Skandal Page 17

  Donna’s not the real threat right now. My mind is mine alone. I can’t be a weapon for any faceless emotion. My mind is mine alone. Or any person.

  If only I could be sure that were true.

  Al Sterling pokes his head into our den and slaps his hand against the wall. “Frank wants everyone in the break room.”

  I follow Donna and Marylou with leaden feet. This time, the whispers swirling around me are no hallucination. The entire PsyOps team—my team, I think feebly—is gathered around the cigarette machine, the coffeepot, the curved Frigidaire. And at their heart looms Frank Tuttelbaum, his bloodshot eyes fixed right on me.

  “It has come to my attention,” Frank says, his gruff tone quelling the whispers, “that the powers that be did not vet our Russian ‘friends’ here as thoroughly as they should have.”

  I glance at Papa, but he’s engrossed in chewing on a hangnail, not even glancing Frank’s way. Valentin’s gaze is fixed firmly on his shoes.

  “I’ve had concerns for a while now that someone within the PsyOps team was passing information to the Reds, but after your spectacular bungling of the Paris operation, there’s little room for doubt. Thank God we’ve got a diligent, competent psychic on this team, who overheard the thoughts of one of you traitors.”

  My jaw hangs as I look toward Donna, whose cheeks burn red over a nervous smile. I was barely conscious when she overheard me, and certainly not capable of rational thought. “Sir, if I might explain…” I glance around for Winnie, but she’s nowhere to be found. My throat spasms shut. I need Winnie to explain for me. How can I make him understand?

  “Explain?” Frank wheezes with laughter. “What’s there to explain? Do you deny your willingness to see your mother rescued?”

  “But what if she’s on our side?” I ask, but the words have all the weight of smoke.

  Frank’s smile swells like a tumor. “I’m sure. And that’s why she’s creating this army of scrubbers, right at General Rostov’s disposal.”

  What can I say? I look to Papa, not really expecting him to speak in Mama’s defense—not anymore—but hoping he might look at least somewhat incensed. But he’s nothing. He’s as still and emotionless as the formaldehyde-soaked Lenin in his tomb.

  “Now, Andrei, you and I go way back, and I’d like to think we understand each other. But we’re on the brink of war with North Vietnam, and we don’t need meddling from more Commies at home.”

  Cindy clears her throat. “We’re still a long way off from declaring war on the Viet Cong, sir. In fact, they just announced a new round of eight-party talks next week. The Pathway for Peace summit—”

  “Are you looking to get reassigned, too, Conrad?” Frank asks. His upper lip curls back. “I hear the boys in the bayou have been missing you something fierce.”

  Cindy’s face blanches and her eyes bulge as she seizes her pearls as though they were trying to strangle her.

  “As much as my gut tells me to throw the three of you Russkies in jail, the man upstairs would rather investigate such charges fully before we act, which would only bog down our urgent work needlessly with all that gobbledygook. So I’m pulling you three off the case until we can spare the time for a formal investigation.”

  Off the case.

  Off the trail that leads straight back to Mama.

  Off the task of hunting for a mole.

  Frank bares his teeth in a rough grin. “I’m sure you will cooperate fully, and allow us to do what needs to be done.”

  I look back to Papa. If there was ever a time for him to use his powers, it would be now. I think I could forgive him for that. But he turns without a word and leaves the break room.

  “This has to be some misunderstanding, right?” Judd asks. “I mean, me and Val were making great progress tracking down potential targets, and we—”

  “Put a sock in it, Opie, before I slap you back to Mayberry.” Frank wags a thick finger at Judd. “That’s the thing about these Reds—they’ll win you over, but they’ve always got a trick up their sleeve.”

  “Mister Tuttelbaum,” Valya says. “Frank. I assure you, our desire to stop Rostov is just as strong as yours. Perhaps more so.”

  “Then you’ll have nothing to fear from the investigators. Until then, you’re benched, got it? You report directly to me and no one else. And I do not want to hear any complaints unless you want a free ride on the next U2 to cross Soviet airspace. Do we understand each other?”

  “Perfectly,” I say through clenched teeth, and follow Valya from the room.

  CHAPTER 18

  IN MY DREAMS, Mama is walking me to school one morning; at age nine, I am still wearing the blue jumper and white blouse that all schoolgirls wear, and my hair has been braided and topped with a white puffy barrette. As we shuffle down the sidewalk, my new loafers scratch and schick against the concrete covered in salt poured out in anticipation of the winter’s first snow.

  Mama’s hand is tight around mine; I can feel her agitation building without even looking at her. It itches against my skin like a spreading rash.

  “Why do you keep staring at the sidewalk?” She yanks my hand, sending my head snapping up. “Do you think it’s going to bite you if you don’t keep your eye on it?”

  I bend my head down with force now and scrunch my face into a scowl. “Everyone else walks like that.”

  “Do you know why they do that?” She tilts my chin up, forcing me to see all the other pedestrians: bent-over babushkas with faded scarves tied tight around their hair, factory men with their coat collars turned up, women in padded parkas and ill-fitting slacks.

  “Sure,” I say. “Because it’s cold.”

  “The cold doesn’t matter. It could be the middle of July, and they’d be walking the same way. It’s because they’re scared.”

  I crinkle my nose. “When I’m scared, I pull the covers up over my head.”

  “What, when you’re in bed? What are you afraid of then?” Mama asks.

  “Monsters,” I say. I think back to the scary movie we’d watched at the Party kino, Aelita, Queen of Mars, where a Soviet cosmonaut had to free oppressed Martians from the bourgeois Martian elite. “Aliens. Capitalists.”

  “And have you ever met an alien or a capitalist?” Mama asks.

  I think for a minute before shaking my head vigorously, as if I’m trying to shake off even the idea of encountering such a ludicrous, mythical beast.

  “That’s what I thought. So what is there to be afraid of? Eh?” She tweaks my nose. “Nothing. It’s the things you miss when you are too busy being scared that should have you worried.”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “Good question. You’ll never know the answer unless you start paying attention. Do like I do, little devochka.” She glances skyward, and my gaze follows, as the early morning sun dances across the golden cupolas of a shuttered church. “Don’t forget to look up.”

  CHAPTER 19

  ON OUR FIRST DAY barred from the Rostov case, Valya and I draw up a chart of every one of the team members and write up arguments for and against each of them being the mole. Revenge tops my list for Donna, in thick, steady letters, but she’s already exacted that; Winnie’s list grows lengthy, with Ideology claiming the lead. I already know she volunteers her time with civil rights groups because I overheard her and Cindy arguing about it. Everyone glances over the shoulder for the ghosts of the McCarthy hearings, when any deviation from the norm got you labeled a communist, an agitator, a threat, Winnie once explained to me. But is dissatisfaction with the current situation enough to drive her to spy for the Russians?

  Once we exhaust all possibilities with no clear leader for the mole, Valya goes to practice for the open mic contest while I read through Professor Stokowski’s research notes. I felt like we were on the verge of a breakthrough before the Paris trip, identifying the mechanisms in which viruses target specific genes. The dense mathematics of nucleotide pairing and biological reactions distracts me, at least for a while.

  �
�Why don’t you kids play outside?” Papa suggests, when he comes down for lunch. “I bet some sunshine will do you good.”

  But it’s not sunshine I need—it’s answers. I need to find out what Rostov is trying to accomplish with his scrubbers and who he’s sending them after next. How does attacking NATO delegates bring him closer to war? If it’s assassination he’s after, there has to be a simpler way—one that doesn’t involve designing his own army of scrubbers. Why the extra effort? I puzzle over it, each permutation in my mind tracking Valya’s musical shift in scales, in key, in mood. Heinrich knew exactly who I was. Did Rostov want Heinrich to draw us away? If so, to what end? What if we’d managed to catch Heinrich? Who’s coming for Senator Saxton next?

  Al Sterling drops by to argue with Papa in hushed, bristly tones for a few minutes, then offers to drives me back to Doctor Stokowski’s lab for the afternoon. He must have just cleaned his car upholstery, because the whole car ride, my brain feels foggy as if from chemical fumes and I’m on the verge of nausea. Al’s usual stream of chatter is absent; I hope he hasn’t bought into Frank’s nonsense about us being the moles. He pulls up in front of the biology complex and wipes a thick sheen of sweat from his forehead.

  “Well,” he says.

  I wait a few moments for him to continue, but he says nothing, so I let myself out of the car and watch him tear away.

  As soon as I’m inside the lab, I fire up the electron microscope and pull my samples from storage. C T G A A T T G C. Strings of proteins march across my vision as I whittle down the genetic markers on my samples, hunting for the snippet of code that makes us what we are. Peptides and nucleotides. A simple string of code, coiled up tight. Add some carbon and some endless patience, and you’ll have yourself a living, breathing watery meatbag that likes to think it’s intelligent. Tweak it a bit more and it can read your mind, as well. But what happens if you tweak those tweaks? How far can you push it before it’s too unstable, and its own mind devours itself, blood leaking out of its ears and nose?

  Now that I have a better grasp of what markers I’m looking for, I can easily pick out the psychic samples from the rest. Donna’s compared to Frank’s, mine compared to Winnie’s … One set baffles me for a moment, though—the psychic markers start out suppressed and stretched, but as I tinker around with some other projects, they slowly reconstitute themselves. I check the sample label. Marylou.

  So rather than amplify her psychic abilities, the LSD and whatever other drugs comprise the MK INFRA cocktail actually impede her psychic ability, loosening the genes themselves. She’s just so high she thinks it’s making her work better. I try drops of the acid on a few other samples, with the same result.

  “Ready to get to work on our research?” Doctor Stokowski joins me, as soon as he’s done grading papers. I nod and tidy up my workspace, but my eyes keep tracking to the measurements I recorded. How could the CIA’s scientists not realize the INFRA project was making them weaker instead of stronger?

  “Look, Yul, I found a fun new virus for us to toy with!” Professor Stokowski deposits a tray of vials in front of me.

  I lose myself in splicing code for a few hours, but the nagging questions over the ineffective drug never fully melt away.

  *

  We’ve been back from Paris from almost a week and I’m suffocating in my own skin. The silence from Langley across the Potomac River aches like a tooth. After almost a week of research with Doctor Stokowski and overanalysis with Valentin and a number of sleepless nights as Valya’s nightmares persist, I’m starving for hints of how Mama’s doing, what horrible developments Rostov has made now. How can I stare up at the same sky as them and not hear the clang of battle? How can I not feel the seismic shift of Rostov’s schemes?

  Finally, one afternoon, Winnie shows up at Papa’s townhouse. “I’m sick of work,” she tells me. “Let’s take a trip.”

  Winnie is to the movie theater what an inquisitor is to a dungeon full of torture devices. My job is to translate the entire movie to Winnie, from English to Russian. Word for word. “You’ll like this one,” she says, as we flip down the sticky seats. “Some of it’s already in Russian. So you can translate that to English for me, instead.”

  I curse in Russian, an elaborate and obscure enough curse that hopefully even she can’t decipher it.

  The next ninety minutes feature some of the most jaw-droppingly bewildering cinema I’ve ever seen. The weird little man from The Pink Panther, which Valentin and I saw on our own recently, is playing almost half the roles in the film—shapeshifting seamlessly from a meek American president to a diabolical war room adviser with a fascistic salute and deranged grin. Doctor Strangelove, they call him.

  I am not entirely sure what the purpose of the film is, aside from showing men drinking, smoking, flirting with women, and dropping absurdly huge bombs from airplanes. The Americans and Soviets both are shown as clueless political leaders far more interested in watching things explode than brokering any sort of peace.

  “It’s satire,” Winnie says, after I stumble through one of the translations with an incredulous look on my face. “They’re making fun of our leaders for being hungry for war.”

  “You understand why this is a strange concept to me. This ‘making fun of our leaders’ business.” I grin.

  As the chubby cowboy rides his colossal bomb onto the Siberian plains, something needles at the back of my brain. I twist in my seat, scanning the rows behind us, but we’re the only people in the theater that I can see. The projector dances across my hand as I shield my eyes for a better look. It felt like a scrubber, slipping past us, like a phantom cobweb clinging to my skin. I look back at Winnie, but she was laughing at the cowboy. Well, she couldn’t have felt it, anyway. People like her can’t feel a scrubber until it’s far too late.

  “I’m sorry. I need to visit the restroom,” I tell her, and slip out of the row.

  The movie theater, tucked away in a lower level of Georgetown down by the canals, is dark and grimy on the brightest of days. I sniff out the scrubber’s trail, fainter than a fine perfume. My heart thuds rapid fire high in my throat. Could this be the next scrubber in the chain?

  I round the corner and plow into Papa’s chest.

  “Yulia! There you are. Al and I wanted to join you and Winnie for the show.”

  “Don’t bother. The movie makes no sense.”

  “You see? Waste of time.” Al punches Papa in the arm. “I shouldn’t be here anyway. Frank’ll have my hide if he knows I’m talking to you.”

  “Now, now, don’t run away just yet. We can catch Doris Day next door.”

  I start to catch my breath as they stroll past. The strange sensation I felt wasn’t the new scrubber. It must have been Papa, conning his friend into talking to him. Or conning whoever Papa felt like conning at the moment.

  But the itch at the back of my mind doesn’t abate when I head back into the theater.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE NIGHT AIR on U Street quivers like an autumn leaf, eager to take that leap from its tree. U Street is the leftover stone from carving out Georgetown: it is dark skin and harsh neon and thick metal bars on the windows, it is cinder-block churches and hookah dens and sunken eyes that follow you as you pass their stoops. Jazz music and Motown tunes pour from every doorway like spilled beer. Papa’s house is in DC, but this, this, Winnie tells us, is the true city of Washington. Chocolate City, they call it. The workhorse heart pumping behind the fancy filigree veins of the National Mall and all the other tourist traps.

  I can’t pretend to know what Winnie feels, but I imagine this might be a small taste. To be the odd one out, the skin tone that people point at as you pass and grab their children by the collars to keep them from running into you. I may be an exotic species, Homo sovieticus, around other whites, but among them I can blend into the background, as long as I don’t make a noise. Winnie with her education and military training has more in common with Frank Tuttelbaum than I do, but she’s the one left curling her
fingers around the chain link fence as she watches us from outside.

  Tonight, though, Winnie is lit from inside by a three-wick candle. She’s torn free of her Air Force uniform shell and has emerged in a polka-dotted dress that swirls around her curved slender calves. The whole cab ride here, she and Valentin batted around various jazz composer names and terminology like kittens playing with yarn.

  “Miles Davis—” Winnie started, then choked on a grin that seemed to bloom out of her like a flower.

  Valentin leaned in closer. “‘Kind of Blue’—”

  “—Those two notes!”

  He and Papa are both in what Winnie called their beatnik camouflage: black turtlenecks and tight brown corduroy slacks. Winnie dolled me up in a silky, slinky green dress and twisted my dark hair high atop my head in something called a “beehive” before painting my lips ruby red. “That Val of yours is going to catch the eye of every woman in the place,” she told me as she spritzed us both with perfume. “Might as well show ’em up front that they don’t stand a chance.”

  But I’m not worried about beatnik girls with their clove cigarettes and their Liz Taylor Egyptian eyes stalking Valentin. I’m worried about the trail to Mama that grows colder every day, the information Valentin and I are working from growing older and less useful. Even though we aren’t on the case, I keep imagining her scrubbers’ psychic noise creeping up on me like an itch at the back of my throat. It’s nothing, it’s nothing. My mind is mine alone. Yet every twitch of my psychic antenna sets my head swiveling.

  But tonight, I want to relax. Tonight is for my Valya, and our new, exciting life in America, the good shaken and served over ice with the bad.

  We reach the end of the block, and Winnie uses nothing but a stern glare to push past a cluster of fedoraed men blocking the sidewalk. Our destination rises from the concrete like a brick and neon reliquary. “Bohemian Caverns” reads the looping neon sign, meandering around the building’s sides beneath a ribbon of signage painted to look like piano keys. A golden saxophone sign hangs off the building’s corner like a beacon.