Kursed

 

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Copyright

Chapter One

Moscow, April 2, 1945

Secretary Josef Vissaryonovich Stalin cups one hand around his cigarette as he lights it, then exhales, a smile returning to his face as the screaming recedes down the corridor. “He would have made a poor operative anyway,” he says, gesturing toward the noise.

I smile because I don't know what else to do. In nature, smiles are submission—showing your teeth, surrendering your defenses—and with Comrade Secretary Stalin, it is safest to submit. Be glad that I still stand here in the Kremlin's heart, conducting my work, instead of being led down the hall like the last man, and the one who came before.

“Antonina Vasilievna, are you certain your screening test is working as you intended it?” Stalin asks, in a fresh flurry of smoke. “So many fit your criteria, and yet, when we test them…”

The past few years have coached me well in the delicate art of speaking to a Party official, but Secretary Stalin is a new challenge entirely. “The screening will only determine if they carry the genetic markers. It does not guarantee they have the traits.” I grip the edges of my folder until my knuckles go white. “That is why we must test them, as well.”

All heads in the room swivel toward me. The Minister of Defense frowns at me; the generals who run the NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police and spy force, bow their heads together in a wordless exchange. They don't trust me—never have, not even after all I've done for them, all I've foreseen and overseen.

They don't like me knowing what they're thinking right now—which is precisely what they're thinking right now. If I didn't have my gift of psychic powers, I wouldn't believe in it myself.

Stalin taps away the ash from his cigarette and leans back in his chair. “Very well. Send in the next.”

It's amazing how harmless a monster seems when you see it every day. But I scarcely even notice death and the stormcloud threat of it. I grew up in the land of the vanishing neighbors, was raised on the nighttime lullabies of heavy boots on the stairwell and muffled pleas and trucks rumbling away. People die—they say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. Have the wrong genes or the wrong antibodies to fight off disease. Wrong place, wrong time, in a German sniper's sights or on a train that jumps the tracks. I see it in my visions, deaths hissing and flaring like hot oil. Stalin caused so many, sure, but someday it'll be his turn. Someday it'll be mine.

The page flings open the doors to our chamber and storms out. “Chernin!” he shouts. “Andrei Dmitrievich!”

My stomach sinks. Andrei Chernin—I know him from our work at Moscow State University. Quick to laugh and make light of even the densest topics, with a smile that can melt permafrost, though I was always too busy with my Party and Student Soviet responsibilities to get to know him better. He studies developmental psychology, while I work in the genetics wing, but we've collaborated in the past. I've tested all the Moscow State students for the genetic markers, and it shouldn't matter whether I've worked closely with the candidates before or not, but I don't wish my future on anyone.

Andrei steps inside, dark hair shaggy, sleepless circles under his eyes. His gaze roves the room, restless, refusing to settle on any one person or thing; if he recognizes me, he doesn't show it. His shoulders curl inward as if bracing for a blow; though his face is handsome, defined, he's managed to suppress it with his shabby dress and need of a haircut. But then after four years of war, of rations and starvation, and every third neighbor or friend fallen by a fascist bullet, we're all looking rather threadbare and turned inside out.

“Please state your name,” I say. “For the record.”

His eyes finally rest on mine, and one side of his mouth curls up, though it looks too sad to be a smile. “Well, well. What are you doing in this dump, Antonina Vasilievna Berezova?”

The assembled generals and ministers shift uncomfortably; I squeeze my eyes shut. “Your name, please.”

Andrei holds my gaze for a moment longer, like he's puzzling through my presence here; as his face tightens up, I wonder what conclusion he's drawn. “Genetic variances in wheat germ specimens, huh?” he asks me, citing my doctoral thesis—or rather, the one I tell people I'm writing.

I grimace and fold my arms.

“Very well,” he says. “Andrei Dmitrievich Chernin.”

“Thank you, Comrade Chernin.” I raise my folder high, blocking his line of sight to me, and run through my script as quickly as I can. “The following tests are to assess your cognitive capabilities in a variety of circumstances. Please try to answer the questions to the best of your ability, even if answering seems impossible to you—”

“Wait, wait.” Andrei lifts one hand, halfhearted, then presses a finger against his lips. “Do you mind telling me what this is all about? Why you are dragging dozens of citizens before the Comrade Secretary here to ask about our cognitive ability? When we're in the middle of a goddamned war?”

Stalin leans forward in his chair, muscles taut, smoke drifting in a tight column. My fists tighten around the edges of my folder. “If you will please proceed with the test first,” I say, “then I will be
happy
to explain it to you afterward—”

“Afterward. Sure. I heard the guys who were in the
after
part.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, unable to look at him, at Secretary Stalin, at the assembled Party hounds. He needs to stop talking. I can't be held responsible for his safety if he upsets anyone. I can't be held responsible for what they might do to him.

Something shifts in the air around us, crackling like a lightning storm, and the tightness unwinds in my chest. When I look at Andrei, he's softer now—pliant and compliant, like a proper
apparatchik
, just a cog in the Soviet machine. His head tips forward in deference as he jams his hands deep into the pockets of his ratty boiled-wool coat.

“I apologize, comrade Berezova,” he tells me. “I do not mean to make your job more difficult.” Dark eyes flick toward mine from under a fringe of boyish lashes. “Please, continue with your tests.”

I smooth the papers out in front of me. Years of working at the behest of the NKVD, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or
Narodniy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del
, have put a tremor in my hands, and it's getting harder and harder to feign the enthusiasm I once felt for my work, back before I'd seen just how they intended to make use of my research. Before the screams began. But there is no greater opportunity for my research than this; that's what keeps me going. It has to.

“There are three cards facedown on the table. Please tell me what symbols are on the face.” I peel each card up so only I can see: a star, a circle, a wavy line.

Andrei scrunches up his face. “You mean, you want me to guess?”

Normally at this stage in the test, I feel that ping of disappointment, like a button breaking off my favorite sweater. This time, though, I'm actually relieved Andrei has no idea what I'm talking about. I don't want him mixed up in our grim task. But then I remember the fate that awaits him, successful or no. “If you have any special … skills at your disposal, ones that would allow you to … intuit anything about these cards…”

“Oh, like I know how to count cards or something. Sure. Let's see, how about jack of hearts? Four of clubs? And…” He squints at me. “Eight of diamonds.”

A vision breaks inside me like a bubble bursting. Unbidden. Andrei clutching a flush as he slams something—coins or jewelry, perhaps—onto a flimsy card table. But it can't be right. My visions foretell the future—this is my style of psychic gift, and the reasons I chose to study the ability in the first place, foreseeing the great prestige and research opportunities it would bring me. Once I see a possible future, it becomes my duty to bring it about, or else prevent it, depending. If Andrei isn't a psychic, he won't survive long enough for this vision to happen. He won't survive the next few minutes.

“It's been a long day, Comrade Berezova,” Stalin says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Perhaps you should just bring in the next candidate.”

“Wait.” I rustle through my papers. “Please remember, Comrade Secretary, I must test for several different types.” I don't give him a chance to argue. “Comrade Chernin, please tell me what I will have for breakfast tomorrow.”

I think of sliced kielbasa as hard as I can. Party-rationed kielbasa, the kind impossible to get during the war unless you're the sort of person who holds audience with Josef Stalin, the pockets of fat round and juicy and the meat with its greasy charred tang. I try to taste the kielbasa, savor it, please, Andrei, tell me you can foresee it—

Andrei jabs his shoulders in the air, a Russian shrug of defeat. “Kasha? Or has Moscow run out of that, too?” He smirks. “Though I shouldn't complain. The things they ate in Leningrad during the blockade, yeuch!”

My jaw feels tight as a clock spring. It doesn't mean anything, I tell myself; he could still have the skill. My memory has always been hazy, shrouded in much the same fog as I see the future, but I'm starting to remember the times I've crossed paths with Andrei. When we collaborated on the study of congenital cognitive disorders—hadn't he suggested the very change I'd been considering, but never voiced? Hadn't he known just how to bring me my tea without being told?

But no, I'm reaching. Trying to shape my past in the same way I try to find a route toward the futures I want and around those I don't. I designed this test. I have to trust in it to do what it was designed to do, no matter the subject.

“Next test.” I cross my hands behind my back and lift my chin high. “I am thinking of a number between one and one thousand. What number am I thinking of?”

“How many chances do I get?” Andrei asks, that wry smile curling the edges of his words.

I fight against my instinct to smile back—I can't help it, he makes it so easy to—and instead I sigh. “One chance—”

“No, Comrade Berezova. Wait.” Stalin had been slumped back in his chair, chin propped on a meaty fist, but he leans forward now with his dark mustache aquiver. “Let him guess my number instead.”

Stalin and Andrei lock gazes. The photographs and oil paintings and murals smeared across countless factory walls never quite capture the truth of that stare. I'd expected it to be like a predator, peering out from the depths of the forest, but it's something else entirely. Comrade Secretary's stare is cold, void of any feeling at all. I am only a piece of machinery to him, or a sum on a calculation. It moves across people as emotionlessly as a radar sweep.

Andrei, though—he meets it with the exact same gaze.

“Two hundred and ninety eight,” Andrei says.

My throat constricts as I wait for Stalin's response—dismissing Andrei with a flick of his fingers, or declaring him a worthy subject. Instead, Stalin just leans back, no change in expression. “Please proceed with the tests,” he says.

I look between the two men; beside me, the NKVD generals have once more bowed their heads. Did he guess correctly? Neither Stalin nor Andrei seem to care about the result.

“Last test.” The test for remote viewing. “Behind this screen, my assistants have placed a series of objects. I do not know which objects they placed; the assistants are no longer in the room. Tell me, please, what is behind it.” I gesture to the cardboard screen that divides a table in half.