Skandal

by Lindsay Smith

  Valya rips his hand away from me as his musical shield snaps back shut. “Enough.” Some of the white-edged fear has left his eyes, but concern twists the corners of his mouth. “That’s—that’s all I can do for now—”

  I gasp for fresh air, but everything tastes stale and moist, and I can’t find a way to breathe through it, I can’t seem to get the air through my lungs and into my blood. My skull is too tight against my brain. Little Valentin’s screams are ringing in my ears. His fear is racing through my veins. Everywhere I look is dark, crushing me with emptiness, a heavy, bloating thing.

  “You must learn to let go, little girl. You can’t carry all these burdens on your own.” Papa is leaning in the doorway to Valya’s room. “I’d hate to have to erase you again, just to keep you safe from your own foolishness.”

  And then he is reaching through the air with his thoughts. His mind pushes into mine like a puppeteer. Air rushes back into my lungs. The terror drains away; the memory turns inchoate, like a faint dream. Whatever I was feeling and thinking before has turned to smoke and drifted away, and I’m left with a clammy sweat, a sense like I’ve walked into a room and forgotten what I came for.

  “Well?” Papa asks me, folding his arms across his chest. His hair is raked back, stiffened with sweat and dried in unnatural whorls. “Are you pleased with yourself?” He tilts his head toward Valentin. “Took away an ounce of his pain to give yourself a pound?”

  Valentin and I exchange a look. He looks pretty relaxed for a boy who’s been caught in bed with a girl (by her father, no less); some nameless fear lingers over my shoulder, but I can’t remember what brought it on. I’m not entirely sure how I came to this moment, in fact—one moment I’m whispering with Valentin, and the next—the next, Papa is looming in the doorway—

  I grit my teeth and stare back at Papa. “Pleased with myself about what?” I ask. “I don’t even know what I’ve done! You’re always ripping my memories away from me!”

  “It’s for the best. You could have gotten yourself killed.” Papa’s face is eased, but there’s a tension to his words as he looks at me. I feel emptied out; I can’t gauge how serious he is. “You don’t understand what you’re capable of. You’ll never understand.”

  I clench my hand around a fistful of sheets. “Maybe because you take that understanding from me every time you erase parts of my mind.”

  “It was for your own good. It took me twenty years to control my power, don’t you see? They aren’t static. They grow alongside us, and if you push too hard without mastering them, you’ll hurt yourself.” Again, those icy fingers sink into my brain; against my will, my head twists to face Papa. His face is like marble in the moonlight, hard and only a false attempt at portraying emotion. “You are a child still. You are toying with things you cannot possibly understand, and you would rather kill yourself than show a little common sense!”

  If I didn’t feel so drained right now, I’d be yelling at him. Pointing out how unfair he’s being, what a hypocrite he is when he obviously had to learn to control his powers from somewhere, and how dare he try to make his point by using his powers on me. I’d be shaking with the urge to weep that this is what it takes to get my father’s attention.

  But I am so empty, like the fear I leeched from Valentin has burned clean through me like rubbing alcohol. Papa forced it all away from me.

  “Get some sleep,” Papa says, leaning back from the door frame. “Both of you. You’ll need your rest for tomorrow.”

  I nod, numbly, and stagger to my feet. Whether it’s Papa directing me or my own will, I couldn’t say; I feel nothing as I plod down the hall and collapse into bed, too exhausted for words and thought.

  But I’m no closer to understanding the nature of Valentin’s injury; the answer to the questions humming like a disrupter under the surface of all my thoughts. Is there a mole, and if so, who? Papa, with his hateful threats and casual comfort with taking control? Valentin, and whatever dark secret lies in the waves of his wounded thoughts? Or any of the other PsyOps team members, whose motivations and secrets I can’t begin to sift from the foreign, surreal faces they present to me. I’m no closer to grasping the answer, but as I drift off, Anna Montalban’s face stares back at me, laughing, victorious. One thing is for certain: our adversary has grown far cleverer than we’ve ever before seen.

  CHAPTER 10

  FRANK TUTTELBAUM IS A FORCE of nature in the PsyOps office, and this morning, he’s pacing in front of us with all the calm of a hurricane. “Not a single hint?” he roars. “Not one imbecile in the lounge or the jail knows anything about this woman?”

  Marylou stubs out her cigarette with a sigh. “She’s a ghost, man. She disappeared.”

  Frank lurches to a stop in front of Marylou. His eyes tighten like a spotlight on her; his face is as red-raged as a Disney cartoon character. I’m waiting for the steam to shoot from his ears. “I was chief of Moscow station for seven years, sweetheart. The Russian target’s the toughest nut to crack there is. But nobody, and I mean nobody, just disappears like that. There has to be some kind of trail you bozos are missing.”

  Cindy drums her fingers against a pair of cards spread before her. “If I may, sir…”

  But Frank is on a roll now. I don’t catch all his words, but I get the general idea: incompetent, fools, should have never let women like Cindy and Donna and me work in the field. I glance at Valya, but he’s stone-faced, as if this outburst is no surprise. Another day on the PsyOps team.

  “Six of Pentacles, inverted.” Cindy cuts into Frank’s rant. “Anna is probably confused, lost, running out of options. We just have to keep digging until we can find where she’ll be vulnerable.”

  “She mentioned a diner in Dupont Circle that she goes to a lot.” Donna smoothes her glare into a cloying smile for Frank. “We could ask around there.”

  Judd shakes his head. “But what about Senator Saxton? Shouldn’t we be worried about him?”

  I squeeze my hands together, one palm warring against the other, tension rolling back and forth. Someone here could be actively trying to sabotage us, if Sergei’s to be believed, though we certainly seem to be doing a good job of sabotaging ourselves, whether intentional or not.

  “Or maybe there’s, like, a secret underground lair where all the commies hang out,” Marylou says. “Like in the James Bond movies.”

  We have less than nothing, because we once had a trail and we lost it. I try to quiet the pounding in my head as they bicker back and forth, tossing out more and more ludicrous conspiracies. My mind is scraped raw with half-remembered fragments of last night—trying to help Valentin with his pain. Fearing Rostov had made a mole out of him. Papa, forcing me to stop. He took something from me—yet again, he found it easier to erase the past than dredge it up, examine it, accept the results, no matter how cruel. Whatever insight I’d glimpsed at in Valentin’s mind is lost, and Papa’s keeping the peace once more in his own selfish way.

  Frank’s shouting, pointing—he’s giving out more assignments. Valya, Cindy, and Judd are to retrace Saxton’s steps and question his neighbors about the recent breakins; Al, Donna, and Tony will interview the other NATO delegates. “Marylou and Yulia.” Frank scratches at the steel-wool stubble on his chin. “Get some practice in. Lord knows you two numbskulls need it.”

  Unless Papa’s not doing it for himself at all, but for Rostov, the longest spy game imaginable to infiltrate the Americans—no. Bozhe moi, Yulia. You can’t let Sergei knot up your thoughts like this. Either there is a mole or there isn’t, but I can’t be distracted. I have to stop Rostov. I have to save Mama—

  “Yul. Hey.” Frank snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Speaking to you here. Do I need to get Sergeant Davis?”

  I wrestle back my first acrid response and force a smile to my face. “No, sir. I understand you.”

  “You know how to work with remote viewers? Linking into their thoughts?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  Frank snorts. “Well, tim
e for you to learn the next step. Marylou?”

  Smoke weaves out of Marylou’s nostrils and mouth. “Yeah, yeah, don’t be a cube. I’ll show her how it works.” She stubs out her cigarette and beckons me back toward the girls’ room. “Exciting first week, huh, Jules?”

  “Maybe too exciting.” I settle into a nest of pillows while Marylou finds a new record to play. Harmonicas breeze along as a man and woman sing about deep purple fogs. “What is this next step?”

  Marylou flops onto the pillows beside me. “Ready for me to knock your socks off?” She grins. “Are we close enough for you to read me?”

  I fold my arms across my chest so they aren’t against hers. It’s faint, but I can hear her thoughts humming, lazy and unselfconscious. I scoot back across the floor until the sound retreats. “Now I can’t.”

  “Good. You’ve let a remote viewer in your head before, right?”

  I nod carefully, trying not to let myself think about the alleged mole. I have to clear my mind if I’m going to let Marylou in. Then, in a flash, Marylou’s thoughts knock up against mine. I pry back my shield enough to share thoughts with her.

  Good job. Now for the fun part. Try looking back through my mind—like we’re linking our powers.

  I don’t like this—I much prefer keeping our powers separated by barriers as thick as aquarium glass. This is how a scrubber takes control of someone even if they’re trained to repel them; peeling back some of my shield is how a mole might gain the upper hand. Sergei and I did something similar, back in Moscow. I learned then that distance wasn’t always enough to protect me from Rostov’s hate. I close my eyes and press back, tentative, waiting for Marylou’s syrupy shield to soak me up.

  I slip into her mind. Now it’s as if I’m hovering just above her, seeing the room from where she lies. “So this is how you view.”

  She giggles. Pretty much. It gets trippier, though. Get up and walk to the other side of the room.

  I stagger to my own feet, fighting to bring my vision back into where I’m standing instead of where Marylou is, but it takes some effort to swap between Marylou’s sight and my own. With Sergei, once I’d linked into his sight, I generally stayed in his viewing until our mission was finished. From Marylou’s sight, I see myself wobble and nearly trip over a box of files.

  Watch it, cat, you are slated for crashville. Not as easy as it looks, huh? I catch sight of her grinning. Switch to your sight when you’re moving around until you get the hang of it.

  All right. I align my sight, keeping her thoughts back in reserve in my mind. So this is it? I can see through your viewing, and you can use me to scout ahead?

  It gets even better. Through Marylou’s sight, I catch a flicker of movement. I’ve got something in my hands. Go around the corner, then reach back through my mind to where I am and see if you can read the memories off of it.

  Ah, yes—I’ve done something similar with Sergei, before, when Rostov forced me to help him examine memories beyond a locked door. But I’d done it while physically touching Sergei. This makes sense to me as the next step, but the nerves inside me frazzle all the same. I weave through the curtained maze, keeping Marylou’s viewing in the back of my head.

  What’re you waitin’ for? Marylou asks. Go on. Show me what you got. We need you to be able to cycle easily between my viewing and your own sight.

  I plunge back into Marylou’s vantage point—the sensation’s dizzying, spinning my mind unsteadily like a top about to fall over. The record music slinks into the vision; the floor feels solid like linoleum beneath me again instead of the carpet I’m standing on at the opposite side of the room.

  Marylou’s pointing toward an old dimestore paperback, near her but not touching her—Nancy Drew, by the looks of it. Come tell me what you see.

  Like a ghost of myself, I imagine slipping closer and closer to Marylou. My body is like a strange cloud of energy—I can feel where it exists in the remote viewing, but cannot see it. I brush my arm against Marylou’s as I reach out like a phantom to touch the book to see if she reacts.

  She twitches. Yes, I can feel you bumblin’ around. She smiles, lopsided. Go on, try the book.

  I brush against the book in the viewing. But there’s nothing. I don’t fall into any memories or glean any emotions. The viewing wavers. My corner of the room, wood-paneled and dark, bleeds through Marylou’s sunny corner.

  Oh, come on, Jules. Hold tight for a minute more. Pretend you’re, I dunno, trying to hold your breath that extra second before you have to come up for air.

  As easy as that. Right. I hold my breath and push past the waver; try to claw my way back into the viewing. Once more, I reach for the book and trace one finger along its cover—

  —a sunny spring day, the shadow of the Washington Monument spilling across us as we reach up to flip the page—

  —and as I lose my grip, I’m torn out of the memory, out of Marylou’s viewing, slamming back into my own skull with a head-spinning slap.

  Careful, Jules, don’t give yourself a condition! I can hear Marylou’s laugh from across the room. Don’t worry, you’ll get there. Soon, you’ll be able to share images with the whole team and see what everyone else sees through me—trust me, it makes our work much easier. You just need practice.

  And practice we do—all morning long, until the rest of the team returns, without a single sign of Anna Montalban.

  *

  “What a waste of time,” Donna grumbles as Al threads through the afternoon traffic. “Every single one of the NATO delegates I interviewed lied to me about something, but not about anything useful for our case.”

  “If they’re willing to lie about one thing, are they more likely to lie about something else?” I ask.

  Donna nods. “Sure, but now I know how they act when they’re lying. When it came to hunting down Anna Montalban, I’m pretty sure they’re telling the truth. At least we still have this lead.”

  Yes, it took quite the battle between Cindy and Frank to follow up on Donna’s suggestion to investigate the diner that Anna had mentioned the day before. I couldn’t resist but try to frame them each in the context of a mole—Frank’s blustery, red-blooded hatred could conceal his true loyalties. Cindy, on the other hand—I’ve only started to glimpse at the deep currents beneath her frosty veneer, and I wonder what more they might contain. I wish I could forget Sergei’s warning and concentrate on the task at hand—wish I could brush it aside as carelessly as Papa brushes away anything that interferes with his carefree life.

  Al Sterling turns Donna, Judd, and me loose on Connecticut Avenue, just north of Dupont Circle, a wide boulevard that reminds me of the older parts of Moscow with its thick, overdressed buildings, all of them four or five stories in height, and splashed with imperial shades of blue and gold. Streetcar cables spin a web across the sky, though the cars stopped running a few years ago. I catch an overpowering whiff of flowers—a plump woman sells them from a bucket on the street corner, a quarter for a whole bouquet. The smells of coffee brewing and bread baking and lunch frying and even leather ripening at the shoe store all mingle into a dizzying potpourri.

  And lording over the whole tableau, at the top of the hill, sits the Soviet embassy. Its design reminds me a little too much of the mansion where Valentin and I were effectively prisoners of the KGB, let out of our pens under armed guard for the sole purpose of hunting down traitors. Even at this distance, I can spot the slow stride of a soldier, marking off the embassy’s boundary as he makes his patrol rounds.

  A tiny, wicked voice at the back of my mind asks me why my life is any better now, marching to America’s drum. I am still hunting people for their thoughts. I can imagine Sergei taunting me, telling me I am still trying to remake the world in someone else’s vision. The doubt, however, is strictly mine.

  But when I look past the rainbow landscape, the shops with overflowing shelves, the rattle and hiss of daily life that spills from every mouth and machine, I can see the difference. It’s an absence—an absenc
e of guards, of bindings, of a rabid fear to comply. And in that absence, human will and creativity and resourcefulness have grown, unchecked, filling every possible crevice like some tenacious, lovely weed. These people refuse to be stopped. There is nothing to stop me here.

  “I’m gonna park the car,” Al calls out his rolled-down window. “You kids have fun. If you get into any trouble, just give me a shout—I’ll be right around the corner.” He taps his temple.

  No guards with machine guns monitoring our every step when we’re permitted out into the world, no threat of violence against my family if I make an unapproved move. Yes, I can live like this.

  “I’m so excited to see what you can do,” Donna says as we wait at the crosswalk. Judd hovers behind us, arms crossed. “It’s nice to have another girl on the team.”

  “What about Marylou?” I ask.

  Donna sighs, ponytail swinging. “She doesn’t count. She almost never talks, and when she does, you wish she’d stop. She’s more of a clueless beatnik than that guy on Dobbie Gillis.” She peers at me from the corner of her eye, like she’s challenging me: Don’t be like Marylou. Talk, but only in a way that amuses me.

  Donna pauses in front of the big window of a men’s suit shop, watching a young man having his measurements taken, the tailor straining to wrap the tape around his sculpted chest. Donna traces her index finger along the windowpane, one curving line, then another to mirror it—the shape of a heart. But she’s gone from the window and swaying down the street in seconds, the boy already forgotten.

  “I guess I don’t blame you for being shy,” she says. “I mean, Russia must be so different from life here. Gosh, I’m from California, and even I don’t understand Washington yet.” She smiles so perfectly that I can’t imagine that’s true. “In Los Angeles, everyone is so gorgeous, and they just want to share and share when you talk to them. I had no trouble learning anything I could possibly want to know from someone. I barely had to use my ability at all. But everyone’s so suspicious here.”