The officer hunches over a typewriter in an empty office, twisting around to look behind him frequently. He cannot trust this report to a secretary in the typing pool. He has to finish before the office’s owner returns. I peer over his shoulder: “Comrade General—I regret that I must compose this report anonymously, but I am sure you will understand. I fear that Comrade Major Anton Sergeevich Rostov is gathering his own army from within the KGB to move against Secretary Khruschev—”
Show him to me. Rostov grates his thoughts against mine. The gawky, studious young soldier sloughs off of the memory in my thoughts. Rostov grasps his image, glowing as he recognizes him.
The chief is coming down the hall, Misha warns. I can’t stop him.
Let him come, Rostov says. You have done well.
There is a thud in the hallway.
“Misha?” Masha asks. Her portion of the viewing stretches and warps as she pulls away from Sergei’s. Misha is slumped against the wall, pulsing with the soft thought waves that I usually sense from people in a deep sleep.
Masha screams.
“Quiet!” the guard hisses. My sight darts back to the cramped metal room that smells of stagnant water. Our guard leans over Masha, hand raised to slap.
Sergei yanks both Masha and me toward him. “He’ll be fine,” Sergei tells her. “Rostov will protect him. Focus.” Masha is hyperventilating, gulping down nicotine-laced rusty air; but slowly the viewing returns to its over-sharpened state, and I settle back into their sight.
The chief stands in the office doorway, looking at Rostov. “Comrade Colonel.” His thought pattern changes. I can’t tell if he’s a psychic as well, but he knows the music shielding trick; it grows thicker and thicker. “I was not expecting you.”
Rostov drums his fingernails against the file folder. “I believe that you were.” He bristles with intensified noise and I cringe. Sergei soothes me with his thumb over the back of my knuckles. “I understand you received a troubling report.”
“I receive many reports,” the chief says stiffly, “few of which a colonel need concern himself with.”
“My results are exceptional. You know this,” Rostov says.
The chief tweaks the bridge of his nose. “I don’t doubt your results—only your methods. This report—I can’t ignore such things. You put us all at risk by threatening the supremacy of Secretary Khruschev.”
Rostov’s static hum is drawing dangerously taut. His power is a molten bar of steel, a blacksmith hammering it to a lethal edge. “What you and Khruschev’s lapdogs do is far more dangerous.” His words are whisper-thin. “You spit on Stalin’s grave. You beg the Americans for food, economic support. Dissidents like that damn poet Yevtushenko run their mouths against Marx’s vision and instead of locking them away, we give them medals, treat them as national treasures!”
“We couldn’t carry on like Stalin forever!” the chief cries. “You saw how many died under him. Starved, executed, diseased—the system is broken. The West cannot be our enemy. We can no longer stare each other down like we did in Cuba, fingers on half-pulled triggers.”
“What is broken? Only you. Secretary Khruschev. And everyone in between.”
“I keep the state safe—”
“You keep us weak! You are weak!” Rostov slams his fist on the desk; Sergei and I jump. “Only I can clean it out. I must trim the fat.”
The chief’s eyes narrow for a moment as he prepares a retort, but then he eases and his eyes glaze. Too quickly, for an old spymaster. My stomach sinks. Rostov must have drilled through his mental shield.
Something moves in the hallway, drawing my gaze. There is a third figure lurking there, though he keeps to the shadows concealing his massive form. My gaze slides off of him when I try to look at him directly. Is this Rostov’s Hound that Valentin warned me about?
But before I can look closer, the young soldier who wrote the report staggers into the chief’s office, arms smacking against the doorframe, legs bending unnaturally. He’s burning up, he’s warped with a white glow that washes out our viewing. I try to pull away from Sergei’s hand but he holds firm. The soldier’s actions are puppetlike, jerky and unreal, and his mind, bozhe moi, it’s full of Rostov’s noise. I know too well how it feels to be bound to Rostov’s strings. The soldier reaches into his holster, fighting with himself as he does it, and rips his pistol free—
Colonel Rostov knocks us back with his static, white hot, blistering my brain as the remote viewing is severed. But he is a split second too late. I feel two gunshots in my marrow as Sergei’s and Masha’s viewing tears to shreds. The chief’s chest. The soldier’s temple. Like the afterimage of a bright light, I see the shooting even after the connection is lost.
And then a nest of bees is in my brain, buzzing, scrubbing away what I’ve just seen. Has Rostov done this before? Sleep opens her warm, cozy arms to me, and I stagger into them. Consciousness seeps away from me, but I fight that emptiness. I must not … lose my …
The fired shots are land mines beneath my skin. I cannot let Rostov know that I have seen this, or they will detonate and tear me apart. I cannot ever think about this. Rostov must believe I didn’t see it. An empty mind is a safe mind, my memories of Papa claim.