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

by Lindsay Smith

  Laughing, Josh swung his feet to the floor, putting down the newspaper. “You make it sound so delightful. How can I resist?”

  Paperwork was the bane of every spy’s existence, but sharing it created a camaraderie second only to that involving live ammunition.

  Gabe and Josh spent the next several hours working the phones and the fax machine in order to assemble a file on Haakensen to present to Tanya. Gabe also wrote up his encounter with her and a summary report of his breakfast with Lytton. He’d have to fill out an expense voucher as well, to be reimbursed for the morning’s watery eggs, soggy toast, and weak coffee. It would have been easier just to pay out of pocket, but contacts with the other side always looked suspicious and he wanted a paper trail a mile wide for this little game he was playing with Comrade Tatiana Morozova.

  “Excuse me.” One of the crew of interchangeable accountants who had been sifting through the embassy’s financial records, this one bespectacled and pale-scalped under a severe crew cut, stood blinking before Gabe. “Is this a good time for you?”

  “As a matter of fact, buddy, this is a perfectly terrible time for me. But never mind that. What can I do you for?”

  “Well, you can . . .” The accountant stopped and, all in a rush, said, “You guys are doing a great job, I just wanted to say that.”

  Most people didn’t know what Gabe did for a living, so he didn’t get this reaction very often. But he understood it. To someone on the far fringes of the intelligence community, a desk man, an encounter with an officer who presumably went out into the real world and did things to shape the destiny of nations would be like meeting Mick Jagger. “Well. Thank you for telling me that. It means a great deal to me.”

  “You’ve been chosen at random to fill this out,” the accountant continued. He held up a binder whose contents were a good inch thick. “I’m afraid you won’t like it.”

  Gabe’s stomach sank. But he turned on the easy grin, the pleasant manner. He had learned long ago that this was the best way to handle people he found difficult to like. Act like the guy they’d most want to have a beer with, the new neighbor they’d immediately invite over for a barbecue. “Before we make that kind of judgment, let me glance over this thing. Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.”

  Swiftly, Gabe riffled through the binder. The introductory section spelled out a fourteen-step protocol for an hour-by-hour expenditure/benefit accounting of all his activities performed in the past six months. The rest went downhill from there. He doubted he could fill out this bastard in less than a day.

  Okay, then. The gloves were off. Gabe let out a long, low, and perfectly insincere whistle. “Wow. Filling this in would be an honest-to-God violation of national security.”

  “It would?”

  “Trust me. If I created this documentation and it fell into the wrong hands, it would be a road map detailing my duties, methods, and operational preferences. A map leading straight to my dead body in a dark alley. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?”

  “No! But I’m still on probation. If I can’t do my job, I’ll lose it.” The man was close to tears. Who would have guessed that accountants were so emotional? “I had an offer from J.P. Morgan, you know. I passed up good money so I could serve my country.” Or that they were so patriotic?

  Gabe snapped his fingers, as if he’d just had an idea. “I’ll tell you what. You and I both agree that this form is total bullshit, right? I literally cannot fill it in without committing an act of treason against the United States of America. But you can.”

  “I can?” The accountant looked confused.

  “Of course.” Gabe guided the man to his chair and sat him down behind his desk. “You can’t give away any secrets—you don’t know them. It’s just a lot of boilerplate, really. All you need to know to make it look good is that my job is forty percent agency paperwork and planning, twenty percent embassy paperwork, and forty percent ops. Add to that another twenty percent soft surveillance—going to lectures and such—but be sure to mark it ‘off the books.’ Otherwise I’m entitled to overtime, and getting paid for work I don’t do is a fast way into the federal prison system.”

  “I really shouldn’t . . .”

  “I’ve done some things in this job I wasn’t proud of. But by God, I did them for my country.” Gabe lifted his head nobly. This was no time for subtlety. Locking eyes with his victim, he said, “I’d sleep a lot better knowing that you’ve got my back.”

  “Well, I suppose . . .”

  It was so easy that Gabe found himself wishing the guy worked for the Soviets. He’d have had him trapped, turned, and depositing spools of microfilm in bus station lockers within the week. “That’s the spirit,” he said. “When you’re done, let me know and I’ll give it to Amanda in the typing pool.”

  The afternoon passed slowly, but not a fraction as slowly as it would have without Gabe’s little act of deceit. When the Time/Efficiency Accounting Systematics Documentation—as the heading on every single page solemnly proclaimed it to be—was finished, he stood the accountant up and gave him the firmest handshake of his life. Then he sent him on his way.

  As he was leaving the embassy at the end of the day, Gabe realized that he’d never learned the accountant’s name. He almost felt bad about that. Turning to Josh, he said, “You know, your typical KGB officer might be working in a treacherous den of thugs and assassins in the service of a filthy cause, but at least they don’t have to put up with all these goddamn bean-counters.”

  Josh made a wry face. “I said something like that to Frank once and he told me I should be grateful I had to deal with so few of them. He said that we had no idea how much crap he was protecting us from. So I dunno. You have to take the good with the bad, I guess.”

  “Oh yeah, speaking of that. Frank wanted me to have a word with you about your choice of reading material . . .”

  • • •

  Tanya had never seen an organization fall apart so fast: Prague Station, which yesterday had been solid as solid could be, was crumbling before her eyes. Having thoroughly demoralized the clerical staff, Bykovsky was now working his way through the intelligence officers. One by one, they were called to his temporary office, and one by one they returned to their desks, looking shaken and alarmed.

  Meanwhile, Bykovsky’s underlings, grim creatures who might or might not have been accountants but certainly looked like they would be at home in a brawl, were ransacking the very files nobody was supposed to touch anymore, shredding some, adding to others, and assigning each a randomly chosen file number by which they were now to be organized. The original titles were written down on yellow legal pads that would be kept under lock and key in Sasha’s office. However, since the numbers were random and the titles listed in no particular order, it was a system which guaranteed that, once implemented, no information would ever be accessible again.

  Even Sasha was beginning to look panicked.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, the general summoned Tanya. “You have doubtless heard that I am instituting more stringent internal security policies. From now on one of your duties will be to turn in weekly reports detailing the activities of,” he consulted a paper, “Nadezhda Fyodorovna Ostrokhina.”

  “Sir, Nadia answers directly to me. So her activities are already a part of . . .” Then, in mid-sentence, she got it. “You want me to spy on her.”

  I can do this, Tanya thought. Nadia spies on me, I spy on her, we each attest to the ideological purity of the other.

  “Nobody can be above suspicion. Listening devices will be provided. Incidentally, why isn’t she here today?”

  “She—”

  “Also, what have you done about the American since we spoke yesterday?”

  “Nothing, sir. I’ve been busy with paperwork.”

  “No excuses. I want action. Either bed him or kill him.”

  Tanya’s mouth fell open. Prior to this very moment, she had thought it something that only happened to people in pulp novels
. While she was grappling for a less than suicidal way to phrase her complete and utter unwillingness to attempt to engage in either disastrous suggestion, she was dismissed and the next victim was sent in.

  Her hands itched for the tools she had left with Jordan.

  Later in the day, Tanya noticed Sasha retrieving something from his office desk. With a sinking sensation, she saw that it was a travel guide to Hawaii.

  3.

  After a second day of solid paperwork, Gabe found it a pleasure to be out on the street again. He and Tanya met, as if by accident, at a Peter Max exhibit sponsored by USAID. Indeed, it was by some standards coincidental, as neither of them had made prior arrangements to do so. But there were only so many places that people like them would be on any given evening.

  They had stalked each other through the show and wound up in a dogleg at the far end of the gallery, well beyond the magic table with the crystal bowl of spiked punch and stacks of paper napkins and plastic glasses where the coursing guests put an end to their relentless advance on art and culture in favor of as much free booze as they could swill down and still walk home afterward. Nobody was paying the least attention to Gabe and Tanya whatsoever.

  Gabe gestured expansively toward a multicolored painting of the Statue of Liberty. “Forget all those musty old oils at the National Gallery that your country stole from Europe. This is America in all its polychromatic glory.”

  “I agree. It’s bright and splashy and utterly without a soul.”

  With an easy grin, Gabe said, “You’re saying that the country that gave the world James Brown and Elvis Presley has no soul? C’mon.”

  “Whatever soul it might have, there’s no romance in it. Do you know the difference between Soviet men and Americans? They both want the same thing from women. But Americans just . . . go for it. Like they are grabbing a beer in one of your commercials. Russian men understand romance. Do you know what you’ll see on the Moscow Metro when work is letting out? Men with soulful eyes and bouquets of flowers in their hands—for their wives, for their girlfriends, for young women they hope to make smile.”

  “When was the last time you saw a Russian smile?”

  “When was the last time you brought a woman flowers?”

  “Ouch.” Smiling, Gabe handed Tanya a bright yellow plastic bag. “This is for you.” A coffee table book of pop art that he’d have to file an expense report on in the morning. Lowering his voice, he said, “The file’s in there too. It’s a duplicate—keep it if you like. Your man’s name is Magnus Haakensen. Born to a Norwegian blue-collar family in Minneapolis. Saw action in ’Nam and by some rumors served in Army Intelligence. Hooked up with the Irish Republican Army. Had to leave Ireland quickly, which led to some less than savory rumors that he was turned by the Brits. Popped up in Israel, where he fought in the Six-Day War. So he may be working for Mossad.”

  “Stop. You are making my head hurt.”

  “He’s been seen in all the hot spots in Africa, all the usual bars in Europe, and of course in Hawaii—so it’s also possible that he’s one of yours.”

  “How would that make him one of ours?”

  “Everybody knows how you guys feel about Hawaii. That’s where all the KGB generals go when they retire.”

  “That’s a cliché.”

  “Only because it’s true. Most likely Haakensen is a freelance spook, picking up work where he can get it. I wouldn’t worry about him if I were you. In any case, he’s not one of ours, so do with him as you wish.”

  Tanya nodded. “And what are you hoping to get in exchange for this information?”

  “It’s not worth much. You can do me a favor somewhere down the road.”

  “Just how stupid do you think I am? No favors. Payment up front.” Tanya took a folded piece of paper out of her clutch. When Gabe reached for it, she drew it back. “It’s true that Russians don’t smile unless we have a reason to. But we are famous for our sense of humor. Let me tell you a joke: A man walks into a diner and sits down at the counter. He has just lost his job, his wife, and his life savings. He is feeling very close to suicidal. The cook asks him what he’ll have, and he says, ‘Two fried eggs and a kind word.’

  “A few minutes later the cook puts a plate of eggs down in front of the man. He looks up and says, ‘How about that kind word?’

  “The cook leans forward and whispers in his ear, ‘Don’t eat the eggs.’”

  Tanya handed Gabe the paper. “I was hoping to have something better for you than this, but . . . well. I’m going to give you two things. The first is the address of someone who may be able to help you. She’s not aligned with either the Ice or the Flame and she’s got a drinking problem, so she’s always in need of money.” She tapped the paper. “And the second is a piece of advice. As a fellow human being, I urge you to take it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t eat the eggs.”

  • • •

  Tanya’s apartment in a crumbling khrushchyovka in the New Town was like every other apartment she had ever lived in—a Soviet apartment, identical from Saint Petersburg to Kamchatka. The door opened into a hallway with a coatrack on one wall with a rubber tray where one could trade one’s shoes for a pair of slippers beneath it. Bedroom to one side, water closet, bath, and kitchen to the other.

  The electrical wiring was a disaster. Of necessity, Tanya habitually turned off the lights before plugging in the electric kettle to make tea. Otherwise, she was likely to blow a fuse. Tonight, when the water finally boiled, she yanked the cord, turned the lights back on, and slapped some brown bread and cold fried fish on a plate for a late dinner. Sitting down at the kitchen table, she opened Pritchard’s file and began to read.

  Haakensen had had an adventurous life, there was no denying that. Much too adventurous for her to take him very seriously. Probably that was all that had kept him alive—being a daring but small fish in a very dangerous ocean. Too small to be of any serious interest to the sharks and orcas that swam there.

  When she’d read the précis, Tanya slid out a grainy wire photo of Haakensen in the Atelier Bar in Helsinki. There were more such of him in spy bars in Cairo, London, Johannesburg . . . Looking at them, Tanya had an idea. She felt the corners of her mouth tugging upward.

  Tanya got out her typewriter, an elegant little Groma Kolibri with green casing, and set to work.

  • • •

  There were three rocks on the wall again the next morning. Tanya fetched in the newspaper. Today’s note read: Bring me up to date? Let’s have bagels for breakfast. Eight o’clock. N.

  It was not exactly a subtle code. Tanya and Nadia met in the Old Jewish Cemetery. It was a cluttered, cold, and morbid place, gravestone upon gravestone upon gravestone clustered ridiculously densely. Here the dead were buried three deep. Tanya could feel the heavy thumb of the past leaning down hard on her whenever she visited this particular spot. But it was a place where they could talk without being overheard. Here she could shout if she wanted to—and today she might well decide to scream.

  Nadia was waiting for her at the very center of the graveyard.

  Without so much as a hello, Tanya leaned her portfolio against a stone and said, “Tell me exactly what the Ice is doing with the Hosts.”

  Nadia looked surprised and then bored. “You know all about our relocation program. We—”

  “Don’t you dare lie to me. I know what you do to them! Andula Zlata trusted me and I betrayed her. Just as I trusted you. Just as you betrayed me.”

  “I have no idea what you’re going on about.” Nadia folded her arms. “I don’t think you do either.”

  “Don’t play stupid. I broke into the barge.” Tanya saw Nadia’s face go stern and blank. Holding back her emotions as best she could, she said, “I saw everything—the bodies frozen in stasis, the hexes holding them there, the blankets so old they were beginning to disintegrate . . . The dust was an inch thick on some of them! I saw a girl there—“ She choked with anger, managed to go on. “A girl
I’d talked into coming over to our side.”

  Nadia relaxed. “So that was only you?” she said, amused. “I lost three days moving that facility and trying to track down who had breached our security. You covered your tracks well, incidentally.”

  Tanya was furious. “I swore to that child on Lenin’s grave that we were going to help her. Because I thought it was true.”

  Glancing away, Nadia said, “You’re growing tedious, girl. Live in the moment. Embrace the all. Stop annoying the snot out of me.”

  “Just who do you think you’re talking to? I’m your direct superior!”

  “And just who do you think you’re yelling at? In the Ice I’m—” Nadia caught herself and stumblingly said, “I’m your fellow soldier. We’re on the same side, after all. We shouldn’t be arguing like this.”

  Tanya got it now. The chain of command within the Consortium of Ice was murky at best. One received directions in the form of whispers and hints. Orders arrived unsigned. Duties were simply understood. She was not meant to know who her immediate superior was. And what better way for a superior to hide in plain sight than by working as her subordinate?

  “So you lied to that girl,” Nadia said. “So she spends the rest of her life asleep. So what? Do you imagine that’s not better than what the Acolytes of Flame had in mind for her? Tell me the truth, now. If it were you—which option would you choose?”

  “I . . . I . . .” Tanya found herself gasping for breath.

  Unexpectedly, Nadia laughed. “Oh, you! You should see your face.” She punched Tanya lightly on the arm. “Cheer up. The past doesn’t matter and the future isn’t here yet. Yes, things may look dark from time to time. But we are alive, and this is good.”

  Tanya was being thrown a lifeline and they both knew it. She could grab onto Nadia’s words and let herself be pulled back to land, back to her status as a good soldier for Ice. Or she could go rogue and . . . do what? Find common cause with Flame? Not likely. Try to go independent like Jordan Rhemes? Even if she’d had Jordan’s resources—and she didn’t—she had family back home who could be made to pay for her disloyalty. Give up magic entirely? There were some things that, once seen, could not be unseen.