He laughed. Truly laughed. Something was wrong.
She kept up a bright patter, distracting him while she twisted her wedding ring through a half circle. Every charm on her person—the garnets in her earrings, the ancient coin tucked her clutch, even the silver threads sewn into the hem of her coat—gave a single faint jerk, as if acknowledging their activation. Let him try to kill her. Her protective wards would burn his bones to ash. She’d render this bakery, this entire street, a howling firestorm before she’d allow a pudgy alcoholic like Aleksander Vadimovich Komyetski to believe he could best her.
He took her to the walk-in pantry. There, on a table, a long length of cheesecloth concealed a bundle the size of a bread basket. Karel and Vladimir leaned against the wall—her junior acolytes, now eyeing her as if they thought they were sizing up her throne for themselves. That gave her pause. Sasha alone, she could defeat. Karel and Vladimir, too, she’d outwitted before. But all three? Hoping the men would dismiss it as a nervous tic, she gave her wedding ring another twist. This time the confirmatory shake from her charms filled her mouth with the tongue-writhing foulness of moldy bread.
Sasha waited to speak until the door was closed and Karel had propped a chair under the knob. Zerena recognized the static electricity tingle of a protective ward snapping into place. Then Sasha strode to the table and laid a hand on the cheesecloth. She rolled her eyes. Perhaps she’d die of boredom with this tedious showmanship before he tried to kill her.
Frowning, he ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Zerena watched it bulge first one cheek, then the other. Damn. He tasted it, too. She’d gone overboard.
“Are you tense? There’s no need. I merely have information to share.”
“This isn’t how we do it.”
“No, but this is urgent, and it affects us all.”
She eyed the other two. The tension in the way they leaned against the shelves, the glances flicking back and forth between them. Aha. You don’t know what Komyetski is about, either. Maybe I won’t have to scorch this place to the ground.
Sasha was many things, but no fool. And he’d never be so foolish as to attack all three of us at once.
She waited for one of the buffoons to rise to Sasha’s bait. It took but a second.
Vladimir crossed his arms. “We’re all here now. What is it?”
At least Sasha had the courtesy to dispense with preambles. “There’s a defector in Prague. And the CIA already has him.”
Zerena didn’t have to feign surprise. “Then I’d say you have quite a problem on your hands. But I can’t help you. This is your mess. What could I possibly do?”
“Why, nothing.” With a yank of the cloth, Sasha added, “You’ve already done little enough.”
The hidden item was a radio. A recent conversation—a conversation about a radio—came unbidden to mind. Zerena didn’t like where this was going.
Karel jerked his chin toward the table. “Are we supposed to understand the significance of that?”
“Examine it.” Sasha spread his arms. “Be my guest. Take a good, close look.” He met Zerena’s eyes. “It’s perfectly safe, I assure you.”
It was the work of moments to perceive the foreign magic lurking within. The radio was a construct. And a subtle one.
“This is the work of an Ice sorcerer. A very fine one. Where did you obtain this?”
“I found it hidden behind a secret panel in dear Tanya’s apartment. Since that time, she has gone to great lengths to retrieve it. I, of course, have deflected such efforts.”
It took superior willpower not to shiver visibly as a frisson of genuine alarm tickled her spine. Sasha had inquired about this very same radio. Acting on instinct—on the sense of great untapped potential within Tatiana Morozova—Zerena had recklessly improvised an excuse to help shield the young officer from suspicion. A foolish gamble, she knew, even as she had made it. But in the moment the potential dividends had looked so rich . . . Now that careless lie was laid bare. And it made it look as though Zerena had deliberately interceded to conceal an Ice operation being carried out by one of Sasha’s own officers.
Though she doubted Karel and Vladimir understood the context, the implication was clear enough. This was a coup attempt. Or worse. But she played along, spooled things out a little further. She needed the delay to regain her equilibrium.
“I do hope you intend to start making sense today.”
“It was Tanya who identified the defection-in-progress. She’s a very fine officer. But she’s clearly an agent, wittingly or otherwise, of our enemies. She must go.” His jowls shimmied when he shook his head. “I truly dislike this course of action, even more than I dislike having it thrust upon me.”
Karel crossed his arms. “I’m sure you don’t dislike it any more than we dislike being kept in the dark—”
“Wait your turn,” said Zerena, “while the adults speak.” She needed no charm to summon a tone of voice capable of knocking a disobedient cur into instant submission. Vladimir and Karel both bristled; nevertheless, the latter’s teeth clicked together. In a tone infinitesimally less frosty, she added: “Thrust upon you? Do explain.”
“We relied upon you. It was your job to monitor our adversaries and keep us informed of their disposition in Prague. We trusted you.” Again, the jowls shimmied. Sasha, the hapless victim. “Instead, you allowed an enemy agent to infiltrate my station. Had I not uncovered the truth myself, the damage could have been incalculable.” He turned to the others, pulling a charm from his trouser pocket as he did so. She knew without looking what it would be: a jade-green hummingbird feather threaded through a minute hole in a lodestone, all bound with silver wire. Hummingbird because truth was so light and fragile, silver to reflect the value of honesty. A beautiful, deadly thing. “I call upon you both to witness this. I vouch that Zerena Pulnoc did state Tatiana Morozova’s ownership of this radio was harmless and of no concern to our efforts. I vouch that, to the best of my knowledge, Zerena knowingly concealed the Ice affiliation of a KGB officer under my command, and did so to the detriment of all our efforts in Prague.”
He pressed the charm to his lips. He bit the feather, pulled it loose, and spat it on the floor. It didn’t burst into flames. Neither did he. He’d spoken the truth, or if nothing else, the truth as he understood it.
“I submit that Zerena Pulnoc is not suited for her position.”
Vladimir frowned at the emerald pinion. Karel frowned at Zerena. “Do you deny this?”
“I deny that my actions were taken in support of Ice. I have reasons for everything I do.”
“Yet you never share them.”
“You share very little with us,” Vladimir added.
Under other circumstances, she would have rolled her eyes at his petulant tone. She quirked an eyebrow. “Such as?”
“We know a Host has recently arrived. This we discerned for ourselves. You never mentioned it.”
Sasha flinched as if he’d just received a static shock. “Is this true?”
The look of scorn she tossed in his direction might have flayed a thinner man down to the skeleton. “I thought you no longer trusted my pronouncements? You’ll move against Morozova soon, I assume.”
“I must. This is a delicate time. With a defection-in-progress—and now apparently an uncollared Host roaming the city—the risks of keeping her under observation outweigh the benefits.” Sasha straightened. The shift in his body language was subtle but deliberate. When he spoke next, his voice wasn’t that of a jolly uncle, nor was it that of a mealymouthed sycophant. “I will lament the loss of her skills, but she must be removed. And so she will be.”
You want her gone because you believe she’s my creature. Well, then, perhaps I will make her so.
“I see,” she said, in what she hoped was a convincingly meek tone. It wasn’t one she practiced often. Cling to your illusions, Aleksander Komyetski. They serve us both. “May I make a suggestion, then?”
It was galling, honestly, how he mana
ged to load a single nod with such condescending magnanimity. But she swallowed her distaste. “We already have the tools in place for dealing with Morozova.” She didn’t take her eyes—a supplicant’s eyes, she hoped—from Sasha, but she jerked her head toward the other Flame men, who eyed the exchange like caged canaries watching a pair of hungry housecats tear at each other. “Use one of their constructs. Doing so will leave your hands clean.”
Vladimir and Karel exchanged a guilty look. Artless idiots. “We don’t have—”
“Oh, please.” She let the disdain fly free. She could play the supplicant to Sasha if she must, but she’d never bend a knee to these idiots. Karel squirmed as though the hoarfrost in her tone had glazed his spine. “Don’t insult me. The very moment you suspected there might be a new Host in town, you tripped over yourselves to build constructs to hunt it. Your latest has roamed the town for several nights.”
To Sasha, she added, “I’m not entirely uninformed about the goings on in Prague, you know.”
He scratched his chin. “A construct. Yes, that might do.”
2.
A floorboard creaked. Josh cocked his head, briefly splitting his attention between the window overlooking the street and the room behind him.
“How is he?”
“Sleeping like a newborn kitten at his mother’s teat.” Dominic’s voice was a gravely rasp in the dark. The door to the safe house’s only bedroom closed behind him with a quiet click.
“I’d have thought Sokolov would be too keyed up to sleep. I guess the adrenaline rush wore off.”
Not mine, though. Not yet.
“Guess so. Or maybe it was the knockout drops I spiked his water glass with after we arrived.”
That stole all of Josh’s attention. His chair scraped across the floor as he pushed away from the window to stare at Dom, who had taken a seat at the kitchen table. The room was small enough that a stage whisper carried.
“Chloral hydrate? That wasn’t in the mission brief.”
Dom shrugged. “I made a situational judgment call. We need Sokolov clearheaded and calm. He’s neither of those things as long as he’s coasting on a sleep deficit.”
“But what if we have to move him in a hurry?”
“I’m not worried. You’re a good man in the field, Toms. I’m confident we’d make it work.”
Josh blushed, grateful for the shadows. He tried not to let the compliment swell his chest or his head. “I suppose it does make sense that he rests sooner rather than later.”
Dom nodded. “Mission briefs are all fine and good—hey, I wrote this one, after all—but fieldwork is always about thinking on your feet.” He pulled a cigar from the inner pocket of his sport coat. He didn’t light it, thank God, but he did hold it under his nose. A few sniffs later, he added, “Always have a contingency plan in your back pocket. And a contingency for your contingency.” The cigar made its way to the corner of his mouth. Speaking past it, Dom concluded, “I mean contingencies that aren’t laid out in the mission brief. Your own personal plans B, C, and D for when it all goes to hell.”
“Has that ever happened to you? Everything gone to hell, I mean?”
“And then some.”
Josh chewed on this. He tried not to look too eager for advice. “You can’t plan for everything, but you might as well try, huh?”
Dom shrugged again. “Nothing you haven’t heard from Pritchard a dozen times or more.”
“Hm.”
Josh turned his attention back to the approach to the safe house. If unfriendlies showed up, he and Dom would have to shove the disconnected oven aside and scramble out through the crawlspace. He was still trying to figure out how they’d manage to extricate an unconscious Maksim if that happened when Dom stood. Carrying his chair, he joined Josh’s vigil at the window.
“Get some rest, Dom. I’ll spell you.” I couldn’t sleep if you gave me twice the dose you gave Maksim.
“Sure. I appreciate it.”
Yet Dom’s gaze didn’t waver from the street. The curtains hid them from outside eyes, yet up close in a dark room, the window offered a good view of the alley. He cleared his throat, as if hesitating.
“Hey, Josh. Before I turn in? I know I’ve been a little heavy-handed with you. About . . . well, about things that are none of my damn business.” Josh tensed. A prickle took root between his shoulders, auguring an uncomfortable conversation. The cigar tapped against Dom’s teeth, making a muted scrape as he rolled it from one corner of his mouth to the other. “You did fine work tonight. That’s all I care about. You’re okay by me.”
A spot of motion on the street gave Josh an excuse to turn his head. There it was again. He stood, leaned closer to the window, catching his weight on the sill so that he didn’t disturb the curtain. He craned his neck, hissing, “Did you see that?”
“Easy, cowboy.” Dom pointed. “Newspaper.”
The wind picked up. A dust devil carried a piece of paper down the alley—a scrap of newsprint, darker on one side than the other. It flickered in the streetlamp shine.
Josh returned to his seat, blushing again, but not from pride. At least he hadn’t knocked over the chair.
As if reading his thoughts, the other man said, “Better safe than sorry.”
They shared a silent vigil. Perhaps a quarter hour passed. Nobody entered the alley. Not even a stray dog, piddling on the corner lamppost. Dom yawned. Josh fought down a sympathetic yawn of his own. He was about to reiterate his offer to spell Dom when the other man broke the silence.
“Ask you something?”
Josh tried to emulate one of Dom’s shrugs, that easy nonchalance. “Hit me.”
Dom’s meaty hand curled into a fist. “If you say so, chief.” He reared back as if winding back for a haymaker. Josh flinched. Dom broke into a grin, slapped him on the back. “Nah, I’m just shitting you.” He allowed himself a little chuckle. “This time of night, people get punky. Once the excitement passes, the crash is hard. Gotta keep it interesting.”
Gabe wasn’t wrong about Dom. The guy could be an obnoxious jingoist. But that didn’t make him so terrible. Dom was all right, in his own blustery way.
“Did you actually have a question?”
The other man nodded. “Pritchard.” Again, it was like he’d just read Josh’s thoughts. “What’s his deal?”
Josh tore his attention from the alley. It wasn’t as difficult as it had been half an hour ago.
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Does he make everybody work hard to get on his good side, or just me?”
“I don’t . . . that’s not my experience with Gabe.”
“Just me, then.” Dom pursed his lips. The cigar made another circuit of his mouth. Josh wouldn’t have pegged him for the kind of guy with easily hurt feelings, but then again, how well could you really know somebody? Appearances were deceiving. Josh chastised himself; of all people, he should carry that truth deep in his marrow. Every part of his work, every part of his life, rested upon it.
Dom honestly looked put out. Josh sought a comforting word. But before he found it, Dom’s blustery mask fell back in place.
“Don’t get me wrong. He’s good. I’ve got no problem with his work. I’m just trying to figure his angles.”
“Honestly, you’re overthinking it. Gabe doesn’t have a lot of angles.”
“Everybody has angles, son.”
Well. There was that strangeness earlier this winter. But that had passed. If anything, as ANCHISES prep moved into high gear, Gabe had been more solid than at any time since Josh had known—
“How long have you known him?”
Josh reeled. This was getting downright uncanny.
“How the hell do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“It’s like you’re reading my mind.”
“If I could do that, I wouldn’t bother asking questions.”
Josh flipped through the pages of a mental calendar. “I’ve worked with Gabe for about a ye
ar, I suppose.”
“There you go, then. He’s known you long enough to feel comfortable. But I’m the new guy—he’s gotta keep me at arm’s length. I get it. I’d do the same thing in his shoes.” Dom took the cigar from his mouth and frowned at it. Shaking his head, as though ruing the fundamental injustice of the world, he added more quietly, “I’ll tell you this much. It’s a load of BS that the company quacks have so much power to derail a guy’s career over nothing. Especially a solid guy like Pritchard.”
Josh’s antennae went up. His stifled yawn took a backseat to sudden alertness. He rubbed his eyes. Partially because they stung, but partially to give himself a few extra moments to parse Dom’s meaning.
“Quacks. You mean doctors?”
“The Langley breed.”
Josh chewed on this while the last stars disappeared from the sky. Somewhere, a municipal electrical timer registered the diurnal cycle and triggered a relay, and a split second later the electric streetlamp blinked off. Josh wondered how long it had been since an ancient city like this had actual lamplighters roaming the streets every dusk and dawn. Idle speculations like these were more comfortable than unraveling Dom’s insinuations. The silence stretched under its own weight until, like an unwieldy glob of salt water taffy, it snapped free of its hook and plopped on the floor.
“Aw, shit, Toms. Please tell me I ain’t telling tales outside of school.”
“Don’t worry about it.” The perfunctory reassurance sounded particularly brittle to Josh’s own ears.
“Damn, man. I mean, you’re his partner, for Chrissakes. I figured if he confided in anybody, it’d be you.” Dom fished a handkerchief from the inner pocket of his coat. One corner was slightly browned with tobacco juice. Wrapping it around the cigar, he said, “I really stepped in it, didn’t I? I’m gonna slink away now and give myself a solid sock in the jaw. I’ll spell you in a few.”
He turned to go. Meanwhile, Josh’s memory revisited a hit parade of Gabe’s greatest moments: Fallout from the Drahomir bungle. The fiasco with the cops that cold morning on the Staré Město. Strange interactions with that bartender at the Vodnář, not to mention with that honey-blonde KaGeBeznik and her Amazonian pal . . .
The Witch Who Came in From the Cold - Season One Volume Two Page 13
