The Witch Who Came In From the Cold
Season 2, Episode 8
What’s Gone, What’s Left Behind
Max Gladstone
Prague, Czechoslovak Soviet Republic
April 25, 1970
1.
Smoke, the Americans sang, gets in your eyes. That line had always confused Nadia Ostrokhina. The song’s intent seemed amorous, but actual smoke, in actual eyes, hurt.
Take Nadia’s present surroundings, for example: She strained to think of a less romantic setting than this tiny Prague riverfront bar, its rough plaster walls yellow with tobacco stains and spilled beer. Tables clustered patrons too close. A chair swung in a vigorous argument could take out three men drinking before anyone noticed—and this was the kind of place where arguments started vigorous and grew worse. She hated places like this—no, she hated herself, in this place. She felt a combination of sick and elated, from drink and the emotional whiplash of her reunion with Van—but those feelings would not own her. Nadia had Hosts to smuggle, a world to save.
So she kept her thoughts light, pondering smoke, eyes: Prague river freight dockhands smoked more than the Politburo, and Nadia’s eyes had started watering the second she stepped through the door. She blinked only when she could not avoid it.
Perhaps Americans found tears romantic.
The man across the table did not seem to mind the smoke—or anything else. Nadia made herself small in her seat, to avoid jostling the broad-backed drinkers to either side of her. If she felt hemmed in, her companion should have been on the verge of claustrophobic collapse. Kazimir looked comfortable, though, damn him. Naturally. These were his people, and he’d chosen this venue.
She needed Kazimir for this operation. His people, and his alone, could get Nadia’s rescued Hosts out of the city without attracting the wrong kind of attention—which was to say, any attention—from the Flame or the Czech government or the Soviets or the Americans. Nadia and Kazimir had worked together before. She boxed in his gym. They’d broken bread and shared booze. But she did not like needing people. Kazimir was a criminal, and a nationalist, and at any moment he might abandon their relationship—might decide their business had grown costly, or that he would rather have one Russian dead than a business partner alive.
She opened her briefcase, withdrew a folder, and slid it across the table.
Kazimir looked down at the folder as if waiting for it to open of its own accord.
“I think you’ll find everything in order,” Nadia said. “As discussed.”
He pawed the folder toward him. Rustling paper sounded alien in this still blue air. A drinker at the bar slammed down his glass and called for more beer.
Kazimir opened the folder, and read.
That by itself wasn’t a bad sign. He shouldn’t need to read those pages—they’d agreed on everything beforehand. Then again, there were reasons to be cautious, after the raid. Kazimir wanted to review every stage, including this final step of payment: bank drafts on numbered Swiss accounts. Natural.
But still, he was frowning as he read.
Nadia reviewed her training, her exits, the gun in her handbag. She shouldn’t need any of that. The gun held eight rounds. The crowd was tight—she’d slalom past the tables, save the pistol for whoever tried to block the door, or for any gunmen who materialized among these apparently jovial drunks, and, with luck, she’d make it out of the meat grinder into the streets of Prague. Which these men knew better than she did.
No problem. She felt relaxed, loose, and dangerous. She had a reason to make it home, now.
All she had to do was survive until she got there.
Kazimir stood. His chair scraped the stone floor. There was so much of Kazimir that it took him a long time to reach his full height. His brow darkened like a storm god’s. The room hushed.
Hushed how? Who had stopped talking? Nadia kept her eyes on Kazimir, but she unfixed her focus, let her peripheral vision unfurl. Who had turned to face her, or him? Were they curious, or waiting for a cue to action? One man by the bar stood, and cheated toward the door.
She held her handbag close. She could leave the briefcase. Pop the bag open, draw the gun—
Two men stood up behind her.
The corner of her mouth curled up.
“We could have taken care of this in the ring,” she said.
Kazimir’s lips twitched. His eyes widened.
Then he collapsed back into his chair, laughing. He reached across the table and slapped her gently on the arm. “My friend! Your face! So serious. My God!”
She didn’t respond.
“All is arranged, of course! You know, always I am thinking: Russians, your people, too serious. Perhaps you are learning to laugh, the world is having less trouble, yes?”
She faked a smile and a laugh, and took one hand off her purse.
Kazimir, still chuckling, raised his hand and called, in Czech, for vodka. “You will bring us cargo, and we will get cargo to destination. Is always pleasure doing business, my friend.”
Nadia blinked. Her eyes burned. “Yes,” she said, and raised the vodka when it came. “Is always pleasure.”
• • •
Nadia flew through Prague by night.
Not literally, no, of course not, but this was better than flying. Jeweled reflections glittered in the muddy water lodged in cobblestones’ cracks. The night was bright and brilliant, and its shadows sang. Triumph bore her up. A wet breath of spring threaded through the night, and she felt for the first time in a long while that she could live without expecting a blow.
It wasn’t the vodka. It wasn’t just the vodka. She grinned fiercely at men she passed, and they smiled back. She saluted the women, and saw one pretty girl blush beneath her makeup. She wanted Van—wanted to dig her fingers into the other woman’s back, to celebrate through her sweat. But Van could not know about the hand-off. Too risky. Nadia had to share this pleasure with a friend.
Radiant and powerful, a witch in the full glory of success, she marched up to Tanya Morozova’s door, pounded on it with her fist, and realized, when Tanya opened the door dressed in a nightgown, hair disordered, a crease on her cheek as if she’d been pressed between the pages of a book, that it was one thirty in the morning.
“Comrade, we are on the verge of triumph!”
“Oh, God,” Tanya said, then unchained the door, wrapped one arm around Nadia, and escorted her into the apartment’s sitting room.
“I did it,” Nadia crowed as Tanya fussed with tea and kettle in the kitchen for some reason. “I set this operation up, with some small support from Alestair. Our Hosts will make the journey south in stasis, leaving us to focus on recapturing those three Hosts from the Flame, and neutralizing this senior Flame cultist, Terzian, while he’s in Prague. His death will be a great victory. The Ice will laud us for it, and it was all on my own initiative.” Tanya forced a cup into her hand. It was warm. “What is this?”
“Chamomile,” Tanya said. “Please.”
Nadia took a sip, burned her mouth, swore, then set the cup on the table. “Thank you for letting me in. It’s late, I’m sorry. I just wanted to share the good news.”
“No.” Tanya moved some books off the chair opposite and sat, arms on knees, leaning forward. “Don’t worry about it.”
“We are,” Nadia said, “friends.”
Tanya set one hand on Nadia’s wrist. “Yes.”
“This is my operation.” The tea scalded less on the second sip. “I have proved my loyalty. I may not be from one of the old high families, but I have fought for my place. I am worth everything I’ve achieved. Tanya. I need this to go well.” She caught the wrist of the hand that held her own. “Help me.”
“What do you mean?”
Nadia stared into her friend’s brown eyes. “Come to the docks tomorrow night. Help me. It’s a risk, all of us being out together, but I can’t think of anyone I would rather have by my side.”
Tanya’s hand remained tightly clasped
around Nadia’s, but her face closed like a flower.
“What?”
“I can’t.” She looked away, through the door, as if someone else stood there, watching. “I have another mission. For the Ice.”
“What?” Nadia was repeating herself, but other words slipped from her grasp as she tried to frame them. “What do you mean, another mission?”
Tanya started and stopped, and her teeth found her lower lip in a way that Nadia, drunk, found so fetching it almost distracted her from the ground opening beneath her feet. “Zerena wants me to sneak into Sasha’s office during an embassy meeting. She needs a file there, for leverage on him.”
Small bright red sparks flew between them. Nadia blinked, but they didn’t go away, and she still remembered hearing the words she couldn’t have heard. “Zerena?”
Tanya crossed her legs. “Yes.”
“That,” Nadia said, “is not an Ice mission.”
“I said, it’s for the Ice.”
“Breaking into the office of one high-placed and dangerous Flame acolyte, to help another high-placed and dangerous Flame acolyte, is by definition not an Ice mission. It is the opposite of an Ice mission.”
Tanya let go of Nadia’s wrist, and Nadia, in her mind, tumbled back through a hole in the world, even as she remained distantly aware that her body remained on Tanya’s couch, drinking tea. “I,” Tanya said, and then “She,” before settling on: “There are divisions within the Flame. I want to help fan them. If I play this right, we can use her as an asset.”
“You’re recruiting her? Tanya, we’ve been over this. She’s recruiting you.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“That’s exactly what this is.” Nadia set down the teacup and stood, more slowly than she would have liked, because the liquor kept her unsteady. “She’s using you. She knows you’re vulnerable, exposed. And she asked you for this one big favor. Tanya, you know the recruitment cycle as well as I do. She might not even want this file. She wants you in her hand, and you’re giving yourself to her.”
Tanya found her feet as well, the exhaustion parted to bare anger. “We have a chance to get the Flame at one another’s throats.”
“They’re always at one another’s throats! And you’re so desperate to squeeze out from under Sasha’s thumb you can’t see how much you’re selling yourself to Zerena.”
Tanya crossed her arms and watched her.
The room was very bright and very still. Nadia closed her eyes and the black behind her eyelids glowed too.
“Fine,” Nadia said. “Fine. We’ll handle it ourselves. Thanks for the tea.” Some had spilled, she saw, on the rug. She didn’t remember spilling it. She felt exposed. Teeth on a lip. “Sorry I woke you.”
“Nadia.”
She made it to the door before Tanya decided to follow her. Her hand hesitated on the knob.
To hell with it all.
She opened the door, stumbled down the stairs, and when she woke in bed the next morning, alone, with a cooling cup of tea and a note from Van on the nightstand—See you soon, love—she did not remember how she’d gotten there.
• • •
Josh lay beside Alestair, unsleeping.
He had to leave soon. Had to rise, wander home, sleep, wake, shower, shave, check in to the office. Had to press on with his life. Tomorrow was a big day. The Kazimir situation was reaching a head. One night’s aid, a show of force to solidify their newfound connection with the Prague underworld, which would open who could say what opportunities. All because Frank had sent Josh out of the office, to hide from Edith, their new counterintelligence watchdog, exactly the tendencies—
Exactly the attractions—
Exactly the weakness—
He stopped those thoughts. They did not matter. Or, they mattered, but not here, now.
Alestair slept easily. Of all the surprises the man offered in their months together, the ease of his sleep surprised Josh the most. Alestair was a veteran of secret wars that even Josh, a trained analyst, could barely name. Every time they talked, it seemed, the man fished some new anecdote from an impeccably tailored pocket. Oh, yes, the last time I was in Phuket. The strangest thing about Antarctica, my dear boy. Bamboo stakes make surprisingly effective spears: The hole in the middle helps the blood drain faster. In Josh’s experience, field operatives were jumpy, cocky, superstitious jocks, like surgeons. Risking your life made you nervous, and caused you to interpose fantasies between yourself and death. Perfectly sensible people went out on assignment and came home shaking and unable to sleep again. Sleep reminded them of too much else.
But Alestair—
He had seen the worst of it. Peel away the wools and cotton and silk, and the quite literal wounds announced his past. Even with the lights off Josh’s fingers found the crosshatch those secret wars had left on Alestair Winthrop’s body, the puckering of entry and exit, the trail of cuts so deep and regular they seemed almost ritual—false order emerging from the chaos of combat. Even a few fresh cuts, though he’d laughed off Josh’s questions about how he gained them. He must be in pain. Nobody as old as he was—though he was younger, Josh thought, than he affected—could have done so much without lingering pain, inside and out. But if Alestair felt any, he did not let on.
And every night, when what needed doing was done, he slept.
Light from moon and city passed through the window blinds to paint him in stripes of silver, glistened off thin curling hairs on his chest, cast shadows from ridged tissue.
Josh would earn his own scars tomorrow.
His watch ticked on the nightstand. Make that today.
No sense being so negative. He’d only earn scars if things went wrong. And they wouldn’t go wrong. He remembered Kazimir, cheerful, one big arm heavy around Josh’s shoulders: “Is no problem! Everything to be proceeding as foreseen.” Josh could speak Czech; Kazimir preferred English. “Will be fine! With your help, especially fine.”
So why did he lie awake? Why was he scared?
He wanted to nudge Alestair—no matter how easily the man slept, he woke on the slightest provocation, and so alert Josh sometimes wondered if he was wrong, if Alestair even slept at all—wanted to ask him how he handled it. Fighting. Killing. Fieldwork, and what came after. He seemed to have come out of the darkness okay.
But Alestair didn’t like Josh’s work with Kazimir. Didn’t like Frank’s moving him from desk jobs to the field. Didn’t like “consorting with criminals,” or didn’t like Josh consorting with criminals.
Josh was spy enough by now to spot an approaching whale from the shadow in the waves. Alestair wanted to cushion him from Kazimir, from wet work, from the world where he, himself, had spent his life. He wanted Josh safe. He had said as much.
Which meant—what, exactly? What did Alestair think of him? For that matter, what did Josh think of Alestair?
He liked it when they lay side by side. He liked his aftertaste, and he liked the contours of his flank, and the way he laughed.
Wake him. Ask for advice. Ask for help. Let him know you’re on his side.
Just a touch, and those eyes will open. He’ll be there for you. You know he will. For all his reservations about your work, he’ll catch you when you fall.
Are you strong enough to test him?
Josh’s hand trembled in midair, in the bedroom chill. He reached into the moonlight. He pulled back.
2.
Gabe wished Josh would calm down.
He’d seemed together at the coffeemaker that morning—a bit rumpled, but what else could you expect before a big operation, especially one for which the kid had laid the groundwork himself?
But the jumpiness only grew worse by lunchtime, when Gabe ran Josh through weapons check with Edith. He, Gabe, laid the guns on a long cloth on a conference room table—fresh from the weapons locker, like dishes at some damn suspicious church potluck. “The CZ 52,” he said, “is a semi-automatic Czech service weapon, eight-round magazine. We’re not expecting a figh
t, Josh’s contacts assure us”—he shot a glance up at Josh, who nodded without meeting his eyes—“but we’re going in prepared for one. And if a fight comes to us, we want to use weapons that won’t stand out if the Russians or local security take a closer look.”
Edith lifted her pistol in a matter-of-fact manner, sighted along the barrel, squinted, frowned. “It’s a bit long.”
“You’ll get used to it. The trigger pull’s the main issue—it’s a bit heavy. We’ll head down to the range after this to try them out. The firing pins tend to break—the arms department took the liberty of replacing them. Used local aftermarkets, thank God. Still, don’t throw away the gun if you can help it. Always a chance they can trace it back.”
“Don’t throw away the gun,” Josh said. He stroked the knurled metal grip, then lifted the weapon with his fingers. Gabe watched his arm adjust to the weight. Edith inserted the magazine, ejected it again, slid a cartridge from the mag and examined the bullets. He remembered how Edith had looked, pointing a gun at him. She’d be fine.
“Josh,” he said, “can we talk outside?”
Josh made it halfway to the door before realizing he still had the gun in his hand. He set it back on the cloth, then adjusted it to keep the angles right.
In the hallway, he stuck his hands in his pockets, and muttered, “I’m fine.”
Gabe wished, not for the first time since he got involved with this magic nonsense, that there was actually a way to read another man’s mind. “Josh, buddy.” Josh tensed a little at that. He’d seemed so distant to Gabe recently. Fine. Don’t read too much into it. “Josh, this is your op. I don’t mean to horn in.”
“It’s not that.” The answer came too fast to be believed.
“Okay,” Gabe said. “Then tell me. Because I feel like we’ve been jumping at shadows around one another since Dom.” Josh’s eyes darted sideways. “I know. It’s hard to decide who to trust in the middle of all this. Action—especially action you’ve planned—makes everything worse. But Edith’s on our side. She’s a good agent. You’re a good agent. Mission twitch keeps you honest. Keeps us safe. But we need to be on the same page with one another. Okay?”
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 28