“Comrade Major, that’s enough.” Sergei bounds to his feet and swoops around her. For a moment I see his hockey reflexes come alive, as if he means to tackle her to the ground. “We’re working hard. We won’t let Rostov down.” His thick, corded arms circle her shoulders from behind in a bear hug and he maneuvers her toward the doorway. The stringent stream of vodka wafts behind her.
“Rostov? My dear Sergei Antonovich, you don’t understand.” Kruzenko wheezes laughter at him. “Rostov will soar to great heights for the glory of the Soviet Union, but what about—me—”
The door swings shut behind them, but her words keep echoing in my mind. If the other psychics—like Misha’s and Masha’s parents—are wearing out, or worse … But I take care to seal up that thought in a Shostakovich envelope. Like all the other Soviet games, information is the most precious thing I can possess.
*
We’re snowed in until the first week of December. The sky is solid slate; as the snowdrifts climb up the windows, I imagine our snow-globe world on the cliff filling up, floor to ceiling. Kruzenko’s henchmen carve a path from the gate to the docking bay, so we always have food and tea, but otherwise we are locked up, only able to see the outside world through our minds.
I’m drawn to the ballroom in the afternoons, when Valentin plays, though I do not meet his eyes during this time. He’s playing a new jazz theme, kneading it over and over into different shapes and styles, though the piano’s quickly coming untuned. I can’t bring myself to forgive him for invading my dreams, but I feel safer surrounded in his notes than in any words either of us could say.
I have taken, too, to lying in Anastasia’s bed sometimes, acknowledging her pain. It reminds me that my own troubles aren’t so great: my mother and brother live, I’m slowly gaining control of my power, and maybe there’s danger beyond these walls and loneliness within, but not so much that it could crush me like it did her. Anastasia’s troubles were the taste of wood clenched between her teeth; Kruzenko’s face peering over her as she’s strapped onto a gurney. “You have not been following our training. Your condition is worsening—”
They filled her with electricity, hoping there will be no room left for her madness. But like the beast of Frankenstein, it only brought a darkness far worse to life.
My project with Larissa offers a distraction, at least, if not much in the way of results. It’s strange to watch her work—looking forward, navigating the branching waters of the future in search of the missing wildlings, even as I reel backward against the currents of the past. Larissa convinced Kruzenko to dedicate some of the KGB’s resources to the hunt, as long as it doesn’t distract us from our Veter team mission.
Finally the snow settles enough for us to venture beyond the mansion, and the Americans get a new president, and they kill an American man whom they think killed the president, and there is no new threat of nuclear war because they do not blame us, though we feel the pressure of their nuclear missiles aimed our way like the glare of narrowed eyes. Major General Rostov is too busy for our little troupe as he whispers in the Party leaders’ ears, telling them—Misha and Masha report proudly—that Khruschev is not protecting the Soviet Union enough.
One more name is struck through on the chalkboard, leaving only one wildling at large. Only one name. But it will have to be enough.
“The remaining wildling works at the ZiL auto factory, but his shift leader said that he was missing last night,” Kruzenko tells us at our morning briefing. Missing. I find the word unnervingly vague. “Their records show a British businessman recently visited the factory under a foreign investment visa, but we have caught many spies using this cover.” Larissa and I exchange a look; of course Kruzenko has a secondary goal in letting us run our little mission. She’s hoping to catch a spy in the process. “His hotel room is where you will go, Valya and Misha—” she gestures to the two boys—“and Yulia, Lara, and Ivan will go to the factory. Sergei and Masha, you will stay here with me to observe.”
Larissa bounces beside me on the truck bench as we putter blindly through the snow-walled streets of Moscow. “All the best movie dramas take place in factories,” she says. “I wonder if there’s a dreamy foreman like the cute guy in I Love You, Life.”
“You watch too much television,” I tell her.
“I’m all the Russian man you need, my little squirrel.” Ivan nuzzles her cheek; I turn away, staring at the empty bench beside me.
The truck deposits us, with our spider-guards, in the back alley behind the ZiL factory. The cold air carries the smell of molten slag, though the snow has muffled the trash bin stink, thankfully. The factory is flat concrete and glass and, save the smoke stains that rise away from punched-out windows, undecorated. We crunch our way to the rear factory door and listen to the chugging of machinery inside, rattling like a caged panther.
“We can search the factory floor unnoticed,” Larissa declares. “The floor manager is on an extended lunch. Ivan, can you ensure no one looks too closely at us?”