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

by Lindsay Smith

  It had, thank whatever nonexistent gods overlooked the welfare of wayward spies, turned out to be a bathroom.

  The vomit gushing into the delicate porcelain sink—hand-painted with Tyrian purple gentians—was green and foul-smelling. Fat drops of sweat poured from his throbbing head like rain. Meanwhile, the thing within him reached down to caress and then squeeze his bowels. An instant ago, Gabe had imagined his situation couldn’t possibly get any worse. Now, however . . .

  Somebody rattled the bathroom’s doorknob.

  “C’est occupée!” Gabe growled in his very best Metropolitan French. “Va te faire foutre, trouduc.” Just to throw off the scent, should the intruder later wonder exactly who he might have been.

  Whoever it was went away, possibly to alert the guards.

  Gabe knew all the ways an agent might get in and out of a secure building. His previous cover identity, after all, had been as the chief of diplomatic security for the Cairo embassy. But he had no idea how he was going to get out of the fix he was in. If he was discovered—no, make that when he was discovered—his career was as good as over. He would be a laughingstock. Worse, he would have rendered himself visible in a way no intelligence officer should ever be, constantly pointed out, invariably noticed wherever he went, the guy who was found spewing filth from both ends in an art museum. He was well and royally screwed.

  And then, abruptly, he was fine.

  What the hell had that been all about? One minute, he was looking at a painting, and the next . . .

  The noise that issued from Gabe’s mouth then was half relief, half despair, and half disgust. Swiftly, he made himself presentable and cleaned away all evidence of the embarrassing incident. The bundle of towels he’d used to mop things up, he hid in the back of a linen closet for some horrified janitorial staffer to discover a week from now. Time for him to slip away quietly.

  As he was making for the exit, however, Gabe saw Morozova standing by herself at the edge of the mingler, talking to no one and looking extremely bored. On a desperate impulse, he seized her wrist and pulled her into a shadowy side gallery.

  And realized that he had a demon by the arm. Morozova’s eyes were murderous. Her free hand was raised and cocked in a way that Gabe knew meant she was ready to drive its heel into his nose and, with any luck, splinters of his skull into his brain. But then, seeing who he was, and evidently judging him unlikely to try anything physical in so public a space, Morozova lowered her arm and wrinkled her nose. “You smell terrible.”

  Quietly, urgently, Gabe said, “I need your help. I need help from . . . your organization.”

  “Let go of me.” Morozova pulled her arm free of his grip. Fiercely, she said, “That door is closed. Forever. You can just pretend it never existed.”

  Whoops. Mentally, Gabe took two steps back and one to the side. That had been badly played on his part. Apparently, the bad blood between them was stronger than the desire she’d shown earlier to recruit him into her organization. No, wait. Her tone suggested she was unhappy with more than just him. Her KGB masters, perhaps? Or was it Ice? If, at his instigation, she had looked into the barge filled with the frozen victims of her organization, she might well have suffered a massive loss of faith in her own people.

  Whatever was going on, it was the kind of situation Gabe knew how to exploit.

  His personal problems were nothing compared to an opportunity like this. Gabe felt like an actor who’d just heard his cue. Time to stride on stage and play the fool. Let her think that he thought she could be manipulated. Then see what she did.

  “Listen to me,” Gabe said in his most unctuous tones, channeling his inner bad boyfriend. “We had a thing going here, a professional connection. Don’t cut me off like this. Keep the relationship open: Surely we can work together on matters that don’t threaten either of our sponsors. We complement each other. Seriously, there must be something you want. Some small favor. Ask.”

  For a long moment, Morozova considered his offer. Gabe could almost see the gears turning. “As it happens,” she said at last, “there is something you could do for me.”

  2.

  There was a wall across the street from Tanya’s apartment, too tall for a passerby to see over, but not too high for somebody to place something atop it. The morning after her encounter with Pritchard in the gallery, Tanya discovered that Nadia had placed three small stones in a row there, easily visible from above. So she was not surprised to find a rolled-up newspaper outside the neighboring apartment door—the one that nobody lived in. She took it in and shook it open over the kitchen table. A folded sheet of paper fell out. It read simply: Family crisis. Cover for me. N.

  Tanya understood this to mean that Nadia was off on Ice business. Which would have been inconvenient at the best of times, but at this particular juncture was maddening. She had questions, pressing questions, for Nadia about the Ice’s handling of the Hosts. Nor was she thrilled at the prospect of having to cover at the embassy for a subordinate when the inspectors descended upon them like hyenas upon carrion.

  Still, what could not be mended had to be endured. Tanya turned off the lights and put the electric kettle on for tea.

  As could have been predicted, Tanya was not at her desk for fifteen minutes that morning before she was summoned to Sasha’s office. A stranger waited there, a man who seemed a caricature of himself: morbidly obese, with a doughy face, jowls, brown age spots, and, on his eyelids, skin tags like little flesh tentacles that jiggled as he talked. Tanya found it hard not to stare as they exchanged meaningless preliminaries. No reason was given for his presence, so he was obviously the head inspector.

  Sasha introduced him as General Boris Petrovich Bykovsky, adding in an almost whimsical tone, “You can speak as openly before him as you would before me.” Obviously, a guarded warning. Then he told the general that Tanya was his most trusted subordinate, which made her wonder.

  “Not half so trusted, I am sure, as Sasha is to me,” General Bykovsky said with finality. “We are like brothers.”

  A complex look passed between the two men. They both turned to Tanya. “You have an eager air about you, Comrade,” Sasha said. “Perhaps you have something you wish to ask me?”

  Tanya marshaled her courage. “Sir, I request access to the files and authorization to use the photocopier room. I’ve chanced upon an opportunity to slip the Odessa file to the Americans.”

  Sasha’s eyebrows flew up. “Did you really?”

  The Odessa file, a carefully constructed lure labeled Electromagnetic Bio-information Transfer, contained A. L. Ivanov’s paper from the International Journal of Parapsychology on eyeless seeing, the mimeographed transcript of a symposium on the use of Tesla coils as anti-remote viewing devices, a secret and totally fictitious speech by Kosygin on the importance of psychic research, and a background paper on an experiment in telepathic communication between Sevastopol and two nuclear submarines using ELF transmitters as boosters. It was by no means a comprehensive file or even a particularly coherent one. Rather, it was quite cannily the sort of thing a curious rezident might assemble out of bits and pieces that came his way, in the hope that it might eventually add up into some useful clue as to what his superiors were up to.

  But when Tanya gave a severely edited version of her discussion with Gabe in the gallery, she was astounded to hear Bykovsky abruptly shut down Sasha’s growing elation. “I absolutely forbid any file leaving the building. Discipline has obviously gotten slack here. Why would we give such valuable information to our enemies?”

  Tanya bent her head deferentially. “With all due respect, sir, the file is nonsense. Bait. Half forgery and half the work of crackpots. But if we can get it into the hands of the American intelligence community, the Odessa file has the potential to make them waste millions of dollars creating their own psychic research program.”

  Sasha added, “Moscow Center concocted the scheme. They are most eager for it to go forward.”

  “As far as you are concerned, I a
m Moscow Center. So, no, Moscow does not desire any such thing.”

  “Then . . . I am to drop the American contact?” Tanya asked.

  Bykovsky assumed what he obviously thought was a clever manner. “You could always seduce him.”

  Tanya felt her lips turn cold. “I am not a—”

  “We have made a good beginning here,” Sasha said, clapping his hands together, “and I trust that we will all build upon it. The first thing I will need from you, Comrade Morozova, is a typed report of your contact with the opposition officer. I’ll expect it on my desk by noon. With three carbon copies, please.”

  So there went most of Tanya’s morning. When she delivered the handwritten copy to the typing pool, she discovered that the general had spent the interim spreading terror and confusion among the clerical staff. Bykovsky was the sort who liked to change procedures without bothering to understand them first. First, he had told the typists they were not to make carbon copies any more. Then the file clerks were instructed to merge individual files into group dossiers arranged by “affinity clusters,” whatever those might be. After which, anything on paper was immediately classified secret, including blank forms. All typed materials were henceforth to be handled only by those graded as intelligence officers or higher. Which meant that, in essence, nobody in the clerical staff had the clearance to read or handle anything they typed or filed. In the aftermath of this cascade of new and contradictory regulations, one typist, Ekaterina, came to Tanya, biting back tears. “Please, Comrade. Tell me this is some sort of test.”

  “Keep calm, and do what you can. Everything will be normal again soon,” Tanya lied. She assumed her most stalwart and capable face. “Meanwhile, in the absence of carbon paper, I’m afraid you’ll have to type this out four times. I’ll need all the copies by noon, so please make it your top priority.”

  “But . . . four copies!”

  “You’re not the only one with problems, Comrade.”

  • • •

  To Tanya’s complete and utter surprise, the report and its three hand-typed copies were finished in time, despite all the chaos. Apparently she was not as unpopular with the typists as their behavior had always led her to suspect.

  Bykovsky had requisitioned Sasha’s office for his own use, but when Tanya arrived there, the general was out for lunch. Sasha accepted the papers, placing them print-side down on an empty space of the desk where his bonsai used to be—facedown positioning of all documents being another of the general’s innovations. Then, sitting on a chair not behind but to one side of the desk, he said, “So. How are you enjoying the new regime?”

  “I am confident we will quickly adapt to the changes.”

  Sasha looked longingly at the tables where he normally kept his chessboards. They had, it seemed, been deemed a distraction from his work. “Have you ever seen the American James Bond films?”

  “I saw From Russia with Love. It was nonsense.”

  “My old friend Borya has seen every James Bond film three times.” For a long time, Sasha said no more. Tanya, who knew better than to let him goad her into speaking simply to fill the void, matched him silence for silence. At last he continued, “Boris Petrovich has risen as far as he possibly can in the KGB. Now he is angling for a position on the Politburo. For that to happen, however, he must first draw the attention of those on the top. He needs a spectacular accomplishment. For his purposes, closing down a corrupt and dysfunctional station would be every bit as useful as reforming it. So, trust me, he’s nobody you would want to make unhappy.”

  As Tanya wondered at this unexpected show of friendliness—callousness? a display of power? business as usual?—Sasha’s face turned uncharacteristically grim. “Nor, my dear, am I. Whatever else happens in the course of this very long week, I do hope you’ll remember that.”

  • • •

  That same morning after the meeting in the gallery, Gabe had a long and depressing breakfast in a rundown café in the New Town. When he arrived at his desk, he found the embassy buzzing with bland, pink-faced accountants. “Oh, Lord,” he muttered. He had forgotten that it was inspection season, that time of year when, the winter holidays over, busybodies on both sides of the Cold War descended upon embassies everywhere to make life a living hell for poor, long-suffering spies.

  He also found three identical messages demanding that he report to Frank’s office immediately. There Gabe saw, lined up on a table, an array of half-empty liquor bottles, prescription bottles with their labels carefully turned to the wall, a switchblade, and a short stack of magazines.

  “It’s a funny thing,” Frank said. “No matter how secret you try to keep these things, word always goes out about an inspection the day before. Somebody always tips somebody else off.” He did not mention that he himself had issued the warning. “A cleaning team went through the offices last night looking for anything an employer might not want to find in the desks of his employees and, predictably enough, they came up empty-handed. However, as it turns out, our auditors expected this to happen. Which is why, without notifying me, they previously had three days’ trash diverted to a warehouse. When it was sifted through, all kinds of crap was discovered.”

  “I know whose switchblade that is, and—”

  “So do I. He’ll have his little souvenir back just as soon as our esteemed colleagues from Accounting are gone.” Frank opened a drawer, fished within, spilled a handful of trinkets onto the desk: bits of carved bone, a white feather painted with red stripes, glass beads and twigs lashed together with silver wire, and the like. “What do you make of these?”

  “Um . . . hippie jewelry?”

  Frank stared at Gabe, unblinking, for long enough that Gabe began to sweat. He knew better than to break the silence, though. Silence was the easiest way to get someone who was feeling guilty to blurt out something incriminating. Instead, he matched that gaze with his most stalwart mask of an expression and just the hint of a smile. Frank would know what he was doing, but it was exactly what an honest spook would do.

  “Yeah, I’ve got no idea either.” Frank swept the things back into the drawer and handed Gabe one of the magazines. “How about this? What do you think?”

  The magazine was titled Dynamic Nudist. Gabe flipped through it, paused midway through, and grinned. “I think that I wouldn’t mind playing volleyball with the blonde.”

  “Right answer.”

  “Sir? I’m afraid I don’t understand what a wrong answer would be.”

  “Faggots like magazines like this because they allow ’em to look at naked men—if they’re caught they can claim they were ogling the broads. I wish someone would tell whoever-it-is to keep this crap at home. Or, better yet, to just use his imagination.” Frank tossed the magazines into a wastebasket.

  “Oh,” Gabe said.

  Then he realized that Frank was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something. Not about Josh—that matter was closed. But Frank’s unblinking stare said, clearer than words, Do you have something to tell me? The best means of concealment was always the simple, if carefully pruned, truth.

  Gabe cleared his throat. “Sir, I must report a contact with a KGB officer last night.” Frank did not look surprised. Which meant that someone had seen him talking with Tanya and fingered him. Josh? No, more likely somebody from outside the Company, looking to curry favor with Frank. Or just some idiot yanking Gabe’s chain. “She wanted information on a new player in town. I said I’d see what I could do.”

  “So what did you do?” Frank asked.

  “I had breakfast with Arnie Lytton.”

  It had been heartbreaking how the old man’s eyes had lit up when Gabe walked into the café, and pathetic how eager he was to tell everything he knew. Not that he knew all that much. But at least now Gabe had a name, Magnus Haakensen, and a nickname as well—the Norwegian. Haakensen had been on the circuit for years. He told good stories and he bought his share of the drinks. Nobody knew who he worked for—nobody, the implication was, particular
ly cared. He was just one of those characters who popped up wherever spooks gathered.

  As Gabe was leaving, Arnie had grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and begged for work. “Surveillance, sabotage, message-running, anything, Gabe. I’ve got a good record, I can do the work. You have no idea what it feels like being on the outside.” Which was not entirely true; Gabe understood the old duffer well enough. He just didn’t have any use for a relic from a different era, with reflexes gone slow and a brain clogged up with old tricks. But he had lied and promised to do his best to find something. Just to get free of the poor sonofabitch.

  “And the KGB officer?”

  “Tanya Morozova. We’ve talked about her before. Ostensibly third cultural secretary at the Soviet embassy, but of course we know better. Very serious, very professional. A true believer. We’ve met a few times before this, just casual talk. This time she suggested we might do each other a small favor from time to time.”

  “Huh. Sounds like she’s trying to get you a little bit pregnant.”

  “Funny thing, that’s my assessment of the situation as well.”

  “Let’s turn the tables on her, see how much time she can be conned into wasting on you. Let her think you might want to play volleyball with her. Without your spending an equal amount of time on her, understand? Some of us have got work to do. Anything else? No? Scram.”

  Gabe started to leave.

  “Oh, and Langley’s sending in a new boy to oversee you on the extraction. Name’s Dominic Alvarez. We’ll be having a conference on that the day after tomorrow.”

  • • •

  On the way back to his desk, Gabe did a few mental calculations and was appalled to discover exactly how much grunt work he had just volunteered to do. Then he saw Josh, feet up, reading that day’s Lidové noviny. Gabe clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Josh, old buddy, old chum, old pal! How’s about giving me a hand today? I’ve got a bitch of a workload and it’s all dull as ditchwater.”