Skandal
Page 25
After a hasty exchange with Cindy and Winnie, they head off to coordinate with the FBI over our findings and Papa drives me to Georgetown. Doctor Stokowski is in the middle of a lecture on uncategorized genetic disorders when I storm into the lab. A dozen faces turn toward me—bright, pale boys’ faces, their noses and cheeks rosy from the April sun. I march past them, ignoring their stares, and yank open the fridge full of cultures.
“Miss Chernina,” Stokowski says, face puckered. “I’ll be happy to meet with you after class if you need help with your research.”
“Sorry, Doctor.” I cast about for the right English phrase. “Medical emergency.” I snatch a cooler from the stack next to the fridge and start loading my labeled vials into the preformed slots. “I’m going to need a lot of LSD.”
*
While Papa drives us into Arlington, toward the safe house, I perform the genetic equivalent of brain surgery with gardening shears. I scrape the lysergic acid diethylamide samples into the most promising antiviral strain, add the necessary catalysts, and load it all into a trio of capped syringes. The INFRA should suppress Mama’s swollen psychic gene markers enough for the virus to strip them out without damaging the proteins around them. The samples look promising, but a thorough test would take weeks—weeks we don’t have. If I’m lucky, Valya has days. There’s no time to waste—I’ll need to inject Valya as quickly as possible if we’re going to have a chance of saving him.
Papa tries to upshift and fly past an old lady in her Bel Air, but the stoplight foils him, and he drums his fingers anxiously against the steering wheel, casting a glance my way. “You’re a brave girl,” he finally says. “Braver than me, to seek out your mother like that.”
I shake my head, cheeks burning. “I’m just stubborn as sin.”
“Do you get that from your mother?” he asks, then spreads his arms, a sheepish grin on his face. “It’s certainly not from me.”
We laugh, but his words hang eerily in my head, reminding me how little he must remember of her personality. Anyone who’s met Mama would remember her tenacity—my little pit bull, Papa used to say of her. Another thing he’s forgotten.
I tighten my grip around the case of syringes. Well, after I cure Valya, I hope to give him a chance to relearn it all.
Papa throws the car into park in the safe house’s driveway, even though we’re supposed to park down the block, especially with his flashy ride. I leap out of the passenger’s seat without opening the door and ring the buzzer. The watchman has strict orders not to let anyone into the same room with Valentin, but I’m sure Papa and I can persuade him. We have to.
But it’s not the watchman who answers; it’s Frank Tuttelbaum, a cheerful whistle dying on his lips when he sees us.
“Yulia,” he says, like it’s a four-letter word. “Is there something I can help you with?”
I hold up the case of syringes. “I have the cure for Valya. Please, Mister Tuttelbaum. You have to let me see him. I promise, I can cure him. He can help us stop Rostov.”
Frank quirks his mouth to one side of his face. “I’m sorry, Yulia. Val’s not here right now.”
My heart cracks open. I feel all my determination leaking out, drifting away from me. The one emotion I need to cling to. “Why?” I ask, but my voice sounds so fragile to me. So useless.
“We had to move him. For his own safety, of course. With Rostov’s plan in motion, we just couldn’t take the risk…” Frank pats me on the back—more to guide me back down the sidewalk than to reassure me. “Even I don’t know where they’re taking him. It’s safer that way—what’s that old chestnut your pops always says? An empty mind’s a good mind?”
No. I don’t understand. Valentin would be safe from Rostov right now, if only they’d let me access him. “But I can cure it. Please—you have to take me to him.”
He guides me right back to the driveway, more insistently now. “You two are still barred from missions, so go home, relax, get a good night’s rest, Yulia. I’ve got an entire network of Reds to stop. I don’t have time to worry about one little boy.”
Rage is like a fist around my throat, and I don’t want to force it away from me. I want to feel every painful barb of it scraping me raw from the inside. But Frank is oblivious, whistling that stupid tune again as he forces me back into the passenger’s seat of the Austin Healey.
“Your girl is clearly in need of a good night’s sleep,” Frank tells Papa, a vicious smile smeared across his lips. “I know she wouldn’t be behaving so rashly if she just got some rest.”
My English may still be poor, but I know how to see through the gaps in his words. I’m well versed in the shape of threats.
Papa drums his fingers on the steering wheel. I grip the sides of my seat; Papa’s about to compel him. I brace myself for the nauseating static burst.
But it doesn’t come.
Instead, Papa jams the shift into reverse so hard it sounds like he’s about to wrench the stick off. “Wise idea. Lots to do tomorrow.” The tires squeal as Papa peels out of the driveway.
“Are you joking?” I cry. “Of all the times for you to abuse your power—”
“He doesn’t know where they took Valya. He wasn’t lying about that. Besides.” Papa’s mouth is a grim slash across his face as he races through the dark suburban neighborhood. “We have bigger problems right now.”
“Like what?” I ask, but then I realize where I’ve heard the song Frank is whistling. It’s the introductory music for the KGB numbers station.
“Like the mole on the PsyOps team. Frank.”
*
We try to sleep for the night, but it doesn’t come easily for me. In my dreams, I grasp for fragments of Mama, jagged mirrored shards of memory, but they only slice me when I try to get too close.
Winnie, Donna, and Cindy meet me at a 24-hour diner that overlooks the Georgetown Canal. The sun is just starting to slip out of the eastern mouth of the Potomac, orange gold dripping across the water as the university crew teams row in perfect unison. Donna orders a strawberry milkshake while Cindy and Winnie grab us a booth with a great view of the city as it awakens. Their eyes are wide the whole time I explain: Rostov’s plans to sow chaos at the peace summit; the way he’s holding Mama hostage in the tunnels beneath the Soviet embassy. Frank, the mole within our own team, dragging Valya away to points unknown. Donna’s cheeks stay sucked in as if she means to drink her shake in one terrified gulp.
“I just can’t believe it’s Frank,” Donna says, in between sips. “But I guess it’s always the ones with something to prove. Do you think he’s working for them intentionally?”
“That’s what I’m hoping you can find out.” I shove the scrambled eggs around my plate, unsure if I can keep them down.
Cindy stares through me, no emotion on her face.
“And here I thought he was just a racist, sexist pig,” Winnie says. “You’re sure about this? He doesn’t exactly strike me as a communist sympathizer.”
“Ideology,” Cindy says. “He doesn’t have to sympathize with the Soviet Union—he just has to want the same thing as them, for now. In this case, that would be America’s declaring war on North Vietnam. You heard him the other day. He thinks we have every reason to go to war with North Vietnam. Thinks it’ll be good for us, like Korea—put another nail in the coffin of communism.”
“But he’s just playing into Rostov’s hand,” Winnie says.
I nod. “The war is a means to an end—something to keep us occupied. And then, when we’re weakened, our military is elsewhere, we’re vulnerable to attack—”
I don’t need to finish the rest. The card Cindy lays before us, the Ten of Swords, says it all. A man lies facedown with several blades still embedded in his spine. Betrayal, destruction.
Donna chews at her straw as she stares at the card. “Heavens to Betsy, Jules. This is quite a pickle.”
“This is a pickle,” I agree, without being entirely sure what I’m agreeing to. “But we can stop this.”
“First, we have to stop Rostov. Frank isn’t going to do anything to prevent the attack at the summit because he wants the war. But my mother said there’s a way to control the altered scrubbers. If Rostov and Sergei can do it, then surely Papa can, too.”
“So, save the world first.” Donna cracks a smile. “Then what about curing Valentin?”
“That’s where I’ll need your special skill at—how do you put it?—‘sweet talking.’ You’ll have to ply Frank’s loyal operatives to find out where Valya’s being kept. Papa read Frank’s thoughts, but even he doesn’t know where Valya was taken.”
Donna reaches across the table and gives my hand a tentative pat. “You got it.”
I don’t entirely trust her, but neither have I given her a good reason to trust me. She wasn’t wrong about me—I would have done anything to save Mama, even if it ran counter to the PsyOps team’s plans. I offer her a weak smile back. “Thank you. Are the rest of you with us?”
Cindy nods, face solemn, while Winnie grins widely. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
“What about Judd?” I ask. “Tony? Will they understand why we can’t trust Frank?”
“I’ll have a word with them,” Cindy says. “I think it’s safe to count them in our plans.”
“Excellent. Then Donna, you, me, and Judd will be dealing with the scrubber minions at the peace summit. We’ll need all the disruption boxes you have, Cindy.”
“Done.” Cindy leans back from the table. “What about reaching the lab beneath the Soviet embassy and getting your family out? I worked out some details with the FBI yesterday while you were at Georgetown, but your father seemed confident he knew how to deal with Rostov in person.”
“I’m afraid I can’t organize any more spontaneous street festivals and demonstrations,” Winnie says, “but I’ll do whatever I can to help with logistics.”
I shove her the rough map Mama made of the tunnel network. “Papa will be working with the FBI on storming the lab while we deal with the scrubbers at the symposium—he’ll fill you in on the details.”
Winnie rubs her hands together. “Can’t wait.”
Cindy shuffles her card deck and plucks out two more. She holds them close to her chest, but my arms are already pressed against the edge of the table; I can see them just fine. The first image makes my stomach clench: a red heart looms large in a storm-tossed sky, with three swords piercing it, each of them dripping with blood.
She catches my eye. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she says. “It means you’ll be too hard on yourself. The emotions will be hard to fight.”
I catch sight of the last card Cindy’s fingering: a skeleton atop a horse riding into town, trampling the village’s ruler. Death.
“Change,” Cindy says hastily. “I see change, not necessarily death. An important event brought to a close.”
“Let’s hope that’s all it is,” I reply.
CHAPTER 29
THE DOLLEY MADISON HOUSE, perched on Lafayette Square with a sideways glance toward the White House, hardly looks like a place where one should start a war. Its colonnaded porch begs for a trio of round-bellied bourgeois capitalists to smoke cigars and drink brandy while they trade tips on how best to exploit the proletariat. (So my Soviet indoctrination makes me think.) But instead of surrendering to its old money charms—the pitched roof, the gas lamps—it sets my teeth on edge.
The mansion is filled with scrubbers—dozens of them, humming and throbbing on the periphery of my thoughts like droning crickets outside my window late at night. My purse slaps heavily against my thigh; my knees buckle and my vision blurs. Donna catches me by the elbow and drags me upright.
“Careful, Jules,” she murmurs. “You’re not allowed to pass out just yet.”
We enter the grand foyer and approach the checkin station, where the security guard looks us over like we’re a couple of circus performers. “Names?” he asks dubiously.
Donna stands up straighter. Her time to shine. “I’m not sure which last name it’s listed under. I just got married. Can you check Jones for me?”
As he flips through the list of names, Donna’s eyes narrow; she’s looking at the list through his eyes in search of suitable names for both of us. “First name?” he asks.
“Mary. Mary Jones? When he shakes his head, she snaps her finger. “All right. Mary Griffin it is.” Then she gives my hand a squeeze. Constance Fellowes.
“Constance Fellowes,” I tell the man when he asks me, though I’m sure the real Constance would cringe to hear me pronounce it. He checks us both off the list, and we approach the velvet truncheons.
“Oh, Connie, this is great!” Donna exclaims as the guards permit us onto the grand staircase. “The senator’s sure to love our report.”
I force a sharp smile to my lips. “I certainly hope he appreciates the trouble we’re going to.”
When we reach the great hall, the scene before us looks more like a wedding reception than a peace summit—delicate clusters of flowers adorn the center of each white linen tablecloth. At the front of the room, microphones have been placed along a long table for each country’s delegates; representatives from all the major news radio stations are already clustering microphones of their own around the seat reserved for the United States representative, Senator Saxton. Donna steers me toward a table in the back; a waiter immediately deposits a plate of cream-and dill-slathered salmon before each of us.
“I wish I felt half as confident as you look,” Donna grumbles. She’s casting about the room, trying to sort out how we’ll pull off the next part of our plan without starting an international incident of our own.
I tighten my grip on my beaded purse, holding it possessively in my lap. “We don’t have the luxury of messing up.”
Ready when you are, Marylou chirps inside our heads, opening up the communications link.
Good morning, my rebellious comrades. I smile in spite of myself. Let’s make some new friends.
Through Marylou’s viewing, Papa comes into focus, in the laboratory deep beneath the Soviet embassy. He’s switched off the disruptor circuits like Larissa showed me, and is heading for the inner chamber where the Hound is kept. Rostov should be there with the Hound, ready to use him to amplify and beacon out his every command. Two guards rush toward Papa, but he swiftly puts their minds to sleep; they crumple to the floor.
Waiting on your order, devochka, Papa says.
I allow myself a tiny smile. Papa will stop Rostov first; then he can rescue Mama and Zhenya and Larissa. Whatever emotions hit him when he sees Mama again, at least Rostov will be handled.
The delegates file into the front of the hall; everyone leaps to their feet with triumphant applause. Unlike a Russian audience, their hands all clap out of sync, and I can’t find the appropriate rhythm to join in. No one is listening to anyone else. How can they clap like this?
Then a wave of static rolls through me. This is it—the moment Rostov’s been working toward. I scan the crowd for signs of the scrubbers, but it’s like the world has been wrapped in gauze. I have to fight to see clearly.
A blitzkrieg of flashbulbs subdivides the scene before us. The North Vietnamese delegate screams at Saxton, accusing the US of arming South Vietnam. Saxton throwing up his hands—“Now, let’s not get hasty. We’re here to announce our decision.”
The white noise presses in, burying me in a static snow as the scrubbers sink into Saxton’s mind. The scrubbers are offering Rostov a second hand control over Saxton, unlike the complete domination he has over the scrubbers themselves, but it’s more than enough for Rostov. Against a non-psychic like Saxon, one of his scrubbers would have been sufficient, but Rostov’s not known for his restraint.
“The United States has decided…”
Now, Papa! I scream. Now!
He charges into the cell. The Hound—Sergei’s brother, Rostov’s other son—stands up with a snarl. But Papa has surprise on his side. I
can’t see Papa’s struggle with the Hound around the white crackling noise, but I feel the shift of power over the scrubbers rocking back and forth between Papa and Rostov as the haze waxes and wanes.
Saxton stammers at the podium as the crowd murmurs around him. “We’re going to … we’ve declared … we’re not going to…”
The scrubbers powers are too much for him. Saxton slumps forward, forehead crashing into the table before him, as blood runs from his nose. The room sucks in its breath at once—in terror, at least, this crowd resembles the unity of thought and action that I remember from home. Rostov’s minions all stand as one, including one of the Russian delegates, but no one notices them. Everyone’s too busy screaming for a doctor and rushing toward Senator Saxton.
I’m sending all the minions to the bathroom to get them out of here. Hurry, girls! Papa calls.
The flashing bulbs resume, capturing the chaos and panic for the papers. Smoke and the smell of burning magnesium hang heavy in the air. The hair on my arms stands on end as if a great electrical storm is rolling through. The two opposing frequencies of Rostov and Papa chatter back and forth in my mind.
Donna and I chase the scrubbers out of the great hall, sending our glimpse of them back to Tony via Marylou, who reports back a minute later. Great. I’ve IDed them all. We’ll keep FBI tied up for weeks tracking them down and looking into their associates. He laughs. Well done.
We’re not done yet, I say.
On the other side of the powder room door, I can feel the crackle and hum of all of those powerful psychics; it brings me little comfort to know that Papa’s wrestled them under his control. What if Rostov gains the upper hand? “Let’s be quick,” I tell Donna. She nods and tears open her purse.
With the minions subdued by Papa, it’s easy to snap our makeshift disruptors—Cindy’s disruptor boxes attached to dog collars—into place around their necks. It closes the circuit of the disruptor so it boxes in their power, just like Larissa showed me how to do. Once the collars are around their throats it breaks the link to Papa, and they sink down to the floor, or slump against the counter. We’ll leave them here until the FBI agents move in to collect them. I wonder how much of the person they once were remains in them, in those cold stares and limp limbs and shallow, listless breaths; I force my thoughts away from imagining Valentin in this state.