Skandal

by Lindsay Smith

  He shrugs. “As soon as you left, Mama went outside to chat with that lady in the green uniform.” He’s absorbed in his music sheet, not looking up at me. “The lady kept trying to follow you to the park, but Mama wouldn’t shut up. What a weird illness, huh?”

  What a strange illness, indeed.

  CHAPTER 13

  TONY PEERS AT ME from under a greasy lock of hair. He’s too scrawny for his oversized frame; his joints look incapable of supporting his lanky limbs, and his Adam’s apple bobs freely on a toothpick neck as he fidgets in the break room chair. His pimples stand out like indignant punctuation marks on his tan skin. “Hey,” he says, looking the complete opposite direction from me when I take the chair beside him.

  “Hello.” I glance over at Cindy and Al Sterling, heads bowed together in urgent whispers in front of Frank Tuttelbaum’s office door. “Cindy said you can find the scrubber.”

  “That’s right.” Bob, bob.

  “Are you a remote viewer? Like Marylou?” Like Sergei, I think.

  He snorts. “I’m way better than that.”

  I’m not sure what the correct English response is to such a declaration, so I say nothing.

  “You work through touch, right?” He rubs his palms back and forth against his jeans. “Give me your hand and think about the guy. Let me in to the image.”

  I clench my teeth and slowly place my right hand in his. His skin is clammy, much colder than I’d expected; some unidentifiable grit rubs between our palms. How easily I’ve forgotten the feel of other people, those whose shape and texture and emotion I don’t know like I know Valentin’s. I peel back the frantic strings of Shostakovich’s symphony, then dribble out the percussion, then the marching bass—only when I’m sure my emotions are firmly reined in do I let it all fade away. The sallow-skinned man with a grungy mustache, white static eating away his features. Scouring blasts of thought. I see his sunken eyes and his jagged eyebrows and the sweat running down his cheek—

  “Okay, I think I got it.” Tony lets go of my hand and takes a deep breath. “Carlos Fonseca, born in Havana, Cuba, in 1928, but later became a citizen of Mexico. Last known whereabouts: the border crossing in El Paso, Texas, in July of 1961. No further information.”

  I raise one eyebrow. “How do you know all that?”

  He punches those knobby shoulders up into the air in a shrug. “Please. The border crossing records are way too easy. I memorize them in, like, seconds. Photos take a little longer, but not much. Wanna check the photo bank with me?”

  I glance over at Cindy; she’s pounding one fist into her open hand while Al makes “mmhmm” noises. I turn back to Tony. “Do they need to come with us?”

  “Oh, we don’t have to go anywhere. It’s all right up here.” He raps his fingertip against his temple.

  I place my hand in his again, nervous energy running through me. I try to draw on a reserve of calm like Cindy admonished me to yesterday. Control these emotions instead of merely being a conduit for them. I want to be like the Star Cindy showed me; if any emotions spill out of me, they should be safe ones. I try to think calming, watery thoughts, like the images in the card. Waves lapping rhythmically against a shoreline. The sun melting into the horizon, red spilling against the waves. Valentin’s screams ripping through the salty air and his mother’s fiery embrace searing into my waist—

  I jerk back from Tony with a yelp. The terror drips out of me slowly. But Tony just watches me, head cocked to one side like a curious sparrow. I clench my hand into a fist, waiting for my heart rate to return to normal.

  “That’s the western shore of the Black Sea,” he says, though it sounds like there’s a question behind it. “By the town of Sukhumi. I can give you the coordinates for it, if you want.”

  “Is it?” I’d guessed as much, since it was from Valentin’s memories as a boy. Before his father was promoted to a senior Party official. He rarely speaks of those days, not that he talks about his past much anyway. Walks on the beach. Violin and piano duets with his mother, late into the night.

  “What happened to you there?” Tony winces. “It looked … awful.”

  I shake my head. “It’s—it’s not my story to share.”

  “Okay.” He looks at his knee, bobbing up and down with nervous energy, then takes a deep breath. His knee goes still. “Okay. If you can keep your, uh, your thoughts to yourself…”

  “I’ll be fine,” I snap.

  “—Then let’s look through the photo bank.”

  He takes my hand again. I’m rattled from letting Valentin’s nightmare seep out. I can feel new fears buzzing beneath the surface of my thoughts like a shorting circuit, but I try to make my mind empty. After a few seconds, black-and-white photographs start to flicker across it, as if projected onto a screen. Faster and faster—hundreds of photographs whiz past, of all different faces and buildings and objects. It’s dizzying. They turn into a blur of grainy surveillance photos. I only just manage to get a grip on one image before it’s torn away, that split-second shot of trees dissolving into a woman’s laughing face, which tears into a smoky nightclub—

  “Got it.” The images halt. “That’s him, right?”

  My head is still spinning from the parade of pictures, but as the image before me takes shape, the unmistakable profile of the scrubber manifests, glancing over his shoulder as he ducks into a doorway. The awning over the door reads 1301. “That’s him.”

  “1301,” Tony says. “I know I’ve seen that somewhere before.” Tony taps his temple. “Ever heard of a photographic memory? Well, mine’s like that, cranked to supersonic. Hmm, 1301, must be something the FBI has under surveillance. Where are you, 1301…”

  Another dizzying zoetrope of images marches past, all of building façades now—I’m pretty sure they’re all in DC, though it’s too fast for me to be certain—and slowly, the array converges on a single building. An apartment complex. It must have been gorgeous once, but the carved stone accents are weathered and cracked, and the air-conditioning units in the windows sag like tired babushkas. The awning out front reads 1301.

  “There we go. Now, why did the FBI have surveillance on it?” Tony’s voice has taken on a smug lilt as he asks these rhetorical questions—I can only gather it’s because the answer is already awaiting him inside his head, or wherever he’s drawing all these pictures and records from. Sure enough, the pictures in his thoughts have now been replaced by typed documents, all of them formatted similarly, with a big seal stamped across the top.

  “Bingo.” Tony lets go of my hand, and the images shimmer and vanish. “Mister Sterling? Can you pull a file for us?”

  Al looks up from his conversation with Cindy. “Sure thing, kiddo. What’s the serial?”

  Within minutes, a busty file clerk arrives with a folder for us. “Just like you requested, Mister Sterling!” Her voice sounds squeaky, like it’s been squeezed through a tube. “You need anything else, just ring on down the records office. Of course, you can ring us even if you don’t need anything.”

  Al winks at her before turning back to Cindy, who groans and yanks the file from his hands. “FBI surveillance request, approved by a federal judge.” She slaps it down in front of us. Tony flips through the typed pages and we read it together, though I’m not understanding nearly as much as I’d like.

  “The Stratford Apartments in Shaw.” Cindy scans the folder. “Looks like this old widow in the building complained to police about the constant noise from one of her neighbors—said people were coming and going at all hours, I quote, ‘speaking Spanish and Russian and all manner of heathen, godless communist tongues.’” Cindy grins at that. “After the Bureau’s counterintelligence grunts did an initial stakeout, they saw a few ‘persons of interest’ acting suspicious around the building—making chalk marks on the sidewalk in front of it, standard tradecraft—so it’s been under infrequent surveillance ever since.”

  Tony nods. “I recognize some of the other individuals photographed outside the building. Chin X
u, a Chinese embassy employee with an unspecified position. Borsca Szabo, a Hungarian national who’s turned up in surveillance photos of other suspected foreign agents—”

  “Thank you, Encyclopedia Brown, we’ll pull those files later. For now…” Cindy props one hand on her hip, looking me over like she’s assessing fruit at the market. “Yulia? Feel like a drive through Rock Creek Park?”

  I take a deep breath—what feels like the first I’ve taken in days. It feels like we’re finally surfacing for air, finally untangling the first knots on this case.

  “What’s at Rock Creek Park?” Papa calls, as he storms into the room, Valentin and Judd trailing behind him. “The Stratford Apartments?”

  Cindy lowers the file folder. “How did you know about that?”

  “FBI called, alerting us to an interesting complaint they’d received,” Papa says.

  “Is it about ‘heathen, godless communists’?” I ask with a smile.

  But Papa doesn’t smile. I don’t know if he’s capable of being rattled, but he’s as close to it as I’ve seen him. No whistle on his lips; his hands are jammed awkwardly in his pockets like he’s trying to contain them. “Same old woman as that complaint, yes,” he says carefully. “But she has a new problem this time. An awful smell coming from next door, like when a rat’s died in the walls.”

  Dread sinks in my stomach like a weight.

  “Should we let Frank know?” Cindy asks.

  “No time. He’s in a meeting all day, anyway. We’ve got a full squadron of DC’s finest guarding the entrance, so let’s hurry. No way the bastards can scrub the place before we search it, this time.” Papa holds out his hand for me. “Yulia. It’s your show now.”

  *

  “I told you,” the old woman says, peering out of her cracked door. Her hair is set in pink rollers; she’s sipping Ovaltine from a glass. “I told you them atheists were up to no good. It’s not right, that they should be peddlin’ their un-American lies right here in this great nation’s heart.”

  “Don’t worry, ma’am. They won’t be troubling you any longer.” Even Cindy’s smile looks ragged. “Now, if you’ll just answer a few questions for us, I promise we’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

  The woman’s rheumy gaze drifts from Cindy to me. “My, what’s this world coming to? We’ve got lady cops now? Little girl cops?”

  “Something like that,” Cindy says through clenched teeth.

  “Is that Ovaltine you’re drinking?” Donna asks. “Gosh, my grandma used to drink that all the time.” Her voice starts to quaver. “Oh, I miss her so…”

  The woman winces, then slowly pulls the chain out of her door. “Why don’t you come inside? I’d be happy to make you a glass.”

  “Gee, would you really? That’d be just swell! And then we can have a nice little chat…” Donna twists around to throw us a thumbs-up—and the door clicks shut behind them.

  “Yes, better lock your doors. This isn’t going to be pretty,” Cindy mutters under her breath.

  Papa props one arm on the door frame. “Would’ve been cleaner if Valya or me just took care of the old lady.”

  Valya’s face goes white, but Cindy claps her hands, too loudly, before Valya or I can protest. “Well, then! Donna should be able to gather whatever the old lady knows about the goings-on here.” Her smile strains at the seams. “Now let’s see what you can find out for us, Yulia.”

  Yulia. Quickly! There you are!

  I stagger back, my pulse so loud in my ears I can barely hear anything else over it—Papa and Valentin talking, the security guards, the creaking floors—my pulse and Sergei’s voice swallow them all up. I try to fight down the rising tide of panic before I answer.

  Who’s the mole, Sergei? I hesitate. Please—either help me, or don’t. Stop leading me on.

  I don’t have long. They’ll know I’m—

  Silence. The pressure in my head starts to fade. Sergei?

  Then he weighs in again, slipping one last message against my shield before vanishing again. Check the stovetop.

  Please, Sergei, wait. I need to know— My shield softens. I need to know if my mother’s all right.

  But he’s gone. Cindy watches me, arms crossed, one eyebrow creeping up as she waits.

  The stovetop. Check the stovetop. And don’t tip anyone off about Sergei’s help. What is it they say at the jazz clubs when Valya and I catch a show? Stay cool. I take a deep breath and reach for the door.

  As soon as I put my hand on the doorknob, the vibrations reach for me from the walls, shuddering and shaking my molecules apart. White sparks dance across my eyes as the door falls open. My ears fill with needling noises, like a too-silent night.

  I step inside. I see the room, I hear the room, but I am not part of the room. I am walking on a tightrope. If I were to fall off on one side: the reality of this dead body, stretched across the rug, thick red liquid dried in a trail from its ears to the floor. The reality of that smell, pressing into my chest cavity with its rotten stench. But if I were to fall the other way: a vast white plain, stretching as cold and heartless as Siberia.

  “There’s definitely been a scrubber here. Probably the man who lived here.” I walk in a wide arc around the body, breathing through my mouth. “And he is definitely the man I saw with Anna Montalban. He warned her, though. That if she didn’t do what she was supposed to, the next one would come after her.”

  Cindy hovers beside me. “The next what?”

  Papa scratches his chin, his stubble sounding like sandpaper. “The next. The next scrubber? The next body? How far apart have these deaths been occurring?”

  Cindy checks the stack of papers in her hand. “Between six and nine days apart. It’s fairly consistent.”

  “Like it’s a chain,” I say.

  “Or like a relay race,” Cindy offers.

  I nod, reaching my hand out for the black telephone sitting on the floor. Only then do I notice how empty this apartment is. The Murphy bed pulled down from the wall, a telephone, an ugly rug, a radio—nothing else. I sink down next to the telephone and brush my fingertips across the receiver.

  White static ricochets through me—the scrubber’s lingering aftereffects and the crackle of a bad connection, all tangled up together like a ball of barbed wire. If this man is part of a chain, a relay, a ring of spies, carrying out orders in succession, working for Rostov’s unknown plan, I have to fight past this residual noise. The hot smell of copper tickles my nose. I have to uncover the memories. I have to push past this hungering white and reach beyond—

  “C-21.” The slimy voice, interwoven with fuzz, must be Carlos Fonseca’s. Slowly, he coalesces around me, though he’s blurred, too much for me to see clearly.

  “We are growing impatient, C-21.”

  Carlos tugs at his too-tight shirt collar; a sheen of sweat runs down his jaw, though it’s still cool for April. “Relax. I’ll make the drop with H-22, in case Montalban fails us. But it won’t be necessary. I’ll get to him, I promise.”

  “You do not have long,” the voice says. I strain to hear it closer, but the static is too strong; all I can tell is that it’s a man, speaking too slowly and precisely to betray an accent. “We need you to make the drop now. It must happen before Saxton departs.”

  “Two more days. I still have two more days. I’ll reach him, I swear.”

  The voice on the other line cuts through the static like a whipcrack. “We will call again in one.”

  I jolt back from the telephone as the room swims back into view. “He told them yesterday he had two more days. But they’re going to check on him again soon. We have to work quickly.” I swallow. “He talked about reaching Saxton before he departs.”

  Cindy grimaces. “All right. Let’s keep looking. Quickly.”

  There aren’t many other places to look. I let my fingers hover over the walls, the stained and twisted bed sheets, but the static crackling off of them warns me away like an electrified fence. This place is too empty to offer us much i
n the way of memories. Whatever Fonseca was up to, he must have conducted it outside of this apartment.

  I glance toward Valya, who’s standing closest to the kitchenette in the far corner. I start toward him, but guilt and fear over turning to Sergei for help have cemented me to the spot. “Check the stovetop.”

  He pokes around the range top. “Yes—looks like he tried to burn something. Molodtsa,” he praises me. Using the tip of a pen, he lifts charred bits of paper out of the crevices of the gas range top. One looks like the corner of a photograph, by the way it’s melted from the glossy paper backing; another bears the spiderweb markings of a map. Just scraps, but scraps, I can work with. Even a scrap can hold the memory of the whole.

  “Bag it. We can look at them more closely back at the offices.” Cindy’s speaking through a silk scarf she’s wadded up over her mouth and nose. I squeeze my eyes shut. What’s Sergei playing at? Why on earth is he helping us now?

  Papa touches my arm gently, but his scrubber noise is like a spark jumping from him to me. “Yulia. We’ve got to know who this next scrubber is. What they want with Saxton. You’re sure there isn’t anything else you can glean?”

  I look away from his narrowed stare, like a spotlight sweeping across me during a midnight escape. “Not with a scrubber of this power. It’s so empty here—I can’t imagine there is much more—”

  “I’m not talking about reading the objects, devochka.”

  A fly buzzes past us to fling itself against the grimy window. The overripe smell of fermented meat thickens in the space between Papa and me. Yes, I know exactly what he means. My stomach whines in protest.

  “Andrei.” Cindy folds her arms, bangles clacking together. “We do not need to subject the poor girl to that.” The Metro police officers at the doorway step back, as if they’re afraid Cindy might volunteer them instead.

  “And why not? Why, she was just demonstrating to Valentin and me the other night how very confident she is in her abilities.” Papa shoots me a glare. “Apparently she’s all grown up now, and perfectly capable of handling whatever we ask of her.”