The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2)

by Lindsay Smith

  “What are you suggesting?”

  Alestair set his hand on the small of Josh’s back, and Josh, tense, frustrated, was even more frustrated to notice himself thrilling to that touch. “Our business, my friend, relies on appearances. People decide what they want to see: two old friends walking together, for example. So make her decide what to see when she looks at you.”

  Josh felt sick. He felt turned on. He wanted to pull away from Alestair. He wanted to crush him against the railing, bend those perfect lines in his arm, and kiss him, hard and fast and full in front of God and everybody. But he could not.

  They walked together, in silence, until they reached the farther shore.

  • • •

  Gabe woke early, but he reached the office late regardless. He needed the extra time to head across town and leave a note in a dead drop for Karovich: a simple request, nothing classified, just a little more information in the same vein as before, for a similar payment. Which would put a substantial dent in Gabe’s savings account, but never mind. All in a day’s work, saving the world from magic. Or for magic. Or some damn thing.

  Anyway, no sense wasting time feeling bad about a job well done. He rode high into work. Brought coffee for the receptionists, traded jokes with Josh in the office kitchen, said hi to Frank and got a grumbling adjustment of papers in return—which, for Frank these days, was the equivalent of a hug and a surprise party, so that felt okay.

  When he reached the tower room, coffee and pastries in hand, he thought, for a blessed second, that he’d beaten Edith in: no overcoat on the rack, papers undisturbed. He set his coffee mug and the bag with the doughnuts on the table, and settled into the chair, hands crossed behind his head.

  He almost fell when Edith said, “You’re late.”

  She was there, after all: behind the paper rampart, straight-backed, pearls on a gray sweater, hair in a different sort of coil-bun thing he lacked the words for, the same folder as yesterday open on her desk. He hoped the mug of tea wasn’t the same, too. “God! You scared the pants off of me.”

  “Fortunately not.”

  He decided not to try that one on. “I stopped for coffee. You want a doughnut?”

  “No,” she said, and after a tick, in which she, maybe, was realizing he expected her to say it, “thank you. I’ve moved on to Alvarez’s phone records. If you could continue with the transportation documents?”

  “Fine.” He rolled his shoulders, flexed his back, and settled in for a long day with a bad doughnut.

  Another day of papers. Another day of trying, vainly, furiously, to weave some sort of explanation through the squeaky-clean paper trail Dom left behind—another day of forms in small type, of carbon stains on his fingertips, of folders and paper clips that lost themselves, of pencil tips lingering in margins. Another day of knowing that, no matter how hard Edith searched, no matter how hard she made Gabe search with her, they would never find what she was looking for. Because the gross truth was, the Soviets hadn’t turned Dom Alvarez. The Flame had—when he was a kid, maybe, or when he was a young Marine on the make, or when he joined the CIA. The Flame wouldn’t leave a paper trail. Edith might be some big-deal bloodhound from back home, but she was on the wrong scent entirely, and he was stuck trotting alongside her until she admitted there was nothing to find. If she wasn’t a Flame agent herself, actively covering Dom’s trail.

  Thank heaven for small mercies, she didn’t seem to suspect Gabe himself, yet. Or if she did, she was being circumspect about it. Which wasn’t a good thing at all, come to think of it.

  Gabe stopped thinking, and waited for the end of the day. He kept his mind in the files, and found nothing. Of course.

  He clocked out at six, leaving Edith in the office, and took his time reaching Karovich’s dead drop. This one was simple: a locked mailbox in a residential district. He took buses and changed to other buses for a while, doubling back and around, to case the neighborhood and be certain he wasn’t followed, which was harder than he expected: All around him Prague had loosened into spring, and people thronged the sunset streets, fathers and kids, old women and old men ganging together, enjoying themselves and their world and making Gabe feel perfectly alone.

  He worried, for a while, that the spring crowds might make it harder for him to approach the dead drop, but as the sun set Prague remembered that spring had a lot of ground to cover yet, and closed up again. Streets emptied. Gabe relaxed into his long coat.

  He entered the apartment building in question, keyed open the mailbox, and—good—found the folders there. Easy. Entrants into Prague in the last couple weeks who hadn’t left already. Fewer than he’d thought. He could get through the pages in a night, take them for a spin, see what he could see, and give Tanya the thumbs up, or the thumbs down. Drop the files back for Karovich. Focus on Edith, on the investigation, on finding some way to pass the time.

  He stuck the files beneath his coat, and stepped out into the night.

  A car idled by the curb in front of the door. Streetlights glinted off a pearl necklace in the driver’s seat.

  Edith said, “Get in.”

  4.

  Gabe could not remember a less comfortable car ride. Even the one time in Jakarta, with the machine gun and the snake, didn’t quite compare.

  “I—” he started, but Edith interrupted him.

  “Don’t speak.”

  He shifted in the passenger seat.

  She drove him to a building near the embassy that he recognized but had never entered. Parked the car. “Walk to the front door.” She followed him, one hand in her coat pocket. Tossed keys on the step by his feet. “The gold one opens the door. The silver one’s for upstairs.”

  “Am I—”

  “Don’t speak, I said.”

  He opened the door, and preceded her up the steps.

  “Third floor. First door on the left.”

  He stopped, opened that door with the silver key, and entered the room. One suitcase lay on the floor, and another stood open on the dresser, and a book lay on the table by the bed. This was a room for someone who did not sleep so much as wait. The bed was made with hospital corners.

  He waited while she closed the door and walked past him. When she drew her hand out of the coat pocket, it was empty.

  “I knew you didn’t really have a gun.”

  She hung up her coat, walked to the open suitcase and drew a gun from within. She held it with as little regard as she had held a pen. She did not point it at him. “Put the files on the table.”

  He did.

  “I guess I can talk, now?”

  She shrugged. Not much of an invitation, but it would serve.

  “I can explain.”

  “Try,” she said. “Really, do.”

  • • •

  Josh found his own way back to the warehouse. Heart somewhere just a little south of his throat, he descended the steps and knocked on the door at the bottom. Someone opened the door, which didn’t do much to brighten the stairwell, since the someone basically filled the doorway. Beyond, he heard music and conversation. “Hi,” Josh said, feeling some weird combination of horrified and embarrassed, like he was a kid again asking if Davey could come out and play. “Is Kazimir there?”

  “Joshua!”

  The bouncer moved back just in time to allow Kazimir to reach through the door, grab Josh, and pull him into the brightly lit cellar. If Josh hadn’t seen the place himself earlier, he would not have recognized it now: tablecloths on the tables and makeshift bar, the weights and gym equipment cordoned off, all the crates carried off to some back room, and the place was full of people, dressed not quite to the nines, but to the sixes and sevens, at least. Even Kazimir had poured himself into a suit, to a good sort of overstuffed sausage effect—Josh doubted the suit’s stitching would endure a solid flex—and slicked back his hair. “Good to see you, Kazimir. Have you given any thought to our conversation yesterday?” Not putting too fine a point on it: He’d broached the issue of customs evasion in
the back room, received a few noncommittal grunts of the ‘have to run it up the chain’ variety, and a suggestion that he return tonight, which he was smart enough to know not to take as a mere suggestion.

  “Still I am talking with many of the peoples with whom we must discuss these things. Yes? Very interesting! But, tonight, party. Good boxings! Light and middleweights, tonight.”

  The bell rang. Two young men circled one another, gloves out, testing. The one on the left was bruised, the one on the right was bloody. “Fun.”

  “Very! Come, watch, I get you drink.”

  Josh followed him to the bar. Crowds, it seemed, had a way of parting around Kazimir. Kazimir set down a bill, and the bartender poured them two bourbons. “I didn’t know you could get bourbon here.”

  “Very expensive,” Kazimir said. “But is all to good business.”

  “I see. To a good,” he searched for the right word, “partnership.”

  They clinked glasses and drank. Behind Josh, someone hit the mat. He turned to watch the count.

  And there, in that same low-backed dress, stood the Russian. This time, she was staring right at him.

  She turned and walked through a side door, away from the lights and the fight.

  Josh glanced back to Kazimir. “I’m sorry. Over there—are those the, um, the toilets?”

  Kazimir, eyes closed, relishing his drink, nodded.

  “I’ll be right back.” Josh downed the bourbon and ran.

  • • •

  Gabe did not like telling stories on demand, and he liked telling them at gunpoint even less. Mortal danger did concentrate the mind, but the particular shape of that concentration, in Gabe’s experience, highlighted sensory detail and possible answers to the question “how the hell are we going to get out of this,” and tended to blunt the creative skills required to spin a proper yarn. But Edith’s cool green stare, and the comfort with which she held that sidearm, left him with no other options.

  Keep it simple.

  “I’m waiting,” she said, and raised one eyebrow. For all the affect in her voice, they might have been playing cards, and he was hesitating on the bet.

  All explanations save the truth deserted him. “Okay,” he said. “Look. Dom’s dead. His plane crashed. Whatever he was up to, it went wrong.” Edith’s glare did not waver. “I thought whoever was running him might have sent someone to find out what went wrong. So I grabbed more recent entry-exit files. We have Dom’s phone logs. We have a record of his movements. If there’s some crossover—if he was talking to someone who showed up in the last couple weeks—that would give us a lead.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me about this. Why?” He’d heard people sound more emotional asking about a casserole recipe. For all the calm, though, he recognized the ribbon of threat underneath those words. She didn’t trust him, but the way he answered this next question might determine exactly how she didn’t trust him. Careful, Gabe. Careful.

  “You don’t respect us.”

  She blinked.

  “You haven’t exactly made a secret of it, since you got here. You don’t like Prague Station, you don’t like the way we do things. That’s fine. We were part of a colossal fuckup. I want to get to the bottom of it just as much as you.” He burned as he said those words, which surprised him. Was this even lying? He did want to find Dom’s sponsor, to learn the truth, to serve his country. Flame agents inside the CIA, sabotaging American ops, selling out good men to the KGB—whoever they were, he wanted them flushed like quail, wanted them silhouettes in his sights against a gray sky. He wanted the shotgun in his hand. And so did Edith. So why was he afraid of her? Why hadn’t he trusted her, since she arrived? “I thought you might dismiss my ideas, because they came from me. So I took initiative. I should have included you. I’m sorry.”

  Standing still hurt more than most people thought, because most people never actually stood still. They twitched and shifted weight, relieving stress. Gabe didn’t dare. Edith had read his service record. She knew she would only get one chance, maybe two, at this distance, if he started to move. She would shoot first. So he let the pain between his shoulder blades build and hoped—dearly, fiercely—that she would believe him, that her exact progress through the office, her care, her conviction, her regulated mugs of tea, came from a place that understood a need to bear up under disrespect.

  There were not many women in the Company, after all.

  Edith lowered the gun.

  Gabe exhaled.

  “Not so fast,” she said. “We’re going to the embassy. I will review these files. You will stay in my line of sight while I do so. And then we’ll see.”

  • • •

  Josh chased the woman beneath the warehouse. Through the doorway, the basement was a warren of twisting hallways, all alike. He glimpsed the Russian spy’s black skirt flaring around a corner, and padded quickly after her, footsteps light, and tried not to think about what had happened to the last person he saw chase this particular woman.

  Don’t worry about it, he told himself, in a sort of sideways imitation of Gabe’s voice. Stay cool. Keep your distance. Don’t make any threatening moves. You’re here to fact-find.

  He glanced round the corner, into an empty hall lined with doors. One stood ajar, two doors down and on the left. There was a light on inside. He padded close, listening.

  A door latch clicked open behind him; he had just begun to turn when strong hands grabbed him from behind.

  Gabe wouldn’t have made a sound. Certainly not something which even Josh had to admit was best characterized as a squawk. Gabe would have fought back with some sort of crazy mix of jiujitsu and pure old Captain America haymaker moxie, and then maybe some kind of snappy James Bond-style comeback. Or was that Alestair?

  Anyway, Josh didn’t expect either of them would end up slammed against a wall by a woman about half a foot shorter than they were, with her arm against their windpipe. Then again, Josh could be mistaken. He’d seen this woman fight before.

  Her eyes narrowed, and she flushed beneath her makeup.

  “No,” he said, in Russian, which was all he could manage through the pressure of her forearm against his throat. He tried to move, but she was doing something to his other arm that he couldn’t describe, but which made the entire limb a solid bar of pain.

  “You helped me,” she said. “In the alley.”

  Josh’s reply came out a bit gurgly, so he nodded.

  “Why are you following me?”

  She relaxed her hold on his neck so he could answer. Still, he had to spend a few seconds sucking wind before he could speak. “I recognized you. That’s all. I wanted to… say hello. Learn why you’re here. Ask your name.”

  Yeah, so he sucked at fieldwork. He could probably fight his way out of a paper bag, if the paper bag were blindfolded and had one arm tied behind its back. But he knew from chess.

  Neither of them wanted this to get bad. He’d made a mistake following her, but she’d made a bigger one getting violent. She had to be thinking: Why was the American here? Kill him and you’ll never know. Do the Czechs like him more than they like you? If so, you hurt him and you’ll have a bad night. Or you can take the opening he offers, laugh this off, little misunderstanding, I don’t trust strangers who follow me down hallways as a rule. Maybe even mistake his interest for a crush, some little flirtation she could use. If she was, after all, a spy.

  Did her embassy know she was here? She might be sneaking out on her own—this could be a handle he could use on her, a path into the Soviet embassy, if he played his cards right.

  Unless she was working with the smugglers. Unless Josh had read Kazimir wrong and their business arrangement was deeper than it seemed—in which case, she might kill him here and let the mob sort it out.

  The big difference, his stomach reminded him, between doing this sort of stuff on the chessboard and doing it in real life, was that the stakes were a bit more immediate.

  The woman looked into him: read him, lik
e Alestair read him. He wondered what she saw. Whatever she saw or sought, she was close enough that he could feel her decide what to do next.

  “It’s a fight night,” she said. “I like to fight. And I like to watch. So sometimes, I come here.”

  Which was an opening in return. We can leave this hallway together. If we play it very, very carefully.

  “Me too,” he said.

  She stepped back, and freed his arm, and adjusted the front of her dress, which Josh imagined would have been somewhat noteworthy for a very different man. He shot his cuffs, and straightened the lapels of his jacket. She extended one hand. “Nadia.” She said it as easily as she said her real name, which maybe it was. He could check against embassy rolls later. At least it was probably the same name she’d given Kazimir.

  Which meant he was stuck with his. “Josh.”

  She had a strong handshake, and softer hands than he expected, which was not saying much. Her calluses were right for guitar and handgun. “Pleased to meet you. Shall we?”

  “Let’s.”

  • • •

  Lightbulbs burned in the embassy parapet. Gabe sat in his chair, in the corner, and watched Edith work. She had turned her chair at an angle to the desk, so she could keep him in view even with a document in her lap. The gun lay on the table, beside her manicured hand and the mug of tea. She had not spoken in at least an hour.

  “I could get some coffee,” Gabe said.

  She did not answer.

  “I think there are doughnuts left in the bag I brought—”

  “I threw them out,” she said, “after work. We don’t want ants.”

  She turned a page.

  “Well, I’ll—” he tried to stand.

  Her hand drifted to the gun. “Sit down, please.”

  He sat.

  Gabe crossed his legs. He didn’t realize it at first, but he’d crossed them the same way Edith did: knee to knee. He relaxed, changed position, ankle over knee instead. Dry air insinuated through floor exchanges. Bright lights made the world outside the window black.