Somewhere with the CIA handlers? Our boots squeak against the parquet wooden floors as we cross the parlor toward a closed door. I keep my fingers out to feel for more memories, but I find only cobwebs of thought: no substance, no weight, no context. Gruzova has spent very little time here, at least recently.
Wait, Valentin says, urgency fraying the musical barrier around the thought. He’s hunched over a coffee table, looking at, but not touching, a stack of folders. They’re all empty, but there’s a rectangle cut out of the top of each of them. Looks like someone tried to cut away whatever was written on it. There’s some red ink on the edge.
Act like you haven’t noticed anything, I tell him. I want to stay a step ahead of Masha and Sergei; as much as the American scrubber frightens me, I have a theory about his teammates that I want to test. I’ll look at them in a moment, and see what I can read.
My hand rests on the bedroom doorknob. Finally, I get something tangible. Natalya hesitates here each day before entering; she tucks back a lock of hair and presses her ear to the door. After a few moments, she opens the door slowly, staying pressed against it like it’s a shield, and listens for breathing—for the click of a cocking gun. Her American handlers have made her paranoid this way. But she doesn’t fear the KGB, awaiting her in silence. She’s resigned herself to that fate. It’s the one American—the one with the vanishing, noisy face—who scares her most of all.
I open the door.
It is as tornadic as the rest of the apartment. A bed so big it could fit my whole family sits, sheets rumpled, against the far wall in an eave framed by plaster molding of wheat and gold-flecked stars. The French reproduction dressers have been ransacked, and an ashtray holds a fully ashed cigarette corpse.
A heavy gold ring rests on the nightstand, bearing a symbol that looks like the Russian Orthodox cross. Why would a Party member, one as obviously well cared for as Gruzova, wear something so boldly religious? It seems dangerous to me. But then, everything about her is. I pluck up the ring and roll it around in my palm.
I see a handsome, smirking man in a soldier’s flight uniform—there’s a hint of Sergei, of Russian bluster, in that grin—wriggling the ring off his finger and dropping it in Natalya Gruzova’s hand. “Hold on to it for me, will you? Don’t want it flying off during testing.”
“Comrade Gagarin, I insist you not go through with this preposterous idea.”
Gruzova knows Yuri Gagarin? But of course she does—she works for the Veter 1 team.
“Secretary Khruschev has forbidden you to enter space again. We would not want our national hero … damaged,” Gruzova says, voice stiff.
“Damaged.” He snorts. Even through the memory, I can smell the alcohol on him; already he’s preserving himself from the inside out, preparing himself for a waxy sainthood. “These are my friends you’re sending up in your death machine.”
“I assure you, comrade, we are doing everything to make the Veter 1 safe—”
Gagarin reaches past her to flick switches on the control panel. “It doesn’t matter. If it were truly safe, why not publicize the program? Why keep it such a big secret?” He laughs, dry and bitter, and heads for a large metal crate that looks like a testing capsule. “I wasn’t the first man in space, comrade.” He tilts his head toward her, the charming grin gone, replaced with a look so sad it aches. “I’m just the first who lived.”
I set the ring back on Gruzova’s nightstand and back away. This won’t lead us to the Americans. Her private memories should remain her own, even if they are about the most famous man in the Soviet Union next to Khruschev himself.
Valentin stands in the bedroom doorway. “Anything interesting?” he asks, his voice steady but not demanding.
“It depends on your definition.”
He leans back, eyes hooded. You can share your visions with me. You don’t have to let me through your shield to do it—just open them to me, like how we speak in thoughts …
My first instinct is to scream No! but something in the look on his face pauses me. He’s not the confident beast he was before, but he’s relaxed against the doorframe, watching me. His shoulders are taut, though. Like he’s expecting me to snap at him. I choke down my initial reaction.
All right. But stay out of my shield.
Understood. He musters the tiniest smile.
I run my hands along clothing, sheets, chairs tucked into the alcove overlooking Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Only the dirty clothing—which is most of it, thanks to this madwoman—points at anything about the Americans. Unfortunately, what it points to is the scrubber. A sweater chafes with the scrubber’s static like it was woven with steel. The coat dangling from a lampshade is painful to touch, overwhelming me with that chaotic noise.