After a few moments, Zerena straightened. She felt much better. “You are certainly living up to your potential, lovely Andula.” She drew the covers over the girl and restored her Flame stasis, a flower under glass.
Thirty minutes later, hair and makeup done, she gently kissed the case over the ambassador, leaving a bloom of lipstick.
“Back in a flash, darling. Something’s come up at the embassy.”
She murmured his response for him. “Give them hell, darling. Give them nightmares.”
Zerena promised herself she would.
• • •
KGB headquarters wore that particular bureaucratic gray of many Russian offices in Prague. Drab. Boring. Worse, Tanya was not at her desk, and the typing staff didn’t look up as Zerena swept through their disappointing ranks and blazed straight for Sasha’s office. Her lunch with Morozova had been productive, but some things had to be done in person.
A secretary stepped in front of her. “Director Komyetski is out today, Comrade Pulnoc.”
“Ill?” Zerena hoped. “I have several messages from the ambassador. I must speak with the director immediately.”
“He has meetings in the Ministry of Agriculture,” the secretary began. She was very young, bright of cheek and eye, and wore no makeup. A party pin sparkled smartly on her collar. Nothing magical about the child whatsoever, except an obvious eagerness to perform.
Zerena arched an eyebrow and smiled. “You do an excellent service to our cause, comrade.”
The girl smiled back. “The director is coming back to the city tonight. One of our staff is a very talented boxer, did you know?”
Zerena’s interest heightened. So did her sense for interoffice politics. This bright young thing was telling someone’s secrets, to the ambassador’s wife, for her own advantage. “I didn’t know. Tell me more.”
“You shouldn’t know, of course,” the girl demurred. “The fights are off the books. Very hush. But when the director found out somehow, he wanted to be sure his people were well supported in their hobbies.” The girls’ smile was sharp as a blade. Zerena had no doubt how Sasha had found out about the fights.
A delightful thought swept over Zerena. Cornering Sasha in public would be that much more enjoyable. “Will you be going, dear comrade? Where is it happening this time?”
The young woman chuckled. “Me? No. I’ve got neither the time nor money for such entertainment. I’ve little interest in knowing more.”
Zerena nodded obligingly. “I understand, comrade.” She reached to open Sasha’s door, to see if the girl was really as sweet as she seemed. “I’ll just leave a message on the director’s desk.” She wondered if there was anything in Sasha’s office she might steal. A hand clamped her wrist and she was right, the grip was as firm as steel.
“You can leave it with me, comrade.” The young woman smiled again, but now it was a crisp, appraising smile. Yes, this was a young woman with ambitions. And firm loyalties.
Zerena took her arm back and adjusted the cowl of her dress. “I’ll speak to him another time, then.”
The empty chairs in the office numbered her failures as she made her way out.
• • •
On the way back to the embassy, her driver admitted he’d heard about the fights. Viktor was his name, Zerena was fairly sure. “In Holešovice, yes, I know them. My friend’s cousin works the docks,” he chuckled. “Fight inside, fight outside. It’s all the same. Lots of bigwigs show. Good fighters too,” Viktor continued.
“Plan to take me there at eleven.” She’d make a fashionably late entrance. She wondered if the ambassador should make an appearance.
There was a long pause from the front of the car. “What is it?”
“I am sorry, madam, for the presumption.” Viktor hesitated. Zerena gestured impatiently. “You might want to change, and take a friend with you.” He sounded worried.
“It’s fancy, then?” That could be exciting.
Another long pause. “Perhaps you should buy something more Czech? Your wardrobe will stand out in Holešovice. There are people there who might not welcome an ambassador’s wife.” Zerena knew he meant the Soviet ambassador’s wife. He sounded genuinely concerned for her. “Perhaps if you brought your young college student to advise …” Viktor trailed off as if he knew he was overstepping.
Zerena was in no mood for this type of thing. She liked standing out. “They will need to welcome an ambassador’s wife.” She considered the piles of designer disappointment in her bedroom. The right costume for the job. Perhaps Zerena should do some local shopping downtown, after all. She lit a cigarette and took a long drag, thinking. “Stop at the embassy, then we’ll go on.”
If Sasha was going to be at the fight, she might need the girl’s strength. The driver was right. She’d buy the girl something too. Andula had been so helpful recently. This would be enjoyable.
At the embassy, Zerena woke Andula. Handed her a mug of tea and brought her out to the car.
Viktor drove them through the main shopping district, along Na Příkopě. Andula struggled to hold her mug as the car bounced over the potholes and cracks of the clogged Nové Město.
The mug held more than tea, of course. Zerena had put a stimulant in, something that would keep the girl from groggily drifting back into sleep as they shopped.
“Where are we going?”
“Drop us here,” Zerena said, pointing to the large facade of Prague’s largest department store, the White Swan.
Yes, Zerena thought as she stepped through the White Swan’s large doors, below the ostentatious swan rotating above the entrance, she would absolutely need a different costume for this adventure. Something a little less perfect, a little more in line with those prosaic parts of the proletariat, the workers, the fighters, the boxers. And yet, also something new.
She passed through the doors of the department store and into hell.
The spare shelves and thinly populated racks were Zerena’s first shock. The second was that there was so much gray everywhere, so many poorly sewn hems. Buttons were barely secured to fabric that didn’t even try to pass for something decent.
Andula was no help here. The young woman drifted aimlessly through the store, clutching her tea.
Tracing a path of disappointment along the lines of racks, around the few circular displays, Zerena’s fingertips itched at the touch of rough synthetics. And if the clothes weren’t gray, the few patterns available were utterly garish.
The main floor of the White Swan—and how ironic the name seemed now, for this was indeed a terrible goose of a store, not a swan at all—was filled with identical items of clothing piled on identical shelves, or hung as if they were being tortured. Up the stairs, another floor of drab clothes hung dispiritedly. No one had bothered to press them in days.
Zerena finally found a saleswoman and pointed blindly at something on a rack, hoping to get the girl to come over and make things different somehow. In the good shops in Moscow, the finer ones in Paris, what was visible was only the beginning of the wares available. The best things were in the back room. “How much?” Zerena demanded in Russian.
The shopgirl took a drag of a cigarette and turned back to her magazine. “Not enough,” Zerena thought she heard the girl mutter. There are people there who might not welcome an ambassador’s wife. Fine.
“It’s for my niece,” Zerena started again. “A student at the university.”
The shopgirl’s expression brightened a fraction. She indicated a few items. Terrible blouses and sad slacks.
But the sullen salesgirl was right. Even the prices were depressing. Zerena remembered her childhood, knowing what she would have traded for a new outfit or two, from places much smaller than the White Swan. Even the drab items from the local commissary. Zerena felt a spike strike deep in her heart: the disappointment of knowing that she could buy a dozen outfits at this store right now and still have nothing to wear.
Perhaps sensing her unshakeable disinterest, the sh
opgirl had wandered over to the racks and struck up a conversation with Andula. Zerena hoped that would get them better service.
A good representative of the people’s cause would give this tired mess of the people’s hard work their best effort and appreciation, so Zerena tried one last time, taking an almost silk-looking blouse with a bow to the fitting room. “Come, Andula.”
The young woman followed, though her expression had sharpened. She looked at the shopgirl. “We were talking of the university. We know the same professors.”
Zerena hadn’t thought of the risk. She’d been focused elsewhere. Had Andula said anything about her stay at the embassy? The shopgirl didn’t look alarmed. But Zerena’s little pet was rather more alert than she would have liked.
She needed an isolated spot to fix the balance, either in Andula’s mug or in Andula herself. The fitting rooms would do.
But the fitting room turned out to be a large open space with no privacy. Three women stared at her before returning to tending their four noisy, alarming children and talking loudly in Czech as they yanked fabric over uncooperative limbs.
It was a sea of flesh, crying babies, and badly fitted girdles. Zerena, Andula in tow, hastily purchased the dismal blouse and a skirt and fled.
2.
The setting sun tinted the Charles Bridge a deep violet as it slipped between the thick clouds and the urban horizon. A change was coming. Something in the air, gathering along the riverbank.
Workers and managers near the port, those who weren’t packing away their tools or finishing a late family meal, were changing too, putting on clean shirts, shining the dust out of the creases in their work shoes.
Among them slipped agents of Ice and Fire, east and west. Though they moved undetected, ordinary citizens navigating the evening crowds, something in the air felt different enough from the normal Holešovice evening, made the workers walk faster than usual down those cobbled alleys.
A few drops of rain fell. Then the deluge hit, soaking the cobbled streets and puddling in the mud. The river, usually warmer than the air at this time of night and so far into the spring, was speckled with ice floating here and there, and glistened with oily patterns. The rain pocked the first and diluted the second, without caring which was which.
• • •
Tanya Morozova knew lurking in alleys was bad tradecraft, especially when so many oppositional forces were in play. Years of countersurveillance practice while waiting for contacts made her pacing look random—spread it across several blocks and no one was the wiser—but Tanya knew she was pacing and that was bad enough. Especially near Gabe’s apartment.
Where are you? She’d tied a blue thread around a specific signpost for Gabe Pritchard to find. New information. No reply. Either he was ignoring her or he was in trouble.
Something had happened between Zerena and Sasha. She wasn’t entirely certain about all the details yet, but Zerena’s vendetta against Sasha certainly seemed to have intensified lately. She also needed to relay her concerns about the visiting counterintelligence officer in Gabe’s office. The KGB had an eye on her … and she seemed to have an eye on Gabe. He needed to be careful. Informed. Before he walked into a situation where he didn’t understand the new power balances. And he couldn’t know any of that if he didn’t answer her messages.
She saw him emerge from his apartment, distracted, and hail a cab. Heard “Holešovice.”
Oh. Talk about walking into a situation he didn’t understand. There was only one thing happening in Holešovice tonight. The fight. Sasha was going. He’d taken great pleasure in letting Tanya know he expected to see her there, “in support of her colleague.” He’d thrown in an extra-oily smile, no charge.
“Bozhe moi,” Tanya muttered to herself, and hurriedly flagged down a passing taxi, clambering into the rusting Škoda with her heart hammering. “Take the Hlávka,” she ordered. By some intersection of grace and luck, they made it across the bridge in record time. She walked the last blocks with her head down, ignoring the river, the passersby. She found another alley to lurk in.
This section of Holešovice was near enough to Prague’s walls that the city’s lights dimmed the stars, dulling the night’s sparkle. The approaching clouds did the rest, setting a gray blanket over the city.
Gravel crunched and one of the Soviet embassy’s unflagged cars pulled past, headed for the warehouse doors.
The driver opened the rear right door and Andula stepped out, wearing a navy blouse and slacks and no coat. She didn’t shiver in the evening air, but Tanya did.
Andula reached a hand inside the black embassy sedan, and Zerena, wearing an uncharacteristically understated outfit, emerged. A silk blouse with a bow, a simple skirt, not particularly well tailored. Not her usual designer flair.
Watching Andula hook her arm through Zerena’s and walk blandly into the warehouse, Tanya swallowed back bile, hard. Still, Tanya had to admit Zerena could wear anything and make it look good. Even people. Especially people.
A tendril of Zerena’s perfume—hints of bergamot and neroli—reached into the alleyway.
Worse and worse.
Gabe had to know what was waiting inside. At least two powerful Flame agents, a Host. The number of ways tonight’s event could possibly go wrong was ticking up exponentially.
She needed to get in there.
Voices, male and female, sounded close by. Closer. Tanya receded into the shadows again. Footsteps on gravel and stone: the tap-tap of heels, and the purposeful crunch of a man’s shoe. Tanya recognized that second step as well as she’d know the hand of a colleague on a spell.
They were holding hands, Gabe and that prim suchka who’d been inspecting the embassy for weeks. Tanya had heard whispers at Bar Vodnář’s wobbly tables, and at the office too, that this Edith Lowell had a sharp eye. The hum of white noise, like radio static, filled Tanya’s ears. Her jaw clenched. How could Gabe ignore her signals? Tanya was surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy.
Gabe stopped in the circle of a warehouse light where Tanya could see him clearly, and pulled two cigarettes from a pocket. Put both between his lips like a cinema hero, and tilted his head to his cupped hand to light them. Then he passed one to Edith. Tanya fought the impulse to reach out and shake him. Why bring a dangerous woman like this to a fight when everything was so precarious?
Gabe’s first pull on his cigarette left a long hang of ash, while Edith let hers dangle untouched from her fingers.
Tanya seethed. There were already too many people inside—Zerena, Nadia, Andula—who could make trouble for Gabe Pritchard. And Sasha was coming.
There was no way for Tanya to warn him now, not before he went inside.
Stupid, Gabe.
Only one thing to do. Stay away from Zerena. While simultaneously distracting her enough to keep her away from Gabe. If others could figure out that Gabe carried the quicksilver elemental, Zerena eventually might as well. Sasha too. What a mess.
Tanya went around the back of the warehouse and took the rear stairs down to the basement. She pushed through the crowd, past tables covered in checkered oilcloths. No sign of Sasha. Yet. She avoided eye contact with Zerena, who stood uncomfortably at the bar, probably tabulating the worth of everyone in the room.
“I have information for you,” Tanya whispered, from far enough away that she could ignore Andula’s blank look. “About those irregularities.”
Zerena positioned herself between Andula and Tanya, then smiled like a shark at the bartender. “Tell me.”
“It is as we discussed. Some time spent away from the office, meeting with locals. Who also meet with,” here she lowered her voice further to hide the stretch of truth, “a gentleman with a British accent.”
Zerena barely blinked. That was how Tanya knew she’d hit home. “Ah, that is not surprising, given the Politburo’s orders of late. A good try, Tanya, but keep looking.” Zerena collected her drink. She snapped her fingers for Andula to follow and, out of the corner of her eye, Tanya swore sh
e saw unintentional sparks. A distracting punch indeed.
• • •
There was just one prep room. It was small, but the span of floor between Nadia and Van felt like an expanse of frozen ground. Nadia shrugged out of her sweatpants, feeling more than the usual chill. Van was finishing up, wearing a tank top that showed off her arms, and tight, dark shorts. She’d pulled the knuckle padding and hand wraps over to the benches where she’d draped her stuff.
She’d taken all the tape off the prep table too.
“Toss me some of that?” Nadia said, trying for a tone that wasn’t too forceful, but wasn’t weak either.
Van tossed the tape without looking up. Nadia caught it one-handed. Van silently reached for the Vasenol—Kazimir had gotten a shipment from Spain, apparently—and began to methodically grease her face and arms.
“Thanks.” Nadia ignored Van’s glistening skin. She weighed attempting to get Van to see reason. Sasha was likely right outside.
Van bent to retie a shoelace on her trainers. A lock of dark hair fell loosely over her eye. Nadia decided to try. “You don’t have to fight me tonight. We can settle this another time.” A night when danger was somewhere else, far away. “Kazimir will find another fighter.”
Slam.
Van put the jar of Vasenol down hard. She stared at the boards of the bench, her jaw working. “We fight tonight.”
“And then what do you do?” Nadia had a sneaking suspicion she knew. Van had lingered at her prep like it was the last time she’d see the place.
Nadia let her anger build: There’d been too many lies, dodges, feints. She wrapped a layer of tape around her left wrist, for extra stability if she needed to use her cross. If she could plant Van on the canvas, then get her somewhere secure, maybe she could still find a way to bring her into the fold …
Van growled. Clenched and unclenched her taped fists and rolled her head, staying loose. “You don’t run me.” She stepped close to Nadia, nearly treading on her toes. “You hear me? You will never run me.” Her breath was hot on Nadia’s face.
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 22