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Thecityrolledbylike a film reel someone had spliced together out of silence and suspicion.
From the back seat of our taxi, I watched Budapest unfold. The buildings were beautiful in that worn, haunted way—like someone had built them to withstand ghosts instead of weather. Wire-strung tram lines sliced through the air, taut and humming, and the Danube flickered to my right in occasional glimpses, a dark ribbon that didn’t care who lived or died beside it.
Our driver didn’t speak.
Or maybe he just knew better than to talk to someone dressed like me.
I wore a wool coat three years out of fashion, gloves scuffed, a scarf the color of fresh mustard, and the kind of bureaucratic expression that came from long hours spent in rooms filled with charts and tea gone cold. My bag was full of meaningless papers, and my camera was real, though it didn’t work unless you held the shutter just right. I looked like someone who had been sent to ask questions no one wanted to answer.
Which, in a way, was true.
I pressed a fingertip to the fogged window and traced a lazy circle as we passed a majestic stone church half rebuilt from mortar scars. In another life, I might’ve stopped and marveled. In this one, I checked every window and rooftop for men who weren’t there to worship.
Behind me, somewhere out of sight, I imagined Thomas and Egret watching from their taxi. I wasn’t sure why we’d split up for the short ride, but Thomas had insisted. Sparrow would already be at the tram stop, gloves in her pocket, her eyes tracking everything.
We’d done everything right. Ran the plan. Rehearsed the lines. Timed the route. And still, my stomach was doing its best impression of a washing machine set to spin—because this part, first contact, always felt like walking a high wire blindfolded. One wrong word, one flinch, one little tell . . . and the whole act unspooled with a theatricalsplat.
We knew Farkas was watched. Not always, not obviously, but enough to make us think twice about which way we breathed. I’d be playing the fool—an inquisitive American with poor Hungarian and worse timing.
But if he took the bait . . .
If he wanted out . . .
Then maybe we’d be playing for something more than survival.
If he didn’t, I shuddered to think of what came next, of how we’d have to “deal with” Farkas and his invention. One way or the other, the world could not afford for Stalin to obtain such power.
The car slowed as the street opened to a small yard beside the river, bordered by chain-link fencing and old communications buildings built like fortresses.
I spotted him immediately.
Dr. Farkas.
He was tall, thin, wearing an overcoat buttoned high and dark leather gloves. His hair was gray, worn longer than most, and his gait had the careful rhythm of someone used to being followed, even when he wasn’t.
He walked alone.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
The car pulled over, and the driver gave a little grunt and nodded at the curb.
“I’ll only be twenty minutes,” I told him, flipping a few coins into his palm. “I’m cataloging the telecom restoration effort for my department.”
He didn’t answer. I was fairly certain he hadn’t understood a word I’d said. He lit a cigarette and went back to staring through the windshield like he’d done this a hundred times before.
Thomas and Egret’s car arrived as I stepped out into the morning light, adjusted my scarf, slung the camera higher on my shoulder, and walked toward the cracked stone retaining wall near the fence line, the one Farkas was expected to pass.
“Hey, Henry,” Thomas called as he climbed out of their taxi. “Wait for us.”
I stopped and turned, letting a look of bored annoyance enter my eyes.
The moment Thomas and Egret reached me, a gate screamed on its poorly oiled rails, and a bespeckled man stepped through, raising one hand in greeting. He said something in Hungarian. Seeing our blank stares, he switched into broken English.
“Welcome, comrades.” The man smiled more broadly than I thought possible for a Hungarian, given the somber state of every other face we’d encountered. “I am Imre Bálint,” he said, pronouncing his first name EEM-reh.
Thomas extended a hand and mirrored our host’s smile. “Dr. Charles Beckett.” He then motioned to Egret and me. “This is Dr. Hans Weiss and Henry Calloway. Mr. Calloway belongs to one of the U.S. departments who oversees electrical grid issues. Please do not ask me to remember which. They are filled with letters and little meaning.”
Bálint laughed, a genuine, rich sound that echoed off the walls surrounding his facility. “We will try to make today interesting, even for you, Dr. Beckett. Would you like tea before we begin? Coffee?”