“Please.” I close my eyes. “I want to understand who I really am.”
Again that deluge of emotion is threatening to drag me under, and I have to disconnect. There has to be some kind of release valve for all these feelings. Some way for me to get rid of it. I thought I’d done it, once. I don’t want to drown in it like Anastasia did.
“You won’t be able to change it, even if I can restore your memories,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s worth the risk…”
Wood clatters at the other end of the vault hallway—someone moving back the panel to enter. I sit up straight, and Valya reaches for the volume knob on his record player.
Larissa slips in, hair tangled around her shoulders, still in her pajamas. I relax; Valya leans back from the record player. “Feel better now that you’re up and moving?” I ask.
She wipes her nose on her sleeve. “Turns out you lunatics are going to need my help after all.” She sits down across from us, but her gaze is all over, drinking in the musty vault like it’s a fresh spring day. “Yul, you were right, by the way. It’s best to keep looking ahead.”
Valentin looks at me with a smirk. “Funny, I was just telling Yulia the same thing.” He swaps to a nice loud Mussorgsky record, Night on Bald Mountain. “All right, Larissa. It’s good to have you on our side.”
The strings swirl around like wind whipping against a mountain’s face; low horns announce a demon’s arrival. Papa told me stories of Chernobog, the black god of ancient Russia who lived within the mountainside. Old gods like that were made to crush such men as Rostov and Comrade Secretary Khruschev. We could certainly use that power on our side.
“So. Have any of us ever been to East Germany?” Valya asks. Larissa and I shake our heads. “Me, neither. So we’ll have to improvise.”
He opens a yellowed, smelly book I recognize from the house library: Capitalist Aggression in Post-War Germany. It’s old, probably from right after the Patriotic War, but there is a map of Berlin, complete with a demarcation line where now a concrete wall exists.
“We saw the maps of the actual launch site,” he says, “but unfortunately, it’s located about twenty kilometers from the wall, on a heavily guarded military installation. So I think our best chance will be when we are in Berlin proper.” He circles a point on the map. “Most of the Party officials attending the launch will be staying at the Hotel Kepler, only a kilometer from the eastern side of the wall.”
A new melody slinks around in my head, weaving between the demonic dances of Bald Mountain. I have heard it before, but I can’t place the tune; it presses against the side of my skull.
“Rostov will put us there as well. He’ll want us keeping tabs on the nomenklatura. If so, the CIA team is sure to be close by.”
Larissa rubs her arms, like she’s staving off a chill. “I really don’t trust him, Yul. I know he didn’t hurt you at Gorky Park, but you’ve seen what he can do to…” She trails off. “Others.”
A way out. The words rise up from the noise inside my head. I can’t explain the certainty I feel about our plans or even its source, but I know it’s there. “This is different. I’m sure of it.”
Larissa chews her lip without any emotion showing on her face, which makes me nervous. I wonder if she’s seeing something now, if her tree of possibilities is charting out all the factors. But she doesn’t say anything either way.
I gesture to the map. “Look—this checkpoint near the hotel might be our best chance. I don’t know if the American soldiers working it are trained to repel psychic attacks, but I’m pretty sure our enlisted men aren’t.”
“It’s promising, at least,” Valya agrees. “You’ll have to learn the guards’ routes and look for paths that they may not know about. Feel out the scenery for us. And Lara, we’ll need your help to choose wisely along the way.”
“You’ll be acting as our smoke screen for anyone who tries to stop us?” Larissa asks.
Valya winces. “I’ll do my best, yes. I don’t know, though, if I’m strong enough to stop Rostov. My biggest fear is if he brings the Hound…”
I look at him sideways. “That thing Rostov sent after you when you tried to escape?”
Valentin nods as the frantic devil’s dance of string and cymbals crashes around us. “That was him. Another sick experiment of Rostov’s. The poor creature’s deaf, blind, mute. He gets around entirely on psychic ability—and more often than not, Rostov’s explicit orders. Like a big, monstrous puppet.”
I frown. “But what’s the purpose? He’s just exceptionally strong?”
Larissa shakes her head. “He’s a tracker, for starters. You know how we can only use our powers at short distances? Not him. He can follow any psychic’s signature across any distance.”