The Witch Who Came in From the Cold - Season One Volume One

by Lindsay Smith

  Josh’s mind was already whirring. Maybe he could slip into the lecture halls after their assignment today. It was in a different part of Charles University from the lecture, but he looked enough like a grad student that it shouldn’t arouse suspicion.

  “I need both of you to be in this a hundred percent.” Frank looked at Gabe as he spoke. “You understand?”

  “Of course, sir,” Josh said brightly.

  “Yes, sir,” said Gabe.

  “Good.” Frank was still watching Gabe, appraising him. He didn’t comment on the waxen skin or the sunken eyes, though Josh knew he saw them. Frank didn’t miss much. “Now, you two have an assignment to get to, if I’m not mistaken.” He flicked his hand toward the door. “Get on with it. Sokolov’s not here yet.”

  Gabe and Josh stood up. “The students await,” Josh said.

  Gabe didn’t respond, just shuffled over to the door. Josh moved to follow him, but then Frank said, “Wait,” and they both stopped and looked his way.

  “Not you,” Frank said to Gabe. “Just Toms. He’ll catch up.”

  Gabe glanced between Frank and Josh. “Right,” he said, and slipped out into the hallway. Josh’s heart thudded. Something else?

  “This’ll only take a minute,” Frank said. He settled back into his chair, the leather creaking. Something in his countenance had changed, and Frank looked older. Tired.

  “Thanks for doing this,” he said. “The university assignments are bullshit, but Gabe hasn’t been himself lately. The last few weeks—” Frank let the sentence dangle, and he gazed over at the tiny square of gray light that was his office window. “I know the man he can be. That’s why I wanted something simple to get him back to fighting form.”

  “I completely understand.” Josh fiddled with his coat, trying to smooth out a wrinkle. Frank watched him with that weighty gaze and Josh dropped his hand. “I don’t mind the university assignments.”

  “You’re one of my best officers,” Frank said. “You know that, right?”

  Josh smiled. “Why, thank you, sir.”

  Frank didn’t return the smile, though. He just studied Josh, his hands folded on the desk in front of him. Josh glanced around the room, wondering if Frank expected him to say something else.

  “I saw something the other day,” Frank said.

  “Sir?” Josh blinked, not certain where this conversation was going.

  “You were talking with that little flop of a man from the mail room. Maybe standing a little too close.”

  Josh’s cheeks burned. Bile rose up at the back of his throat. “That wasn’t—what you think it is. Some of my correspondence got mixed up—”

  “Good,” Frank interrupted. “You know I like you, but Langley’s not going to put up with that kind of—relationship.”

  “It was just a question about correspondence!”

  Frank leaned forward over the table, hands folded. He had figured out Josh’s secret during Josh’s early days, Josh knew—he had been careful, the way he was always careful, but Frank had been through a war and countless bureaucracies, and it was hard to get anything past him. It was difficult enough keeping it a secret back home, all that hush-hush spycraft against his own agency just to go on a date. And here, his sexual history was even more of a liability.

  “I know it was.” His voice was as gruff as ever, but something in his posture had loosened, suggesting a sort of fatherly affection. “But I thought you could do with a reminder. After all, ANCHISES could be a major career builder for you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Josh said. Blood rushed in his ears. God, he hadn’t even thought about relationships since he got here. The job was his first priority. But he’d learned to live with this kind of suspicion a long time ago.

  “Which is why I want to make sure you’re being careful out there.” Frank tilted his head toward the window. “I’m sure you are. But don’t forget that all the successful exfils in the world aren’t going to protect you if a Soviet figures out your—proclivities.”

  “I know that, sir.”

  “Of course you do.” Frank almost let a smile slip. “I’m just telling you to be careful. Pritchard’s been screwing up and I don’t need you following after him.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “Good.” Frank nodded, as if the conversation had gone the way he wanted. “You better get out there before Gabe takes off without you.”

  “Of course, sir. Thank you.”

  Frank waved a hand to dismiss him, and Josh stepped out into the fluorescent glow of the hallway. Gabe was leaning up against his desk, arms crossed, waiting for him. Already had his coat.

  “You ready?” Gabe called out.

  They had an assignment. And yeah, he was ready.

  • • •

  Gabe settled down into the hard, molded plastic of his seat, and he stretched his and Josh’s coats over the space beside him so no one would sit down next to them. The throbbing in his head had finally subsided. It usually wasn’t too bad at the office—apparently that meant the embassy wasn’t built on a ley line. He wondered how the boys in Langley would feel about that, that there was a secret out there they couldn’t touch. Even so, all through that meeting with Frank a sharp pain had burrowed into his temple. At least the headache hadn’t incapacitated him, the way it had the night with Drahomir. Maybe that meeting with Alestair had helped him more than he thought.

  The lights in the auditorium dimmed. The place was only half-full, and the audience was made up mostly of bright-eyed students, no one of any interest. Of course not. This was punishment.

  A woman walked onstage, her blonde hair shimmering in the spotlight. The audience applauded politely; Gabe slapped his hands together a couple of times. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Josh straighten up, suddenly interested. Zerena Pulnoc. Wife to the Soviet ambassador. Gabe had met her once or twice on the dip circuit; she always regarded him with a kind of bored languor, as if he were a TV show she couldn’t bother switching off.

  In front of her crowd of university students, though, she glowed like the moon. She smiled brightly and said, “Welcome, Comrades! I am so delighted you could attend. This afternoon, the Chancellor’s Lecture Series has quite a treat lined up for you.” She paused for effect, her gaze spilling across the audience. “Our speaker today is a distinguished academic and a thoroughly charming gentleman—I’ve had the pleasure of dining with him several times.” Another smile, this one dimmer, more understated. “Here to introduce Karel Hašek’s accomplishment is one of the members of the Komsomol Youth League. Please welcome Andula Zlata to the stage.”

  More applause. A girl stepped into the spotlight, one hand clutching a crumpled sheet of notebook paper. She looked small and wan compared to Zerena, as if Zerena were sucking all the light away from her. The girl stepped up to the microphone and in a shaky voice began to describe her experiences in Professor Hašek’s medieval history class. Gabe wished he could just go to sleep.

  The girl finished, the audience applauded, and Karel Hašek stepped onstage and made a joke that elicited a few strains of awkward laughter from the students. Gabe tuned him out; he knew what to expect at a lecture like this, the usual filtered-down Marxist nonsense about the glory of the proletariat, although in this case Gabe suspected it would be given some kind of medievalist glaze. Peasants instead of the proletariat, then. He wasn’t here to learn, only to observe. And so, as Hašek spoke, Gabe scanned the students sitting in the dark room. A few of them tilted their heads together and whispered, occasionally shooting quick glances across the room at a compatriot. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Really, what did Frank expect?

  Gabe leaned into Josh. “See anything interesting?” he murmured.

  Josh shook his head. “Nothing. You?”

  “Nope.” Gabe straightened up in his chair. Hašek was still talking. Zerena and the student—Andula? Aneta? He’d already forgotten, Christ, he should probably ask Alestair about that—sat behind him on stage, watching intently. Gabe checked his watch
. Another twenty minutes, then the reception.

  A few rows in front of him, a figure slipped into the theater. A woman, going by her silhouette. Some latecomer. But then she stepped into a shaft of light spilling in through an open door, and her face was illuminated, and Gabe recognized her with a sharp jolt of surprise.

  Tatiana Morozova. She wasn’t a student. She was in the files back at the office. She was KGB. Undeclared, of course, but her name and photo were printed in the booklet of suspected officers Gabe studied in his downtime. She’d attended university in Moscow, had a well-connected family. Officially she had some job at the Soviet embassy—a political secretary, if he remembered correctly.

  Morozova stepped into the shadows again, and then draped herself in a chair near the aisle. Was the KGB interested in Hašek for some reason? Had this bullshit assignment turned out to mean something after all?

  Gabe watched Morozova out of the corner of his eye, careful that she didn’t see him staring. She stayed where she was, lingering in the aisle. Hašek sounded like he was coming up on the end of his speech—he’d already built up to a crescendo of Marxist fervor a few minutes ago as he’d described the violent transition to capitalism, and now they were on the downward slope. Gabe flicked his glance over at Morozova again. She sat straight up in her seat, watching the stage.

  “—and that is why students such as yourself are so important,” said Hašek with a quiver in his voice. “Because only the youth can lead us away from the mistakes of our past. Thank you.”

  Applause rang out in the auditorium.

  Gabe nudged Josh. “I might have something.”

  Before Josh could say anything, Zerena took to the podium again, and she beamed out at the audience and invited them to join Professor Hašek for a reception in the lobby. Hašek himself stood off to the side, his hands clasped behind his back, looking down thoughtfully at his feet. And the student, the girl who had announced him, she was still sitting in her seat, staring out at the audience, toward the part of the theater where Morozova was sitting. In the glare of the spotlight, the student’s expression wasn’t right. She looked frightened, maybe. Anxious.

  Were the KGB here for her? Not Hašek? Or was it just stage fright?

  More applause littered around the auditorium. People shifted in their seats and began to stand and move toward the aisle. Morozova stayed put.

  “What was that student’s name?” Gabe’s skin prickled. “The one up on stage.”

  Josh peered at him. “What are you seeing?”

  “Did you catch her name or not?”

  “Uh, yeah. It was Zlata. Andula Zlata.”

  Andula Zlata. The name meant nothing to Gabe. On the stage, Zerena gestured toward the girl and then said something, and the girl stood up and moved toward her. Professor Hašek gave her a warm smile. Together, the three of them walked off stage.

  As soon as they vanished into the wings, Morozova stood up and walked toward the lobby doors.

  “The reception.” Gabe grabbed his coat. “Now.”

  “Come on, Gabe, just tell me what you’ve got.” Josh was already sliding out of his chair.

  “I don’t know yet.” They left their seats and made their way into the lobby. Cold gray light poured in through the windows, saturating the colors of everything: the students’ clothes, the paintings on the wall. People milled around, their voices low and sparkling. He scanned the room. Froze.

  There was Morozova, standing in a corner, sipping a glass of wine, pretending to admire one of the paintings: some lurid landscape, everything cast in dull golds and browns.

  A peal of familiar, twinkling laughter cascaded across the room. Zerena. Gabe turned toward her, as did half the faces at the reception. She was leading Hašek toward the temporary bar, and Andula trailed behind them, her skin pale and her eyes shadowed.

  It was the student. Gabe was sure of it.

  “So what’s your theory here?” Josh’s voice was low and close to Gabe’s ear. “Something with Hašek?” He nodded at Zerena and Hašek sipping their wine.

  “Not Hašek. The girl. Andula.” Gabe stepped away before Josh could answer; he was determined not to lose sight of her. Another student, dark-haired and bespectacled, had walked up to her and was trying his hardest to have a conversation. Andula tilted her head toward him and nodded, but her eyes bounced around the room. She fidgeted with the hem of her sweater.

  And then she went very still, and the color drained from her face. The dark-haired boy kept chattering as if he hadn’t noticed. Gabe was close enough that he could catch fragments of the conversation—something about a mutual mathematics course.

  “Excuse me,” Andula said suddenly, too loudly. And then she strode away from the boy, leaving him looking vaguely stunned.

  Gabe grabbed a glass of wine from the bar and whirled around, taking a long drink as he scanned over the rim of his glass. There. She was cutting a clear path to where Morozova stood beside the painting. Morozova straightened at Andula’s approach, her expression calm and professional. Gabe maneuvered around the room, sticking to the perimeter, hoping he could blend in with the knots of students. He caught sight of Josh frowning at him. No matter. He’d explain in a minute.

  Morozova was talking to the girl, her body angled away from the party, her head tilted down. The girl shook her head, glanced over her shoulder. Christ, she looked terrified, and for a moment Gabe went cold all over, afraid that Morozova had spotted him. But no, the girl wasn’t looking his way. Wasn’t looking at Josh, either. She turned back to Morozova, ran her fingers over her hair. Morozova leaned into her, looking for a moment almost concerned, almost maternal. She put one hand on Andula’s arm. Andula shook it away.

  “Gabriel Pritchard.”

  Gabe closed his eyes, took a deep breath. God damn it, not now.

  “My, my, my. I’d no idea you were so fascinated by Prague’s history.”

  Zerena slid up beside him, her chin lifted, the ends of her mouth teasing at a smile. Gabe forced himself to smile back.

  “Zerena,” he sighed. “You’re looking as lovely as ever this afternoon.”

  She laughed, hard and glittering and fake, and reached out one hand, a slim silver bangle shining on her wrist. “Surely you’d like to meet our speaker, Professor Hašek? Karel, darling, come over here for a moment.”

  Gabe ground his teeth together. He didn’t dare glance over at Morozova and Andula, not when Zerena was so close.

  Hašek stepped up beside Zerena, who put her hand on his shoulder. Her nails were as sharp as her cheekbones.

  “Karel, did you know you had an American in your audience?” She bared her teeth like an angry cat. Gabe imagined it was supposed to be a smile.

  “An American!” Hašek spoke in an English. “Tell me, did you enjoy the lecture, Mr.—”

  “Pritchard,” Gabe said, and then, in Czech: “Really, Czech is fine.”

  “An American who bothered to learn Czech! And you speak it so well. Isn’t that a curiosity.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find Gabriel to be an exquisite curiosity.” Zerena’s nails flashed. “And I’m sure he would be delighted to discuss some of the points from the lecture. Wouldn’t you, Mr. Pritchard?” There was that angry-cat smile again. Gabe returned it with the most neutrally pleasant expression he could muster.

  “Absolutely,” he said, looking at Zerena. Then he turned to Hašek. “Unfortunately, I told my friend I’d meet with him, and I’d hate to leave him alone—” He glanced around the room and found Josh ambling through the crowd, a drink in one hand. “And there he is now. Thank you, Professor Hašek. The lecture was fascinating. Zerena, it was a pleasure, as always.”

  Zerena stared at him, sharp and cold and full of harsh white light, like a diamond. “As always, Mr. Pritchard.”

  Gabe slipped away from them and headed toward Josh. His eyes, though, darted in the opposite direction, toward the corner where he’d last seen Morozova and Andula.

  It was empty.

  •
• •

  Tanya and Andula stepped out onto a narrow, enclosed courtyard tucked around the side of the building. Icy wind gusted over the walls, blowing Andula’s hair into her face. Tanya walked quickly around the edge of the courtyard, her boots crunching on the old snow. No one was out here. They were alone. Good.

  “What are you doing at the lecture?” Andula cried. “I told you I didn’t want anything to do with this!”

  Tanya whirled around to face her. Andula stood on the opposite side of the courtyard, her hands tucked under her arms, her coat flapping around her knees. She shivered. Maybe because of the cold. Maybe not. Tanya remembered what Andula had told her at their meeting in the park, about her sister’s disappearance during the Prague Spring.

  “I’m trying to keep you safe,” Tanya said.

  “How did you even know I would be here today?” Andula said. “Have you been following me?”

  Tanya sighed. Andula watched her warily, and when Tanya took a step toward her, Andula took a step back. Tanya considered her options; right now, she decided, it would be better not to lie. Too much.

  “I’m not here as KGB,” she said slowly. “But I still have KGB methods at my disposal.”

  Andula’s face went pale.

  “I told you,” Tanya said. “I’m here to protect you. Yes, the Ice has been watching you, but only because the Flame want to grab you for themselves—”

  “And you thought the Flame would be here? At the university? At Professor Hašek’s lecture?” Andula glanced around the courtyard, fearful. “Is one of those things coming after me again?”

  Tanya reached into her pocket and fingered the charm she had tucked away there. She and Nadia had created it from the scraps of the construct that came after Andula; it was designed to send out a pulse if the construct’s creators were nearby. It had been still during the lecture, but Tanya did not want to take any chances.

  “I don’t know.” Tanya walked over to Andula and this time the girl didn’t step away. “We seem to be safe right now.”