Page 17

17

Sparrow

T he cold had teeth by the time we stepped out of the restaurant.

The warmth and chatter of the dining room clung to my coat like a memory, but the moment the door shut behind us, it vanished into the wind. The city pressed in around us—soot-smudged buildings, dim pools of yellow light from cracked lampposts, the shiver of footsteps echoing off stone.

Budapest after dark—after the war—was a city of held breath.

Will and Thomas peeled away with quiet efficiency, murmuring something to each other as they turned down the street toward their hotel. Thomas didn’t look back. Will did, just once, a small nod in my direction, a kind of wish for luck without words.

Then it was just the two of us.

Egret stood beside me on the curb, his broad shoulders hunched beneath his ill-fitting coat, hands jammed into his pockets. He didn’t say anything right away, just looked down the road where my cab was supposed to appear.

The silence between us wasn’t awkward.

It was worse than that.

It was familiar.

We were always saying goodbye.

Sometimes it was between trains. Sometimes between assignments.

Sometimes with bruises hidden beneath our sleeves, or blood still drying on our hands.

But somehow, this one felt heavier.

Because this time, he wasn’t coming with me.

A taxi rounded the corner, its headlights cutting a narrow path across the wet cobbles. It was still half a block away.

I glanced at him. “You’ll go straight back?”

He nodded. “Same ole drill. Walk slow, take two turns, and smile for the invisible camera.”

“And if someone follows you?”

“I’ll bore them to death before they reach the lobby.”

I tried to smile. It refused to hold.

Egret turned to me, his face shadowed in the dim light. He didn’t say, “Don’t go.” That wasn’t us—it wasn’t allowed—but his jaw clenched, just slightly, like he had to hold words back.

“You’ll stick to the north approach?” he asked. “Avoid the market street with the broken lampposts?”

“I’m not walking into a trap, Egret.”

“No,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean one won’t find you.”

The taxi pulled to the curb. I moved toward it and reached for the handle.

“Sparrow.”

I turned.

He whispered, “Sarah.”

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

His usual armor—wit, sarcasm, bravado—had slipped, just for a moment. The man underneath was worried, and not simply for our mission.

He was worried for me.

“If something feels wrong—if even the air breathes differently—leave it. Walk away. Don’t wait to be right.” His tone teetered between giving an order and pleading. It made my breath catch far more than the biting breeze ever could.

I nodded.

And then, because it felt like we’d break if we didn’t touch, I reached out and pressed my gloved fingers against his chest, just above his heart.

“I’ll be back before midnight,” I said.

“I’ll be waiting.”

I slipped into the cab and shut the door before either of us could say anything else.

The driver was middle-aged, lean, and unreadable through the rearview mirror. His hands were pale and twitchy on the wheel. He didn’t ask where I was going—he already knew. The restaurant staff had informed him when they’d called for the cab.

I gave the cross street anyway. He nodded once and pulled away from the curb with a jerk and a low groan from the engine.

Outside, the city passed in smudged glimpses. The taxi’s windows were streaked with rain residue and grime, so the world outside looked like it had been painted in charcoal blurred by some unseen hand. Lights were fewer here—flickering sconces above doors, half-lit apartment windows, occasional lanterns hung outside state buildings. The farther we got from the restaurant, the darker it grew.

And I loved it. God help me, I loved it.

Not for what the city had become—broken, watched, exhausted—but for what it refused to forget. Its architecture still stood tall and proud, Gothic shoulders squared against history. Its bridges still arched with elegance across the Danube, even if they now carried Soviet trucks instead of lovers.

I pressed my gloved fingers to the window and watched the streets roll by like a secret.

But even as I admired it, I couldn’t relax.

I wasn’t that kind of fool.

The driver’s eyes flicked to me in the mirror.

I counted the red lights he slowed too early for, tracked the shadow of every car that passed.

He didn’t speak. Which was both comforting and unnerving.

The silence in the cab was complete. Too complete. There wasn’t even the scratch of the radio, just the engine’s growl and the rhythmic squeak of the windshield wipers dragging across glass that didn’t need cleaning.

Was he listening? Or watching me? Was someone else?

I reached down and pretended to adjust my boot lace, the way I always did when I wanted to check my thigh holster without drawing attention. It was still there, still snug, the steel more reassuring than any word could be.

We passed an old tram stop. One lone man stood under the broken shelter, his collar high against the chill, his cigarette burning low. He didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to breathe.

I turned my head away before we passed him, just in case.

The streets grew narrower.

More shuttered buildings.

More storefronts covered in faded propaganda.

Two boys hunched together under a stairwell, trading something too quickly for me to see in a passing car.

A stray dog sniffed at a trash pile.

Every part of this city knew what it meant to disappear; and still, something about the way the streetlamps blinked just as we passed beneath them made me tense. They flickered like someone was waiting.

I met the driver’s eyes in the rearview again. He still didn’t blink, just adjusted the mirror.

I looked away.

We turned down an even narrower alley, passed behind a crumbling bakery, and came out onto a quiet lane lined with tenement housing.

We were two blocks out.

“Here,” I said.

He braked without a word and put the car in neutral.

I opened the door slowly, scanned the intersection. No lights shone through the windows. No voices spoke. Only the wind dared whisper as it scraped dead leaves across the curb.

I paid the driver in exact bills, keeping my eyes on the street.

He didn’t look at the money.

He didn’t drive off right away, either.

“Wait three minutes before you go, please,” I said.

He nodded once as I shut the door with more force than intended. I started walking.

Behind me, the taxi idled like a watchful animal, its exhaust fogging the air.

I pulled my coat tighter, adjusted my scarf. My heels clicked against the slick cobblestones, but I kept my pace measured and unhurried.

A woman in a rush got remembered. A woman who belonged didn’t need to rush.

I passed a bookstore with papered-over windows, its name half erased by age. A next-door bakery’s display was dark, its sign broken and swinging on a single chain.

Ahead, the streetlight buzzed once and died.

Darkness seeped in with the Hungarian cold.

I crossed the street and kept to the right, my shoulders brushing the edges of buildings, eyes flicking to the glints of broken glass in the gutter. A lamppost ahead had been shattered. Its wires dangled like nerves.

I felt them before I saw them.

The shadows. They weren’t moving. They were . . . just there.

A gap appeared—an alley.

A figure that might have been leaning, or might have been stone.

A flash of movement in the window above a butcher’s shop.

It could have been nothing. It probably was.

But I knew the truth:

Paranoia in this job wasn’t a flaw.

It was a learned skill.

Adjusting the weight of my shoulder bag, I kept walking.

The notice board stood beneath a crooked iron awning on Váci utca, its wooden frame damp from the cold, its surface layered with curling and ripped papers.

I approached, pausing just short.

There were five flyers.

Three for lessons of one sort or another.

One for ration assistance.

One, as expected, for a Liszt Academy performance.

It stared back at me with cruel indifference.

Its corner was un-torn.

Its surface unmarked.

It was untouched.