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

  Gabe moved to the door. He spoke under his breath. Josh had to fill in the gaps in the whisper with the movement of his lips. “If I tell him, he’ll die. Look at me. Look at Edith.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re in danger,” Gabe said. “The Flame and Ice play for keeps. You bring him into this, and we’ll lose all Prague Station at once. We’ll lose the war.”

  “I have to tell him.”

  “Josh.” Gabe had always seemed so confident and sure. His lighter caught the first time he flicked it open. He always knew the right way to lose a tail, to play a mark, to win a fight. He was everything Josh had never been, and he was desperate now. “Promise me you won’t tell him.”

  “You’re asking me to betray him. To betray my oath.” Like you did. He stopped himself before he said that.

  “I’m asking you to save him, and all of us. If I go down for Edith, I go down. Prague Station never had trouble with … this sort of thing … before I came along. Maybe it won’t, after I’m gone.”

  Josh shook his head.

  “Promise me you won’t tell him. Promise me you’ll save his life.” Gabe stared through the narrow window. “Josh. Promise me.”

  Josh turned away from him.

  “Promise, dammit.”

  Josh set his foot on the stairs, and began to climb.

  2.

  A dead woman lay beneath a sheet. She could have been anyone. Then the doctor pulled back the sheet, and she wasn’t.

  Josh said nothing. Frank said, “That’s her.”

  The doctor left them alone with Edith’s body. The lights made her skin look green. Ceiling fans rattled. Massive refrigerator compressors whirred behind the walls, keeping small pieces of the world from rot. Frank’s breath steamed. Her skin was paler than in life, and Josh remembered her seeming larger. He’d never seen her lying down. Maybe that was it.

  The doctor had left the cloth pulled back, baring a slash of skin beneath the collarbone, and Josh hated him for it. He reached out and folded the cloth back so it laid flat across her neck. If her eyes had not been closed, it would have been easier to remind himself she was not sleeping.

  She was not burned, like Kazimir had been. She still looked herself. For all he knew, there might be some magic to restore her. He doubted it worked that way.

  He thought of Alestair, holding the fire in his hand, saving Josh’s life, and thought of the people Alestair did not save. Josh had dreamed of magic growing up, what kid didn’t? Wrapped himself in Superman stories and the legends of King Arthur. What good was magic, if you ended up here anyway?

  Sorcerers, cults, spies. If Josh had been king of Prague, he would have drowned them all in the Vltava and been done with it.

  “They washed her,” Frank said.

  “What?”

  “She doesn’t smell like shit.”

  Frank folded back the sheet. Josh reached to stop him, but Frank fixed Josh with a look, and he stopped. Frank took Edith’s wrist, gently, but not the way he would have taken a person’s wrist. “Look at this.”

  Josh made himself. “It’s clean.”

  Frank turned the wrist over. Easier to think of it as the wrist than as hers. “Under the nails, too. And her purse they showed us—you ever seen a handbag that empty?”

  “Oh.”

  Frank set the hand down, and covered it with the sheet. He gripped Edith’s shoulder through the cloth. “But if they wanted to cover evidence,” he said, head bent as if praying, “why could we get our package so easily?”

  The package, in this case, would be Gabe. Too much mystery by half already. Josh, too, folded his hands and assumed an attitude of prayer. “I don’t know.”

  “And if they were going to hide evidence, why arrest him in the first place?”

  He hadn’t promised Gabe. He hadn’t said anything. But Gabe was right—or at least he wasn’t wrong. Say Frank left. Say Josh confessed everything to Frank, about magic and the Ice and Flame, and the station chief went after it. Like Edith.

  But what should he say now? That he believed Gabe did it? Let his friend take the fall? No. He could not sell Gabe out, no matter how much Gabe himself wanted him to. There were too many secrets these days. Too many sharp turns and betrayals. Friendship had to be worth something. “If Pritchard is the killer.”

  “They found him with blood on his hands.”

  “You know Pritchard, sir. If he killed her, would they have found him?”

  “Sometimes men get sloppy. They get emotional.”

  “If he wanted her out of the picture, there were plenty of opportunities by the docks.” In the firefight, at night, using Czech service weapons, not his own sidearm. “They were friends. There wasn’t anything between them beyond that. People don’t kill their friends.”

  “You’ve had better friends than me.” Frank’s voice sounded flat.

  Josh kept praying, or seeming to.

  Frank continued: “This is bigger than Gabe. And the Prague cops miss whatever it’s in their interest to miss. If we want justice for Edith, we’ll have to find it ourselves.” He said, louder, “Amen,” and let her go.

  Josh drove them back. The roads spoke to them through the tires. A spring fog lay on the Vltava, and streetlights burned halos in the dark.

  Frank turned his cane in his fingers, consumed in the play of light on silver. Josh kept his own eyes on the road.

  “I checked her movements in the last few days,” Frank said. “Read back her calls. She was on the trail. She thought she couldn’t trust us—any of us. Maybe she was right. Maybe she wasn’t. That much is on her. But we didn’t earn her trust, and that’s on us. We let her go, and we let her die.”

  There should have been rain to fill that silence, but the night was clear.

  Now was the time. Josh had to tell him, dammit. Tell him everything, all at once, now, before they crossed the bridge, before they made it to the embassy. In a car, the two of them, alone, it might almost seem real.

  Promise me.

  He drove.

  Frank watched the city pass. “Pritchard isn’t saying anything. Maybe he’ll talk. Maybe not. But I don’t mean to wait. I’m going out there. I’ll learn what she knew. Who gave the order. And I will make them bleed.”

  3.

  Frank had to walk the Lab that afternoon, of course, and of course the damn dog kept yanking her leash, fit to knock him over, all the way across the bridge and down these narrow streets some baron must have thought were a good idea back before democracy. The streets here always smelled better than he expected, which he didn’t think you could count in their favor, and people smiled at him. He tried to smile back. They tended to leave him alone after that. Edith said his smile wasn’t reassuring.

  “Come on, Bruiser.” The dog lingered to investigate a curb that looked like all the other curbs. A car rolled by. The dog decided against doing whatever she’d been about to do. Frank didn’t mind. If his officers were this careful when figuring their shit out, his life would be a lot easier.

  He reached the place, and walked up and down, looking for signs of—anything. He saw damn little. Garbage cans, streaked concrete, locked doors, dull glass.

  The report they’d bribed out of the cops said they found Edith here, on the sidewalk, on her back. He paced the distance. Cobblestones played hell with his prosthetic foot. He should have considered that before he fought for a post in Prague.

  He’d fought for this city.

  To kneel, he leaned into his cane. Back muscles screamed. He did his best to ignore them. Bruiser tugged at her leash, and almost knocked him over on his way down.

  Back in Sunday school, the preacher used to tell them about the Venerable Bede, who preached to rocks, and got the rocks to shout amen. And when the Pharisees asked Jesus to shut his disciples up, he said that even if they did shut up, the rocks would speak for them.

  The cobblestones proved less talkative. They’d been rounded by a few hundred years of feet, and didn’t have much to say. Wha
tever blood had seeped into the cracks between the stones, it didn’t look much different from the dirt already there.

  Bruiser whined.

  So much for the crime scene. He’d hoped the cops missed something. But that never worked out like it did in detective novels. Maybe he’d have better luck retracing her steps.

  Frank reached Bar Vodnář at happy hour. The jukebox blared unfamiliar jazz—he’d always been more of a country guy, since what was the point of music you couldn’t dance to—and the bar was full of people and smoke. The few patrons who noticed him glanced curiously at Bruiser, and then away, with practiced disinterest.

  Frank only had eyes for the hefty man arguing with the bartender.

  He recognized the bartender, and the man. Jordan Rhemes wasn’t the kind of woman you forgot easy. She looked like she’d cut through a lot of shit so far today, and was sharpening her knives to cut through a little more.

  Whatever she was fed up with, the big man seemed to have an endless supply of it. Him, Frank recognized only from photos. They were speaking in animated Russian, and Rhemes seemed nervous. Neither of them had seen him yet. That the two of them were talking was good intel, worrying intel. He definitely shouldn’t intervene. Just back out the door, let them duke it out.

  Ah, hell. He was walking toward them, wasn’t he?

  Shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t be interpreting the bits of their conversation he could overhear—something about flames, maybe? Damn sure shouldn’t be holding out his hand to, Christ, tap the big guy on the shoulder and lead with: “Hey, buddy. Some of us would like to get a drink.”

  Sasha Komyetski, KGB Chief of Station, Prague, whirled around and stared at Frank in utter incomprehension. Nice to see him surprised. Frank had spent too much time staring at that smug face in grainy photographs, trying to out-spy the spymaster. He’d wondered what it would take to arrange Komyetski’s death, whom he could bribe, what systems he could cut, what he could offer Langley to make up for the risk of an international incident should he fail—but the spider was careful. No way he would have gotten a crack at the man who fouled ANCHISES. Until now.

  Komyetski had a smile broad enough to use for target practice, but it didn’t touch the rest of his face. Only his mouth moved. “Drummond?” His accent in English was about as bad as Frank’s in Russian. “Frank Drummond? Indeed? You have emerged? To what purpose?”

  “Just here for a drink,” Frank said. “Don’t usually see you out and about either, Komyetski.”

  “Is Sasha, please.” The officer held out his hand. Frank didn’t take it. Komyetski looked more confused than offended.

  “Sorry if I interrupted,” Frank said, though he wasn’t.

  “Oh, certainly not. I am leaving. We have said all we needed to say. I shall employ facilities, and then, I will be gone.” He tipped an imaginary hat to Rhemes, and while Frank did not know the woman well enough to read her, the set of her eyes and the angle of her head made her look one grinning offhand comment away from flipping him the bird, or punching him in the throat. Komyetski did not seem to mind. He whirled away through a door in the back wall, slipping into a space that seemed much too small to accommodate his bulk.

  “We don’t allow dogs in here,” Rhemes said, in English. Bruiser pressed her nose against Rhemes’ trousers. Rhemes didn’t seem to notice.

  “I won’t be here long.”

  “You said you want a drink. Do you drink fast?”

  “I’m looking for information.”

  She was a good four inches shorter than Frank, but she could do that thing with her eyes where she looked down on him anyway. “You’re not the only one.”

  He liked this part. Never was much for fieldwork, with the leg, but who cared about climbing over rooftops when you could do as much with a simple conversation? “Friend of mine’s dead.”

  She kept still, but she lost color, and he wondered who she thought he meant.

  “A woman,” he said, and she steadied, and he knew. “Name of Edith. Light brown hair. American.”

  “I know her.”

  “Did she drink here two nights ago?”

  She set a hand on an upturned glass behind the bar. “She’s dead?”

  “It was sudden.”

  “She came in—yes, two nights back. Didn’t say a word. She ordered whiskey, and she sat in that seat over there. Barely touched her drink.” She pointed. “Put Brahms on the jukebox. I didn’t know we had Brahms in the jukebox. Kept picking the same song over and over. And she read. In the end, she left.” She looked down into the empty glass. “I’m sorry.”

  “No one met her?”

  “No.”

  “Can I have a whiskey?”

  He made his way with the glass through the crowd to the table near the jukebox. Bruiser’s tail drummed on chairs they passed. The table Rhemes meant was small and round, with an inlaid chessboard; a few games stood on a shelf beside it. A kid sat there, writing in a journal; he’d finished his beer. “You’re done,” Frank told the kid, in Czech, and the kid seemed to agree.

  Frank sat. So did Bruiser.

  He petted her as he drank, and considered the table. No message here. His fingers explored the wood’s underside, finding only the usual scratches and scrapes. Maybe she left something inside these boxes?

  He was rifling through them when Sasha Komyetski emerged from the crowd. Looked like he had changed his mind about leaving. “Mister Drummond! I did not know you liked games.”

  “Depends on the game.”

  Komyetski found that funny for some reason. “Well, then. Shall we play?”

  • • •

  Josh walked the city in a haze.

  Days stretched as spring opened. All winter, his embassy shift ended after sunset. He reached his office in the dark and emerged in the dark at night to wander shivering home. Over the long winter months he started to feel the sun did not exist, really, not for him. Sunset came later now, but he still felt as if he walked in the shade.

  The air was thick and wet. He felt uncomfortable in his own skin. He jerked his neck to stare at flickering shadows and windblown bits of trash.

  He needed someone. No, that someone was shrinking from the facts. He knew the man he needed: Alestair Winthrop, the spy whose bed he’d shared, the secret wizard. He knew rules at which Josh, now, could only guess. Was Frank in danger? If so, how much? How could Josh keep him safe? What could they do for Gabe? Alestair could answer all these questions with a smile, a firm hand on the shoulder. My dear boy, it’s quite simple …

  If only Josh could imagine the rest of that explanation as vividly as he could imagine its beginning, he’d save himself a lot of trouble.

  He could not have Alestair. After Alestair’s revelations, after their fight, after Kazimir—Josh did not trust him. And even if he did, he would not go crawling back.

  Wouldn’t he, though?

  If there was no other way to save Gabe, to save them all?

  Josh let his footsteps take him east, to a small row of apartments not far from the Soviet embassy. No light burned in the window he watched. He bought a newspaper and sat, reading about local politics, about great advances in agricultural science in the Soviet Union, and a bit about the inevitable doom of capitalist society in light of American decadence, and so on, as the sun set. He had to guess a few scraps of vocabulary, but he could get the gist.

  When he looked up, the light was on.

  Okay, then. He folded the newspaper, stood, and felt a heavy hand settle on his shoulder.

  “Why are you waiting in front of my apartment?” Nadia Ostrokhina asked.

  He had a good answer to that question, but it did not fit in the margins of his mind.

  She did not relieve the silence.

  “Reading a newspaper,” he said. “I had hoped to make a friend.”

  She let go. He turned. She looked different than he remembered, like a glacier just calved: still a mountain-high wall of ice, but smaller now. Sharper, too, he thought, from the r
ecent break.

  “I would have gone to—” He would not say the name in the street. Even he wasn’t that dumb. “Can we talk?”

  “You are about to offer me the newspaper.” She pointed. “As I am asking you if I can read an article inside. There is a small space behind my building, with a bench that cannot be seen from the back door or any window. It will take me fifteen minutes to reach it.”

  He passed her the newspaper, and she thanked him.

  • • •

  “Long winter in your embassy, I hear,” Frank said, and moved a checker piece.

  Across the board, Sasha Komyetski loomed over the pieces, working his drink in one hand. “I believe the winter has been long for us both. Though perhaps my people are better suited for it.” He took a piece. “You may be confusing Prague for a planet in one of your American Star Treks. Where the time goes more slowly for some than for others.”

  “I don’t watch television. Rots the brain.” Frank moved to block. “Your ambassador has been sick. Tough luck. Brings everybody down.”

  Komyetski shrugged, and took another piece. Bruiser snuffled at the Russian’s pocket, and he scratched her under the chin. “Some illness is to be expected, in winter. Some loss. What about yours? Are your, what is the word—colleagues. Are your colleagues well?”

  Frank shifted one piece on a diagonal. “Everything around here’s in tip-top shape.”

  “A little bird told me an American was arrested the other night.” Komyetski considered, then took the piece Frank had pushed forward. “And yet when I went to see him—because we do always try to look out for foreigners in need, you know—”

  “I do.”

  “When I went to see him, he was already gone. Apparently a prisoner transfer of some sort. I am curious as to how this was accomplished.”

  “It’s a mystery. Maybe you got bad information. That happens sometimes.”

  “I do not tend to get bad information.”

  “No, I bet you don’t. Bartenders in this town are awfully chatty.”

  “Oh, Miss Rhemes is not one of mine. That was a private conversation, a disagreement among friends. Chitchat.” He shrugged, and showed Frank his palms, as if to demonstrate how much dirt wasn’t on his hands. “You are far less entertaining than I had hoped, Mister Drummond. One wishes an occasional open sparring session with one’s adversary, does one not?”