The Witch Who Came in From the Cold - Season One Volume One Page 9

  Andula’s distant relative had been her hasty cover. Fortunately, students, draped in the invincibility of youth, tended to be trusting. Certainly Marcel had not questioned her story—he was too busy trying to talk her into bed. “Not long,” she said. “I am sorry. I must speak to my cousin.”

  “We have such a night planned!” Marcel did not seem to have heard. “The joys our city offers—they will stun you.”

  “Perhaps.” She turned her back on him and pulled Andula ahead, into the warm huddle of students shambling toward the bus stop. Andula felt stiff, scared, under her hand. Tanya had hoped a drink would bolster the girl’s courage, but her courage needed more bolstering than her bloodstream could support. “When the bus arrives,” Tanya said, “we must move quickly. Do what I say, when I say it. We have taken precautions to deter pursuit, but the elemental inside you will draw certain eyes.”

  Andula tensed. “They’re watching us now.”

  “Yes. Relax. Walk.”

  “They’ll find us,” she said, her voice uncertain. “I could feel the one who followed me. How can we lose them?”

  They clustered at the bus stop, a clutch of sheep gathered against the winter. “Act naturally,” Tanya admonished.

  “None of this is natural.”

  Fair. Headlights flashed up the street. The bus approached. So did the man in the thick jacket. Another fellow in an overcoat, this one wearing earmuffs and a fur hat, emerged from an alley across the way. Sloppy, if they were professionals—but not all the Flame’s acolytes had intelligence training. The one across the street might have a weapon; the newspaper man’s hands were in plain sight.

  “Oh, God,” Andula whispered. “He’s there.”

  “The man across the street?”

  “No. Third car down, the Moskvich.” She pressed closer to Tanya. Her breath steamed. “I can feel him.”

  Newspaper ambled closer, head down, doing his best uninterested, uninteresting saunter. No one innocent would spend so much effort seeming so. Earmuffs glanced left and right as if preparing to cross the street—his gaze drifted smoothly past Tanya and Andula, but hitched on the newspaper man. An exchange of glances.

  The Moskvich had tinted windows. Perhaps there was a suggestion of movement inside. Tanya felt nothing when she looked at it, but then, she was not a Host. She did not breathe the secret powers of the world. She merely used them, when such tools suited her.

  She giggled as if Andula had said something funny, and leaned close to her, covering her mouth with her hand. “Do not look. The man with the newspaper. The man across the street. They are hunting us.”

  Andula tensed, and almost looked; Tanya felt a stab of sympathy as the girl caught her breath. Poor girl. So few harbors remain in our storm-tossed world for sailors like you. “We should run.”

  “Wait for the bus,” Tanya said. “When it comes, we board. Now, please, laugh, as if I have told you an embarrassing fact about Marcel.”

  The girl’s laugh, when it came, was strained and hollow.

  • • •

  Josh put down his monocular. “Okay, fine, that’s Morozova. What now? Do we approach? Try to scare her off?”

  “Looks like someone beat us to the punch,” Gabe said. “Newspaper. Earmuffs.”

  Josh shook his head. “What is this, amateur night? Spy camp? If that’s the KGB’s second-string team, they’re definitely pulling your leg with this job.”

  “That’s not KGB backup,” Gabe said. “Look at the girl—she just made them, and she’s terrified. No Russian team would be that obvious. That’s another squad—and they’re moving in.”

  • • •

  When the bus arrived, Tanya pulled Andula to the front of the gaggle of students so they could board the bus first, ignoring the others’ groans and Andula’s own yelp of protest. Descending passengers shot them dirty looks; a short woman in a black overcoat shoved Andula against the wall of the bus, and the girl gasped in pain. A thin line of blood ran down her pale cheek.

  Nadia worked fast. In less time than Tanya would have needed to draw the blood, Nadia had cleaned it from her thin knife onto a piece of wadded cotton, placed the cotton into a silver locket, and shucked her black overcoat from her shoulders.

  “You cut me!”

  “Hush,” Tanya said. “Give her your jacket.” She did not greet or acknowledge Nadia. The last passengers left the bus, and students milled on. Andula, trembling, wordless, handed her jacket to Nadia, who passed Andula the overcoat. While Andula struggled with the bulky black garment the knife flashed again, and Nadia withdrew her hand, clutching a few strands of the girl’s bright hair.

  “What—”

  Before Andula could finish her question Nadia darted out into the night, no time wasted in valediction or farewell. Tanya guided Andula to a seat, pressed her down, and stood above her like a mother bird over her child. Nadia could take care of herself. “She will buy us time.”

  • • •

  “Holy—the girl’s on the run!”

  Gabe shook his head. “No she’s not. It’s a lookalike. Zlata’s on the bus, with Morozova.”

  “No way. She slipped out the doors, she’s running past the dorm now.”

  “Are you crazy? That’s not the target. The height and hair and build are all wrong.”

  Josh banged on the dashboard. “I followed her from the apartment over here. That’s Zlata, dammit!”

  The bus closed its doors and pulled away from the curb.

  “We’re going after the bus,” Gabe said.

  Josh threw up his hands. “You’re the one who wanted to follow her. Newspaper and Earmuffs are running after her now. I’m telling you, that’s our mark! You’re the one who talked me into this damn scheme. If we’re doing this, we might as well do it right.”

  “Zlata’s on the bus.” Gabe turned the key and shifted into drive. “Trust me.”

  “Not this time.” And before Gabe could stop him, Josh slipped out the Moskvich’s door into the dark.

  Gabe cursed. On the one hand he had Josh, on his own, chasing a dead end, possibly into a trap. Why was he so sure? Everything about that decoy was wrong. On the other hand, the student, target, lure—whatever Zlata was, she was disappearing into the KGB’s mouth.

  No time for clarity. Josh could handle himself. Gabe pulled the door shut, pressed the gas, and followed the bus into the cold and dark.

  2.

  Josh, running, cursed Gabe, himself, Frank, Prague, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles II, and the Soviet Union. Most of those were merely implicated in the present mess; the real fault lay with Gabe, obsessed with a meaningless Czech student and stubbornly blind to the fact she’d been switched for a body double. Gabe, whose madness must be catching. Why else was Josh now pounding down the sidewalk, chasing this joke of a mission?

  But he couldn’t blame anyone but himself for the grinding pressure on his lungs, for the fact that after a few minutes’ run his legs felt like lead and his blood like lava. Should have kept up the PT after basic. Should have found hobbies other than reading, chess, and overwork. Should jog in the mornings, maybe. He’d meant to, before he learned what winter mornings in Prague felt like. If he got through this he’d buy sneakers. Long underwear. A better coat.

  The girl cornered hard and sprinted down an alley. Newspaper and Earmuffs followed; Josh settled into a pace he hoped he could sustain.

  What he’d do when he caught the girl—or when Newspaper and Earmuffs did—was a question he hadn’t yet answered. He had a sidearm. He could shoot—targets. People wouldn’t be so different, he told himself.

  God. He didn’t want to kill anyone. Not tonight.

  Newspaper and Earmuffs were halfway down the alley. Josh ran harder to catch up, hoping they were too focused to hear his footsteps. Streetlamps lit the girl’s black hair—no, she was blonde, must be a trick of the light.

  His legs didn’t like him. The feeling was mutual. Josh ran faster.

  • • •

  “There’s
no need to complain,” Tanya said. “The cut was shallow. Look, the bleeding has already stopped.”

  “But why?” Andula kept the handkerchief pressed to her face.

  “Sympathy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “With a bit of blood, a bit of hair, and the right tools, Nadia can pass for you. The trick will not work in direct light, nor will it last for long, but it can distract pursuit.”

  Andula huddled into the black overcoat. Not good. She was drawing away, into herself, away from the chase. Tanya should have warned her about the blood. Now she needed to re-forge trust, create common cause.

  It was not hard to make herself look worried. She thought about Nadia, fierce, in flight; pictured the men following her, imagined what Acolytes of Flame might do to a captured agent of the Ice. Nadia could fight them, and she was strong, but only in foolish fairy tales did the stronger fighter always win.

  “I’m sorry,” Andula said. “Your friend will be fine.”

  Tanya drew a ragged breath. The truth, as always, was the best lie. “Yes,” she said. “I hope so.”

  Andula removed her glove and laid her bare hand on Tanya’s wrist. Her touch was warm and sharp, with a soft tingle like mint or electricity. Was that the elemental beneath the girl’s skin? Or was it Tanya’s own spark of loneliness, an ache so desperate she could not admit it even to herself?

  A tint-windowed Moskvich passed the bus on the left.

  “Can you stay with me,” Tanya asked, “for what comes next?” She forced that brief thrill of contact back into the locked and chained pits where she kept everything she did not have time to feel.

  Andula’s wide brown eyes were soft. “I’m ready.”

  Of course you are. I have made you ready. “That car,” she pointed. “Is it the one you saw before?”

  Andula’s breath caught; her lips opened but the word yes did not quite make it out.

  Tanya set her jaw. “Thank you. Now, please listen. This next part will be tricky.”

  • • •

  Karel Hašek should not have been chasing a fugitive Host down back alleys after dark—by all rights he should have been home now, poring over tomes and texts or marking papers in comfort, glad to have several thick walls and a roaring fire between himself and the cold. He and Vladimir had hoped to observe, to follow the Host and her Ice handler, but they could not pass up so golden an opportunity. For the Host to have slipped her handler’s custody! “Do not run,” he shouted—or tried, it being difficult to shout at full sprint. “We are here to help!”

  The Host crossed the street, diving out of the way of a passing truck. The truck swerved, but righted itself. Vladimir followed the Host into the alley, and Karel followed Vladimir, feeling triumphant. He knew the university grounds, their cobblestones and corners, better than any student. This particular alley branched west out to the street again, and, a little later, branched east; the Host, running, might assume they’d think she’d taken the quick escape of the western branch, and try the east instead—only to catch herself in a dead end.

  The Host’s jacket flared around the eastern turn. Karel ran faster, ignoring the pounding in his chest. The revolver in his inside jacket pocket pounded against his ribs. He would not need it. The Host would join them. They would free her from the lies of Ice, and feed her the truth of Flame.

  He rounded the corner.

  The girl lay crumpled near the wall.

  Vladimir approached, his knife out. Thug. “Girl,” Karel said. “We will not harm you.”

  She did not move. Collapsed, no doubt, when she found she could not escape. She despaired. He had to make her believe she was safe, for now.

  “I do not know what lies that woman told you,” Karel said, gasping for breath, “but we are your friends.”

  “I think she’s out,” Vladimir said, tilting his big ox head.

  “Pick her up, then!” Karel clutched the stitch in his side, and winced. “We have to get her into hiding before the Ice find us all.”

  Vladimir lurched toward the fallen girl. His knife glinted in the shadows. “Miss?”

  “Put away the knife, you fool!”

  Vladimir reversed the blade so it lay against his forearm, but did not sheathe it. “Miss?”

  Karel limped closer. Vladimir knelt by the girl, prodded her shoulder with one meaty finger—

  “Karel, she’s not here.”

  Karel blinked snow out of his eyes. “What are you talking about? I can see her.”

  “I don’t understand either,” Vladimir said. “There’s a coat, and a locket, but no girl.” Vladimir lifted something glistening and silver from what Karel could now clearly see was a pile of rags. The locket shimmered and glowed like torn foil cast into the air at sunrise. It pulsed. It growled.

  “Vladimir, put that down!”

  But too late, too late—and then the world was light.

  • • •

  Gabe followed Morozova and the mark, hoping they would stay inside the bus. He knew no good way to tail pedestrians from a car: There were too many places cars couldn’t go, and a car could not match a walking pace. He kept a few lengths ahead of the bus; when it stopped he saw the KaGeBeznik lead Andula out, and he parked and almost left the Moskvich, only for the women to circle back onto the bus again at the last moment.

  He threw the Moskvich into drive and followed as casually as he could. Morozova must have seen him; he would have seen her were their situations reversed.

  He turned onto a side street and sped through intersections to beat the bus to its next stop, a few blocks south from the Staré Město. He only almost killed himself once, fishtailing on slick cobblestones. He parked and left the Moskvich, ditching his hat, but keeping his overcoat. No sense freezing on the trail. Hunched shoulders and bent knees would change his height a few inches. He paused in front of a shop upwind of the bus, produced a cigarette, and smoked in the snow.

  If Morozova had made him, or the car, at the bus stop, he might have thrown her off by veering away. If they didn’t dismount here, he’d board the bus himself, a tipsy Czech apparatchik stumbling home from a late night at the office, or a bar, or both.

  Gabe did not think of this game as cat and mouse. It was dangerous to cling to the fantasy that pursuer and pursued were different animals, living out their fate. In the real world, a cat could not become a mouse, or a mouse a cat. In Gabe’s world, that shift could come at any time. Chases turned when you least expected; your careful preparations pitched you straight into a trap.

  He avoided thinking about Josh.

  The bus stopped. He smoked, and watched reflections.

  He found the women more easily than he’d expected. Andula drew the eye in a way Gabe couldn’t explain. Morozova manipulated her charge well, moving them within a clump of bystanders; she’d hidden her own hair beneath a knit cap, and seemed shorter—swapping off heels, perhaps, or walking with a stoop.

  As they neared, he looked past them, raised his hand as if greeting a friend just now exiting the bus, and brushed toward the rear of the crowd. Morozova’s eyes tracked over him, locked briefly. She quickened her step.

  As the women passed him, Gabe realized he felt distinctly aware of their presence and location, especially Andula’s. Not merely conscious, as he would have been of any mark—aware. If he’d thrown a rock over his shoulder, he could have struck Andula in the arm. Like someone had switched on a radar screen in his skull.

  He spun on his heel and tailed them north into the snow and swirl of the Staré Město.

  • • •

  Josh saw a blinding flash around a bend in the alley, and heard a wet thud. He pressed himself against the alley wall and stilled his breath. There was no cover here. Then again, that hadn’t been a gunshot.

  Footsteps on iron echoed through the silence and the snow. He looked up to see a woman descending a fire escape set into the alley wall. Josh recognized her, and didn’t, at once. He’d seen her before, some part of his brain asserted:
short, muscular, dark-haired, this was the woman he’d chased down the alley. That was the hair off which the streetlamp light reflected.

  But she was not Andula Zlata.

  Gabe had been right. But Josh could have sworn, had sworn, he was chasing Zlata, as sure as he would have been swearing he had skin. Surer, in fact, than he ever should have felt about his ID of a target running in the dark. He was no field agent like Gabe. What had made him so positive that he’d left his partner and chased this woman into certain danger?

  The woman leapt from the fire escape and landed in a fighter’s crouch in the snow. The steam of her breath wreathed her face and spread out behind her in the wind. She looked fierce, and cold.

  She rubbed her arms, and walked toward the western alley.

  Josh almost followed her. Then he heard the click of a gun being cocked.

  “Do not move,” a man said in Russian. Earmuffs emerged from the bend in the alley ahead, a revolver leveled at the woman. “I will kill you.”

  She turned. Josh did not need to see her eyes. Even from this distance, the scorn she directed against Earmuffs set the air wavering.

  “What did you do to him?”

  She raised her hands and walked toward Earmuffs, as if he were an unwelcome suitor and the revolver a rose. “Your friend will be well.” Josh recognized the accent on her Russian—Moscow, and the countryside before that. Interesting. “Put down the gun.”

  Earmuffs’ revolver shook. He did not seem entirely certain where the woman stood. “Put your hands behind your head. Kneel.” Josh slipped his own sidearm from his pocket.

  The woman did not move. “Throw the gun away, and we both leave this alley. Your friend will recover. You should go to him. No one should lie out in the cold on a night like this.” She was a body’s distance from Earmuffs now—either his body, or hers.

  “Down!” Earmuffs barked, and raised the gun.

  At which point Josh shouted, “Hey!” and ducked.