“I know you’re only going along with this for your family,” he says. “But it’s what’s best for you, too. You have to be safer here than you were on the run.”
He’s right, and that’s without knowing about the American scrubber out there. I’m safe from starvation, strange men, and the hungering cold. But like most tough trades, the cost is far too steep. “I worry about my brother,” I say. “He didn’t get all the care he needed when we were fugitives, but he had my mother and me. His mental difficulties…” Gooseflesh rises on my arms. I can’t bear the thought of Rostov dealing with him, ripping out his thoughts like he just did mine.
“What’s he like?” Sergei asks, still half grinning. It thaws away some of my fear.
“Zhenya’s brilliant. I’ve seen him write down the score for an entire symphony after listening to it once. It’s only that he’s … he’s not quite engaged with the world around him. He lives in his own world inside his head, and it’s very tough to pull him back into ours.” I shake my head. “My parents were working with him at their old lab, researching his disorder or whatever it may be. He was better then,” I admit.
“You must be good at coaxing him out, though. You can hear his thoughts, see his world…”
“I didn’t have enough control over it at the time, and everything about his thoughts was so foreign, you know? Like another language.”
Sergei pulls his knees up on the couch. “Sure, but foreign languages can be learned. I speak a little German … Eine kleine Englisch, too—I’m learning it for our work.” His German is like chewing stale bread. “Listening to the Beatles helped me.”
I stare at him blankly. “Beetles?”
“You’re joking, right? Everyone knows who the Beatles are, even in Russia.” He shakes his head, sending a spray of blond hair across his forehead. “This wicked British rock band. Valentin’s got their record if you want to listen. All the lyrics are simple, but so clever.”
“How did Valentin get their record? Isn’t Kruzenko worried it’ll brainwash him into a British sleeper agent or something?”
“Rostov gave it to him for good behavior. Some project they’re working on.” He shifts abruptly on the couch, his face tightening though he’s still grinning. I’d taken his charming smile for a weapon, but I’m starting to think he uses it as a shield instead.
“Listen … When I first saw Rostov … Through the training exercise we did.” I swallow, hard. The Russian thing to do would be to cling to every crumb of knowledge I’ve got, but information is currency, and Sergei seems like a good source. If he can lead me to the knowledge I need … “He was thinking about making our minds ‘belong’ to him.”
Sergei shrugs, like this is nothing new. “He resents what the psychic program has become. Most of the spies from the Great Patriotic War are gone. He doesn’t think we’ll live up to their glory days. Stopping the Germans, saving thousands of lives. Now we pick at the bones for tiny victories here and there. I suppose he wants to make us in his own image, like the old guard.”
“Hunting down spies and making dissidents vanish are only ‘tiny’ victories?” I ask.
“Compared to singlehandedly saving an entire city by guiding food supply trucks into Leningrad during the siege? Of course.” Sergei drops his voice. “He’s not a fan of Khruschev—says we appease the Americans too much now.”
My eyebrows raise. “You mean he doesn’t agree with the Party line? That sounds dangerous.”
“It’s not that he disagrees; he takes a more extreme approach. He’s too impatient for cold wars. Thinks we should confront the Americans now, get it over with.” Sergei leans back. “He wants the Party to do more to police our own, too. You know the old-guard types—they long for the glory days under Uncle Stalin, when people did as they were told, and didn’t complain about ‘freedom’ because they had better things to worry about, like gangrene and Nazis.”
Stalin, who—if whispered rumors are to be believed—sent more of his own people to die than Hitler ever did. Yes, a perfect model for reclaiming the Soviet Union.
“I don’t see why he needs us at all,” I say. “He’s a much stronger psychic than any of us.”
“Ah, but you’re wrong. He’s good at what he does—ripping people’s brains open—but it only goes so far. He can’t read the past like you or see the future like Larissa. And he can’t spy on Johnny Kennedy getting a little kiss-kiss bang-bang in the White House, eh, if you know what I mean?” He elbows me in the ribs.
“You can remotely view inside the White House?” I say, dubious.
That half grin. “All right, so not yet. I’m working on it, but I have a harder time with places I’ve never been. Anyway, my point is, Rostov is only one man, and the more power he gets, the more people working for him, the more he wants. You know what they say about the security services—we have a third of the country keeping an eye on the other two-thirds.”