“Rostov tried to take control of Khruschev and launch missiles,” I say. “You have to warn your American friends. He might be planning a coup.”
Papa releases me and holds me at arm’s length. “You’re sure of this?” He motions to a gaunt man in a fedora, who watches us from a safe distance. “Call Langley, Fort Meade. Find out what they know.” He sounds so confident in his English, like he’s been speaking it his whole life. He turns back to Valya and me, and slips into Russian. “As for you two … Let’s get you some medical attention.”
Two attendants rush forward to help Valya, while Papa braces me against his side. An ambulance waits for us down the rubble-free street—slick white metal, brand new and glistening. Papa’s smile is the same as ever, so boyish. It reminds me a little of Sergei, but I shake that thought away. He helps me onto a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, next to Valya, where a nurse is attaching him to an IV. Our hands fall over the stretchers’ sides and tangle up. I don’t ever want to let go.
“Rostov,” Valya mumbles. “They have to stop Rostov.” His eyes flutter shut, and he drifts off to medicated sleep.
A blue-suited man with full, healthy cheeks and a skinny black tie leans to Papa’s ear, though he keeps his eye on me while he does so. He’s the other team member—the one at Krampnitz who told me where to go. I offer him a feeble smile. He grins back at me, with a little too much sympathy. Papa nods and dismisses him with a flick of his fingers. The ambulance door latches shut.
“Our intel sources confirmed that the Party’s called an emergency meeting. They mean to ask Khruschev to step down.”
“Is that good or bad?” I ask.
“Less destabilizing than if he was assassinated. And certainly better than nuclear war. But depending who they put in charge…” Papa shakes his head. “Nothing we can do about it tonight. You’re free now—that’s the important part.”
“And Mama,” I say. Why didn’t he ask about her? The Papa I remember rushed to give her a kiss the moment he got home, before he so much as acknowledged Zhenya and me. I take a deep breath. “She’s restarted the program.”
Papa turns away from me so I can’t see his face. Compared to when he was working as a scrubber, his mind is calm, but I sense the turmoil shifting within him.
“We’ll deal with that later.” Papa sits back down and braces himself against the ambulance wall as we take a sharp corner. I reach for Papa’s knee. I love him, I will always love him. But I have to know. I want to understand.
“What did you do to them?” I whisper. “The other wildlings. And—and me.”
Papa laughs, though his eyes are hardened. “Erasing their knowledge of their powers, as best I can. I was only trying to help you, little dove. But I wasn’t as strong then. It only held for a short time. Now, it should last much longer. Perhaps not forever, but we’ll be rid of Rostov soon.”
“We will?” I ask.
Papa smoothes my blood-slicked hair. “Shh. Later. Rest now, while you can. We’re headed for the States.”
I sigh, as if the last weight has finally lifted from me—or maybe it’s the shot from whatever the nurse is now giving me. “You really can get us in?”
“Of course I can. I work for the CIA now. And if you wish it, you will, too.” Papa grins his sunbeam grin. “My brave Yulia.” It’s as if he never left my side. “Your powers and your life are yours now. You can use them however you like.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The need for secrecy is woven through so much of Russia’s history. Russians even invented the espionage concept of maskirovka, an elaborate masquerade in which nothing is ever what it seems. I loved the idea of injecting yet another layer of secrecy and paranoia into that history through mindreading. While the events of SEKRET are fictionalized, the circumstances are very real. Stalin’s ideological purges killed millions of Russians, and sentenced many more to hard labor in the Siberian gulags, a fate documented in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Despite Khruschev’s attempts to back down from Stalin’s rhetoric, the pall of forced compliance remained, amplified by fear of Western infiltration as Russia sought to win the Cold War.