Summers—they think of summers in the wheat fields, when they were young girls kissing their beaux, and praying before gilded icons of the Romanov emperors and the Holy Mother. They don’t like to think of how things are now, fifty years later, but they must sometimes; one worries about whether her grandson’s boots will last him for the winter before he outgrows them, and prays (very quietly, without a bowed head or folded hands) his ration comes up in time.
The men are few. They are the ones left behind by the Great Patriotic War, whether by cowardice, fate, or dumb luck. They don discolored furry hats, and are much heavier with their worries. They try to store those thoughts in vodka, pickling and preserving them like Lenin, but I touch their arms—I know what they fear. Marching boots on the stairwell in the middle of the night. Black vans with no headlights. Jail cells. Wetting themselves. And the endless cold, white cold of Siberian prisons, if they’re lucky enough to survive.
“Anything?” Sergei asks, watching me with a playful grin. I shake my head and plunge ahead of him.
I hold my hands at my sides, fingers splayed, trying to touch everyone who passes me. I’m like a gypsy thief, but instead of pickpocketing, I’m snatching up thoughts. Hopes and loves and hates and fears and sorrows and blessings and curses and prayers—it’s churning, it’s thrilling, it’s taking over me.
But there are only tiny acts of defiance around me: black market traders, ration swappers, resentment of the whole Soviet system shuttered away. Nothing as drastic as what the Veter team member intends.
Pavel shoves through the crowd and snatches me by the arm. He doesn’t say anything, but I hear him thinking; he believes I’m trying to run. “I’m here,” I say, yanking my arm free—though I don’t believe I could if he didn’t let me—and march determinedly through the crowd.
Sergei jogs up to me. “Trying to lose me?”
“Not just yet,” I say. “You haven’t told me what happened on The Promise last night while I was practicing with Kruzenko.”
He laughs, big and brassy. “Ahh, so that’s why you put up with me. Well, Grigorii was taking the night train out of Leningrad, right? Only Natasha woke up and realized he was gone…”
Pavel hovers behind us as we push toward the northern end of Red Square, watched over by the red crenellated historical museum. I’m still coming up empty-handed; no spies leap out of the crackle and hum of workers around us. But if I can’t bring back a prize for the KGB, then at least I can conduct an exercise of my own.
Hypothesis: Our guards are not psychics themselves.
Experiment: I let down my Shostakovich shield as Sergei chatters on. I feel exposed without it. Kruzenko was right; it really does become a basic brain function. No matter. I steer toward the pink-and-green confection of a church at the northeast corner of the square. I concentrate all my thoughts on an imaginary tunnel leading out of there, on ditching them in the crypts and slamming the gate closed between us.
Result: Sergei’s narrative dissipates in a puff of his breath and he tilts his head. “Yulia, what are…” I hold up one finger to silence him and peer over my shoulder toward Pavel. He’s close on our heels, but nothing in his granite face indicates suspicion—more than normal, anyway. I turn back from the church as Shostakovich rushes up around me.
Conclusion: Further testing required without Sergei second-guessing me.
“I thought you were through with that,” Sergei mutters, turned away from Pavel. He speaks down toward his chest so only I can hear.
I shake my head. I don’t owe him an explanation, but I don’t like the dull glaze to his eyes. Like I’ve betrayed him somehow. “It isn’t what you think.”
My fingertips trail the ridge of a concrete barrier. If I were selling secrets to Russia’s enemies, how would I feel? What would I be thinking? Fear, certainly. But determination, as well. Hope—for I would feel there was some good to be gained by my act, or why go to the trouble? Why else do traitors risk their lives, their minds?
I stop so suddenly that two old ladies crash into me and shuffle off, muttering curses that only God is meant to hear. Then a woman’s voice prickles at me, looping and looping on itself in a hysterical chant.
I have to find them. Why can’t I find them? He said they’d come for me!
I press deeper into the echoing memory and see a woman, lugging a leather case at her side. I can’t focus on her face—it shudders and warps, like there’s something buzzing under the surface—but she has to be who we’re searching for. I can’t explain the certainty that settles like a stone in my gut, but I know it’s her. Who is she looking for? The spies she’s selling secrets to? Something in her frantic thoughts hints that there’s more to the exchange.