Skandal

by Lindsay Smith

  There you are, Yulia.

  I sit up straight as my heart slams into my sternum. I glance around me, hoping I’m imagining things; Donna’s still staring out the window at the office workers milling along the sidewalks, and Cindy is steering around the slower cars like she’s in Ronnie and the Daytonas’ “Little GTO.” Neither of them hear this very Russian voice, a voice I haven’t heard since it helped me escape East Berlin: Sergei Antonovich Rostov, son of General Rostov, a remote viewer with the ability to push his thoughts into others’ heads from afar.

  My knuckles blanch white as I curl my hands into fists. Please let me be imagining this. I glance at Cindy in the rearview mirror. If Sergei’s in my head, he’s either very close by, or he’s far, far stronger than before. And if he’s much stronger … then I don’t even want to imagine what else he’s capable of. I swallow down the lump of terror in my throat.

  Come now, Yulia, I know you can hear me. No need to be shy. What’s a little chat between old friends?

  I sink into the calfskin seats. Though I can hear him, I don’t think he can peer past my musical shield to hear my thoughts. I feel a pressure inside my skull, as if he’s pressed up against the bone, waiting for me to push a thought past my shield where he can hear it. The last time we talked, you said you wouldn’t help me again, I remind him. So we have nothing to discuss. I turn up the volume on my shield.

  Shostakovich, the Rolling Stones, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, it all sloshes around in my head, a catalytic ready to blast this presence from my mind. By fractions, the pressure eases. He’s retreating. I indulge myself one long, quiet sigh.

  Then he surges back, loud and quick as a gun firing. You’re wrong, though, Yulia. There’s so much for us to talk about now. So much that you need to know.

  Desperation bubbles up in me, a consuming hunger for information from the other side of the Iron Curtain. My mother—what if he has a message from her? But I remind myself that this is Sergei. Everything he does is to protect his comfortable, safe future as a celebrated Soviet spy. He won’t help me. He can’t. I clamp that desperation down. If Sergei’s reaching out to me, then it’s surely on the order of General Rostov himself.

  Panic is tightening inside me like a screw. I may not have a good reason to trust Cindy yet, but I know Sergei far too well. “Cindy?” I sit up straight, trying to force a confidence into my voice that I don’t feel. “I think I—”

  I lurch forward as Cindy hits the brakes, stopping us just short of hitting a plaid-suited man who unleashes a string of unfamiliar words I know better than to ask Winnie to translate.

  Foolish, trusting Yulia. I can almost see Sergei’s bitter grin. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.

  “What’s the matter?” Cindy looks at me through the rearview mirror.

  There’s a mole, Sergei says. We have a mole on your PsyOps team—I don’t know who. He speaks unhurriedly, as if he were telling me about the weather in Moscow. I’m only trying to help you, Yulia. I don’t want to see you get hurt.

  He’s lying. I have no good reason to believe him.

  But what if he isn’t?

  I sit back. “It’s nothing.” Then, ducking my head, “I am sorry.”

  Now there’s the smart Yulia I know.

  Prove it to me, Sergei, I tell him. If you want me to trust you, you’d better do a damned good job of convincing me. Give me some evidence. Tell me— I hesitate. Dare I let him know how hungry I am for news of Mama? But with the CIA keeping their knowledge of her hidden from me, he might be my only source. Tell me what my mother’s doing.

  Sergei laughs, though the sound is fading away. The pressure in my skull is almost gone now. Don’t you worry. You’ll have your proof. And we can discuss it in person very soon.

  CHAPTER 7

  SERGEI, I THINK DESPERATELY. What do you mean? Sergei, how will we meet? What’s going to happen?

  But there’s no answer. I no longer feel that pressure inside my skull, like the aura of an impending headache. Wherever he’s reaching out to me from—the old mansion that was our prison in the southern hills of Moscow, or perhaps the KGB headquarters at Lyubyanka Square, or even just around the corner in Washington, DC—he’s gone.

  We crest a hilltop, and the Capitol’s thick white dome emerges from behind a copse of trees. Cindy jerks the Thunderbird into reverse, throwing Donna and me against the front seats again, then slams us into an empty parking spot along the street. She slings her arm over the seat and looks back at us, her face the picture of composure. “Everything all right, Yulia? You look vexed.”

  Vexed. If that’s anything like conflicted, then yes, that’s exactly what I’m feeling. I know I should tell Cindy right away about Sergei’s eerie message, mole or not. But Cindy keeps plenty of secrets of her own. She even hides her own name. And the last thing I want is to appear weak around her—vulnerable to being manipulated by the enemy.

  I take a deep breath, rattling loose some phlegm in my throat. “Motion sickness,” I say. I smile, though the lie tastes vile in my mouth. Just for today, I promise myself. I’ll stay on my guard and get through today. Then I can talk to Valentin, and we can figure out just what I should do with Sergei’s warning.

  Cindy nods, apparently satisfied. “We’ll start by interviewing Senator Saxton himself. Donna, he’s trained in shielding, but it can’t hurt to ask him probing questions nonetheless. Yulia, you can feel out his office space for any signs of foul play—whether by one of these scrubbers or someone else. We’re looking for people smuggling documents out, or snooping around when and where they shouldn’t. If any of his past visitors happen to be psychics themselves, that’d be a big red flag. If we don’t turn up any leads that way, we’ll move on to the other NATO representatives.” She yanks open her door. “Oh, and if anyone asks, you’re students at the Conrad Academy.”

  “And what is the Conrad Academy?” I ask, peeling myself off the backseat where it’s stuck to my thighs.

  “My school for promising young secretaries, of course.” She perches her pillbox hat into the perfect position atop her head and tugs on wrist-length gloves. “Come on, let’s not keep the senator waiting!”

  I tug at the hem of my geometric-patterned minidress, willing it to cover more of my thigh. I certainly don’t look the part of the demure schoolgirl. Already I feel the prickle of pedestrians’ gazes on me: the suited, hatted men and the crisp, Easter egg–colored women.

  Donna gives me a quick once-over with one eyebrow raised. “Who dresses you, anyway? Twiggy?”

  “Winnie says it’s ‘the height of fashion,’” I say.

  “Well, she’s right about the height.” Donna thins her lips as she studies the top half of my dark hair piled high atop my head. “I’m sure it’s a bit of a culture shock for you, coming here, but you should dress like a proper young lady, like Cindy and me.”

  Donna loops her arm through mine before I have a chance to protest, like we’re the stewardesses on the PanAm posters, and steers us after Cindy. Somehow, Donna’s disdain for my mod clothing gives me more confidence in it—maybe I should embrace my odd clothes, my odd words, my odd accent. I smile into the stream of questioning faces we pass as I limp into the Senate Office Building and Cindy flashes her credentials at the guards.

  The deeper we wind through the cool marble hallways, the more I sense something opening inside of me—a box I’d locked up months ago. I’ve used my power so sparingly since that night in the tunnels of East Berlin, but now I’m plunging back into that world without coming up for air. I’m afraid of myself in the same way I used to fear Rostov or Valentin, when I didn’t understand their powers—or their weaknesses. This time it’s my own mind, my own skin that’s turned against me, and I wonder if I can ever be sure which one of us is in control.

  I need to limber up if I’m going to take back control of my abilities. I stretch my fingers toward the marble wall and drown in their maddening noise.

  Urgency—it shivers like a live wire, powering every memory. Men
in suits barking orders back and forth; staccato, frenzied heels clacking on the floor. Perfume and cologne and stale sweat from too-late nights. They scream about Cuba, Korea, poverty, Martin Luther King. They hang on their tentpoles: If Jack were still in charge and we didn’t think like that during the war. That goddamned negro and those communist pricks, those pinkos in Hollywood, those bloody Japs, the slants and krauts and Charlies and Chicoms and fairies, a million phantom enemies guiding their actions with hate and burdening their days.

  Everyone’s yelling. Is it in the corridor or in my head? I can only hold so many thoughts; it’s like someone’s held up a camera for a photograph, and hundreds of faces are pressing inward to crowd into the frame. I lurch forward as someone screams right in my face, finger to my sternum like an adrenaline shot, spit spraying against my face—

  “Easy, now,” Cindy says, snapping me back from the memory. Just a memory. Her hand coils around my wrist to catch me from stumbling. She peels back her lips for a Pantone-white grin. “Having trouble finding your feet?”

  “In a figure of speech.” No, that’s not right. I straighten up and tug my dress back down my thighs. “In a manner of speak.”

  Heads swivel toward us—toward me. I heard in the very walls how little these people think of those different from them—is it written on my face, burned onto my skin, what I am? A psychic, a traitor, a freak?

  “It was your accent,” Cindy says, slipping the words under her breath. “Also, your shield’s weak.”

  I clench my teeth and let Shostakovich’s symphony hammer out the rise and fall of my thoughts as we reach Saxton’s corridor.

  A pert, mint-clad secretary greets us at his main door. Dark boy-cut hair feathers her tan face, framing her cheekbones. She jabs a hand toward us, fanning out nails that could double as pickaxes. “Anna Montalban,” she purrs at Cindy as they shake. “We spoke on the phone.”

  Cindy’s face pulls tight like vinyl. “So we did. My girls and I are thrilled for this opportunity.” High shoulders, outsized grin; Cindy plays her role as a polished, well-heeled working woman perfectly. I wonder what else she conceals so effortlessly.

  “Please, have a seat.” Anna ushers us to a settee pushed against the wall across from her desk. “Senator Saxton is still at lunch, but I expect him back shortly.” She settles behind her desk and lets those nails fly across the typewriter keys.

  I drum my fingers against the arm of the sofa, determined not to let it overwhelm me like the hallway did. Like I’m relearning to walk, I sink into its memories one fragment at a time. Fortunately, there are no darting shadows or dark, poisonous memories awaiting me. In fact, I don’t see suspicious men lurking around the senator, or anyone breaking into his file cabinets—nothing of the sort. Only the rote daily office work I’d expect, of Anna and the senator and his many guests shuffling in and out of the office, digging through file cabinets, typing away at the desk. I glance toward Cindy, wondering if I dare ask her about our mission in front of the secretary, but she’s busy melting a hole into the opposite wall with her gaze while she fiddles with something inside her purse.

  “Oh! Jules,” Donna exclaims to my right. “Let me see your nails.” Before I can give her a weird look, she clasps my hand in her own. Check out the secretary, she says, thoughts pressing against my shield while she pretends to study my ragged, unpainted nails. Doesn’t something seem off?

  Aside from her boobs sculpted like torpedoes by those awful “shaping brassieres” under her too-tight sweater, or her grin that tilts too readily into a smirk? The way she’s effectively locked us out of any and all chance for conversation with her maniacal typewriter hammering?

  I’m reading her thoughts, Donna says. Do you know how to listen in?

  I nod, though it’s been some time since I’ve done this, too. We peel back our shields just enough that I can peer into a portion of Donna’s thoughts, linking into her psychic observations as she focuses on the secretary. I don’t like the feeling—my hand in a near-stranger’s, our thoughts snarled up together—but I need to reacquaint myself with this sensation, too.

  The secretary’s thoughts spill across the surface of her brain like an oil slick. She’s worried about meeting her girlfriends after work and about impressing Dave, a junior staffer two offices down. Clack-click-clack; her words fall into a practiced tempo with the typewriter keys. She has five dollars budgeted for food and drinks until next paycheck. That leads her to thinking about the money she plans to send to her grandmother in San Juan and her mother in the Bronx. Each thought fits into the next with flawless precision: a tongue and groove custom-made.

  But it’s not how people think. It’s ordered, precise, rehearsed. It’s an effect like converting jumbled dictation into seamless sentences on the page.

  Even in translation, it sounds completely and utterly false.

  I glance up at Donna; she’s already watching me expectantly, a single eyebrow arched. I close my mouth and manage a faint nod. My hands scrape back and forth on the couch, scrounging for more clues about Anna like they’re loose change, but there’s nothing except dim memories of her typing at the desk, or lighting cigarettes for lobbyists while they wait for the senator.

  Donna bumps her knee against mine. Time to show you what I can do.

  The moment Anna stops flogging the typewriter to flip over her page of handwritten notes, Donna leaps up and approaches the desk. “That’s such a lovely manicure. Where do you go?”

  I stand up, too, and hover behind them, feeling every bit the awkward wallflower I’m portraying as I hover on the edge of their conversation. I run my fingers up the corner of Anna’s desk, sinking past the soft wood and into its memories. If Anna’s using these flat, eerie thoughts as a shield, then someone must have trained her how to shield her true thoughts from people like us. Trained her to hide—something.

  Streams of men, tall and fat and lanky and crusty, skin ranging from ghostly to overbaked but all of it perfectly set against their razor-edge suit collars. Anna flies around the room in her impossible heels. Coffee for this gentleman, sandwiches from the cart for that one, filing this and mailing that and typing yet another letter … She does all of it without complaint, without anything short of that smirking smile on her lips.

  “Oh, you’re from Puerto Rico? I hear it’s just lovely this time of year,” Donna continues. “How did you wind up in Washington?”

  Inside the memories, Anna’s thoughts remain a thin veneer—always on point to whatever she’s doing, utterly false, a highly effective shield. What is she trying to hide? I crawl my fingers onto the top of her desk and graze the face of a porcelain figure. It stares at me with gaudy doe eyes that offer up no more memories than what I’ve already seen. She’s not slipping files into her purse when she leaves for the night or breaking into the senator’s office. Her behavior is beyond reproach.

  None of the men in the memories look dangerous, either—not in the shifty-eyed way we’re looking for. There’s danger in their words and tone of voice, of course, but it’s the dangers of men with more money and power than sense. No foreign agents stealing documents, at least that I can tell—certainly not the kind that could rip someone’s thoughts from their mind.

  “Oh, that sounds like a gas!” Donna exclaims. “I’ve been looking for a diner near Dupont Circle…”

  “Sure, it’s good. That or the lunch counter down Pennsylvania,” Anna says.

  There—a memory frays at the corner of the past. Just one moment in time, but as she touched the desk in the memory, her thoughts looped against themselves, like she tried to patch them up and plaster them over. For just one second, the laugh track of her thought shield hiccupped, exposing itself as a lie.

  The office door bursts open and Senator Saxton charges in. “Anna, where’s my briefing packet from the Pentagon?”

  “The courier won’t bring it until you’re here,” Anna says. She turns to us with a practiced eyeroll. “He keeps forgetting I’m not authorized to handle classified
documents.”

  I tense. If she doesn’t have access to classified documents, then maybe I’m mistaken—she’s not a valuable asset for a foreign spy to run. But someone’s taught her to conceal her thoughts. If she can’t steal intelligence for them, then what are they using her for?

  “Your one o’clock appointment is here,” Anna calls at the senator’s back as he retreats into his inner office, then eyes us impatiently.

  Senator Saxton backs out of his office. “Of course—I’m so sorry. Miss Conrad?” He steps up to Cindy and cradles her hand like he’s afraid a proper handshake might shatter it. “So good to meet you in person. Hello, girls.”

  This close to Donna, I can feel the moment—feel it in the crackle of psychic power over her skin, hear it in the subtle shift of her shield—when she dons a new mask to contend with someone new. I wonder if her stiff behavior toward me is just another mask. “What an honor it is to meet you, Senator Saxton.” She drops into a curtsey.

  I nod and mumble a greeting, so he won’t hear my Red Scare accent just yet.

  “Please, step into my office.” He holds open the door for us. “Anna, where are your manners? Go fetch some sandwiches for these ladies.”

  “Of course, senator,” Anna chirps, and trots out of the office.

  Once we’re inside Saxton’s inner office, Cindy locks the door and dumps out four aluminum boxes from her clutch, each of them about half the size of a cigarette box. She holds one finger up to her lips, looking right at me—presumably Donna and Saxton are already familiar with whatever ritual is about to take place. Then she walks the perimeter of the office, clicking a switch on each box and dropping one in each corner.

  A hum bubbles up from the carpet. It itches at my arms like a dry patch of skin and fills the gaps of my thoughts like putty in a crack. I try to ease back in my chair, but the sensation prods me into discomfort, distracting like a low-grade fever.

  Cindy smiles at me. “My own portable scrubber,” she explains. “It deflects every type of psychic we know how to deflect with a series of electrical currents. We have psychic disrupters in the walls at headquarters, and your father’s house, as well.”