Sekret (34 page)

The last movement of Papa’s melody breaks inside of me. Papa on the Ferris wheel; Papa leaning over and pressing the melody into me. A message inside the words: “Your power is so great, my Yulia, but you only use it in one direction,” he said. “You let others push their memories and ideas onto you. One day, you must learn to push back.”

The Hound hoists me over his shoulder with a feral growl. Our skin makes contact—I open myself completely for that one second, letting all his rage flood into me.

Then I count. Two, one, null.

And throw both my hands against his bald head.

The Hound’s rage pours back out of me—how his own father treats him, how he’s turned him into a pawn. Envy—the chafe of rough burlap as his brother is rewarded, eating fine meals and playing hockey for cheering crowds. It’s Rostov’s doing. His own father, turning him into a blind, ignorant beast. Let the Hound amplify
that
.

Valentin’s screams have stopped. I twist around to see why, but my fingers slip—and I can’t risk letting go.

You don’t know anything
, Rostov snarls.
How could you possibly guess—

“You aren’t the only one who knows a little about genetics.”

My hands are slick with sweat; I dig my nails into his flesh to keep my grip. I have to push, even as the Hound’s thoughts come rushing in. Memories. Emotion. Conflict. Sergei was the only child Rostov and Kruzenko meant to have. The Hound was born with multiple complications, and they only made him worse with their genetic meddling—trying to create the perfect psychic spy.

But he was far from perfect. Locked away in a lab, his own brother and mother terrified to look at him, and his father slowly making a puppet of him. Burning his eyes, bursting his eardrums, until he was reduced to nothing but an extension of his father, a psychic doppelgänger and homing pigeon.

My touch draws these memories in; my touch pushes them away. I am no longer the memories’ pawn. They are my tool. My weapon and my gift.

The Hound wheezes and whimpers. He reaches back and pries one of my hands loose. The memories are fading. My back smashes against jagged rocks, though I can barely feel it through the tingling void under my skin. Too numb with shock, too empty to fight on. I reach out with my fingers because they’re the only things I can move. Valentin, my primitive mind reminds me. I have to find Valentin.

His skin is cold; my fingertips cling to it out of sheer desperation. His music is gone. His memories and terrors and dreams are a film on his surface, and I catch sight of them without even meaning to.

His father with a glass of vodka in one hand and a Makarov pistol in the other. Valentin swimming through the Black Sea under a melting sun, then he’s sucked under by a wave, torn from his mother’s grip. This must be what he didn’t want to share with me. Everyone deserves their secrets—but the pain they’re causing him right now is just the weapon I need.

Valentin’s anger mingles with what little emotion I can still muster up. It’s like fire on oil. The Hound reaches down to throw me again. I latch my nails into the skin of his forearm. I don’t need to understand Valya’s memories to use them. The Hound buckles backward, wailing at my fresh onslaught.

Music floods the air around us, pouring from Valentin’s motionless body. Bright, bouncing, in perfect harmony:

And when I touch you, I feel happy inside,

It’s such a feeling that this love I can’t hide,

I can’t hide …

But I need more. Rostov is howling his wordless rage in my head, but he’s still in control of the Hound.

You’ll have to knock him out to break his link with Rostov.

I look up.
Sergei?

The pile of rocks behind you.

I nod, just barely, and snatch the largest chunk I can.

One crack isn’t enough. The Hound bucks wildly, swinging me on his shoulder. I strike him again, again. Rostov’s acid thoughts scour at the periphery of my mind as the Hound claws frantically at me. One last chance—I bash him in the temple, just above his ears, his ears that jut out like his mother’s. He totters back and forth as Rostov’s screaming fades.

He falls to the ground like an avalanche, pinning me under his unconscious weight.

“Valentin?” An iron band constricts my chest as I scan for him in the darkness. I worm my way out of the Hound’s grasp, each movement shooting pain through muscles I didn’t know I had, but my legs are still trapped. “Valya, are you okay?”

He’ll live,
Sergei says.

I swallow hard.
But what about you?

In the distance, I hear the whine of unoiled brakes.

I know how to handle Rostov. Don’t worry about me.

I pry my good leg free, but my shattered ankle—I have to slide it out one agonizing centimeter at a time.
Why help me? I thought you said running away was foolish. That I should be a real Russian woman and live the life I’m dealt.

I was wrong. You make a terrible Russian.
I can almost see his boyish smirk. My foot finally pops free; I swing myself onto my good leg.
And if you’re crazy enough to run from Rostov twice—toward the American scrubber, no less—well, then you deserve what you get.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

You can thank me by never getting me caught in one of your schemes again. I don’t want to hurt you, Yulia, but I will not always be able to avoid it.
And he is gone.

Valya groans as I approach him, and the iron band eases up on my chest. I rush toward him, swallowing down a yelp of pain, and kneel at his side.

“Yul…”

“Come on. We have to go.” I swipe at my eyes. Blood trickles from his nose and ears; his glasses are askew. “Please, Valya, come with me…”

His eyes open and his hand gropes before him. I lace my fingers in his. If I can force rage upon Rostov and the Hound, surely I can infuse Valya with peace. The strength we need. I close my eyes and show him my very favorite memory.

Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something I think you’ll understand … I wanna hold your hand.

CHAPTER 44

THE HOLE IN THE TUNNEL
opens onto a field that ends against the hulking wall. Stubborn, fierce little weeds peek through the layers of ice and slush. We’re fifty meters from the checkpoint, lit up like Red Square—only fifty meters separate us from West Berlin. Guards perch in a tower above the wall; their spotlight sweeps across the field and pins us. The razor wire coiled around the tower looks alive, like a great python. I hold Valya firm.

“It’ll be all right,” Valya says, wincing into the harsh glare. “We can do this.”

One precarious step after the next. A massive sign announces “You are now leaving the Russian sector” in Russian, German, English, and French. The East German and Russian soldiers at the gate watch our lopsided approach.

“Declare yourselves.” The first guard walks toward us as we exit the field, his AK at the ready.

“We have the Americans’ permission to cross,” Valya says.

“You do not yet have mine. Your papers, please.”

I glance toward the guard box in the middle lane of the road. The man inside reaches for his radio. “Valya, look out—”

Valya throws out his hand and the guards on the roadside, the man in the box, even the men in the tower all snap into a salute. The guard in front of us doubles over, clutching his head.

“I have your papers right here.”

A light like the sun crests on the other side of the red-and-white-striped gate. Slowly, the glow dims into Papa, striding forward with a thick sheathe of documents raised. He is brightness and warmth, and just looking at him, I feel my heart sing. He turns toward me: his scruffy black hair and his lopsided grin as he puffs on an unfiltered cigarette.

“Of course, comrade. My mistake.” The guard falls back. As Valya and I limp past him, I hold him tight, keeping the song between us alive.

We step across the border into West Berlin.

“You look like death,” Papa says. He pulls me into his arms. He smells clean, even under a film of cigarette smoke. He’s my Papa, just as I remember him, but stripped down, polished, disinfected. I don’t care. He feels like home.

“Rostov tried to take control of Khruschev and launch missiles,” I say. “You have to warn your American friends. He might be planning a coup.”

Papa releases me and holds me at arm’s length. “You’re sure of this?” He motions to a gaunt man in a fedora, who watches us from a safe distance. “Call Langley, Fort Meade. Find out what they know.” He sounds so confident in his English, like he’s been speaking it his whole life. He turns back to Valya and me, and slips into Russian. “As for you two … Let’s get you some medical attention.”

Two attendants rush forward to help Valya, while Papa braces me against his side. An ambulance waits for us down the rubble-free street—slick white metal, brand new and glistening. Papa’s smile is the same as ever, so boyish. It reminds me a little of Sergei, but I shake that thought away. He helps me onto a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, next to Valya, where a nurse is attaching him to an IV. Our hands fall over the stretchers’ sides and tangle up. I don’t ever want to let go.

“Rostov,” Valya mumbles. “They have to stop Rostov.” His eyes flutter shut, and he drifts off to medicated sleep.

A blue-suited man with full, healthy cheeks and a skinny black tie leans to Papa’s ear, though he keeps his eye on me while he does so. He’s the other team member—the one at Krampnitz who told me where to go. I offer him a feeble smile. He grins back at me, with a little too much sympathy. Papa nods and dismisses him with a flick of his fingers. The ambulance door latches shut.

“Our intel sources confirmed that the Party’s called an emergency meeting. They mean to ask Khruschev to step down.”

“Is that good or bad?” I ask.

“Less destabilizing than if he was assassinated. And certainly better than nuclear war. But depending who they put in charge…” Papa shakes his head. “Nothing we can do about it tonight. You’re free now—that’s the important part.”

“And Mama,” I say. Why didn’t he ask about her? The Papa I remember rushed to give her a kiss the moment he got home, before he so much as acknowledged Zhenya and me. I take a deep breath. “She’s restarted the program.”

Papa turns away from me so I can’t see his face. Compared to when he was working as a scrubber, his mind is calm, but I sense the turmoil shifting within him.

“We’ll deal with that later.” Papa sits back down and braces himself against the ambulance wall as we take a sharp corner. I reach for Papa’s knee. I love him, I will always love him. But I have to know. I want to understand.

“What did you do to them?” I whisper. “The other wildlings. And—and me.”

Papa laughs, though his eyes are hardened. “Erasing their knowledge of their powers, as best I can. I was only trying to help you, little dove. But I wasn’t as strong then. It only held for a short time. Now, it should last much longer. Perhaps not forever, but we’ll be rid of Rostov soon.”

“We will?” I ask.

Papa smoothes my blood-slicked hair. “Shh. Later. Rest now, while you can. We’re headed for the States.”

I sigh, as if the last weight has finally lifted from me—or maybe it’s the shot from whatever the nurse is now giving me. “You really can get us in?”

“Of course I can. I work for the CIA now. And if you wish it, you will, too.” Papa grins his sunbeam grin. “My brave Yulia.” It’s as if he never left my side. “Your powers and your life are yours now. You can use them however you like.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The need for secrecy is woven through so much of Russia’s history. Russians even invented the espionage concept of
maskirovka
, an elaborate masquerade in which nothing is ever what it seems. I loved the idea of injecting yet another layer of secrecy and paranoia into that history through mindreading. While the events of
SEKRET
are fictionalized, the circumstances are very real. Stalin’s ideological purges killed millions of Russians, and sentenced many more to hard labor in the Siberian gulags, a fate documented in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
. Despite Khruschev’s attempts to back down from Stalin’s rhetoric, the pall of forced compliance remained, amplified by fear of Western infiltration as Russia sought to win the Cold War.

SEKRET
takes place in the 1960s, but much of that era was influenced by Russia’s and America’s actions in the 1940s during World War II, also known as the Great Patriotic War for Russians. Though Josef Stalin, the Soviet secretary at the time, allied with Hitler, Hitler betrayed the Russian people by invading in the winter of 1941 and blockading the port city of Leningrad (now called Saint Petersburg). Over a million Leningraders died of starvation and exposure until the Red Army was able to smuggle food and supplies into the city over the frozen riverbed. Helen Dunmore’s
The Siege
, while fictionalized, chronicles their extreme quest for survival.

Once the Allied forces routed the Nazis and retook Berlin, the United States and Russia divided the country of Germany between themselves, in effect sparking the Cold War. The years 1963–1964 were a major turning point in the Cold War. After America and the USSR came within minutes of igniting a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, they adopted a more conciliatory tone on the surface, but waged a vicious espionage campaign against one another in secret. East and West Germany, and East and West Berlin, became a testing ground for the greater conflict and hosted countless spy struggles like those in
SEKRET
. Tunnels, cafés, dark alleyways, and abandoned factories witnessed an untold history of power shifts and lost lives—David Stafford’s
Spies Beneath Berlin
attempts to reconstruct some of it.

When Nikita Khruschev came to power, he tried to shed the doctrine of fear and cult of personality that characterized his predecessor, Josef Stalin, but his temper often got the better of him. Peter Carlson’s
K Blows Top
characterizes his mercurial approach to foreign policy and statecraft. For a snapshot of middle-era Soviet life, John Gunther’s
Inside Russia Today
from 1956 (unearthed for me at an estate sale by my intrepid bestie, Alison) can’t be beat.