The woman stands before me, jumbled thoughts crackling around her. Blond curls spill out of her pale blue scarf and chalky lines cut through her too-young face. She stares at me with eyes guilty, haunted, dark.
Her mouth works silently. Wait—she thinks, grip tightening on my wrist. The Americans are hunting you, little girl. Stay right here. It’s you they want. You can set me free—
Sergei steps between the woman and me. “Is there a problem here, comrade?”
Come with me! She screams at me, static sparking over her words. Don’t you get it, little girl? This isn’t a game!
But Sergei breaks her grip, throwing a nasty glare over his shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asks me, rubbing my wrist where her nails left little crescents of red. “Where’s that awful noise coming from?”
Hunting us. Her American allies are hunting us. The words stamp into my skull. “I—No. She’s not—” But I don’t know what to say. I want to turn her in to Rostov to earn a visit with Mama. But if there’s a man like Rostov controlling her … The only thing that scares me more than Rostov might just be a man like Rostov who isn’t on our side.
A dreadful new hypothesis comes to me: Rostov and Valentin aren’t the only ones who can wipe things clean.
CHAPTER 12
“MASHA, HAVE YOU SEEN my gray sweater?”
I tear through my duffle bag of laundry once more, then dig into the pile at my feet. My wardrobe is only what the KGB has provided for me—five sweaters, three wool skirts, a pair of trousers, and cream blouses to wear underneath. But now there are only four sweaters. A small problem, I know. But the ration rat in me is panicking, parceling out future clothing options, budgeting survival under new constraints. The gray one was the warmest—a necessity for fleeing into the face of oncoming winter.
I try to keep the hysteria building in my lungs from rising up and choking me. It’s too soon to run, but after what I saw yesterday in Red Square … I have to be ready. The Americans offered that woman a trade—the Veter 1 design plans in exchange for a way out. A way out. They can be reasoned with. Bartered with—just like my black market games.
Masha shrugs, flipping through an old issue of Pravda. “Maybe someone mistook it for a dishrag.”
I roll my eyes. “Larissa? How about you?”
“It happens,” is all Larissa says. She keeps doodling in her notebook.
Wonderful. I toss one last look at Masha and scan her bunk for potential hiding places. I’m sure she’s taken it, but if I dig through her belongings, she’ll go crying to Kruzenko. There are worse things she could have taken from my stash. Military rations I won from Sergei in a card game. A heavy blanket swiped from the linen closet. I scoop my laundry into my arms and storm toward the basement to use the washbasin and drying racks.
*
“Yulia Andreevna. Just the young lady I was hoping to see.”
Major Kruzenko blocks the rickety basement stairs as I climb them after leaving my laundry to dry. Light spills around her so she is only a dark form. I stop a few steps beneath her, arms folded across my chest.
“Colonel Rostov would like to speak with you. We need to follow up on yesterday’s Red Square mission.”
My blood cools, though I’ve improved my musical shield enough that she shouldn’t notice. “Sure.” I follow her to the study through its double doors. The guards stay outside, which somehow frightens me more. I hear Rostov’s awful churning sounds before he even turns to face me.
“Major Kruzenko’s care is agreeing with you, I see,” Rostov says. His polished boots click together at the heels, and he tucks his red-banded hat under one arm. “You are no longer a starved dog, hmm?”
“It’s more food than we need,” I say. Though I could use some extra padding for my escape. Winter’s already laid an icy base coat on the ground.
“Nonsense. Growing girls and boys … and we must feed the mind, too. It is our greatest treasure, isn’t it, comrade?”
Right now my mind is shredding apart from the sound and feel of him—his thoughts, his focus, his power—but I manage a pitiful nod and sit in the lumpy armchair he offers me. Kruzenko stands watch at my side.
“So.” Rostov sits opposite me, wispy fingers laced on his knee. “In your report, you state that you were trailing someone you believe belonged to the Veter engineering team, but you were not able to locate him, and when you reached the location where you believed he dropped the bag full of documents, it had already been removed.”
“That’s right,” I say, my ribs knitting together. I can’t breathe. Shostakovich’s music crashes around me, Yevtushenko’s voice rumbles; Rostov can’t possibly miss my panic right now.
“You said that the location of the documents had been wiped clean? That you believe the Americans have someone like Valentin and me. A ‘scrubber,’ as you called it.” He shares a tiny laugh with Kruzenko, like he’s flattered by the name.