I manage to jerk my chin in a nod. “A segment of time had been blanked out. Just like you did with my mother’s necklace.”
Anger flashes across his face, lightning striking and then gone. “You deduced all this from a few seconds of missing memories?”
“N—no. There were thoughts, too, with the same sound to them. The sound that you make…” I’m cringing, inward and out. But I would be anyway. Just being near him is enough for that.
He leans toward me, breath heavy with cabbage stew. “But you did not see this person. This … traitor.” I shake my head, sinking back into the chair. “But I am not convinced of this.”
Rostov’s noise blasts through me like warring radio frequencies. “Anton, you promised—” Kruzenko says, but her voice fizzles out. I can’t help it—the blond woman leaps out of my thoughts, graceful as a deer leaping from the birch trees, and I can’t force her back in. Brass blaring, strings sawing back and forth, Yevtushenko’s words ringing across the forest. Oh, my Russian people; those with unclean hands have made a joke of your purity.
I have to protect her. She stares at me with frightened fawn eyes and her panicked words knit themselves into the music. I can’t tug them free without the whole symphony crashing down around me. She’s stolen documents, she’s trying to escape. She made a bargain with the Americans and they sent her to find us, the psychic team. Her darkest secret ossifies, it is clay and bone, it’s there for Rostov to see, jutting from my brain, waiting for the harvest.
“There she is.” Rostov isn’t angry. He doesn’t even sound surprised. “I thought she might be in there somewhere.”
I’m trying to cram her back into a drawer much too small. I won’t let them use me this way. I try to stand, but my legs are numb. Major Kruzenko holds me down as bile singes my throat.
“You should be happy. You are helping the State. And you are paying your debt.” Rostov reaches for my chin, and his touch is glass shattering inside my brain. Deeper, deeper—an icepick lobotomy, every note of my musical shield splitting apart like atoms. He reaches right through the wall of Shostakovich and wrests the traitor out of me. Notes, fragments of words, images crash down on him. There’s nothing I can do to stop it. He’s brushed aside my only trick like sweeping snow from the windowsill.
I slump back into the chair, my thoughts tender and bruised where something’s been pried out of them. My heart pounds like I’ve been running for hours through a blizzard.
Kruzenko clears her throat. “Well? Is she part of the Veter team? We’ll have a sketch made. Compare it to the Veter scientists’ records.”
Rostov stares through me. Veins dance on his forehead; his Adam’s apple strains against the collar of his shirt. “I’m more interested in her handler. Another ‘scrubber.’ That fraying around her thoughts…”
“And this other scrubber is hunting us?” Kruzenko asks.
I manage a weak nod. A look passes between Kruzenko and Rostov: a hasty widening of the eyes, quickly stopped. “I will deal with this scrubber myself,” Rostov says.
Kruzenko rocks on her sensibly low heels. “Shall we send a team for the traitor woman once she’s identified?”
“No, not yet. If these American spies think they are hunting us, then let her play bait a little longer.” He stands, hands swinging to his sides. They’re too long, even on his tall frame—his fingertips nearly reach his knees. He’s too wiry, too intense; he’s a man boiled away to his base part, that awful, powerful brain. A scrubber. The word itself rubs me raw. “Surely Khruschev himself cannot ignore so blatant an American violation of our truce as this. And if he does…” Rostov looks back at me, oozing a cyanide-sweet smile. “Well done, Yulia Andreevna.”
Major Kruzenko pats me on the shoulder. “You mustn’t hide things from us. This is how we maintain order and keep you safe from our enemies.” But she’s breathing too sharply; when she touches me, I sense her unease as well.
Rostov’s spindly fingers pull something from his pocket—Mama’s necklace. My throat clamps shut as he hands it to me. “Funny that you should mention this,” he says, curving a serrated smile. “I thought you might like to have it.”
My fist clenches around the medallion. Of course it’s been wiped clean. It feels less like a reward, coming from him, and more like a warning.
CHAPTER 13
I MAKE MY WAY OUT of that room somehow—I don’t remember what combination lock of pleasantries get me away from them. Yevtushenko and Shostakovich rage in my head, my own shield scolding me for my failure. I am but one soundless scream above the thousand thousand buried here.
I charge for the staircase, nearly plowing headfirst into Sergei. “Watch it!” he cries, catching me by the shoulders in his solid grasp. “What’s the matter with you?”