Skandal

by Lindsay Smith

  For Valya and me, that’s exactly what the rest of our teammates are.

  What about Cindy? he’d asked the other night, when we had the house to ourselves to speak freely. The “ego” factor makes sense. She’s always trying to prove herself.

  You could say the same about Donna, though. I’d frowned. What about Tony, for revenge? Frank’s always passing him up for missions, since he’s more of a behind-the-scenes guy.

  Valya’s nose twitched as he considered. Possible. But he seems so unconcerned about everything. Politics, certainly.

  So does Al, but he has the ego and money motives in spades.

  He sighed. I suppose everyone has their vulnerabilities. We’ll keep watching.

  Paris doesn’t look or smell at all like I’d expected. When we were in East Berlin in January, the devastation of World War II was visible everywhere, leering down on us like gargoyles from their perches: a whole block of demolished buildings here, pockmarks from shrapnel spray there, and symbols of the Third Reich hastily painted over or chiseled away. But Paris has already been reborn—eager, I suppose, to seal off its memories of the occupation as quickly as possible. As I glance south of the NATO headquarters, toward the Seine River, I see nothing but the uniform slate rooftops sloping down and away from our hill, and the merry bob of construction cranes.

  Cindy watches as I drift down the sidewalk, fingers caressing the streetlamps, fluttering through the bushes, tracing the grooves of the stone building façade. The NATO building is a new construction, made to house the headquarters when the Alliance was formed after the war, but I see the old city block hovering like a ghost over its shoulder. As I press into the memories, I feel the earth rumble under the churn of tank treads and the distant thudding of bombs. I smell blood in the air, and musket powder, from wars and battles even older.

  “Anything?” Cindy asks. I shake my head. “Me either.” She rolls her shoulders, once more appearing, for a fleeting moment, like her real age, and not the worldly businesswoman she strives for. “I must commend you, Yulia, on your efforts to adjust to life beyond the Iron Curtain. Frank didn’t think you were worth the effort, but I’m thrilled your father defied his orders, just this once.”

  “Did he really disobey Frank by rescuing us?”

  “Of course he did. I’ve noticed he has a bad habit of doing that.” She peers over her shoulder with an accusatory smile. “I know you and Valentin are used to working on your own, but I would encourage you to try harder to integrate with your teammates. There’s a lot more you can accomplish from inside the system than on the periphery.”

  Cindy stops abruptly, her upturned chin lowering, then strips off one glove. I brush my fingers against the nearby wall, but catch nothing out of the ordinary in the memories. “What is it?” I ask.

  With her bare hand, she seizes my wrist, nails clawing into my skin. I’m about to yelp, but then a strange vision washes over me, flickering around us like underdeveloped Polaroids as she shares her power with me. Skeletons—dozens of them, swirling around us, grinning as they climb from rickety coffins and snag their fingerbones in my hair.

  “Judgment,” Cindy whispers.

  The skeletons form an arc around us. Cindy squeezes tighter; the vision heightens, swallowing us up like a too-real dream. I can see the stringy ligaments and clumps of tissue clinging to the hollows of their bones, a patch of hair here, some rotting flesh there. The stench of death, cloying and sweet like burnt sugar and spoiled meat, seeps into my skin and clothes.

  I didn’t see it at first—not without eyeballs nor facial expressions nor even thoughts to read. But as they press closer to me, stale air pushing from dried-out lungs, I sense their purpose. They’re waiting for me. They want something from me. Their bony hands reach for me—

  Cindy lets go of my arm, and the vision dissipates. Cindy’s glimpses of the future—they’re much more allegorical than Larissa’s, but they unnerve me all the same.

  “What do they want?” I ask, some unnamed emotion tight as a collar around my throat. Repulsed, honored, frightened, relieved—I have no idea what this feeling is, much less how to release its choke hold on me.

  Cindy’s shoulders slope down. “The Judgment card can mean a decision; salvation from a leader … But it can also mean forgiveness and renewal. Redemption, sometimes.”

  “How specific,” I mutter. “Why are your visions so…”

  “Allegorical?” Cindy asks. “It’s just how I make sense of the world. I grew up with the tarot. I suppose my thoughts have always been organized around the archetypes it presents.”

  I’m about to tell her about Larissa and how her premonitions work—when I feel a jolt of static like an electrical shock on the street post as I brush past.

  Cindy and I look at each other instantaneously, as if our magnetic poles, aligned toward past and future, have suddenly snapped together. “What was that?” I ask, at the same time as Cindy whispers, “I saw something more.”

  She clasps her trembling hands before her. Five of Wands. A struggle—a battle for control. And—and I see labyrinths, winding paths blocking the way to victory.”

  My breath feels heavy as granite in my lungs. “I heard the scrubber.”

  Marylou’s voice slices into my thoughts as she projects herself into our heads. Miss Conrad! Yul! Andrei and Al need you out front!

  Cindy races ahead of me with the ping of heels on concrete as I limp along beside her. I tap each post in succession, just quick enough to follow the trail without the static consuming me, unfolding a gap in the past on each from when the scrubber passed by. He—or she—is like a bleach spill, eating away a swathe of history; I can’t see the details of what happened but the spill itself is proof enough.

  I round the corner to find myself in the middle of a standoff.

  Near the building entrance, three NATO military guards stand with their guns drawn, moving as if they are wrestling for control of the weapons against some invisible attacker. Al Sterling has sunk to his knees on the concrete sidewalk; the sleeves of his smart linen jacket only reach past his elbows now, their edges singed black, and his exposed forearms are red and blistered. Papa stands beside him, leaning forward as if into a gale-force wind, his face wrenched in deep concentration as a trickle of red drips from his nose.

  As I turn to look at the assailant, however, the whole world flashes into whiteness. I am floating; I am a dandelion seed, drifting in the breeze. I have no desire to be a part of whatever is happening around me. The cool air curls and buoys me, cleansing me, stripping away any cares, any concerns …

  A snapshot of Cindy running past me burns into my eyes. Cindy pulls something from her purse, but white presses in, snaring me in place. I fight to see past it as hot metal sears my nostrils. Where’d Cindy go? There—Cindy presses the item—a small rectangular box—to the neck of—well, of someone. She and the person she’s attacking are a shifting blend of bodies to me, even as the image hangs, stagnant, in my mind—

  I drop to the pavement with a gasp. A chill courses through me; red splotches the stones beneath me. When I look up again, Cindy is wrestling with a husky man as the guards close in, screaming at her in French. I pull myself onto shaky legs; the old wound in my ankle throbs in protest.

  Valentin, Donna, Judd—protect the delegates. Keep them in the building. Find a room you can secure with the disruptor devices, Cindy orders through Marylou, though the words are garbled and chewed around the edges.

  I can’t view the delegates, Miss Conrad, Marylou screams back, as if from the far end of a tunnel. There’s something—blocking their location—

  The scrubber rips the box from Cindy’s grasp, and the white haze returns. This time, though, it’s much weaker; with an effort, I can force my way through the haze, though it feels like someone’s coiling barbed wire around my brain.

  Rage. It’s boiling under my skin, straining, begging for me to let it off its chain. I want this scrubber to suffer. I limp past Papa, hunched on the ground, his
face purple from exertion. I want the scrubber to pay for what he’s trying to do.

  Our eyes meet. The scrubber stops flickering, and for just a few seconds, rage fuels me as I fight the fog, and I glimpse the man beneath the psychic disguises: cracked, bleeding lips; jaundiced eyes; pouches at his jowls from sudden weight loss; the tight, quivering, captive stare of extreme sleep deprivation. But I also see the tan-skinned, blond-haired, narrow-jawed man beneath.

  “You can’t stop us, Chernina,” the scrubber wheezes, blood-flecked eyes locking on mine. “We are endless. We will always make more.”

  CHAPTER 16

  THE SCRUBBER BREAKS eye contact with me; with one deft yank, he pulls Cindy forward and past him, taking advantage of her imbalance. She topples to the sidewalk with a crack. I leap forward, but the noise is back, thick as beet soup.

  I can only make out snatches of the world around me, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve already seen the scrubber’s face. I call up my memory of him.

  Marylou? Tony? I ask. Can you match this man’s face?

  Perfectly, comes Marylou’s reply. Tony’s checking it out now.

  The scrubber is charging into the street. A car is stopping; its driver appearing to willingly surrender the vehicle, though I know better. Tires screeching against the cobblestones. As the scrubber escapes, the haze fades.

  Papa seizes me by the shoulder. “Come on, let’s stop him.”

  He commandeers a car for us—a sleek, sharklike black Citroën. Papa piles into the driver’s seat, Al into the passenger side, and me in the back. Our surveillance van roars to life behind us as Cindy climbs in with Winnie, Tony, and Marylou. We peel away from the curb and head down the pastoral shrub-lined avenue, right toward a roundabout with Cindy’s beloved towering Arc de Triomphe.

  Tony’s got a name for us, Marylou announces. Heinrich Muellen, a Czech national. Was in Washington on a work visa, but it would appear his only “work” is with the KGB. His face matches a false passport for a passenger jet that flew out of Dulles yesterday.

  The “us” he mentioned. Any leads on that? I ask.

  There’s a pause before Marylou answers. We have a few leads. Hang tight.

  We swing toward the Arc and take the spoke for the Champs-Elysées. Stodgy stone buildings sprout around us on both side of Paris’s chicest thoroughfare. Row after row of ornate storefronts fly past us. The wheaty scent of fresh-baked bread from the boulangeries reaches into the car, but it turns my stomach. I’m too electrified to enjoy the scenery. Too determined to catch the scrubber while he’s still breathing.

  Papa swerves into oncoming traffic to cut ahead of a taxi. Horns blare around us; Al Sterling screams at Papa, jabbing his finger to the right. I’m trying to find Heinrich, Marylou tells us, but I can’t stay focused on him. He keeps deflecting me.

  Al Sterling crushes his hat in his fist. Give me a clear view as soon as you lock on, and I’ll blow the bastard’s gas tank.

  The grill of a massive truck suddenly blocks my view of the boulevard as it roars from an alleyway. “Papa!” I scream.

  He swerves back into oncoming traffic, but the truck clips our rear, shearing off our bumper with a metallic screech. We fishtail for a few agonizing, eternal seconds before Papa rights us.

  “Is the truck part of his team?” I peer out the back window. The truck has stopped now, blocking traffic in both directions behind us.

  “No,” Papa says through clenched teeth. “He’s controlling other drivers.”

  Tony’s voice cuts into my thoughts. Got a few snapshots of Heinrich for you, but I’m afraid you aren’t gonna like this.

  Why not? I ask.

  Tony doesn’t answer for several seconds. Finally, Marylou pipes up. It’s a photo of him in Russia, leaving a research lab with General Rostov. And … Marylou’s trippy musical shield buckles with a surge of nerves. And your mom.

  Before I have a chance to reply, we’re tossed back over to the right as another truck skips the median, heading for us straight on. Papa’s face turns purple and a vein twists against his temple as the truck slowly changes course back to its side, truck bed swinging frenetically. Al drums his fingers against the car windowsill. “C’mon, Andrei, if you can get me a little closer…”

  We suspected Mama’s involvement—Rostov demanded a psychic army, and the leading psychic geneticist seems poised to give him one. But maybe I’d been hoping against hope that these scrubbers were an anomaly. I could believe in Mama complying with Rostov in the short term for a longer goal, but now, having my nose rubbed in the gruesome details—

  Revulsion tastes a lot like fear, which tastes a lot like anger when it’s chewing a hole in your gut. The feelings are scrabbling for escape, but I have no way to release them.

  Papa parts the cars around us, clearing a straight shot for us to the minty Renault we’re pursuing. I can tell we’re gaining on Heinrich by the static fuzz creeping into my thoughts, though Papa’s efforts at controlling traffic tamps it down. He jerks the steering wheel from side to side, wrestling with Heinrich for control of himself, while Heinrich’s car ahead of us bobs and weaves similarly.

  I hold my breath as the green lawn of the Tuileries drops away around us and we clatter onto a bridge across the Seine. The nearby cars rattle erratically, pawns in the psychic battle. “Almost there,” Al chants. “Just a little closer—”

  Papa slams on the brakes with a yelp. Too close—Heinrich is fending us off, white noise screeching in my head like sparks from flint. We skid perpendicular to the bridge. My heart is buzzing against my ribs like a trapped fly as the hood of the Citroën grates against the stone railing. Pedestrians scream and scramble away—no, some of them are charging for our car, a look of rage on their faces as unseen powers drive them—

  “Hold tight,” Papa says, and throttles the car into reverse with the grinding of gears.

  We lurch backward just as another sedan dives for us, trying to knock us off the bridge. It clips us, propelling us forward, then it ramps up and over the stones.

  “Shit!” Al hisses. “Shit.”

  “We’ll catch him.” Papa sets his jaw and weaves around the wreckage toward the end of the bridge.

  We clatter off the bridge, into the southern side of Paris, and within a few blocks, we’re on the green Renault’s tail. I squeeze the door handle so hard my nails puncture the vinyl covering as the white static storm envelops us.

  “Here goes nothing,” Al says, voice strained. “When he gets out of the car, Yulia, how about you do him like you did Donna and the Hound while I make him nice and toasty?”

  Flood him with these negative emotions. This man tried to hurt us; he’s working for Rostov. Certainly he deserves it. But as I try to imagine myself doing so, all I feel are the puppet strings lashing around my wrists once more.

  Al clenches his fists and leans forward, eager; Heinrich’s car jumps up onto the curb as thick black smoke spews from his muffler. He rolls the windows down, more smoke pouring from inside. Papa slows down just a hair as we gain on him. Flames leap from the open edges of the scrubber’s car. He throws open the driver’s door and staggers away from the car as a massive fireball billows out and up—

  The blast knocks the scrubber to the ground as the smell of hot metal floods our car. Is he down? Please let him be down. Please don’t make me have to—

  Papa cries out; our car lurches across traffic and swipes against a street pole, our hood crumpling into a round poster board. “Papa?” I force myself off the back of Al’s seat. My shoulder throbs, but if I have any other injuries, they’re buried under a flood of adrenaline. “Papa, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. My door’s wedged shut.” He tugs at the door handle, but the outside of the door clangs against a lamppost. “Go! Don’t worry about me. Get him!”

  I scramble out of the back on the passenger’s side. Al is stalking toward Heinrich, who’s sprawled across the pavement among a crowd of spectators. Al guides the roaring flames down the sidewalk, straining to re
ach Heinrich, but Heinrich’s face—ever-shifting faces, really—is contorted with focus; Al’s steps slow as static crackles around us. We stop. Why are we here again? My gaze drifts over the burning car, the gawking Parisians, the man struggling to his feet. I recognize that these things are before me, but there is no purpose to them; they are not relevant. If I could just remember my purpose here—

  The crackling tapers off, replaced by a dull pounding in my skull.

  The scrubber’s gone—fleeing around the corner. I try to shake off the lingering film of his control and take off running after him. His noise trails behind him like the stink of ripe garbage, leading me down a narrow alley. If I stay just far enough back, I can follow his static noise on the cold stone walls without getting close enough for him to distort my thoughts …

  Chains rattle somewhere around the bend, like someone’s climbing up a fence. I flatten against the wall, then once the static recedes, peek slowly around the corner. Heinrich’s loafers disappear over a metal gate that’s been chained and padlocked shut. Though it’s in the middle of a grungy alley, the stone opening reminds me of the entrance to a mausoleum.

  “The Catacombs,” Al Sterling says, jogging up behind me. “Come on.” He launches himself at the gate and scrambles to the top, then reaches down an arm to help hoist me up. I kick and scrabble against the links, unable to gain purchase until I’m halfway over.

  “What did they feed you back in Moscow, anyway?” Al asks. “Feathers?”

  We shuffle into the heavy darkness of the gated-off stone antechamber. The floor slopes down sharply, leading into further depths that I can’t see; I reach for the wall to brace myself, but quickly wish I hadn’t. The cold stones are slimy with runoff, and immediately a sharp memory—a glint of steel, a stinging lash across my neck—makes me pull away.

  But the deeper we descend, the quicker the light dies out, smothered in the oppressive, stifling air. Al pulls a lighter from his pocket and ignites it with a click. In his hands, it glows ten times brighter than a regular lighter would.