Skandal

by Lindsay Smith

  “And this is Pavel’s shoe. After he died.” Something rings inside of me, as though I am hollowed out. I didn’t truly believe the general when he told me Pavel was a powerful scrubber. But the proof is still crackling through my nerves. Could this really be my mother’s doing? Rostov demanded she build an army of psychics, and this man wasn’t one before.

  Cindy nods. “Originally, we were going to bring you to his apartment so you could search the area, try to find new leads for us, but there was an … incident.”

  I swallow. Incident. Emergency. Disaster.

  “Someone burned it down not an hour after we removed his body. We’re lucky none of the men guarding it were hurt.” Cindy’s voice doesn’t waver, but her smile does. “The other items are from other locations where we found similar bodies. The pillbox was on a woman who’d last been seen trying to enter the NATO offices in Brussels.”

  I reach for the pillbox. My pulse ricochets in my ears, anticipating another wave of bleaching noise. As my fingers circle the cold metal, white blossoms suround me. It drinks me in, swallows me into its throat of steel wool and scrapes me all the way down. The bleach rots me away, one layer of skin at a time.

  But maybe I can outlast it. If I can skim just one memory—salvage one clue—

  The woman curls around a telephone receiver, lying in a fetal position, stiff polyester carpet fibers stamped hard into one cheek. Her skin is mine, and it is too tight—like a cooked sausage pushing at its casing. The psychic noise pushes back on me from all sides. It’s worse now. I gain some sense that this noise has been festering for a while, but now it’s consuming me whole. It’s invaded my every cell. I am nothing but this painful, piercing noise.

  I have a telephone receiver cradled to my ear, propped beside me on the carpet. “Please,” I rasp into the perforated holes. “Send someone.” My thumb strokes back and forth against the faded rose pattern on the pillbox’s lid. “Your cyanide didn’t work.”

  The phone crackles with a voice tinged in frost. “You must finish the mission.”

  “Please.” Speaking is so hard. I can barely feel the word pushing through my vocal cords. I’m strangled by my own psychic noise. “Please kill me.”

  A labored inhalation, or maybe it’s the static in the phone line turning the caller’s breath into crackling squares of noise. “You must reach Senator Saxton.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” The pillbox slips through my fingers. The carpet fibers pressing into my temple are damp, hot with the smell of copper. “It’s too late for me.”

  I fling myself out of the chattering white void and choke down fresh air. As soon as I’ve let go of the pillbox, I clamp my hand onto Cindy’s wrist and let what I’ve just seen pour back out of me.

  “Yulia!—” she pleads, her tone suddenly sharp and high. The tone of panic and pain. I want her to feel this pain, too. I shouldn’t be the only one subjected to such misery. She needs to know what I’m capable of, what these scrubbers are like. I won’t suffer alone—

  Bozhe moi. My anger is suddenly gone, poured out of me and into Cindy. I pry my hand away.

  “Cindy—Miss Conrad—I am so sorry—” I dump the shoebox onto the ground and curl my arms around my legs, ignoring the twinge from my bad ankle. “I wanted you to see the memory, but I—”

  Cindy’s breathing heavily; she runs a hand against her taut, silky hair. “No harm done.” Her eyelids flutter rapid fire. “Is—is that how you shared your findings with your KGB mentors?”

  No. I was only a tarpaulin strung between trees, collecting memories like rainwater, then waiting for Rostov to wring every last drop from me. I shake my head and lower my legs back down, trying to match Cindy as she schools herself to calmness.

  “Very well. It was my choice to push you.” She raises her chin, regal. “So this woman appears to be a—a scrubber, as well.”

  I take a slow breath. “I think so. And she was dying. Whatever is causing the bleeding from her ears—the psychic noise—I think she was in great pain, and she tried to end it with a cyanide pill.” I tighten my hands into fists, trying to squeeze down the dark memories lingering against them. “Do you know this Senator Saxton they mentioned?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Cindy stands, bracelets jangling. “Wait right here.”

  While Cindy digs around in her desk, I try to keep balance on the couch, as it threatens to reel me in again. Someone laughs from behind me, a snorting sound. I peer over the edge to find Marylou flat on her back on the floor. She’s chain-smoking clove cigarettes, and her hair makes her look like she’s escaped a volcanic eruption because she keeps undershooting the ashtray by her head. “That was real groovy,” she says.

  “What? You heard us?”

  “Yeah. I liked what you did with your box of stuff.” Her pupils are cavernous pits, inviting me in. I can’t read the look on her face, both bleary and frighteningly incisive, and I don’t like it. “It’s like you’re reaching through the time-space continuum, you know? And, like, knotting it all together.”

  I creep back on the couch. “Thanks.” The silence between us swells. “I did not … know you were down there.”

  “Always.” Another heavy, crushing pause as she takes a slow drag. “Do you think we could swim in it?” she asks. Then, as if to clarify, “Time.”

  Suddenly Cindy is there, peering over Marylou with a click of her tongue. “I didn’t realize you were scheduled for an INFRA session today.”

  Marylou snorts with laughter again. “I’m looking in the Forbidden City—couldn’t get past their blockers without one. Following Mao around. I slide in on sunbeams and melt into his shadow, Miss Cindy. It’s poetry.”

  “I’m sure you could do it without the ‘outside help’ if you tried.” Cindy turns away from Marylou and settles beside me again. “Project MK INFRA. Our research department had been trying to induce psychic abilities for years through the use of hallucinogens so we didn’t have to rely on psychic volunteers, but we had it all wrong—you have to have the genetic predisposition for psychic ability first. Now we’re running preliminary trials to see if it can enhance the abilities you all already possess.”

  “Hallucinogens,” I repeat, still trying to process her words.

  Cindy smirks. “Don’t worry, I’m not keen on letting them run trials on you anytime soon.” She opens another folder across our laps. “Senator Arliss Saxton, Congressional representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”

  I page through the file. Russian propaganda led me to expect a round, white-suited Southern old boy with sinister facial hair, not unlike the man on the bucket of chicken Papa sometimes brings home for dinner, but Senator Saxton just looks tired. His face is riveted into place with deep pockmarks, and his dark hair has been splashed with white. His stockiness looks like fortification against some unseen threat.

  “Congressional representative,” I echo. “Is this … significant?”

  “You have more experience with scrubbers than I do.” Cindy thumbs the corner of the file. “You tell me what one could accomplish if they had control of the man who can send every NATO country to war.”

  CHAPTER 6

  CINDY AND I SPEND AN HOUR mapping out everywhere they’d found the dead operatives—the possible scrubbers, with blood dribbling from their noses and ears. Sure enough, they show a steady westward progression through the NATO member states of Europe—from West Germany to France to Great Britain—and now to America leaving a trail of security incidents in their wake. An assault on the West German NATO general in the streets of West Berlin. A British aide walks onto the Tube one day and walks off with no knowledge of where or who she is. For almost every seemingly unrelated security incident to befall a government official, a dead scrubber turned up a few days later in the same city, matching the description of whoever had made the attack.

  And then there’s Senator Saxton, whose dossier I muddle through. Turns out, Saxton had contacted the CIA recently with concerns that someone was leaking NATO docum
ents—files misplaced, reports gone awry. Nothing classified, but he was concerned all the same. Then, last week, he reported an attempted breakin at his Georgetown home, and the Secret Service placed him under protective detail while the FBI and CIA jointly investigated. “Given his position and the other recent episodes,” Cindy says, “we can’t rule out the possibility that foreign agents are trying to harm him or intimidate him in some way. And if they have one of these powerful psychics on their side…”

  I can fill in that blank perfectly fine. I’ve seen what a highly skilled scrubber can do. Force a man to turn a gun on himself. Drive a world leader to input the codes for a nuclear launch. I won’t let that happen again. I pore over her reports, letting myself forget, however briefly, that I might be capable of this kind of danger, too.

  When we break for lunch my head is laden with so many strange words from the dossier, I can’t wait to ask Winnie for help. “There’s my little devochka!” she calls to me from one of the break room tables. I reel toward her—my anchor, my filter for everything mad in this new world. She hugs me for a moment before I pull away. “How’s your first day so far?” she asks me in Russian.

  “Rough. But not the worst I’ve had.” I glance over my shoulder, check that Cindy is still chatting in the far corner with Donna, and tell Winnie briefly about the file with my mother. Her lips draw tight as she listens.

  “I can’t blame you for being upset. But these people are only trying to keep the country safe—you can’t blame them for doing their job, for following the rules.”

  I want to believe her, but her voice is flat, as if she’s said these words before. I may still be learning English, but I know the sound of something you have to convince yourself of. “What about Cindy? Do you trust her?”

  Winnie’s eyebrows lift. “She’s tough—just the right kind of ruthless we need. I don’t agree with her methods sometimes, but I can’t argue with her results.”

  “But do you trust her?” I ask.

  “As much as I trust anyone.” She takes a breath like she’s about to say more, but the door swings open, and Papa, Valentin, and two others enter the break room. Valentin’s stare softens when he sees me. He circles around my chair and rests his palms on my shoulders, murmuring a sweet nickname for me in Russian before planting a kiss on the crown of my head. All the nervousness and fear that’s been skittering through me vanishes with that touch. I smile and lean back in the chair.

  Is everything okay? he asks, our shared music tangling together like our fingers: the Beatles and Dave Brubeck and Babi Yar all at once. You seem tense.

  I hesitate. Last night was a good night—no nightmares pulsing through the halls. No screaming. No anguish. But I know it’s somewhere under the surface, lurking, waiting for its chance. I don’t need to burden him with my troubles. I need him strong. Just a little overwhelmed, is all. I turn our music bright and summery. I’ll be fine.

  “Have a seat,” Winnie tells Valentin, “but we’re switching back to English.”

  We both groan.

  Valentin and Winnie banter back and forth about his work with the CIA’s new employee class, training them to resist his psychic assault. His English is soft and buttery, a stark reminder to me of his past life as the son of a high-ranking Party official within the Soviet Union—he can cycle through Russian, English, and German like he moves through piano chords. I mostly keep up, but the chattering conversations around us—Cindy and Donna, Papa and his friends—tug my ears in different directions like a cross-breeze whipping me around.

  Winnie must notice the fake, baffled smile frozen on my face, because as soon as Valya stops talking, she turns toward me. “All right, Yulia. What do you need help with?”

  Everything, I think. “A few words from today’s reading. ‘Yacht,’” I say, with my best phlegm-loosening German accent.

  “Yacht,” Winnie corrects me with a laugh. “It’s a boat. A rich-guy boat.”

  I grin back at her. “Lacrosse.”

  “It’s a sport, kind of like tennis and football combined. Let me guess, you’ve been reading dossiers on rich senators.”

  “Very observant. What else was there … ‘Adulterer’… ‘er.’ Is it someone who is more adult than someone else?”

  Winnie stops smiling and glances down at her deli sandwich. “No. It’s someone who cheats.”

  “Cheats?” I ask. “Like at cards?”

  “No. Cheats—is unfaithful to their partner. Like their wife.”

  “Oh,” I say, my stomach sinking. “Oh.” I can’t help but glance in Papa’s direction. I’ve seen him flirt with waitresses and secretaries before, but it’s always been harmless banter, as far as I can tell—not seduction, and not warping their thoughts to his will. But Papa naturally radiates a magnetic charm that bends the whole room toward him.

  He wouldn’t betray his vows to Mama. I’m almost sure of it. But I don’t take anything in my new life for granted.

  Winnie pries up the soggy top of her bread and studies the mayonnaise intently. “Anything else?”

  I shake my head and force myself to smile. “Every third word that Cindy says.”

  Winnie grins. “Yeah, you and everyone else.”

  Papa heads toward us with another man around his age who wears a fresh blue suit and a sturdy fedora, which he plucks off as he bows deeply before me.

  “Yul,” Papa says, “my dear friend, Al Sterling. He helped you in Berlin—you remember?”

  The man who may have sabotaged the Veter 1 space capsule, killing two cosmonauts. I manage a terse smile. “Good to meet you, Mister Sterling.” I offer him my hand, and he kisses it—kisses it!—instead of shaking, flooding me with his cheerful Frank Sinatra shield. Valentin shifts beside me.

  “You’ve cleaned up good, kid. Say, your pops and I are gonna catch a Senators game next week—whaddaya say? You too, Val. Get some good ol’ American baseball in your blood, huh?” He crunches up one knee and pantomimes what I think is a batter swinging.

  “Um. Okay,” I say.

  “Al and I always have a gas of a time when we watch the Senators. You’ll love it.” Papa scrubs his hand over my hair. “All the popcorn and Cracker Jacks and wild pitches you can stand.”

  Al ribs Papa. “And when the Senators flop, at least there’s always the cigarette girls to watch!”

  They burst into laughter. Papa’s laugh, so broad and animal, sounds foreign to me. Have I ever heard him laugh before America? At least the noise fits Al. Al is fresh-faced, with sturdy cheekbones and broad shoulders that I think I’ve heard Winnie describe as corn-fed. Maybe corn-bred. Cornbread? He smiles like he’s never had to frown. “You know, it’s just great having you on the team, Yul,” Al says. “Brightens your Papa’s day, it does. It’s really great.”

  “It’s great,” I agree, wishing I could melt into my chair. I glance at Papa, wondering if I’ll get a chance to ask him about Mama, but he’s already bobbing away from our cluster like he’s gotten caught in a more interesting current.

  “Well, I won’t take too much of your time. It’s just great to have you here. Oh, Val?” Al points his finger at Valya like he’s cocking a pistol. “Get back to work on that thing after lunch, will ya? I gotta head upstairs, talk to the big guy.”

  I turn to Winnie as Papa and Al leave. “‘The big guy upstairs’—that means God, right?”

  She smirks. “In this case, I think he means the Director of Central Intelligence, but they’re one and the same around here.”

  Sterling’s jaunty Frank Sinatra shield lingers on my skin, urging us all to fly away on his aggressive cheer. Cindy Conrad appears behind me, Donna in tow, and drums her long nails against the back of my chair. “All right, Yulia, I’ve arranged a treat for you this afternoon. How’d you like to visit Capitol Hill?”

  Without meaning to, my hand closes around Valentin’s; the world is only just starting to make sense to me again, with Valya’s music bolstering mine in harmony. “Could Valentin come with us?” I ask, though my w
ords sound watery—childish.

  Cindy snaps her lips into a thin smile. “I’d prefer if it were just us girls today. Yulia, Donna, me. I think you’ll be surprised what doors that’ll open for us on the Hill.”

  “And close,” Winnie says under her breath. She tidies her sandwich’s remains. “I’d better get back to the translation cave. You’ll be all right for the afternoon, Yulia?”

  “You can’t come with us either?” I ask, though I already know the answer. Capitol Hill is no place for her, and the look that passes between Cindy and Winnie cements it.

  Valya lets his music tumble across me and brings my hand to his lips. “You’ll do great,” he murmurs, then kisses the back of my hand with far more intensity than Al Sterling could have mustered. Ya tebya lublu. The words whisper against my skin.

  I love you.

  I think it back to him, but too soon his hand falls from mine, the cold office air erasing any sign that he’d once been there.

  *

  I did not think I was afraid of riding in cars—not even the darkened back of a Red Army truck hauling me to points unknown, with rat droppings and a guard with an assault rifle as my only companions. I’ve ridden in the Austin-Healey while Papa tears across Georgetown with half a bottle of cognac in his belly. But these are amateur fears, warming me up for the sheer terror that grips me in Cindy Conrad’s Thunderbird.

  She’s quiet; sober. But she grips her steering wheel with murderous intent, and every bulbous, pastel-colored car we whiz past ratchets her eyes just a bit wider and makes her smile a little more fierce. I’m not even sure automobiles were designed to go this fast. The windowpanes rattle and the engine hums like the drone of a distant scrubber.

  Donna seems unperturbed by Cindy’s maniacal driving. She tilts her face out the window like a dog on a joyride, soaking up every last drop of sunlight she can find. The radio isn’t on, but Donna hums her own cheerful bop. Even when we reach a stoplight and Cindy’s brake work flings us forward, she keeps humming away.