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“That’s the idea,” Thomas replied.
We passed a bridge where rusted railings jutted up from the stone like broken fingers. The Danube crawled beneath it, thick with cold and secrets.
“We board with them disguised?” Sparrow asked.
“Yes. Will rides with the girl—he’ll carry her papers. Egret takes Shadowfox separately, both as locals. Clothes, bags, behavior—all prepped in advance. You’ll be the buffer. Documents, cash, alternate IDs are already in the hollowed-out book.”
She tapped the strap of her satchel. “It’s in here.”
“Good,” Thomas said.
“And if one of them doesn’t show?” I asked.
Thomas looked up toward the sky for a long moment before answering. “Then the other still boards.”
Silence.
Egret’s jaw tightened. “That’s cold.”
“That’s Manakin,” Thomas said. “There’s too much at stake to do otherwise.”
We paused at a corner, ostensibly to look at the stone façade of the Szabó Bookstore, where faded Hungarian poetry sat in the window behind grime-smudged glass.
Sparrow adjusted her glove. “What about watchers on the train?”
Thomas blew out a breath that billowed before his lips. “Lark will have someone watching for them. The signal is chalk lines on the platform number sign. However many lines you see, that’s how many Reds have been positively identified. Assume there are more.”
Sparrow cocked her head. “What if they move once we board?”
Thomas gave her the smallest glance. “Then we adapt.”
“Define adapt,” she said, crossing her arms.
“I shoot someone in the bathroom,” Egret muttered.
“You arenotshooting anyone in the bathroom,” I said, biting back a smile.
“Fine, in the powder room,” he replied with a shrug.
Sparrow didn’t laugh. Her jaw was set, her eyes sharp. “What about the girl? You really think she’s ready for this?”
Thomas hesitated just long enough for me to see the truth slip through his mask.
“She trusts her father. She’ll follow him anywhere. That’s what we need.”
We kept moving, following the tram line up through the city center, past an old war monument covered in ivy and flyers. One of the leaflets flapped in the wind—a political caricature too smudged to decipher.
I pulled my coat tighter and asked, “And the fallback plan?”
Thomas didn’t blink. “If the train is compromised, we scatter. Shadowfox moves with Egret to fallback point Delta. The girl goes with Will to the market house on Nyáry Street. Sparrow meets you there.”
“And you?” I asked.
He hesitated, then met my gaze. “I’ll be where I need to be.”
It was the kind of answer that sounded noble but meant nothing.
Ihatedwhen he said things like that.