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

  “I understand, sir.” Gabe’s heart beat fast, but his voice, at least, he kept level. “I’ll get it under control. I’ll do whatever it takes to land the asset.”

  “Damn right you will. One more screwup, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting you touch ANCHISES next month.”

  “Leave it to me, Chief.”

  Frank pulled the report from the clipboard’s jaws, opened a desk drawer, and dropped the papers in a file. “Show me what you can do, Pritchard. Get this done.” Without looking, he slammed the drawer shut.

  • • •

  Tanya rushed through the Soviet Embassy’s hallways, sleep-crusted eyes squinted against the harsh morning sunlight. The worst sort of January day—inexcusably cold and unforgivably bright. Last night’s encounter with the Host and the construct still rattled around her thoughts. It had been a perfect pitch. She’d laid out precisely why the Flame posed a danger, and why the girl needed the Ice to keep her safe. But it had been too much to swallow, Tanya feared. The girl needed time to regain her footing.

  And then there’d been all the paperwork for the Ice afterward, prepping the report, picking through the construct’s pieces for clues . . . And, of course, strategizing how they’d explain to their superiors that they hadn’t persuaded the Host (Andula, her name is Andula) to turn herself over to Ice protection.

  But the girl would come in from the cold, Tanya told herself. They always did, once they saw just how determined the Flame was. Just how cruel their methods.

  None of it mattered, though, the moment she walked through these corridors. Here, she was the KaGeBeznik Andula had accused her of being; when she was here, there was no room in her mind for anything else to matter. Her grandfather had pulled countless puppet strings to land her this prestigious assignment in Prague, the sort of post every ambitious officer’s school graduate would happily claw her eyes out for, and she couldn’t show one ounce of weakness.

  We need you in Prague, he’d said. It’s vital to our success.

  She’d just laughed. For the Ice? Or for the Party?

  He hadn’t answered her for a long time; the tightness around his eyes had begun to frighten her. He’d always been that rarest of breeds—the unserious Soviet. The carefree true believer. Both, if you can, he’d said, finally. But in this, you must put the Ice first.

  She hadn’t believed him then. Still didn’t want to now.

  Tanya shoved open the door to the concrete rezidentura vault, buried like a tainted piece of evidence in the embassy’s basement.

  Heads snapped up at her entrance, eighteen minutes late—including, she noticed with a scowl, Nadia’s. Hadn’t Nadia said something about heading to the bar, even after they’d finished up well past one? Tanya ducked her head and made her way down the swaying, clanking metal staircase, feeling the heat of every single one of her colleagues’ stares.

  No encrypted cable messages from Moscow awaited her—no updates on her grandfather, no word from KGB headquarters, or from anyone else. She spun the dial to unlock her file safe and started to dig through the folders inside, but already knew what they’d all contain. A couple of surveillance shots of suspected CIA and MI6 officers, none particularly damning. Some of the people she was developing for recruitment—mostly university students who might someday, eventually, inform on their capitalist-leaning peers; a few handsy businessmen; and the dossiers on a couple of maids who might, if their third cousins were to be believed, might clean the American ambassador’s home . . .

  They were Nadia’s potential agents, really; as her supervising officer, Tanya had encouraged her to pursue contacts at the university for some easy recruitments to get her initial numbers up. Their encounter with the Host the night before played through Tanya’s mind again. A university student herself. Andula Zlata. Tanya scribbled the name into a new information request form. She’d check KGB records first—then, if she couldn’t find anything there, she’d run it by the Czech secret police service, the StB. Andula had agreed to meet with them in two days’ time, after she’d had enough time to mull over Tanya’s pitch, but if the Flame was already on her trail, it never hurt to be prepared—

  “Morozova.” Rezidentura Chief Aleksander Komyetski loomed in his private office’s doorway. “A word, please.”

  Tanya dropped the form on her desk and shuffled toward his office. Nadia met her eyes as Tanya passed her; Tanya gave her the faintest shake of her head.

  Chief Komyetski—Sasha, as he insisted even the most junior officers call him, in the spirit of socialist equality—was already seated at his desk when Tanya entered. A brutally sheared bonsai tree occupied one third of his desk, while a variety of chessboards covered shelf space, a few side tables, and two chairs. Sasha acknowledged her with a nod, but didn’t motion to the sole unoccupied seat as he rolled his own chair toward one of the chessboards farther afield. He clenched a scrap of cable traffic in his fist; Tanya’s heart leapt at the sight of it. Word from Moscow? An update on her grandfather’s condition, perhaps.

  Sasha squinted at the paper, rubbing his free hand against his jowls. After a moment’s consideration, he changed to squinting at the chessboard instead. “Ah!” His whole face glowed as he slid his knight into position, and struck out the unseen opponent’s bishop with a click.

  Tanya’s shoulders drooped. Of course. One of his countless games of correspondence chess with his chums back at Lubyanka, and the rezidenturas across the globe. She shifted her weight and waited.

  “Officer Morozova.” Sasha turned his wire-thin smile on her. “I thought it was time that we discussed . . . your goals in Prague Station. Specifically, that you are not meeting them.”

  Tanya felt her throat harden like ice, holding back all the objections she wanted to make. “I—I recruited over a dozen agents in my two years in Madrid,” she finally managed. “One of them was a British Royal Air Force attaché. He gave us—gave us vital information on NATO discussions.”

  “So you did.” Sasha wheeled past her, making his way toward another board.

  “It’s not even been two years since the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague to crush the rebellion,” Tanya said, panic raising her tone. “The people are deeply distrustful of us—we have few friends amongst the Czechs.”

  “All issues my other officers face,” Sasha said with a wave of his hand.

  Tanya clenched a fist at her side. “I graduated top of my class at the academy. Top marks at Moscow State’s graduate program.”

  “Yes, yes. And we all know your family’s credentials, as well.” Sasha settled another chess piece into place. “But what are you doing for me here in Prague?”

  Tanya’s teeth clicked together. “It . . .” She swallowed hard, trying to vanquish the desert in her mouth. “It takes some time, sir, to familiarize myself with the new environment. We face far more hostility from the Western services here than we did in Madrid. But I’m building—building relationships. I have several developmentals in progress.” She glanced down. “I understand that the CIA station chief is aggressively thwarting our pitches, and I don’t want to get overeager without taking the necessary precautions . . . but you are correct, Comrade. I will do better.”

  The click of another piece falling. “Everyone knows what a Morozov is capable of accomplishing. I know you will live up to your name.” The smile that shoved at Sasha’s chubby cheeks sent a chill down Tanya’s spine. He wheeled back behind his desk and gestured to a board on the far corner. All the pieces were lined up in starting position. “Come, Morozova. Sit. Would you like to play?”

  Tanya hesitated, fingers curling around the top of the empty chair. She was fairly sure she had one too many games running at the same time as it was.

  Two sharp knocks rang on Sasha’s office door, then the door swung open. “Izvinitye, Comrade Komyetski, I was looking for—ah. For Comrade Morozova.” Nadia cracked a wide grin. “I have the information you requested on the university student you’re developing. You know. The one you think is ready to be p
ersuaded . . . ?”

  Tanya took her hand off the back of the chair she’d been about to sit in. The university students were Nadia’s to recruit. But the tension in her partner’s smile was growing by the second. “Oh! Oh, yes, of course. Thank you, Comrade.” She hurried toward the door. “Come, I’ll show you how to study a developmental’s dossier, if you like. A good opportunity to prepare you to manage your own cases.”

  “That’d be most helpful. As long as Chief Komyetski is finished,” Nadia added, with a shy glance toward Sasha.

  His lips rolled into a smirk. “Go on, my dear, we were only having a little chat.”

  As soon as they were out of Sasha’s hearing range, Tanya rounded on Nadia. “Please, this is your developmental—I can’t just take it from you.”

  “You need to boost your recruitment numbers to get Sasha off your back. Besides, you’re the boss—you have priority. Around here, anyway.” Nadia cracked her gum with a grin. “After we’re done with the dossiers, I think we should both spend some more time at the university library. Check up on our new friend.”

  Tanya scooped up the information request she’d filled out earlier. Andula Zlata. “My thoughts precisely.” She reached into her pocket and closed her hand around the bit of crystal she’d scavenged from the construct. “And then I’d like to do some research of our own.”

  • • •

  Jordan picked up her phone on the seventh ring, and didn’t miss a beat when Gabe said, “Introduce me.”

  Nor did she look up from the bar when he entered the Vodnář that night, snow melting on his overcoat. Smoke burned his eyes. He peeled off his gloves and folded them in his coat pocket as he descended into the dark.

  In the corner, behind a pillar—the table to which he’d guided Drahomir last night. Gabe draped his coat over his arm.

  A man sat in the booth, reading: blond and long and pretty, a fencer or a gymnast gone soft with age. He wore a tweed jacket and a silk tie, either of which Gabe would have bet cost more than his own present wardrobe in its entirety. When the Brit saw Gabe he closed the book—Tiger! Tiger!, Gabe had never heard of it, maybe poetry or something—and smiled with the furthest corners of his lips, not baring teeth. A spark in the man’s blue eyes suggested merriment or larceny. “Good evening, dear chap. Please.” He extended one hand palm up across the table.

  Gabe sat. A drink appeared at his elbow. “Jordan says you’re the man to see.”

  “Very right.” The Brit didn’t look much older than Gabe himself—a handful of years at most—but his voice suggested otherwise. A put-on, Gabe thought, but maybe not, considering. This was a world inside the one he imagined he knew, with secrets of its own. “I am certainly a man, and I’ve had scads of people eager to see me, from time to time.”

  “I’m Gabe Pritchard.”

  “Alestair Winthrop.” The man’s handshake felt firm, not strong, like he was made from math rather than from muscle. “Cultural attaché of her Majesty’s government. And I understand you’re an analyst with the American Department of . . . Agriculture, was it?”

  “Commerce,” Gabe said.

  “Oh, Commerce, indeed.” Winthrop folded his hands on the table. “We do love our masks. Miss Rhemes did me the favor of arranging this meeting, but she left the details of your story imprecise, their relation up to your own discretion. I understand that your main interest tonight thrusts neither toward, shall we say, commerce, nor culture, mine or anyone else’s. Beyond that I’m afraid you must be forthright, if I’m to aid you in any way save offering the considerable pleasure of my after-dinner conversation.”

  Gabe felt the cold glass in his hands, and pondered walking out. He remembered Frank. He remembered Cairo.

  He stared into the light in Winthrop’s eyes.

  “Something went wrong in my head in Egypt,” he said. “And Jordan thinks the Ice can help.”

  “Well, now.” Winthrop unfolded his hands, laid them palm down on the table, and leaned in. “Perhaps we can, at that.”

  Episode 2: A Voice on the Radio

  by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  Prague, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic

  January 21, 1970

  1.

  Tanya peered out the window at the street below. The lamp at the corner burned yellow, but otherwise the street was dark. Empty, too. Good.

  She checked that the window’s latches were still locked and then drew the thick curtain across the glass. At the same time, she snapped the braid of dried herbs she carried in her left hand, releasing a scent like old tea. The magic wafted on the air around her: a simple spell, designed to make passersby on the sidewalk below skip past her apartment building.

  The windows in her kitchen and her bedroom had already been secured. She cut across the apartment to her door, and for a moment she laid her ear against the cool, slick wood and listened to the sounds of the hallway outside. Music drifted from Mrs. Budny’s apartment across the way, but that was expected: Every evening Mrs. Budny’s radio was a constant hum in the background. Tanya ran her fingers over the lock, made sure it was clicked into place. Then she crumbled the herbs and sprinkled the dust on the floor.

  Everything was where it needed to be. Everything was secure.

  Tanya slipped into her kitchen and knelt to open the small cupboard next to the refrigerator. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cooked with most of the tarnished pots crammed inside. She removed them one at a time, careful that they didn’t clank as she lined them up on the linoleum.

  When she had set the last of the pots on the floor, she reached deep into the cupboard and pressed the latch that collapsed the false wall at the rear; there was a sharp pause, like the apartment was holding its breath, and then the back of the cupboard slid into Tanya’s hands. She set it aside and leaned into the hidden compartment. Her hands found the radio, cold metal and rough dials. She pulled it out and sat on her heels. The radio was a small thing, scuffed from use, the numbers fading away into ghosts. Tanya stood up and set it on her kitchen table, then slid into a chair and switched the radio on. She didn’t bother plugging it into the wall; this radio didn’t need electricity to run.

  The radio flared with static. Tanya turned the dial, ears straining. She wasn’t listening for music or messages from the Party. This was not that sort of radio.

  The static roared. Tanya edged the dial forward. Maybe he wasn’t going to speak with her today. Sometimes his voice didn’t come through. Sometimes conditions weren’t right.

  But then she heard it, a familiar whisper in the radio’s white noise. Tanya froze, finger hovering near the dial.

  “—Ya, my little bird—”

  She let out a long breath. Nudged the dial. Instantly, the static vanished, and the voice rang out through her apartment like a bell.

  “Dyedushka,” she murmured. “Are you there?”

  “I am here. I am always here,” the voice said. Tanya slumped back in her chair and closed her eyes. That way it was easier to pretend her grandfather was in the room with her, and not lying comatose in a hospital bed in Moscow. That this voice was really him, and not a magical recording, trapped inside a plastic-and-metal box and enchanted to speak and respond as if it really were her flesh-and-blood grandfather. “What matters do we need to discuss tonight?”

  Always straight to business. That was one way the disembodied voice captured her grandfather. That was the Ice, really.

  “There’s a Host in Prague,” Tanya said.

  “Have you secured this person?”

  Tanya opened her eyes and looked down at the radio. The dial was set to 1320. The channel was different every time, as if her grandfather’s enchantment was floating aimless through the radio waves.

  “No,” she said. “I gave her a pitch and two days to make her decision. I was certain she’d come with me. But she didn’t.”

  A long pause. Tanya could hear the static through the speakers.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s frightened,” Tany
a said, defensive. “The Flame sent a construct after her. It was her first real experience with magic.” Three nights ago she and Andula had met in the shadows of Letná Park. They had strolled through the frozen trees, and Andula had babbled her reasons for refusing: “I have obligations, to my family—my mother hasn’t been the same since my sister vanished two years ago.” And: “This is not my world.” And: “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “The Flame,” her grandfather’s voice scoffed. “Yes, that sounds like them. Always so showy. The old ways are better, yes? We don’t frighten the Hosts.”

  “Of course not,” said Tanya. “But she’s still refusing to exfiltrate with me. We’re watching her, we have her under protection—” She sighed and glanced at the curtains covering her windows, keeping her shielded from the outside world. As a little girl she’d been close to her grandfather, who had been warm and loving despite the formalities of Ice propriety. Sometimes she hated that all she had left of him was this voice in a box, this clever simulacrum. She knew, perhaps, she was being greedy, that without magic she would have nothing, but she thought nothing might be easier.

  “Well, she isn’t from one of the families. Not if the Flame was able to get so close to her so quickly.”

  “I agree,” Tanya said. “But that doesn’t mean we should just let the Flame recruit her.”