“This way.” We weave back in the direction of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Its pastel onion domes are flaking, washed out from the northern sun’s angled stare. Scaffolding clothes the church’s lower portion, though no workers climb around on the rig. It’s like a censor blacking out a past we’re not supposed to see.
We move alongside the Universal Store’s fa?ade, each column shedding a fine powder of the woman’s voice. I see her in fragments, like the shattered tiles in a mosaic. Blond hair, ghostly eyes. She moves like a marionette, too frail to direct herself, guided instead by her obsessive chant.
Hypothesis: There is more to our hunt for scientist traitors than Rostov has said.
Experiment: I must find this woman. If not for Rostov, then for myself.
Sergei trudges beside me, hands buried deep in his coat pockets. “I just thought you were coming around,” he says. Bozhe moi, is he still hung up on this? “It’s not a bad life we have. And it’ll get even better once we’re full members of the KGB.”
“Are you joking? We’re prisoners. How is that not a bad life?”
“You would rather live in a concrete apartment cell like these people?” He waves his hand around the square. “We’re prisoners because they can’t trust us yet. It won’t always be that way.”
I nestle into the flowery eaves of the Universal Store’s entrance and press my fingertips into the carved stone grooves. She was headed this way—I have to find her again. Memories tumble upon memories, amplifying like waves, coiling up like genetic code. Airplanes soaring overhead as boots strike the cobblestones in unison—the Red Army on display. An American pilot dragged from his plane and paraded across Red Square. Women sobbing as they bid their soldiers farewell. The crowds roil in the sea of changing fashions, changing leaders, changing governments. Drab worker’s garb and frothy silk gowns and fur coats. Stalin screaming at a podium; Lenin pacing the stage with predatory grace. The last Romanov emperor, stiff-backed and trembling. It’s harder and harder to part the smoke. The woman has to be buried in here, somewhere—
“Yulia!” Sergei grips my shoulders, shaking me from the past. “What’s wrong with you?”
My hand’s twitching to some phantom rhythm. Decades and decades pump through my veins. But something’s wrong—they’re rattling through me, tinged in shrill, ear-piercing noise. It reminds me of the sonic churn around Rostov. I try to focus on Sergei, but he appears only in stuttering images. The square shifts around me.
“I’ll be fine.” I swallow, my throat parched. “I lost her trail. She has to be nearby…”
Sergei shakes his head. “You’re pushing yourself too hard. Take it easy, all right? There’s no hurry.”
Easy for him to say. If I don’t find her, then I won’t get to see Mama and Zhenya, and then—and then …
Her image flutters over my fingers, slipping up my coat sleeve like winter chill. She plays a game of her own. She lugs the bag behind her, a black market barter for her freedom. There she was, just minutes ago, along the concrete risers behind Vladimir Lenin’s tomb.
“It should be here.” I sink onto the bench, palms grinding into the concrete. “She dropped the briefcase here.” I see her leaving it behind, but immediately after is the electrified fence of a missing memory. Rostov? It couldn’t be. Why would he block me from finding the traitor?
Sergei sits down beside me. “It’s all right. You can describe her for Rostov. He’ll understand.” He claps me on the shoulder, like I’m his little sister, like I’m keeping him from whatever he’d rather be doing—sleeping, or practicing at the rink.
“Finished?” Pavel asks.
I nod, swallowing down my rising frustration. I let them guide me through the crowd once more. The line of—mourners? pilgrims? thrill-seekers?—winds around Lenin’s ziggurat. I wonder what I might see if I touched that waxy face. Is a man like Rostov, calling for war, just what Lenin had in mind for the future of his great communist experiment?
Sergei frowns. “Do you hear that?”
As soon as he says it, a wave of static crushes me, sending the world spinning. “Rostov,” I say. The noise needles at my brain.
Sergei’s curled over, wincing. “No. This is … different. Stronger.” He exchanges a look with Pavel. “We need to leave. Now.”
Pavel moves behind us to usher us along. The woman’s thoughts lash out again, clawing at my skin as I push through the crowd. They resemble Kruzenko’s after she’s been around Rostov—that crackling live wire. She can’t be far from us.
They aren’t coming. Oh, God, it didn’t work. How dare he use me as bait? Where are they? He swore they’d come!
I scan the crowd, but her frenzied thoughts force everything through a shattered-glass view. I can’t focus; I can barely see through the black spots darting across my eyes. A hand shoots out. Snatches me by the wrist.
It’s one of them. Bozhe moi, I’ve found them. Come quickly, she’s here—