Page 1 of Deck the Halls in Secret Agents

George Douglass was getting too old for this.

As he waded through hip-deep snow, trying to tighten his icy scarf with fingers that felt like frozen sausages, George admitted it to himself. They were onto something, those guys back at the Agency who told him he should take a desk job. Let the young men do the field work. You’re—what—forty-one now? Time to hang up your gun. Learn to use a computer!

Jesus. Just thinking about the alternative made the snow a little more bearable. He’d joined the Agency twenty years ago because he wanted excitement—danger—the opposite of quiet desk work. He’d loved his job, once. It hadn’t seemed sordid then.

Maybe it had been less sordid then, back in 1971 when he was a young hotshot and the missions they gave him were actually important.

This mission? Christ. Digging up blackmail material on some doddering lesser Soviet general, who might or might not have exchanged dirty love letters with a French countess during World War II, which might or might be reposing in the attic of an abandoned French chateau, which might or might not be on the other side of this hill. With his luck, he’d gotten out of his stalled Citro?n and started off in precisely the wrong direction.

Couldn’t it wait till after Christmas? he’d asked his boss. I’ll get at it first thing in 1992.

The Soviets are looking too. We have to get there first.

And it wasn’t like George had anywhere better to go for Christmas Eve, unless he wanted to sit in his empty studio apartment in Paris, where he happened to be stationed just now. His parents had died when he was a kid, his grandparents while he was on his first mission in London, and he’d been on his own since then. Closest thing he had to an ongoing relationship were those repeated run-ins with Nikolai Meleshenko.

Whom George hadn’t seen for five years. And Nikolai had been bleeding to death on the upper floor of an abandoned warehouse at the time.

He was alive, though. George got postcards sometimes. No signature, but Nikolai’s handwriting was distinctive.

There had been a long pause when George got posted to France, but two months ago one arrived at his studio apartment in Paris. God, Nikolai was such a fucking show-off; and behind his ice-packed scarf, George’s half-frozen lips twitched toward a smile.

Pity he couldn’t send Nikolai a postcard of this frozen waste. Wish you were here, that’s what he’d say. Didn’t even know the city where Nikolai lived, though. His dossier said he’d been born in Kiev, but as to where he went between missions now, well…

George stumbled over a hidden root and fell full-length in the snow. He lay there a moment, winded and stunned. If he’d hurt anything in that fall, he was going to freeze to death here.

Slowly, carefully, he wiggled his ankles. A little twinge, nothing worse. He pushed himself up, stumbling to his feet. All right. All right. He wasn’t going to freeze to death just yet.

He hoped to God the abandoned chateau was where it should be in the other side of this rise, though. Preferably stocked with a good supply of firewood. Central heating of course was too much to ask.

He shoved through the snow up the hillside, testing his footing as he went, and keeping himself warm by imagining resignation letters he might write. On a typewriter, thank you. Or possibly with the ballpoint pen in his pocket, if the chateau wasn’t there and he ended up freezing to death after all. Wouldn’t be able to write anything fancy with his fingers so stiff (at least he could still feel them, though), but he’d be able to wrap his frozen mitten around the pen long enough to write Fuck you.

Could a ballpoint pen write in this cold? Should’ve brought one of those space pens. Or a pencil…

When the Americans went to space, you spent millions designing a pen that could write on butter. The Soviets? We sent pencils. God, Nikolai loved that story.

George reached the top of the rise. He lifted his head, shading his eyes from the blowing snow with both hands, and stared.

There was a chateau in the valley, all right. But it wasn’t abandoned. It was lit up like a Christmas tree, every window in all three stories glowing.

Shit, shit, shit. He must have gotten turned around somehow. He floundered around in the snow, but the instant he turned back the way he had come, the cutting wind caught him full in the face and nearly blew him over.

He could not wander around in this blizzard looking for the right chateau. He would freeze.

That would save him from the desk job at least.

He turned back toward the glowing chateau, and began to clump down the hillside. The closer he got, the more clearly he could see just how apt his original metaphor had been: beneath the glowing windows hung swags of evergreen, and through the howl of the wind he heard—good God, was that a brass band playing “Jingle Bells”?

Twenty-four windows, too: eight for each story, four on each side. A regular advent calendar of a chateau. Those grand central doors to be opened on Christmas.

At last George reached the wide sweeping steps. He foundered up to the vast double doors, both bedizened with massive wreaths, evergreens wound with swathes of red and gold ribbon. In his stiff mittened hands he grasped the vast iron ring, and banged it against the door.

For a while no one answered. Perhaps no one heard above the trumpet, which was playing a triumphant solo in the middle of “Here Comes Santa Claus.” He could hear voices now, too, singing, and cocktail party chatter, and the clatter of glasses, a strange juxtaposition with the whistling wind at his back.

The door opened. Warmth and light and “Here Comes Santa Claus” washed out over him, and he stared dazzled into a bright golden great hall dominated by a Christmas tree that would not have looked out of place in Rockefeller Plaza.

A throat was cleared. George blinked the dazzle out of his eyes and focused on the butler. He wore an elegant swallowtail coat and regarded George with the dispassionate immobility of a beefeater, his dignity unimpaired by the Santa hat on his head.

“Hello,” said George, putting on his brightest, stupidest harmless-American smile. “My name’s George Danvers.” Even in his half-frozen state, he remembered the alias on the passport in his pocket. “My car broke down on the road. Would it be all right if—”

“Of course, of course, you must stay here!” It was not the butler who spoke, but a man of middle years who bounded over with a youthful spryness that jingled the bell on the tip of his Santa hat. “Biffington’s the name, or you can call me Biffy,” he said, his English accent as plummy as a Christmas pudding. “Everyone else does. Come in, come in, mustn’t let in the cold!”

So George came in, stamping his snow-encrusted boots on the crimson carpet. The door swung shut behind him, and he tried not to gape at the hall, crowded with hundreds of revelers in all manner of Christmas-themed wear: Christmas sweaters, red sequined dresses trimmed with white fur, garlands of holly wound round the hair. Servers circulated in red and green elf costumes with pointy bell-tipped hats.

“Your coat, sir?” said the butler, in an icy voice that suggested that he could tell that coat had never seen a tailor.

George struggled at his coat buttons with his ice-stiffened mittens. “Wonderful party,” he told Biffy.

“Oh, it’s just my little annual Christmas bash,” Biffy said, casting a satisfied glance around the great hall. The brass quartet had just started up “Joy to the World.” “Like to get the old crowd together, you know, all the old boys who went to Skellington, and their wives and so forth. Toodles!” he cried, waving energetically at a woman wearing a slinky dress striped like a candy cane. “Toodles, we’ve got another unexpected guest!”

“How marvelous, darling!” she cried, and swept onward.

George’s fingers slipped from his coat buttons. “Another?” he said.

“Oh, yes, astonishing really. Imagine two of you sillies wandering around in this weather! Oh, Stephens, don’t look so disapproving, of course we have to let them stay, it’s Christmas Eve…”

Another unexpected guest turned up at an isolated chateau in the midst of a howling blizzard. The Soviets are looking too.

Of course they would have sent a younger agent, some new hotshot. No reason to believe that this other guest would be…

“Oh, Stephens, do help with him his coat, the poor frozen thing will never get it off otherwise. Here, let me grab you a Christmas sweater. I keep a stash, you know, some of the guests don’t want to get into the spirit of things.”

Biffy dashed off, leaving George standing like a snowman. Stephens, wooden-faced, removed George’s frozen mittens and began the heroic task of unwinding his scarf, which crackled with embedded snow.

Stephens had just peeled off George’s wool socks when Biffy bounded back, bearing a pair of sheepskin slippers with curly elf toes and a vast Rudolph sweater with a sparkly red pompom for a nose. “Here,” he said.

George swallowed his dignity. “Thank you,” he said, and put on the hideous sweater and the curly-toed slippers, which were at least beautifully warm. His defrosting toes were beginning to ache.

“Come sit before the fire,” Biffy coaxed. “Stephens, you’ll grab him a cocoa, won’t you?” He tossed these last words over his shoulder as he began to thread George through the crowd. “I’m so sorry you missed the flaming of the Christmas pudding, but there’s still quite a bit left if you’d like… Oh, Bunny, I wish you’d try to get into the spirit of things. You can’t just pop a pair of antlers atop a suit and call it gay apparel!”

Bunny saluted Biffy with a Santa-shaped mug. The brass band struck up “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” George followed Biffy around the vast Christmas tree (the red and gold Christmas baubles hanging from the branches were as large as front yard gazing balls), and abruptly came into view of a vast stone fireplace, in which burned an enormous Yule log.

A couple of couches flanked the fireplace, and on one of the couches sat a man huddled in a red and green plaid blanket, the firelight playing off his light hair. George swallowed against a suddenly dry throat.

The man could not possibly have heard their approach above the wailing trumpet. But nonetheless he turned, and his familiar blue eyes met George’s, and for a moment nothing else existed in the world.

Then Christmas crashed over George again like an ocean wave: the brass quartet, the bright swags of holly along the mantelpiece, the smell of wood smoke from the fireplace. Somewhere behind him, a glass broke, and people shrieked with laughter.

“Another stray in from the cold!” Biffy announced. “George, this is Nicky—Nicky—er, what did you say your surname was again?”

“Nick Mellon,” Nikolai said. He stood, the blanket slipping as he held out a hand to shake. As George took Nikolai’s cold hand, he felt an electric shock, like one of those old prank hand buzzers. Then, in a tone of mild interrogation, Nikolai continued: “And you’re George…?”

“Danvers,” George said, with a smile. “My car got stuck in the snow.”

“Well, what do you know.” Nikolai had an American accent this time, a bright fake American smile. “Mine did too.”

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