Thirty-Two
Camp Peary, Virginia
Julian watched Nadiya and Giselle go and felt something almost like regret. At some point, during those seemingly interminable
moments that they had spent in adjoining cells, he had started to feel comforted by Nadiya’s presence. Their bodies, huddled
together on opposite sides of the glass. It had been the only thing to keep him from drifting entirely into madness, into
ruinous dreams of the past.
As if she could sense his thoughts, Nadiya glanced over her shoulder and met his gaze. She didn’t speak, didn’t even nod,
but a wave of relief went through Julian. She was safe and so was he.
But it wasn’t until he turned back to Klaudia that the screams in his head went silent. It was something about her he couldn’t
quite describe, her gray eyes, which had ceased to seem so cold to him—they quieted everything else in his mind.
Klaudia reached into the pocket of her coat and drew out a small bundled object. Wrapped protectively in a layer of cloth
were his glasses.
“Thanks,” Julian said in surprise, taking them and slipping them on. The world sharpened and clarified. When it sank in to
him that Klaudia had brought them with her on their rescue mission, he added, “You were very confident.”
“Not really,” she said. “Deckard isn’t even half as clever as he thinks he is.”
Conspicuously, Crispin retreated to put on the record player. A swelling of orchestral music filled the air. It sounded like
Prokofiev.
“I didn’t mean about your plan,” said Julian. “Hopefully you know by now I wouldn’t doubt you. I meant confident that Deckard didn’t just put us down like dogs.”
“He wouldn’t do that. Not after he’s gone through all this effort. And especially considering you both have paternal figures
with power who would miss you.”
Julian grimaced. “Ever the pragmatist.”
“Someone has to be.”
He wished Klaudia hadn’t brought up his father, even in passing, but when he looked at her—now with the benefit of his glasses—he
could only think of the utter ingenuity it had taken to rescue them. Forty-six minutes and she had solved Deckard’s riddle
and pulled him out of that glass prison cell.
“Shit. Molotov cocktails?” Julian exhaled, shaking his head. “How did you even think of that?”
With a shrug, Klaudia said, “You can take the girl out of Russia . . .”
Julian smiled. “I’m glad you said it and not me.”
“Your restraint is admirable.”
She was almost—almost—smiling back at him. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold and maybe, he told himself, a little bit
from their conversation. Julian felt an answering heat in his chest.
Klaudia had come for him. Her face was the first thing he’d seen when he lifted his head from his arms. The first voice he
heard when the screams were silenced. Looking at her now filled him with the same sense of relief, of refuge. He wasn’t even
too embarrassed to have thrown up in front of her. She had already seen him cry, and he had seen the cracks in her armor,
great and small, so many times. They were safe before each other’s eyes.
As they’d been leaving the tunnel, Nadiya had fallen into step beside him.
“Thank you,” she said, too quietly for anyone but Julian to hear.
It didn’t need elaboration. Julian just nodded and said, “You too.”
“Did you do it for me?” Nadiya asked. “Or for her?”
She inclined her head toward Klaudia, who was walking ahead of them with Giselle. Klaudia, who had impressed upon them the
importance of cooperation, who had all but ordered them not to defect. Still, Julian had considered it, of course—not at the
beginning, but as the moments wore on and the screams raked at him like claws. He thought of how easy it would have been to
call out Deckard’s name.
But then he’d looked through the glass and seen Nadiya huddled there beside him, tears wetting her cheeks and making her dark
eyes shine. A memory had layered itself over the real world, a familiar face over her face. And he’d bit down so hard on his
tongue that he tasted blood.
“I did it for all of us,” Julian answered at last. “Isn’t that the point?”
Now Julian blinked, banishing the echoes of their conversation. He met Klaudia’s gaze, which was wavering with a shy sort
of concern.
“Deckard played something for you, too,” she said. Her tone was careful, making it more of a statement than a question.
Instantly weariness overwhelmed him. “Yes.”
Klaudia glanced briefly away and worried her lower lip—a habit of hers that Julian had come to recognize. “It might be helpful
to know what it was.”
Julian stiffened and didn’t reply.
“For strategic purposes, of course. Deckard used it against you once. He might do it again.”
Klaudia, for all her many skills and virtues, did not suffer from an excess of tact. Usually he liked that about her—her utter
lack of interest in the subtle graces of social interaction charmed him. Now he wished she had more of an instinct for comfort
rather than merely an eye for weakness.
But, when he remained silent, Klaudia dipped her head and said, “All right. Get some sleep.” Julian tried not to flinch at
the obvious disappointment in her voice.
“You should, too,” he said. “You can read the files again in the morning.”
Klaudia hesitated.
“Come on. You deserve to rest.”
She worried her lower lip again and then said quietly, “Okay.”
Julian was surprised, and more than a little moved. It was the first time, he thought, that he had managed to win her over.
She turned and started up the steps to the mezzanine. Julian watched her for a moment before he found his words. One word,
really.
“Klaudia.”
She paused halfway up the stairs and looked back at him.
“Thank you,” he said. “For coming for me.”
It was Prokofiev; he recognized it now—the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet. Klaudia nodded, her gray eyes bright as they lingered on him for just one moment more. Then she continued up the stairs
and was gone.
When Julian finally lay down in bed, he was dismayed to find that, despite his exhaustion, he still couldn’t sleep. It had
nothing to do with the fact that Crispin was slumbering a few yards away, his bed in the path of silvery moonlight that flooded
in from the window. It was that whenever Julian closed his eyes, memories flowered up, and his ears rang with the relentless,
echoing screams.
He didn’t know how Deckard had gotten those screams. His explanation didn’t make any sense. There were no recordings of his
brother’s voice—at least, nothing that Deckard would have been able to get his hands on. His father had made sure of that.
His brother. Aurelian. He had always been a disappointment to their father, a source of immense yet private shame.
Three years younger than Julian, so close in age, but Aurelian had always been different.
He would often go days or even weeks without speaking, locked in some private quarrel with himself, face contorted and dark.
One of the many doctors their father engaged had suggested that the family all learn sign language in order to communicate.
His father had dismissed the doctor with none too gentle language of his own. But Julian had taught both himself and Aurelian
basic ASL, a few signs for desperate times, when spoken words were impossible or insufficient.
Though Aurelian’s distress was mostly silent, it was palpable, like the heaviness of the air before a storm. He would rock
back and forth sometimes for hours, or repetitively scratch the palms of his hands until they were raw and bleeding. In the
worst moments he would bang his head against the wall, while Olivia hid in terror and his mother sobbed and his father shouted.
Julian was the only one who dared approach him, hesitantly, tremulously, speaking in soft tones and hoping that something—anything—he
could do might make it right.
Those were the bleak moments, but there were as many happy moments, too. Aurelian’s favorite place had been their compound
on Martha’s Vineyard, where he would walk barefoot on the sand and dart in and out of the foaming surf, his laughter carried
down the beach by the wind. Julian would heft his brother onto his back so he could reach the low branches of the pear trees,
plucking the just-ripe fruit and scattering the white flowers around them like snow.
But that last night, Aurelian had screamed. Julian still didn’t know exactly what had pushed him to the edge. It could be
odd things, small things, like the sudden sensation of his own shirt collar rubbing his neck or the squeaking of someone’s
shoes on the floor. Maybe it had been their father, raging as usual, as if his anger could break the parts of Aurelian he
didn’t like and draw out a new son from the ruins.
Julian was the one who had found him, the silhouette of his limp body outlined against the glossy blue evening sky. The wind ruffled the tree branches and the white petals blew out to sea and the rope around his brother’s neck strained and swung.
It was Julian’s shout that sent his mother and father and sister running out of the house. His mother dropped to her knees
and wailed, such a desperate, anguished sound that Julian’s skin was set alight. Olivia fled in hysterical sobs. And his father
knelt beside his mother, holding her to his chest, his face white and voice cold when he said to Julian, “Get him down.”
Julian approached the tree on shaking legs. He could hardly feel the weight of his own limbs. He reached up, grasping for
the rope, but his fingers were slick from a chill sweat and they couldn’t find purchase. Icy air wafted from his brother’s
body, already stiff.
He couldn’t do it. He was too terrified, too weak. His father called for Fikret, their towering driver. Fikret’s hands shook,
too, but he managed to unlace the rope and catch Aurelian’s body before it fell to the ground.
In the time that they waited for an ambulance, in those dead, languid moments that felt brief but also endless, Julian pushed
up the sleeve of his brother’s shirt and removed his watch. Aurelian had a particular love for watches and this one was his
favorite, a vintage Rolex with a slightly worn band, a family heirloom.