Page 15

15

Thomas

T he light was slipping low by the time I saw him again.

Will rounded the corner near the eastern gate of the Gellért, his pace easy, hands in his pockets as though he was just another man in another city at the end of another day; but I saw the tension in his shoulders, the slight twitch of his mouth as he scanned the street before his gaze landed on me.

I stood beneath a dead streetlamp, watching from the shadow of a closed bakery. Will slipped beside me without a word, his hand brushing mine for the briefest moment before he exhaled through his nose—half relief, half exhaustion.

“He took the folder,” he said, without looking at me. “Didn’t say much. Didn’t have to.”

I gave a slight nod. “Any reaction?”

“Mild annoyance. Disdain for being interrupted. Then a long, uncomfortable silence.” Will tilted his head. “But when I held the folder out, he hesitated.”

“Because he didn’t want it?”

“No.” Will shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think, maybe, because he knew what it meant.”

“And he still took it.”

“With a gloved hand and no eye contact, but yes. He took it.”

We started walking, not toward the hotel but away from it, down a quiet side street that ran parallel to the tram line. The sun had already slipped behind the skyline, and Budapest was entering its evening hush—the hour when the shadows start whispering again.

Our ever-present Soviet minder appeared a couple of blocks away looking even more obvious than when he stood outside our hotel.

I glanced over at Will. His normally expressive face was unreadable.

“Did he say anything interesting?”

Will blew into his hands, warming them before answering.

“He said the pre-war junctions are brittle, that they’re all he has left.”

I turned my head, just slightly. “Did he mean the grid?”

“I’m pretty sure he meant everything. Look around. His whole country’s been devastated and lives under the Soviet boot,” Will said. “He sounded defeated.”

“They all sound like that here,” I said, trying to crack a joke but failing miserably. The place was entirely too sad to turn into a quip.

“Did he give any indication he knew what really was in the folder?” I asked.

“He didn’t even open it. When I offered it, he looked at it like it might burn his fingers, then took it anyway.” Will paused. “I didn’t have a lot of time with him, and he wasn’t in much of a mood to talk, but it was clear he’s a clever man. I think he knew.”

“Clever but not desperate?”

“Not yet,” Will said.

We reached the promenade above the Danube and slowed. The wind off the river cut sharper now, slipping through wool and bone. Will hunched his shoulders a little, and I had to resist the impulse to adjust his scarf for him. We weren’t alone, even when it felt like it.

“And the Soviets?” I asked.

“There were two of them. They watched from across the yard, pretending not to care until I walked up to him.”

“Did they approach you?”

“No. They stayed in place, though one shifted his hand to his rifle. He just rested it there, like some bad Hollywood warning.”

My jaw tightened. I hated this part.

The balancing act. The pretending. The not knowing until it was too late.

“But they let it happen.”

“I don’t think they knew what was happening. I was just another boring engineer talking about boring engineer stuff. If they had known . . .”

“Right,” I said, trying not to think of what would’ve happened had Farkas’s minders known what he now held.

We walked in silence for another block, our boots scuffing against frost-cracked pavement. The sky above the river had turned iron gray, and the lights across Budapest shimmered like reflections of another city.

“What happens now?” Will asked, glancing sideways at me.

“We watch the notice board on Váci utca,” I said. “Top-left corner of the Liszt Academy poster. If he tears it, we move to step two.”

“A torn flyer is the best we could come up with?”

I shrugged and returned his grin. “It works, and no one will think twice. Most of the crap on that board is already ripped apart.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Will was quiet a moment. “What if he doesn’t do anything?”

“Then he’s not ready.”

“Or they got to him already,” Will said.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t like speculating unless I had to.

He stopped walking then, turned to face me.

“What’s our plan if he refuses to come? Manakin usually has everything planned out to the second.”

I smiled. Manakin was a planner. “We have a different job if that happens. And yes, before you ask, Manakin briefed me on it. I haven’t told the team because I want all eyes focused on making this part work so we don’t have to . . .”

“What?” Will froze, his eyes boring into me. “What won’t we have to do?”

My gaze fell to the river. “Kill more people.”

Will blinked a few times, then nodded and let his own gaze follow mine. Water drifted by, dark and murky. It made me shiver—or maybe that came from our conversation. I wasn’t sure.

“If he signals, how soon do we contact him again?” Will asked, returning to the better option.

“The morning after. We’ll leave dead drop instructions at the base of the statue in Károlyi Garden, tell him where to meet, when, and what to bring.”

“And if someone else sees it first?”

“We’ll know,” I said. “We’ll have someone watching the drop.”

“So it’s a waiting game.”

“It always is.”

Will nodded and stared into the river. “I don’t like walking away from someone like we did today, leaving him standing there with a piece of paper that could get him shot if the Reds figure out what it is.”

I looked at him, at the man who’d said the words with real weight in his voice. There was no guilt, no fear, only truth.

“It’s his choice,” I said. “We offered him an exit. Whether he takes it is up to him.”

We turned back toward the hotel. The wind had picked up. I watched Will as we walked, his coat collar turned up, his hands back in his pockets. He looked calm to anyone else. Ordinary, even. But I’d known him too long, been too close, to mistake his stillness for peace. He carried the weight of this job like I carried mine—quietly, efficiently, and deep beneath my skin.

And tomorrow, we’d find out whether today’s gamble would pay off.