Damn it.” Then pebbles spray across my face. “Okay, what the hell—”

“It’s Masha,” Larissa says. “I guess she isn’t completely terrible at telekinesis anymore…”

“Watch out!”

Valya shoves me to the wall right before a chunk of concrete goes whizzing past where I just stood. “We have to shake her off.”

“Up here.” Larissa charges past us along the wall of the massive factory. “Valya, distract her.”

“Masha?” Valya shouts, stepping out into the street. A crooked piece of piping crashes into his knee. “Masha, you really should know better by now. You’re nothing to Rostov—just a means to an end!”

I’m so much more.
Her words rattle through my skin as she pushes her thoughts through the alleyway.
Imagine how I’ll be rewarded for catching you traitors.

I follow Larissa into a ridge in the concrete factory wall. She points to a basement window peeking above the street surface. “Think we can fit in there?” she asks.

I jam my boot through the window with all my force, snapping the metal bar apart as the glass pane shatters. “We’ll try.” I glance over my shoulder. Did I see shadows flickering through the abandoned scaffolding across the street?

“Khruschev will have Rostov killed for what he tried to pull!” Valentin shouts. “He’ll see our whole program as a threat. Don’t you know what happens to threats?”

Never. I’ll never be useless like you!

“Your loss,” Valya says. Light flares through the alley in a supersonic screech. I grit my teeth, my nails digging into the concrete wall.

“What did you do?” Larissa asks as Valya jogs up to us.

He grins devilishly. “The psychic equivalent of jamming my thumbs in her eyes.”

I make a mental note to kiss him later for that, and tug my sweater sleeves down over my hands. I dive through the broken window feetfirst and slam into cold concrete. The landing reverberates through my bones. Hot, tangy blood dribbles down my chin. The basement is dark, with only vague shapes of discarded machinery looming out of the blackness like ancient rubble. It reeks of mold and motor oil. In the distance, I hear the rumbling factory floor.