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Will opened the door.
Inside, warmth and irresistible aromas wrapped around us like a memory. The floors were scuffed wood, the lighting dim, and a single string of bulbs wound along the ceiling like it had been borrowed from a long-forgotten festival. Locals filled three of the five tables. Some spoke quietly, while one table howled with unrestrained delight at some joke we’d just missed.
Sparrow headed for the table near the back—a booth by the radiator—and sat.
The three of us exchanged a glance and a shrug, then followed suit.
Menus were delivered with nods, not words. The woman who set them down looked at us like we were ghosts who might vanish if she blinked. We placed quick orders, and she fled into the kitchen.
Will didn’t wait.
He reached for the napkin holder, pulled a square free, and set his pen against it with careful precision. Egret and Sparrow leaned in.
She’s being held in a safe house north of the train yard. It’s an old wooden building, looks like a mansion from the street. Iron gate. Guards at the gate, likely more on the grounds. I watched them take her in.
Egret let out a slow breath.
Sparrow’s brow furrowed, her fingers tightening around her menu.
I reached for the pen next and added a line:
Surveil tonight. Extraction tomorrow night. You two get Shadowfox. We get the girl. The longer we’re here, the greater the chance they catch on and move her.
Then I looked up, met all three of their gazes. They nodded—each of them—and the silence that followed wasn’t fear.
It was resolve.
37
Will
Lunchwasnodifferentthan any other meal in Budapest, a long, drawn-out affair that lasted hours. With our minders stuck outside, and relative certainty that none of the patrons around us had any affiliation to the agencies monitoring our every step, we were able to relax and enjoy each other’s company.
Egret held court, telling one bawdy joke after the next, sending flushes of cherry flooding Sparrow’s cheeks with each telling. I tried to comfort her, though my own laughter at Egret’s performance made sympathy nearly impossible. Thomas sat back, sipping some liquor the waitress swore was a local favorite, a grin parting his lips throughout the entire episode.
For a brief, beautiful moment in time, we were an odd collection of friends, family really, enjoying a lunch in a town that was not our own. If I could’ve captured those moments in pictures or a sketch, I would’ve cherished them for years to come.
As Thomas and I stepped back into our hotel room in the early afternoon, each of us tossing our coats on the desk chair in perfect synchronicity, it struck me just how much we’d needed those moments of relief. Living with the ever-present worry of a misspoken word or misplaced step took its toll, even for professionals like us.
“I need a bath,” I said, peeling off my shirt. “Mucking about in city hall always leaves me feeling a bit moldy.”
Thomas chuckled. I was certain his humor was for my description of a bureaucrat’s ailments, but he could’ve been amused by my sudden shift back into character for anyone listening on the other end of the bugs in our hotel room.
I’d only made it a step or two toward the bathroom before the now-familiar notes of Hungarian strings filled the room. I turned back to find that, somewhere in the heartbeats when I’d turned away, he’d removed his shirt and undershirt.
Lean, bare muscles stared back at me.
My eyes widened in appreciation.
He stepped forward, a look I knew well in his eyes.
Hunger. Desire. Commitment to getting exactly what he wanted.
It was a look I could never resist, not in those first days back in Harvard, and not now, when our lives hung by a Soviet thread in a foreign land with Uncle Joe’s men listening.
I would never be able to resist that man.
He reached out and gripped my arm, pulling me into him, then tore open my shirt, two buttons coming unmoored and flying across the room.