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

by Lindsay Smith

  Nadia said, “If what you say is true, then you should come with us right now. We can protect you.”

  “Does your offer come from the KGB or Ice?”

  “That depends,” she said, touching a charm bracelet. It reminded him of Jordan’s trick for discreet conversations. “Are you an American intelligence officer or a man suffering a magical illness?”

  A false dichotomy. He conceded the point.

  “This thing is dangerous,” he said.

  “So are we,” said Tanya. “So are you.”

  “Not like this.” And he told them about the golem.

  This time the Russian invective was aimed at him. He got it in stereophonic hi-fi. Tanya looked ready to kick him in the nuts. Nadia—a boxer, according to her file—clenched her fists. He kept an eye on her. He was slightly taller, but she carried herself like somebody with a mean left hook.

  Nadia scowled. “Have you any idea how much trouble your experiment has caused us?” That was the KGB officer speaking, he knew.

  “No, of course I don’t. Because nobody in my office cares about a string of dead policemen. How could that possibly bother us?”

  “If we help you rid yourself of this encumbrance,” said KGB-Tanya, “you’ll become a more efficient officer. We do not benefit.”

  “What about Ice? What about sticking it to Flame?”

  He could see the gears turning. She twisted her head aside, concentrating. She was nibbling the hook. Come on, he thought, as though he could mentally nudge her. But then her eyes focused on the distance, and just like that the twist turned into a hard shake. The glazed eyes were those of somebody looking inward, not outward. She was seeing something he couldn’t. But it scared her, and that he could see.

  “No. I cannot.”

  The spy in Gabe, the part of him that didn’t give a toss about magic and elementals and golems and secret sorcerous factions, sat up straight. He’d just glimpsed a vulnerability. Her Achilles’ heel?

  One fingerhold. That’s all it took. That, and patience. If, over enough time, he could subtly exploit that weakness, like rain eroding a mountain . . .

  Let Josh have Drahomir. Maybe I can flip this KGB witch.

  But that was a vision in some distant future. He needed her help sooner than that. So he went for simple honesty.

  “Please. This thing . . . it’s destroying me. Maybe we can help each other?”

  3.

  Sasha abandoned the voltmeter. It was the wrong line of inquiry. The exact purpose of the mineral circuit inscribed inside the case still eluded him. But, like a broken pawn chain, it was the watershed. Now he understood the true nature of the problem. Tanya’s radio wasn’t an electrical puzzle. It required a very different approach. An approach he didn’t dare attempt in his office. One that nobody could witness.

  He lived alone in his two-bedroom khrushchyovka, but the second bedroom was not for sleeping. It had no bed—just shelves, cabinets, a workbench, and several very old books. And a series of wards he’d girded himself.

  He set the radio on the bench. Then, from one of the cabinets, he produced an eclectic collection of crystals, flower blossoms, and tarnished silverware. These he arranged in the corners of the room. Some he laid inside special chalk marks on the floor; others he placed in iron baskets suspended from the ceiling. Then he placed a thumbnail-sized piece of patinated copper mesh on his tongue and spoke the appropriate incantation.

  The room instantly went from merely quiet to utterly still. It was as though the outside world had disappeared.

  He removed the copper mesh from his mouth and set it on a towel. Only now, with the magical Faraday cage hermetically sealed, did Sasha turn his full attention to the radio. First, he removed the case again. He studied everything not with a technician’s eyes but with a sorcerer’s inner sense.

  He plugged it into the mains. As in his office, it functioned like a perfectly normal radio. When he twisted the dial, the speaker hissed nothing but static. Remembering how the circuitry had taken so long to de-energize, he unplugged it again . . . and now, with his inner eye wide open, he felt a tingle.

  Such magical craftsmanship! So orderly. So precise. Almost crystalline. This was the work of an Ice sorcerer.

  But to what end? He’d find out sooner or later. What one sorcerer could do, another could undo. What one spell could weave, another could unravel.

  Sasha’s magic could melt this Ice. That’s what Flame did.

  He touched the tuning dial; the static hiss grew stronger. The static took on a strange warble, as though the radio were pulling down a signal from very far away. He kept turning the dial. Slowly. Slowly . . .

  The tingle became a spiritual jolt that almost knocked him from his chair. The static disappeared. And then the unplugged radio spoke in an old man’s voice. “Tanushka? Are you there, little bird? What matters must we discuss?”

  Tsk, tsk, Tatiana Mikhailovna.

  The construct prattled, “Why won’t you speak to your lonely grandfather, little Tanushka?”

  Sasha smiled. “I’ll speak with you, dear Dyedushka.”

  A staticky pause. For a moment Sasha thought the spell was broken. Then the construct said, “You’re not Tatiana.”

  “No,” Sasha said, “I am not. But tell me something, Grandfather. Do you play chess?”

  • • •

  She’d come to hate this time of night.

  The darkest, quietest hours were when visions of Andula Zlata infiltrated Tanya’s dreams. The student she’d worked so hard to save, she and Nadia. Her trusted partner . . . or so Tanya had thought. But Nadia had deceived Tanya, and now poor Andula was stacked and stored like frozen cargo on the Vltava barge.

  When the clock ticked 03:00 and her nerves still thrummed, as they had all day, Tanya threw off the blanket.

  It was Gabe’s fault. Damn you, Pritchard.

  His story, his pathetic appeal, was too ludicrous even for the most desperate CIA dangle. Yet somehow he had found the barge, a moving site virtually invisible to scrying, while a complete newcomer to the secret world of Ice and Flame. But what kept her awake all night was the look on Nadia’s face when Gabe spoke of the hitchhiker.

  Like a starving wolf glimpsing a lame caribou.

  Hiding her disgust had been one of the hardest things Tanya had done in recent days. It was like trying to swallow broken glass. And now here she lay in the middle of the night: jaw clenched, mind racing, stomach roiling.

  The foolish American might as well have begged Nadia to abduct him and put him under stasis. Maybe he’d land on the cot next to Andula. Tanya should let him. He was a Western intelligence officer; she benefitted from his troubles. If only it were that simple.

  Because as much as she hated to admit it, she needed Gabe’s help as much as he needed hers.

  She needed to get her radio back. Every day Sasha held it—every hour—the danger grew that he might stumble upon its true significance. If Gabe had stumbled into their secret sorcerous world, surely others could, too. And Comrade Komyetski was already looking for reasons to question her loyalty: Nadia had warned her, weeks ago, that he expected her to monitor Tanya. Her own safety, and her grandfather’s, depended upon keeping the radio secure. Meanwhile, she desperately needed the counsel of her grandfather’s construct. To tell him what she’d learned about Ice, to ask him what it meant. She needed his reassurance.

  She needed that damn radio.

  She didn’t dare enlist Nadia in a move against Sasha. So she couldn’t trust anybody in Ice, which was a new and startling truth, nor could she trust anybody in the KGB, which was a truth of the familiar but wearying kind.

  At least Tanya knew where she stood with Gabe.

  And in the end, she preferred the devil she knew.

  • • •

  The trick would be in taking the radio back from Sasha without his realizing they’d taken it. Which meant they had to replace it with a replica.

  First problem: They didn’t have an exact replica.
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  “I’ll sell you charms,” said Jordan, “at the regular price. Which you should consider generous, given what you owe me.”

  Gabe placed his empty glass on a handful of neatly folded korunas and a slip of paper. He slid it all across the bar. “No charms. I need something else.”

  “You really know how to push your luck, Pritchard.”

  “I thought you’d enjoy a fun challenge. I’m paying for it, aren’t I?” Well, he and Tanya together.

  Jordan moved his empty glass into a bus bin beneath the bar in one smooth motion. The money disappeared almost like a magic trick. She glanced at the note. Frowned. “Give me a few days.”

  • • •

  Three nights later, two spies sat in a dark car. To any passersby peering through the steamy windows, they’d look like a couple having an illicit rendezvous.

  But there was nothing sexual about the tension filling the space between them. It was the uneasy thrum of being vulnerable, of willingly opening the door to one’s enemy. The tension of unwanted symbiosis.

  Nothing would save Tanya if she were discovered in a car with a known CIA officer. Proximity to Gabe put a queasy lump in her stomach.

  “Show me.”

  Gabe whisked a blanket from the lump on the backseat. “Ta-da.” He watched her expression in the moonlight. “Please tell me it’s a match.”

  She shook her head. “Nyet.” And then she reached into her pocket and flicked open a knife.

  He raised his hands. “Hey! Hold on a second.”

  She twisted in her seat, reached past him, and hauled the radio onto her lap. His aftershave smelled of lemongrass. She clenched her eyes and concentrated.

  Several minutes passed. Gabe broke the silence, startling her. “Whatever you’re trying to do, the spell isn’t working. Otherwise the hitchhiker would be rattling its cage right now. And by ‘cage’ I mean ‘my skull.’”

  Americans. They loved the sounds of their own voices.

  “Do you always talk this much?” She opened her eyes again. “I wasn’t casting a spell. I was remembering.”

  She pressed the tip of the knife into one of the knobs and, very, very slowly, carved a small chip out of the plastic. Next, she dragged the blade over the metal case, which elicited a toe-curling screech as she did her best to reproduce a distinctive scratch.

  “There,” she said, folding the knife away. “Now it’s a little better.”

  “A little?”

  “The plastic trim is yellowed here,” she pointed, “and here. But I don’t know how to replicate that.”

  “I do.” Now it was his turn to reach into a pocket. He produced a small vial of topical iodine, the kind used to disinfect minor cuts and bruises, along with a handful of cotton balls. “I stopped at a chemist on the way home this evening.” She frowned at him; he shrugged. Almost apologetically he added, “Cheap Soviet plastics aren’t known for their durability.”

  Half a dozen what-abouts leapt to mind. But she bit back on her retort. She sighed. “Resourceful.”

  “The iodine takes about twenty minutes to soak in. It’ll set semipermanently if we let it sit overnight.” He cleared his throat. “Or so I’m told.”

  She took the bottle. When she broke the seal, a faintly oceanic scent filled the car.

  • • •

  Second problem: Tanya didn’t know where Sasha kept the original. It was possible he’d taken it home. That would require a team of lamplighters. But Gabe wasn’t about to request that Frank authorize a penetration of the home of his own counterpart in the local KGB. Merely broaching the subject would be professional suicide. It would be even worse if Komyetski were keeping the radio in his office in the Soviet embassy. Authorization for an operation like that would have to go through levels so far above Frank’s head one would need a telescope to see them. They would have to lure Sasha out, radio in hand.

  • • •

  A timid knock pulled Sasha from his contemplation of the transcript of a recent Youth League meeting. A welcome diversion. Unless it was Kasimir coming to reiterate, yet again, his theory about NATO conspiracies to manipulate wheat prices.

  “Enter, please.”

  It wasn’t Kasimir. It was Tanya. “Sir, may I speak with you?”

  “Of course. Always.” He set the transcript aside, giving her his full attention. She closed the door. “How may I aid your struggles in defense of the motherland?”

  She fidgeted. She kept her eyes on the floor, on her shoes, as though she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes.

  Finally, she said, “Recently, you . . . found something.”

  Aha. The strategic approach had worked. He’d been right to keep the zwischenzug in reserve. Sasha concentrated on keeping his expression clear of anything but the utmost sincerity. When a smile threatened to tug at the corners of this mouth, he deported it to the endless steppe.

  “Why so despondent, Tatiana Mikhailovna? I told you I would take care of the problem, and I have. You needn’t worry about others misconstruing what was surely an innocent misunderstanding.”

  “Of course, sir. And I’m very grateful to you.” With visible effort, she stopped fidgeting. She looked up. “Soon after his arrival, General Bykovsky approached me privately. He wanted to verify the item was safe. I thought—well, I remembered what you had told me, so I reassured him. I let him believe I still had it.”

  “How did he know you held it?”

  She shrugged. She looked ready to cry. “Moscow Center ordered me to take it to Prague, where somebody would retrieve it, and to tell nobody. I didn’t know I’d have to wait so long. At first I thought it was meant for you. But then he asked . . . I was afraid to tell him I’d lost it.”

  He tented his fingers. Leaned forward. Nodded slowly. He was every inch the attentive listener. It encouraged her. She continued.

  “A few days later he told me we would together deliver the item to a particular car parked near the Prašná brána.” The Powder Gate. “A green Moskvich. I started to panic. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

  Is this why you sped along my old friend’s departure, Tatiana Mikhailovna? Or have you finally joined me in a game of chess?

  “I see,” said Sasha. He stroked his chin. “What did you do, Tanya?”

  “Nothing. That was the day of his . . . unfortunate circumstances.” She looked down again. “I’m ashamed to say I was deeply relieved by his misfortune. I chose to pretend he’d never had a chance to tell me about the delivery.”

  Sasha nodded. “I understand. You were caught in a difficult situation. But why are you telling me now?”

  “I passed the Prašná brána this morning. The car is there, sir. A green Moskvich, just as he described.”

  Oh, Tanya. He stroked his chin, watching her. The tears were a nice touch. Is this your gambit? You’ll suggest the errand should be completed, yes? That we should deliver the radio? And soon after that, when old Sasha considers the matter settled and the item long gone, it will secretly find its way back to you.

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  “I don’t know.” She took a steadying breath. “But given his manipulation by that Westerner, I worry. Sir, what if this errand was orchestrated by our enemies?”

  Sasha couldn’t help but smile. No transparent gambits for little Tanya. She had played her own zwischenzug. He hadn’t expected this. Clever.

  He willed an avuncular gleam into his eyes. Still smiling, he said, “You think we should use the radio as bait and see who takes it.”

  She shrugged. “If I were not personally involved, I know it is the course I’d recommend. In this matter . . . well. I must rely on your judgment, sir.”

  • • •

  The worst thing about hiding inside the trunk of a parked car wasn’t the painful contortion. It wasn’t the tire iron jabbing his ribs. It wasn’t even the cold. It was keeping the hitchhiker in check while the liquid metal in the mercury switch just inches from Gabe’s head kept sloshing against its glass bulb l
ike a tiger trying to leap through the bars of its cage. If it broke free and tried to join with the hitchhiker, he’d have no good options. He could leap from his hiding place in plain view of two dueling (and unforgiving) agencies or he could lie there and let the poison wriggle up his nose and, probably, drill into his brain. Alestair’s relaxation and meditation techniques were no help in this situation.

  At least the iodine smell had finally dissipated.

  He did his best to endure the cold, the discomfort, and the incipient migraine. Just a little longer. If he could put up with this, then Tanya would get her stupid construct back, and then she’d help him get free of the hitchhiker once and for all.

  He hated this plan. The hitchhiker loved it.

  But just when he thought he’d have to give up and creep through the access panel in order to shake off the seizures, he heard footsteps. He froze.

  A rear door opened. Somebody placed something on the backseat and closed the door again.

  • • •

  Tanya wanted to warn Gabe that she wasn’t alone, that Sasha was watching, but she didn’t dare speak to the empty car. So she turned on her heel and strode away from the ancient city gate. She took a serpentine path back to Sasha’s auto, parked at the edge of the Old Town. Partially because she knew it was important to demonstrate good tradecraft, but also because she dreaded getting back in the car with him.

  It was a special kind of torture, pretending to enjoy the ruminations of a man who’d threatened, ever so subtly, to have her grandfather killed. If she had to hear one more Japanese poem she’d shoot herself.

  To her immense relief, they didn’t have to wait long. A man slightly older than Sasha crossed the square and went straight to the Moskvich.

  “I’ve seen him before,” she said, because it was true. “I saw him speaking with Haakensen, the Norwegian.” Which was also true, of a sort. They’d exchanged a greeting.

  “Your instincts were right,” said Sasha. He folded his newspaper. “We’ll follow him.”

  She started the car, acutely aware that she was being graded on everything she did.

  “I’d forgotten how thrilling this could be,” said Sasha. “You and Nadia must have such fun.”