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

No, no, no no no.

  Delaying only long enough to don a proper robe, she padded barefoot to the kitchen, hoping like mad that she’d misheard. She’d misheard, she’d misunderstood, there was an innocent explanation. There wasn’t. Sitting at her kitchen table, fiddling with the knobs on her grandfather’s radio, was Aleksander Vadimovich Komyetski, chief of KGB Prague Station. Her pots and pans were piled on the floor beside the cabinet.

  “I’m disappointed and frightened, Tatiana Mikhailovna. A strange man enters your flat and you do nothing to confront him? How fortunate for you that it was only me, your true friend with nothing but fatherly affection and your best interests at heart.”

  A long, fraught moment passed before the gears in Tanya’s rattled mind engaged sufficiently for conversation.

  “Sir? What are you doing here?”

  “I was worried about you, Tanya. No sign of you in the office all day, and even dear Nadia had no idea of your whereabouts. We feared something terrible had happened.”

  She’d thought her errand to the barge would take at most an hour around sunrise; it was probably now after midnight. Evading the guards on the barge and shaking the pursuit had taken many hours and one desperate plunge in the river. She hadn’t reported to KGB Prague Station all day.

  “And—my, my—I see my fears have been realized,” he continued. The scent of his breath told her that along with Grandfather’s construct he’d also found the last of her alcohol. So much for that drink she’d been hoping for. “Why are you all wet, dear Tanya, with mud in your hair?”

  “I jumped into the river,” she said. At least that much was true. The most foolish, most immature part of her hoped they’d just concentrate on the river and he wouldn’t mention the construct in his hands.

  In response to the furrowing of his brow, she added, “It was a desperate situation. I was being followed. They may have been with a Western service.” All technically true; she knew nothing about the Ice staff stationed on the barge.

  Sasha shook his head. “My, my, my. It hurts my aging heart to think you nearly came to trouble. Of course, if you had followed procedures and hadn’t been acting alone, perhaps you wouldn’t have found yourself in such dire straits. At my station, we take care of each other. Yes?”

  “Yes, sir. Always.”

  “We’re a family.” He nodded solemnly. But then he tapped the radio with a fingernail and chuckled. “But speaking of family!” A punch of dread threatened to double her over. “This strange device. When I found it, at first I thought, ‘Oh, no! Our dear Tanya has an unreported radio.’ I cannot tell you how it pained me to think you might be listening to Western numbers stations.”

  This was bad. This was Siberian-gulag bad. She started to shake again, but not from cold. “Sir, I can explain—”

  He carried on as if she hadn’t spoken. “But, oh, my relief. It barely receives anything, and nothing on a shortwave band. Just a lone disembodied voice claiming to be somebody’s grandfather.”

  Oh, Grandfather, what secrets did Sasha trick you into revealing?

  Her half-frozen, three-quarters terrified, fully unprepared mind scrambled for purchase on the slippery conversation. “It must be malfunctioning . . .”

  No, no, you fool! Don’t admit your guilt! With one telephone call, Sasha could have her family’s stipends slashed. Or have them rounded up as dissidents.

  He nodded. “Of course it is. Why, it’s not even plugged in! Besides, I understand your only surviving grandfather is very ill. He’s in a coma in Volgograd, yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He reached forward and patted her hand. “You needn’t worry. Soviet doctors are the best in the world, you know. And a veteran of the Great Patriotic War? Remarkable men like that receive the very best care. I’m sure there’s little danger of anything happening to him.”

  The veiled threat was a fist clenching her innards. She pressed a hand to her stomach, gasping for air. “Sir—”

  “You’re also quite remarkable, Tatiana Mikhailovna. More lives than a cat! First, you survive a plunge into an icy river in January. Then, when you’re found to be in possession of an illegal radio, who should be the one to find it but me? Again, such luck! Because I know your loyalty and dedication are absolute. A lesser apparatchik would seek to misconstrue this for his own benefit.”

  She blinked. What was happening? Her mind was too cold and slow to keep up.

  He stood. “Which is why, in order to protect you, I will take this strange device. It is the best option, yes?”

  Bozhe moi. Dedushka.

  She gaped at him like a goldfish. “I . . . I mean, I think . . .”

  Again, he waved her quiet. “Now, now, don’t worry about thanking me right now. Perhaps an opportunity will show itself in the future.”

  “Opportunity?”

  “A favor. I’m doing you this favor now, and maybe there will come a time when I need a favor from you. As I said, we take care of each other.”

  There was another word for it, of course. Blackmail.

  He shrugged. “You’re a highly resourceful woman, Tatiana Mikhailovna. Should it ever come to that, I’m sure you’ll be equal to the task.”

  He donned his coat, and with it a mantle of avuncular concern. “Take tomorrow off. Stay in bed, lest you catch a cold. Sasha’s orders! I’ll ask Comrade Ostrokhina to check on you. She’ll bring pierogi.”

  He said this last with a smile and a wink, as if he hadn’t just threatened to have her grandfather murdered and hadn’t just made it nauseatingly clear that, for all intents and purposes, he owned her now.

  Sasha paused in the doorway. “You should think about moving. The superintendent of this building is not an honest man. Rumor has it that for a shockingly small bribe he’ll let a strange old man enter the apartment of a perfectly respectable young lady such as yourself. I fear for you, living in the midst of such despicable moral turpitude. Good night to you.”

  And with that, he was gone, her grandfather’s construct tucked under his arm.

  • • •

  Gabe stumbled between the graves, arms over Jordan and Alestair. Sandwiched between her sandalwood and his cologne, he felt like a shipwreck in the men’s department of Harrod’s. Alestair led them through the darkness with the surety of a bat, steering them toward the east entrance.

  New noises had joined the sound of pursuit. First, a tremendous crashing and shattering, as though something were punching free of an old wooden casket. Then a slow but steady crunching, as of lumbering footsteps on gravel.

  A few dozen yards ahead, a trio of flashlit fog-halos loomed amid the graves. Alestair paused for a moment, as if consulting an internal map. Abruptly he said, “This way,” and pulled them north into an older section of the cemetery. They passed rows of grave markers. “Here,” he said, just as abruptly. And pulled them into a crouch.

  They’d stopped behind a gravestone so blackened and weathered by age as to be unreadable. Gabe would have thought the occupant long-forgotten, yet somebody had recently left a posy. It was more grass than flowers, but still a nice gesture.

  Jordan frowned when she saw it. “Hey, wait a second—”

  Alestair wrung the posy like a dishtowel until it tore apart and the bundle coughed out a little cloud of seeds and flower petals. It elicited a strange but not unpleasant tingle in what Gabe had begun to think of as his other-sense, a legacy of the hitchhiker. It felt like soft magic.

  The MI6 sorcerer whispered, “That should buy us a few undetected moments.”

  Moments later, a policeman stalked past their hiding spot. Gabe could see the man’s silhouette in the fog and hear the rustle of his clothing. But the cop didn’t even slow when his flashlight beam swept over them. His footsteps receded into the graveyard.

  Gabe frowned. “What the hell just happened?”

  For the first time all night, the hint of a smile played across Jordan’s face. She whispered, “Alestair salted the entire graveyard with charms.”

  Alest
air shook his head. “Merely a few strategic locations. But one does strive to be prepared.”

  “I wondered why you bought up so much of my inventory.”

  Prepared. What had Alestair said? Something about being predictable . . . “Wait a second. You knew I was going to try this?”

  Alestair shot his cuffs. “I suspected that sooner or later you’d go looking for the golem.” From somewhere in the fog came a shout, followed by a heavy crash, as of a shattered gravestone. “I didn’t suspect you’d meet with such spectacular success.”

  “But how? I never told a soul before tonight.”

  “Prague is rife with tales of the golem. But to those of us embroiled in this occult conflict, the descriptions have all the hallmarks of an extremely powerful construct. Many on both sides have sought it. It’s difficult to resist the allure of such a seductive legend.”

  “But in all this time, nobody has ever found it,” said Jordan. “Because it’s only a legend.”

  “So thought we all.” Alestair shrugged. “Any traces of the animating spellwork must have dissipated centuries ago. Rendering it utterly undetectable. That is, until the remarkable Mr. Pritchard came along.”

  Gabe massaged his aching wrist. His skin exhibited a distinctly hand-shaped wheal. Had the golem squeezed any harder, it might have ground his bones into powder.

  “Speaking of which. I know our mutual friend here has been prone to indelicate actions of late,” Alestair continued, “but I am somewhat taken aback to find you involved in this ill-advised venture, Miss Rhemes.”

  “I owe him.” She shivered, hugged herself. “What happened to Gabe . . . it was my fault.”

  “You refer to Mr. Pritchard’s infamous misadventure in Cairo, yes? A ripping yarn, no doubt. Although when a fellow makes discreet inquiries—all through the proper channels, mind you—one finds details devilishly thin on the ground. I rather suspect that you, Miss Rhemes, are the only person who knows the full story.”

  She bit her lip and flicked a nervous glance at Gabe.

  Though his head spun like a tornado, he understood the gesture. “Oh, my God. You’ve always said you found me in that stinking alley. Have you any idea how frightening it is to wake up with a gaping hole in your memory and nothing but disjointed fever-dream nightmares where an entire day should be? For years I’ve worried that I’m losing my mind. But you’ve known all along what happened and what’s wrong with me, haven’t you?”

  Jordan shook her head. “No, no. Gabe, I swear, I don’t know what happened to you. I can’t offer you any certainty. Just a crackpot theory. Or, at least, I thought it was crackpottery until tonight.”

  “If you don’t spill the beans right now,” Gabe whispered, “I will stand and belt out ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at the top of my lungs until every policeman in the city finds us.”

  Jordan looked away. “I only know what I think I witnessed that afternoon.”

  “All I know is that I woke up in an alleyway with a daylong gap in my memory. So let’s hear it.”

  To Alestair, Jordan said, “It was Flame. We barged in on a sorcerous work-in-progress. Big one. A geographically distributed operation. Cairo, Rome, Peking.”

  “An operation intended to achieve what, exactly?” The Brit was all business now. For a moment, the languid Etonian old-boy charm evaporated, revealing the hardened MI6 lamplighter at the core.

  “I think they were trying to hollow somebody out. To create their own Host.”

  For a moment, nobody said anything. The only sounds were the occasional shouts of the Veřejná bezpečnost officers searching for them.

  “Believe me, I know how it sounds,” she said. “As time went on, I convinced myself that I’d misunderstood what I’d witnessed. I chalked it up to adrenaline and fear. But the way Gabe’s proximity energized the golem construct . . . I’m not so skeptical any longer.”

  “You believe the elemental intended for the Flame volunteer ended up in our Gabriel.”

  “He’s not a Host, though. So it can’t join with him.” Again Jordan shook her head. “Instead, I believe it’s lodged halfway, like a couch stuck in a doorway.”

  “Now that,” said Alestair, “is an elegant and intriguing hypothesis.”

  “Well, great. That solves it then. I just need to find some college students,” Gabe hissed. He paused to spit the taste of copper from his mouth. “I’ll pay them with beer.”

  Jordan gave him the side-eye. To Alestair, she said, “Are we certain we can’t leave him?”

  “Would that we could, my dear.”

  A new round of shouts echoed through the fog. At first just a couple, as policemen called to one another. Then more voices joined in, a chorus of alarm. They were converging on something.

  Alestair stood. “Perhaps we should depart.”

  Jordan helped Gabe to his feet. “Thank you, Alestair. I wasn’t prepared for this. I’m glad you were.”

  The tumult turned from shouts to screams. A heavy impact shook the cemetery, and then something large and limp came flying out of the darkness. It landed nearby with a meaty thud. As one, they stared at the dead policeman.

  “I confess, I wasn’t quite prepared for that.”

  Episode 6: A Week Without Magic

  by Michael Swanwick

  Prague, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic

  February 14, 1970

  1.

  Bar Vodnář was knee-deep in shadows and bad memories when Tanya walked in the door. But already there was a thin blue haze of cigarette smoke in the air, mingling with residual traces of beer, frankincense, angelica, and sage. The more exotic scents lingered from Jordan’s weekly purification ceremony, a ritual performed only when the bar was closed.

  There were only four patrons so far: three Czech apparatchiks and Arnold Lytton, a former CIA officer who—on being put out to pasture—found himself compelled to stay, yearning to be let inside again, hoping against hope that he would be called back to duty. His was a common type in Tanya’s world, the human residue of long-forgotten struggles, addicted to a way of life that no longer had any use for him. She despised him for it. Not bothering to return his nod, she went to the bar and waited impatiently.

  Jordan returned at last from setting votive candles on the tables, and slipped behind the bar. “Look at you—all dressed up and ready to party. Did the KGB finally issue you a sense of fun?” Tanya had noticed that Jordan always touched one particular brass bracelet with two fingers when she said things like that, and somehow nobody ever overheard them. So she had given up on trying to shush the woman, even though her words were criminally indiscreet.

  Scowling, Tanya placed a box that had originally held Krasny Oktyabr chocolates on the bar before her.

  “Are you trying to seduce me? Because, frankly, you’re not that—” Jordan’s hand lightly touched the box, then flew up like a startled bird. All trace of humor fled from her face. “Why are you bringing these here?”

  “I need to hide them someplace safe for a week.” Or possibly forever, Tanya thought, though she refrained from saying that aloud. When Jordan remained silent, she added, “An inspection team is coming in from Moscow tomorrow. If these were found . . .”

  “It’s no skin off my nose.”

  But it was, of course, and Tanya knew that Jordan understood that very well. The bartender’s neutrality was only tenuously maintained, through a combination of her usefulness to both Fire and Ice and the amount of effort it would take to bring her down. If the existence of a secret war of magic being fought right under the noses of the intelligence community were to come out, Jordan would suffer as much as anyone. “You’re a perceptive woman,” Tanya said. “You must know how little I trust you . . . Just how serious does it have to be for me to ask this of you?”

  For a long, still moment, Jordan said nothing. Tanya held her breath. In truth, she was not much afraid of Moscow Center’s inspectors. But Sasha terrified her. Her superior might very well invade her apartment again, and she could ill-af
ford the consequences should her gear be discovered. Either he would know what it was and what it was for, or he would want her to explain everything to him. She did not relish the confrontation either way.

  Scowling, the bartender lifted the box. She kicked a step stool into position so she could reach the shelves above the cash register, and placed the box holding Tanya’s tools and weapons as high as possible, alongside a clutch of dusty but expensive-looking bottles.

  Tanya felt her heart stutter at the sight of them so exposed. “Will they be safe there?”

  “Have you never read Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’? Hide things in plain sight. If you’re staying, you’ll need to buy a drink.”

  “I’m not staying. Thank you, Jordan. I owe you one.”

  Jordan made a sour face and shrugged. “Why not? Everybody else does.”

  At that moment, a tall man in a Panama hat breezed through the door. He doffed his greatcoat, revealing a linen suit as white as his hair and far more appropriate to the tropics than to a Prague winter. Obviously, he was new in town. A scar slashed across one cheek rendered his startling good looks all the more intriguing. “Martini,” he said in an American accent. “Dry, straight up, with an olive. Don’t stint on the gin.”

  Choosing a booth by the wall, he removed his hat, tapped out a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros, and lit it with a Zippo lighter.

  Tanya turned to leave. He couldn’t possibly be a spy—too damned gaudy. Then the newcomer cried, “Arnie!” and waved to the only retired CIA officer in the room. Lytton smiled and raised his glass in salute.

  Damn.

  She had to find out who this guy was.

  But not now. Tanya couldn’t linger. She had to show her face at the National Gallery for the opening of a show of old masters on loan from the Hermitage. It was simultaneously the dullest and most glamorous part of her job to attend such gatherings. Nothing interesting ever happened at them.

  • • •

  Deep in the National Gallery, deeper into the administrative recesses than any visitor had a right to be, Gabe was puking his guts out. Minutes earlier, he had been holding but, ironically enough, quite deliberately not drinking a flute of Georgian “champagne,” when the monster inside his head had reached down to roil his stomach. Like a wounded animal, he had fled the reception and found refuge in an unlit corridor. Stumbling as he went, he’d grabbed at door handles until he’d found one that opened, and found sanctuary here.