• • •
Gabe waited until Arnie had the car in gear. By agreement, they didn’t speak. But Arnie did as they’d planned and drove as loudly as he could, which meant grinding the gears, gunning the engine at intersections, and driving over the bumpiest cobbles in Prague.
He’ll plant a bug, she’d warned. I’ll suggest it if he doesn’t.
Once they were underway, Gabe opened the access panel into the noisy backseat. Arnie met Gabe’s eyes in the rearview. He scratched his left ear. We’re being tailed.
Gabe swapped Tanya’s radio with the decoy. It was a decent match. He’d been skeptical about artificially aging the plastic, but it’d worked better than he’d hoped. Judging from her recreation of the original discolorations, Tanya had quite a memory. He’d have to step lightly around her.
He left the replica on the seat and, suppressing a groan, retreated into the trunk with the construct.
• • •
Tanya followed the car from the Powder Gate all the way to a park on the edge of the city. By the time the driver of the Moskvich pulled over, she’d fallen back more than a hundred meters, as the traffic here was thinner than in the heart of Prague. The driver, Gabe’s acquaintance, exited the car and walked into the park.
She endured another several hours in the car with Sasha. He smoked. When she wasn’t wondering how long it would take to wash the smell out of her hair, she pondered whether Gabe had frozen to death. As they’d arranged, nobody came to collect the radio and the driver hadn’t returned. The radio was unguarded.
But, to her surprise, Sasha didn’t suggest retrieving it. Instead, he yawned, stretched, and winced.
“I think I am too old for these stakeouts,” he said. “Now I remember why I no longer yearn for fieldwork. This is a young person’s game. I’m a cold, hungry old man. Let’s return to the office.”
She coughed. “But . . . sir! You saw the Westerner just as I did. Something isn’t right about this.”
“You’ve delivered the package, as ordered. And those orders came from Moscow Center, yes?”
“Yes, sir,” she lied.
“Then you have done your patriotic duty and I have witnessed this.” He turned to her with that dangerously innocuous smile. The one laced with barbs she could not see. “Don’t worry, Tatiana. I have your best interests at heart.”
Heart thumping like a treshchotka played by an overenthusiastic five-year-old, she turned the car around and drove home. Had he fallen for it? Under the guise of scratching an itch, she wiped beads of sweat from her forehead. She wanted to believe it had been so simple, but then she pictured his office, littered with chess pieces.
And now Gabe, and by extension the CIA, had her grandfather’s construct. Could she trust him to return it, or had she just traded one problem for another?
• • •
The trunk opened.
“Hello, chum. Comfy?”
“Hi, Arnie. No.”
Arnie offered a hand. Gabe needed it; he was numb from toes to scalp. He shivered. Arnie had thoughtfully brought a blanket. Gabe wrapped himself like a burrito, and jumped up and down to restore the circulation to his feet.
The other man lit a cigarette. “Who was the bird? I’ve seen her at the Vodnář.”
“She’s been a pain in my ass for weeks.” Gabe spoke with conviction, because it was true. “It helps me greatly if she’s associated with you, because you’re associated with Haakensen.”
“You really know how to make a guy feel like a leper.”
“Yeah. But you’re my favorite leper, Arnie.”
They shook hands. “Thanks for the favor,” said Gabe. “I owe you one.”
“I should be thanking you.” The older man inhaled, swelled his chest until his ribs creaked. “God, I miss this work.”
Gabe let the other man finish his cigarette. He waited until Arnie had disappeared before getting back in the car to study Tanya’s construct.
Gabe’s invisible pal was unusually quiescent. Gabe had been prepared for a tantrum from his ethereal Siamese twin. Proximity to the golem had had Gabe speaking in tongues, and before that, the hitchhiker had nearly given him an aneurysm the night it sensed the construct chasing Andula Zlata. Gabe had spent the evening in a preemptive mental cringe, dreading the moment when the hitchhiker detected the special nature of the radio.
But having failed to absorb the mercury, it was almost as if the hitchhiker had gone into hibernation and hung a “Do Not Disturb Until Summer” sign on the cave door. Like it couldn’t care less about the radio construct. Almost as if—
Oh, shit.
This wasn’t Tanya’s radio.
Sasha had made a replica, too.
No wonder the plastic had seemed such a good match: Sasha had probably used the same iodine trick.
Gabe pulled out his pocketknife and, working quickly as he dared with shaking hands, removed the screws that held the case together. But when he opened the radio, his breath snagged in his chest like a sweater caught on a bramble.
The VHF transmitter was inconspicuous as a tumor. In his imagination, the tracking beacon pulsed relentlessly as a telltale heart.
Aleksander Komyetski, head of the Prague KGB, was toying with them.
And if not for the hitchhiker, Gabe would have bumbled straight into the trap.
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Writer Team
Lindsay Smith is the author of the YA espionage thrillers Sekret, Skandal, and Dreamstrider, all from Macmillan Children’s. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and dog, where she writes on international issues in cyber security. LindsaySmith.net. @LindsaySmithDC.
Max Gladstone has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia, drank almond milk with monks on Wudang Shan, and wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. Max is also the author of the Craft Sequence of books about undead gods and skeletal law wizards—Full Fathom Five, Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, and Last First Snow. Max fools everyone by actually writing novels in the coffee shops of Davis Square in Somerville, MA. His dreams are much nicer than you’d expect. MaxGladstone.com. @maxgladstone.
Ian Tregillis is the son of a bearded mountebank and a discredited tarot card reader. He is the author of the Milkweed Triptych, Something More than Night, and the Alchemy Wars trilogy. His most current novel is The Rising (Alchemy Wars #2). His short fiction has appeared at numerous venues including Tor.com, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Popular Science. He lives in New Mexico, where he consorts with writers, scientists, and other disreputable types. IanTregillis.com. @ITregillis.
Michael Swanwick (guest author) has received the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, World Fantasy and Hugo Awards. He has written nine novels, 150 short stories, and countless flash fictions. His latest novel, Chasing the Phoenix, is available from Tor Books. FloggingBabel.blogspot.com.
Cassandra Rose Clarke grew up in south Texas and currently lives in a suburb of Houston, where she writes and teaches composition at a pair of local colleges. She holds an M.A. in creative writing from The University of Texas at Austin, and in 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle. Her work has been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. Her latest novel is Our Lady of the Ice, out now from Saga Press. CassandraRoseClark.com. @mitochondrial.
Table of Contents
Episode 1: A Long, Cold Winter by Max Gladstone and Lindsay Smith
Episode 2: A Voice on the Radio by Cassandra Rose Clarke
Episode 3: Double Blind by Max Gladstone
Episode 4: Stasis by Lindsay Smith
Episode 5: The Golem or What Happens in Cairo . . . by Ian Tre
gillis
Episode 6: A Week Without Magic by Michael Swanwick
Episode 7: Radio Free Trismegistus by Ian Tregillis
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Writer Team
The Witch Who Came in From the Cold - Season One Volume One Page 27