Skandal Page 14

  “I’m scared, Valya. Even if Sergei is lying, I have to listen to him—he’s the only person who can tell me what’s happened to my mother. I don’t know if she needs our help. I don’t want to hurt her.”

  I’m trembling still, the fear rolling over itself inside me like a rising ocean tide. I can’t control my terror of failing Mama, of failing my family. And I’m petrified that I’ve become what Papa accused me of—a victim of my own ignorance, a monster with no idea of the power she wields.

  “Yulia.” His shield melody swells. “We can do this, together. Until we know what your mother wants from us, I think it’s best for us to focus on whether our team is really safe—whether Sergei’s telling the truth.”

  “You’re right. It’s a start.”

  He kisses the crown of my head. “Let’s focus on finding this traitor, then, if there really is one to be found. When I joined the PsyOps team, Cindy taught me that people who betray their countries are motivated by a few common factors: money, ideology, compromise, ego, revenge.” He ticks the factors off on his fingers. “We can look at each of our teammates for these things.”

  He’s appealing to the scientist in me—seeking order from chaos. But experimentation and observation are only two types of approaches; other things can be learned from blunt interference. “Of course,” I say, “you could always push past their shields.”

  He shifts on the couch. I’ve caught him off guard. “N-not against these people. They’re supposed to be our teammates. I can’t just—I mean, unless I’m really, really certain…” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Yulia, it isn’t right to use my scrubber ability that way. I can’t ever do that again.”

  I shake my head back and forth. “I understand you’re afraid of your ability, but everything has its uses.”

  He shifts and sits up, pulling away from me, but says nothing. Instead there’s just a roaring noise in my ears, like an incoming wave. Waves. Valentin’s past. I can smell the tangy sea breeze, feel the sand squishing between my toes—the echo of memories I’d gleaned and just as quickly lost. Valentin hasn’t woken up screaming since the other night, but I can see the strain in the dark grooves under his eyes.

  It stings, this hollowness in me of not knowing what troubles him so. “This isn’t about our team. You helped me remember my past. Why won’t you let me try again to help you move on from yours?”

  His arms go slack. “Your father might be cruel about it, but he has a point. You shouldn’t have to handle that much emotion. I refuse to hurt you with it.”

  I stare him down as if I don’t even recognize him. “Hurt me? I’m trying to help you!”

  “Well, maybe I don’t need to be helped,” he snaps. “Maybe I’m just fine as I am.”

  I scoot to the far end of the couch. Maybe I am too eager to try to fix others’ problems; I’ve certainly tried to save those who didn’t want saving before. Zhenya, Sergei, Larissa … Perhaps even Mama, now. But Valya? He’s been suffering ever since our confrontation with Rostov—nursing a wound that won’t heal. “You’re a wreck. You scream in the middle of the night. You’ll barely use your ability. You call that being just fine?”

  “I call that keeping you safe,” he says, eyes narrowed.

  “Don’t bother. You or Papa, either one.” I shove off of the couch and gather our plates. “I’ll be as dangerous as I want to be.”

  “Like your father?” Valya asks. I cringe. He isn’t fighting fair. “I see how well that works out for him.”

  “What works out for who?” Papa flings open the back door of the conservatory. We didn’t see him approaching through the side garden. Now I hear the Austin Healey’s motor growling along the street. “Yulia, did you forget your appointment?”

  “What appointment?” I ask.

  “With Winnie? She’s waiting in the car. You’re supposed to meet your new professor at Georgetown, clean his lab, learn about some of his research projects. Glad it’s you and not us, huh?” He elbows Valentin as he slides past us. “What say we hit the movies, Valya? They’re playing a new Annette Funnicello film at Georgetown Theater, and with that broad on screen, who cares if it’s Disney?”

  I turn to Valya, but he just twists his lips sadly and lowers his gaze. “Sure, Andrei. Sounds like a riot.”

  *

  Winnie’s walking so fast I can barely keep up, eyes darting along the neighborhood streets like she’s searching for assailants. I lumber after her in my uneven gait along the cobblestone road. “It was very kind of Cindy to arrange this for you,” Winnie says, in a tone that could harden lava. “Georgetown is very exclusive. They don’t let just anyone in, you know.”

  Ah, so there’s the issue. When she first started tutoring me, Winnie and I always shared the common bond of outsiders—strangers in a strange, light-skinned, English-speaking land. It was the least common denominator of our daily lives, though at least I had some buffer—I had to open my mouth before I was completely dismissed, whereas her very presence was enough.

  “I’m sorry, Winnie. I know it is—” I grit my teeth, trying to land on the word with the proper connotation. “It is difficult for you—”

  She snorts. “Difficult? Please. I’ve got a skill so good people have to ignore my skin. Don’t feel bad for me. It’s everyone else I worry about.”

  A skill so good they can’t ignore it. She’d said as much to Cindy, too, but Cindy implied there were limits to their willingness to overlook their prejudices.

  I wonder if my spot on the PsyOps team is similar—if I’m an asset whose ego needs stroking, whose delicate temperament means she must be handled like raw plutonium: rubber gloves, hazmat suit, two-foot concrete barrier, and on a remote Pacific island if at all possible. I thought they’d been warming to me, but maybe I’m one more piece of weaponry to maneuver into place, and to hope I don’t jam at a crucial moment.

  We’re almost onto the Georgetown campus now; a couple saunters toward us, hands linked between them, taking up the whole sidewalk. Winnie plows straight for them like it’s a game of chicken (I know this because Papa plays it with drunk college boys sometimes) and at the last second, they let go of each other’s hands, each squeezing against their respective side of the sidewalk. I slink after Winnie with my head bowed.

  “Are you afraid of me?” I ask Winnie, scampering to catch up with her. “I thought Cindy was starting to trust me, but now…”

  “But now, what?” Winnie arches one brow.

  I’d forgotten Winnie’s rule. Finish your sentences. Trailing off is cheating. “I think she is trying to … placate me. Because of my mother.”

  Winnie’s mouth flickers with the briefest smile at my vocabulary usage, but it’s gone as fast as it came. “Who knows with Cindy? For someone who’s always watching out for herself, she doesn’t always watch out for herself, if you know what I mean.”

  I don’t even begin to know what Winnie means.

  Winnie presses her hand between my shoulder blades to steer me down a colonnaded path. “Given a choice between the chance for a small victory now and a bigger one later, she’ll take the one now, every time.”

  “But she can see the future,” I say.

  Winnie grimaces. “Maybe that’s the problem.” She shakes her head. “Some people forget where they came from. They’re always looking for the next rung on the ladder. Never forget where you came from, all right?”

  A thick oak door flings open before us; a fuzzy white-haired man stares at us with eyes that look ready to leap out of his skull. “Winnifred? Yulia?” he asks. He actually pronounces my name right. “Please, come in! Oh, here.” He looks down at the mold-encrusted glass vial and pipe cleaner in his hands. “I suppose you should be doing this.”

  He thrusts them toward my stomach and I cradle them against me. “Doing what?”

  “Well, giving them a good scrub! Sink’s over there.” He ushers us into the laboratory, which looks more like a minor chapel with its ragged stone walls and soaring ceilings. As he shuts the heavy d
oor behind him, I could almost imagine we’ve stumbled back into the Middle Ages if not for the gleaming white electron microscope I spy in one corner of the room. Everything smells like dish soap and dust. “When you’re done with that one, there’re nineteen more just like it.”

  I find the giant ceramic basin and turn on the hot water spout. After a glance at the stack of vials on the counter, each of them crusted with the same slimy mold, I hunt down a pair of latex gloves and pull them on with a satisfying snap.

  The professor hops up onto the soapstone counter next to the stack of dirty vials, Winnie close behind. “So! I’m Fred Stokowski. I’m from Europe myself, you know.”

  I peer at him out of the corner of my eye. “Europe” is hardly equivalent with Russia these days.

  “Polish by birth, but I managed to escape during the fall of the Third Reich.” He rubs his hands together and tilts his head back, as if it’s weighed down by a rush of memories. “So, what got you interested in genetics?”

  It’s like asking me why my hair is black. How could I avoid the subject? My parents devoted much of their lives to researching genetics, and their own genetic markers, most of all. The markers they passed along to me. Coiled up tight like a fist in each of my chromosomes is a mystery sequence of proteins that has made me this way, given me this extra sense, this otherness that lets me prowl in the memories of others. And in my brother is a completely different, but equally mysterious code that keeps him locked deep inside his own head instead.

  “Lots of reasons.” My cheeks heat up as I scrub the tubes. “I love the idea of a … a blueprint that we all carry. That there are so many locks just waiting for us to make the right key for them.”

  As Winnie translates the patches I missed, Professor Stokowski nods for a bit, hand curled around his chin, like my response is taking him some time to unpack. “I like that. Yes. I understand you’ve read some of my research already? So you know I’m very interested in unlocking the genetic code. Have you worked on any research teams before?”

  Unless by “worked on,” he means that my entire existence is part of a massive Stalinist experiment in human enhancement, managed by my own parents. The selective breeding of psychics, more or less, to produce stronger psychics still. “No, Professor.”

  “No problem. I’ll have you stay late today to work through some introductory labs.” He waits for Winnie to help me along, then hops off the counter as I set the glassware out to dry. “I’m happy to let you tinker around with any of the samples we have in cold storage, as long as you submit a written proposal of your intended usage for them in advance. Other than that, I’ll be expecting you to help out with my afternoon practicums, and you’re welcome to join any additional research projects that need an extra brain. Fair enough?”

  “You are very kind.” I tilt my head in respect. “Thank you, Professor.”

  “Of course.” He gestures toward the electron microscope in the corner. “Once you’re done cleaning those, we can talk research.”

  As I’m tidying up the lab, I keep pausing to gawk at the carefully illustrated charts he has taped along the walls—chromosome pairs marking out the known genetic diseases, heredity tables, and a portrait of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, a monk who loved to breed his bean plants. A corkboard near the microscope catches my eye, as well; research topics printed on watery purple mimeograph pages are pinned to it. “What are these?” I ask Winnie. She leans in close to translate the topics for me. Recessive traits of Apis mellifera. Choroidal hypoplasia heredity in rough collies. Provirus from Bornaviridae altering genetic sequence in Apis mellifera.

  “Afraid I can’t help you much with the Latin,” Winnie says. But “altering genetic sequence”—even I can grasp the gist of that.

  “Professor Stokowski?” I glance over toward his desk, where he’s grading a stack of papers. “What is this research project?”

  He hops up and joins me at the corkboard. “Ahh! That’s a fun project. I do love my honeybees.” He taps his finger against the abstract. “Basically, I found a virus that alters the genetic code of its honeybee host. We’re still trying to nail down how it chooses what chunks of code to remove, though, and whether we can alter its choices. Very preliminary work, yes.”

  Winnie lifts one eyebrow; I quickly turn away from her. “I would like to work on this project,” I say.

  “Sure thing, kid! I’d love to have some help. Say, have you ever worked one of these things before?” He pats the gleaming barrel of the electron microscope. “Here, swab your mouth; I’ll do one, too. You, too, Sergeant.”

  We all scrape the insides of our cheeks with a long swab and smear the saliva onto a petri dish. My hand trembles as I slide my dish onto the microscope tray. The code is right before me. Professor Stokowski’s genes and mine, side by side, like a “Spot the Differences” pair of drawings in the Highlights magazine Winnie made me read. Professor Stokowski points out some of the obvious differences in their structure, but he can’t point to what I really want to know: the exact nature of the power coursing through me. I keep the sample locked up in the research cabinets, though, for another day. Maybe if I can break my own code, I can finally understand the true nature of my power, and be the one in control.

  CHAPTER 15

  TONY’S ANALYSIS of the burned Paris maps and a murky premonition from Cindy lead us to the next NATO convention on the situation in Vietnam, chaired by none other than Senator Saxton. We’ll be observing the proceedings and hunting for the next scrubber in the chain. Cindy’s forecast was none too helpful—the Page of Wands, which she claimed meant we shouldn’t squander an opportunity we’ve been given (much to Frank’s chagrin)—but it’s better than nothing. According to the countless maps and grainy satellite images Cindy has brought with her on the flight to Paris, the NATO Headquarters are housed in a odd, ragged chevron-shaped building called the Palais de l’OTAN, because the French prefer their acronyms to run backward, Winnie tells me under her breath. “It’s really a lovely view from the palais,” Cindy chirps, pacing the aisle of the Starlifter military plane. “If you look straight down the avenue, you can see the Arc de Triomphe.”

  Which is funny, because I doubt she’s going to let us see so much as a glimpse of the Parisian skyline.

  Marylou demonstrates a new technique for us, as well—if we all chain into her remote viewing, we can communicate with each other. “Like a Handie-Talkie,” she says. Useful when we’re covering a large building, like the palais, but I don’t like the idea of exposing my thoughts to the whole team—for my sake, if there’s a mole, or for theirs. I try not to imagine what could happen if I hurt all my teammates the way I hurt Donna that day.

  We pore over building plans on the flight until we’re all exhausted, blueprint edges curling under our fingers with each jolt and shudder of the plane. The recycled air tastes like metal and smells like antifreeze; I can’t fall asleep while I breathe it in, imagining it spreading its chemical tendrils like roots into my lungs. Valya tosses and turns in his seat beside me, crackling with a nightmare from his past, questions pressing against his teeth but never quite escaping.

  I glance toward Papa’s chair; he’s snoring loudly, and his arms and legs are flung so wide that even merry Al Sterling looks pained, huddled against the far side of his seat. Marylou’s head keeps lolling against me on my other side, until she wakes herself up with a snort. Donna is sleeping with perfect posture, of course, and not a sound or a single glimmer of drool on her chin. Only Cindy is as sleepless as me. Our eyes meet for a fleeting second, then she turns back to her deck of cards.

  As soon as we touch down, we cross the tarmac for one blindingly sunny second before cramming into the back of a windowless bullet-proof van for an hour-long, halting and stuttering journey through the streets of Paris, which are lovely, we’re told.

  “Let’s run through our assignments one more time.” Cindy rubs her hands together, surveying our assembled crew inside the van, as we all groan. “Andrei and Al?”r />
  “Smoking outside near the van. We’ll make sure we’re in range for me to start a blaze and for Andrei to push back against intruders’ thoughts, if they make it to the front door,” Al says in a sing-song voice.

  “Judd? Valentin?”

  “Patrolling all the entrances to the assembly hall,” they say in unison. “And starting a fire if I need to,” Judd adds. “Which should be always.”

  “But it isn’t. Donna?” Cindy asks.

  She puffs up her chest. “Working the crowd before the first session. Talking to everyone, seeing who’s nervous, what’s on their minds.” She glances at me. “Though I don’t need any more of your thoughts.”

  “You’ll be just fine, won’t you, Yulia?” Cindy asks, in the bladed tone of a weary mother willing it to be true. “What else will you be working on?”

  “You and I will be patrolling the perimeter. Looking for clues in the past and the future,” I say.

  Winnie jumps in before Cindy can talk again. “And I’ll be right here with Tony, monitoring the shortwave for suspicious chatter.”

  “You speak French, too?” Papa asks. She nods, cheeks darkening. “Goodness! The sergeant’s talents know no bounds!”

  Cindy clears her throat. “Excellent work, all of you. Now, we absolutely must protect our NATO delegates. These scrubbers have been targeting them steadily over the past few months, and it’s a safe bet that’s their goal here, too. But our primary objective is to capture one of these scrubbers—alive, please—” She narrows her eyes in Papa’s and Al’s direction. “For questioning.”

  “But if you’ve got to kill them,” Winnie counters, “I wouldn’t feel too bad about it.”

  Cindy’s fingers flutter against her pearl necklace. Somehow, she looks as fresh and polished as when we took off, while I’m feeling overripe. Even Donna’s ponytail is frayed around the edges. We look less like a team and more like a line-up.