“Acquaintances. Not the most trusting folks I’ve ever met. Gabe spent a year grooming Drahomir. And Drahomir is a regular citizen, with the usual level of distrust for authority behind the Iron Curtain. But these guys…” Josh shook his head.
“Just let them know you’re a friend, and that you have powerful allies.”
Beyond the closed door, a peal of laughter rang through Prague Station like carillon bells. Josh stiffened, wondering if it was at his expense.
“So,” Frank said, “putting aside your epic fuckup, how was your social night? Everything all chummy?”
Ah. “Gabe seems to have gotten over his problem with Edith, if that’s what you mean. I think they’ve established a détente. They might even come to respect each other.”
“And Pritchard? He’s back to his old self?”
“I’m not sure I know what his old self is, or was. But I haven’t witnessed anything like the incidents this past winter.”
“Would you say that his medical issues are no longer an impediment to his work?”
Medical issues. This wasn’t the first time Josh had had a conversation that circled some vague and unstated condition of Gabe’s. Dom had brought up a similar concern in the safe house on the night of the ANCHISES extraction, just before he and Maksim Sokolov disappeared.
“All I can say is that the seizures, or whatever they were, appear to be in remission.”
“You have no reservations about his work, then?”
Is that true? What about that KGB chippy and her Amazon pal?
“He’s not without his secrets.” Josh paused, momentarily struck by the hypocrisy. “But, then, I suppose neither am I.”
Frank chewed on this. “Fair enough. All right, off with you. Go buy a pair of boxing gloves or something.”
The secretarial pool wasn’t, it appeared, having another laugh at his expense. Instead it was Gabe, speak of the devil, who had them entertained. Edith was there as well, looking, if not exactly amused, less constipated than usual.
Fortune favors the brave, he told himself. He joined the group, giving a friendly nod all around as he addressed Gabe. Edith cocked an eyebrow and didn’t return the greeting. “We could hear you laughing in Frank’s office. Dare I ask?”
“Bad news, pal.” With the kind of gravity that one usually reserved for announcing a head of state has passed, Gabe pronounced, “Zerena Pulnoc is throwing another party this Friday.”
“Oh, come on.” Josh’s uncensored reaction sent what might have been a flicker of amusement across Edith’s face.” Are you pulling my leg?”
“If only.”
Josh pulled out his wallet. “All right. Put me down for five this time.”
“For or against?”
“For.”
“That’s a sucker’s bet. But sure, why not? I’m not turning down easy money.”
“Your parents raised you well.”
“Wait.” Edith looked back and forth. “You bet on dip circuit parties?”
Josh shook his head, glad for a chance to break the ice with a bit of harmless chitchat. “Only the ones thrown by the Soviet ambassador. His wife, really.”
She frowned at him, then turned to Gabe. “This is highly irregular.”
“It’s just, we’ve been to a number of these shindigs—the guy’s wife is relentless—but I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I glimpsed the ambassador himself.”
“So you bet on whether he’s going to show?”
“Pretty much,” said Josh.
She shook her head, looked around the station. “What kind of a place is this?”
“Welcome to Prague.”
2.
Early afternoon on a blustery Wednesday usually meant Jordan could enjoy a second cup of tea before dealing with the usual trickle of alcoholics… and more esoteric customers. But on this particular afternoon she’d barely had time to put the kettle on before the door swung open and her first customer of the day limped up to the bar.
The door slammed behind him, helped along by gusty spring winds. Her flinch drew a twinge from the muscles between her shoulders. She’d come to expect regular visits from Flame initiates wanting to buy the bar for unencumbered access to the ley lines beneath. And then there had been the recent visit from the creepy woman with all the questions. But this guy was new. Definitely not one of her regulars.
He didn’t radiate the helpless anxiety of a lost soul desperate for a shot of rotgut, and he didn’t exude the self-conscious embarrassment of a failed swain seeking vindication in a love charm. He seemed harder than that. But he nodded to her—all very friendly—as he situated himself upon a stool.
“I take it you’re open,” he said.
She nodded to the door. “That’s what the sign tells me. What can I get you?”
“I’ll take a shot of slivovice, if you have it.”
I’m American, screamed his accent. And I don’t care who knows it.
Jordan clicked a shot glass on the bar. The bottle she took down was nearly empty, and the cork made a little “pop” when she wrenched it free. A faint scent of plums wafted from the liquid she splashed into the glass.
“I’m Jordan.”
“Frank.” The newcomer lifted it as if toasting her, then downed the shot.
“I don’t recall seeing you in here before, Frank.”
“That’s because I haven’t been. But I’ve been hearing about this place for a while.”
How did my bar become a magnet for every nutcase in the city with a fetish for being unnecessarily cryptic? I have got to figure out how to make money from this.
“A referral, eh? Tell me, whom do I owe a free drink?”
On second thought, maybe he had come to buy a charm, after all. Sometimes newcomers to hedge magic became enamored of protecting the secrets they’d only recently learned. Every novice fancied himself a gatekeeper. This guy wouldn’t be the only first-time customer to waste half an hour trying to be cagey.
“Oh, some of my colleagues unwind here from time to time.” He tapped the empty glass with his ring finger, tinking the gold band against the lip. “Not bad. Another, please.”
The ring gave her pause. Under the guise of scratching an itch, she touched the bracelet on her left wrist. It was cool to the touch, like unmagicked metal. Frank’s wedding ring appeared to be just that, a wedding ring and nothing more.
As Jordan replenished the shot, he took a moment to look around the otherwise empty bar. “I see why they like it here.” He even inhaled, as if trying to get a scent. “This place has character.”
Yeah. Come for the beer, stay for the ley lines. Which are you here for?
“You should see it when it’s busy.” She slid the glass across to him, but kept her hand on it. “Speaking of which, I didn’t quite catch your colleagues’ names. If they’re regulars, I probably know them.”
“I hear you know half the city.”
“Not sure where you heard that. It’s a wild exaggeration.” Though she kept her expression friendly, Frank tensed when Jordan rummaged under the bar. He kept his expression friendly, too, but his free hand inched for the open pocket of his coat. After manipulating a charm, she produced a bag of unshelled peanuts, and he relaxed. She poured them into a bowl and pushed it across to Frank, who nodded his thanks.
“Still, you must have been here a good long while, to be such a fixture in the city.” He looked around again, nodding at the dark oak beams, the soot-stained paintings high on the wall, the glowing Wurlitzer. He cracked a peanut shell between thumb and forefinger. He chewed quietly, and didn’t talk with his mouth full. “This place wasn’t built yesterday.”
“The bar’s been here for many years. Me, only a few.”
“Not a local, huh?” She shook her head, waiting for a reaction. If he was sensitive to magic, the peanuts would give him a hell of a stomachache. But he went back for more. Not a magician, then. Who was this guy? “How’d you end up here?” he asked.
“I’ve bounced ar
ound, here and there. Most recently, after the Six-Day War, I left Cairo and came here.”
Technically that was quite true, although the implied causal relationship was a bit misleading. The war had nothing to do with it. She’d left Cairo, fled the Levant entirely, to avoid retaliation from angry Flame acolytes. Somehow, no matter what she did, she always landed on their bad side. Helping Alestair, Tanya, and Gabe in their hour of need had only made things worse. This time, though, hell or high water, she’d cleave to her neutrality.
Frank’s eyes widened. He tried to cover by downing the shot, but she’d seen it. Something had piqued his deep interest.
“Cairo? You don’t say. I’ve never been, myself, but I have a colleague who spent some time there.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, lightly tapped the glass on the bar, then turned it over. “Come to think of it, you might have overlapped in your time there. Wouldn’t that be a small world?”
Oh, hell. Whatever you’ve gotten yourself into this time, Pritchard, best of luck. And keep me out of it.
She plucked a glass from a rack, buffed it with her dishtowel, and shrugged. “The world seems plenty big to me.”
• • •
One didn’t need to work for the KGB to read every social interaction, no matter how innocent, with just the tiniest bit of suspicion. Growing up in the long shadow of Stalinism was sufficient. To be on the right side of history, one had to make compromises. Nothing came without sacrifice. Suspicion was a useful tool, not just for spies. A survival trait.
Tanya knew there was no such thing as an innocent meeting with Zerena Pulnoc.
Before departing her flat, Tanya loaded up on every available charm. Recent disturbances in local spellcraft had rendered them a little unreliable, but damned if she’d go completely unarmed. Zerena was a spider. And the likely purpose of today’s lunch date was to drape another silken thread around her, so gently this unsuspecting fly would never feel it.
But there were other Flame factions in the city, all with differing agendas regarding Tanya, and not all known for similar restraint. After all, Sasha himself had tried sending her to her death. Were Zerena and he allies in this new effort? Perhaps lunch was the pretense for another attempt to kill her. Zerena had intervened, once, but Tanya wasn’t about to trust her life to continued altruism. Perhaps Zerena’s confederates wanted to lure Tanya to a known rendezvous, where she could be taken. Still, it was far more likely that Zerena had simply deemed this the right time to remind Tanya of that life-saving intercession, and to call in the implied debt.
Tanya manipulated the enchanted coin in her coat pocket, making it slalom through her fingers. Very well.
The bakery was situated in a tonier part of town than those Tanya frequented. Zerena had chosen unfamiliar territory; a simple and effective way to keep her off balance. Tables and chairs lined the pavement just outside the bakery’s display window, but they were vacant, owing no doubt to the blustery weather. Zerena, who’d unsurprisingly managed to snag the only corner table within, waved to Tanya through the window.
Nothing perturbed Tanya’s charms and wards—the coin in her pocket didn’t suddenly burn her fingertips—when she opened the door and crossed the threshold. A bell tinkled softly overhead, and Tanya found herself wreathed with scents of coffee, almond paste, vanilla.
Her traitor stomach gave a little growl. Regardless of whether this place was a Flame front, it was clearly a functioning bakery. And, judging from the heavenly smells, not to mention the line of customers at the counter, a good one. She’d vowed to herself that she’d only sit and listen, not break bread with Zerena. Only a fool would eat while visiting the underworld. To do so trapped one forever. Wasn’t that how the old stories went?
But now here she was, stomach empty thanks to a skipped breakfast, and wondering if just a small cup of coffee wouldn’t sharpen wits already slightly blunted by a restless night. One wouldn’t enter a duel with an inferior weapon. And every interaction with Zerena was a duel.
“My dear.” En garde. A wide smile touched Zerena’s eyes without baring her fangs. “Thank you for joining me.”
The well-creased newspaper and the smattering of crumbs spoke to Zerena’s entitlement. She’d been here for a bit already, utterly unconcerned by the line of standing customers. She controlled the terrain. Touch, left.
Tanya pulled out the unoccupied chair and draped her coat over it. “Am I late?”
“No, no. I was quite early. This is my favorite place to read the paper and pretend, for a short while, that I’m not an ambassador’s wife.”
Tanya sat. The wobbly table was so small their knees almost touched. Furthermore, by taking the corner seat, Zerena had forced Tanya to sit with her back to the room. Touch, left.
“Your cheeks are flushed,” Zerena commented. “I read in that the hand of this dreadful wind. I do hope you’ll let me treat you.”
Tanya shook her head. “I ate a large breakfast.”
“I doubt that. No, you’d rather starve than add one pastry to the ledger of your perceived debts.” Zerena tilted her head, pursed her lips. “But haven’t we already sung this tune? The call and response of debts owed and obligations paid? I find it tiresome.”
Tanya watched her, willing her empty stomach to silence. “I can’t—I won’t—disregard the recent past simply because it’s inconvenient.” Riposte.
“Whatever may have happened in the past,” said Zerena, “I give you my word, I consider it well and truly in the past. So please, unfurrow that brow, dear Tanya. As far as I am concerned, you’ve no debts to repay.” She finished her coffee and, when the clink of empty cup on saucer drew the attention of the woman behind the counter, she gestured for another, as well as one for Tanya, overriding her objection. Then she continued, “In fact, if anything, I’d hoped I might find myself indebted to you.”
The arrival of a coffee cup and a koláče gave Tanya a moment to prepare her riposte. She took a sip and scowled. She might as well have raked a wire brush across her tongue. Though the coffee had smelled lovely when she entered, this particular cup must have been chiseled from the bottom of the pot. If she took a bite of the pastry solely as a buffer against the chemical warfare being waged against her mouth, would that count as breaking bread?
Zerena caught her expression. She whispered, “It’s not very good, is it?” Then, without asking permission, she plucked the spoon from Tanya’s saucer and, while stirring the burnt coffee, spoke a single word in a language that hadn’t been heard in this part of the world for many centuries. Tanya tensed, but her protective charms registered only the tiniest blip of magical energies. “Try it now,” Zerena urged.
She did. It was vastly improved. It tasted like it ought, like what she’d smelled when she entered. Determined not to betray her surprise, Tanya gave a noncommittal “Hmm.” But she did file the spell away; she could see a half dozen uses for an innocuous little trick like that.
Sip. “Indebted to me? I don’t see how.”
Zerena started to answer, but caught herself. Hesitating, as if choosing her words carefully, she frowned. Then she lowered her voice. “I’m rarely so easily humbled. But I find myself in a bit of a bind. A minor one. But one from which you could extract me, if you chose.”
Put me at ease. Make me feel like I’m in control. Earn my trust with a simple favor. I know what you’re doing, thought Tanya. This is textbook foot-in-the-door work. It’s exactly the sort of thing that every officer looks for when establishing a relationship with a potential developmental.
Tanya took another sip, then mopped it away with a bit of pastry. She wondered if Zerena’s coffee trick could transform a good pastry into something sublime. “How can I help you?”
“I believe you’re friendly with the proprietor of Bar Vodnář?”
Tanya’s hackles went up. “We have a passing acquaintance.”
“Then perhaps you know she sells… Oh, this is embarrassing. She sells certain herbal remedies. Folk medicines. I put
little stock in that nonsense, but my husband on the other hand… He’s quite stubborn.”
“I think I understand. But I don’t see how I can be helpful.”
“Madam Rhemes dislikes me.” Somehow, Zerena made herself blush. Actually blush. Tanya had to admire the performance. “She will not sell to me.”
But she will to me, no questions asked. And then you owe me a favor, and I come away from the exchange feeling safe and empowered. That’s the snare. I see it, and I can sidestep it.
“Now I understand.” Tanya smiled. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
Touch, right.
• • •
Dom’s phone records had led them to Terzian. And now Terzian’s records (or, at least, the records connected to the building that had burned, magically, a week earlier) led them to a flat in the Vinohrady District. Of course it didn’t lead them to Dom’s old flat. That would have been too easy, Gabe grumbled to himself. The building was clean, but not in good repair. Its owner was a relatively young man who walked with a rolling gait on the mismatched shoes he wore to compensate for unequal legs. Gabe and Edith stood on his doorstep, posing as newlyweds desperate to move out of her aunt’s crowded flat.
They were in luck, the man said. He had just one vacancy, owing to a tenant who had more or less up and left in the middle of the night about a week ago. He’d intended to repaint the unit before trying to find tenants for it; some people couldn’t abide the lingering cigar scent. At that, Gabe started. But Edith, fully in character as a desperate bride, asked, “Would you discount the first month’s rent if we paint it ourselves?”
This proved to be a masterful question. He couldn’t fish out the key and lead them upstairs quickly enough. But the building had no elevator, so the climb to the third story was slow, as the fellow had to grip the handrail and re-center himself after each step. He unlocked the flat, pushed the door open, and handed the key to Gabe.
“Take as long as you need to look around. Lock it up when you’re done and return the key to me downstairs.”
As soon as the owner receded into the stairwell, Gabe dropped the key into Edith’s palm. It was her investigation, after all. He told her as much, in a whisper, in response to the eyebrow she raised at him. His imagination filled in the sound of a handgun being cocked. She seemed surprised, as though expecting a struggle for dominance, having taken for granted that she’d have to expend energy on meaningless psychological posturing.
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) Page 10
