Page 27

27

Thomas

T he first thing I noticed was the light—thin and blue and pressing against the frost-laced glass. It bled through the curtains in slats, casting long bars of pale gold across Will’s bare back, where the sheet had fallen away.

He shifted, his breath steady, lips just parted, eyelashes still fluttering against some half-forgotten dream. One arm was slung across my waist, the other curled beneath the pillow like he always did—his elbow crooked, fingers curled. I lay still and watched him a moment longer, committing it all to memory, because in our line of work, the now was all we ever had.

Our previous night hadn’t been hurried or frantic. There’d been no fumbling between shadows, no whispered warnings or glances at the door. It had been just us, quiet and unguarded. Hands and mouths and skin. Passion and blessed release. Everything about our return from dinner had been perfect. Our only care had been to keep our voices—and groans—below the volume of our favorite Hungarian composer.

It had been a long time since we’d had that. It had been a risk. Two men weren’t supposed to sleep together—not that we did much sleeping in the tub—and Stalin was almost as unforgiving of homosexuality as Hitler had been. Still, the moment had been worth it. Will was worth it, worth any effort, any task, any risk life had to offer. He always would be.

I brushed his hair back, loving the feel of his strands against my fingers. He stirred again, and his eyes opened, sleepy and impossibly blue.

“Morning,” he murmured, his voice still sanded by sleep.

“You weren’t supposed to wake.”

“I do a lot of things I’m not supposed to do,” he said, stretching with a groan and blinking up at the ceiling. “What time is it?”

I couldn’t suppress a grin. “Half past sunrise.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You say that like it’s new.”

I trailed a finger down his nose, tapping when I reached its tip, then leaned down and kissed the spot. His smile bloomed, pure and unhindered, brighter than the sun streaming through our window. My heart soared.

Then his stomach growled.

“Is that a hint?” I asked.

He shrugged with his brows.

“Fine, let’s get you fed. I can’t have a hangry bureaucrat ruining my perfect day.”

We dressed without words. Will fixed his collar in the mirror with a smirk that said he was aware of how well it sat on him. When he caught me watching, his smirk grew even more annoying. I buttoned my coat and handed him his scarf. He looped it once, let it fall unevenly, and still looked like a film star lost in Soviet-occupied Europe. It took everything in me to not reach for the radio dial and restart our session from the night before.

Instead, I opened the window to check the weather and lost feeling in my teeth.

“Bracing,” I said.

“You say that like a man who enjoys suffering.”

I shrugged and grinned again. “Occupational hazard.”

Downstairs, the lobby was quiet. A sleepy concierge lifted a hand in greeting, barely looking up from his morning paper. The ashtray near the fireplace was still warm, but the fire had died to embers. A cat curled beside the radiator—how it got in, I had no idea—and didn’t stir as we passed.

We stepped into the cold with our coats pulled tight.

The sky was the color of tin, the sun a dull smudge behind it. The streets were wet from early frost, but the footpaths were dry enough to walk without slipping. Will fell into step beside me with ease.

“Any plan for the morning?” he asked.

“Walk. Breathe. Eat.” I paused. “No inspections. I can’t take another electrical plant tour, at least, not on an empty stomach.”

We didn’t have any tours planned. It was the weekend. My words were only for those close enough to hear. I desperately wanted to have a normal morning in which our gravest concern was the cook on our eggs.

“Just a typical Saturday in Budapest,” Will said.

Our tail followed at forty meters. It was the same man as last night, wearing the same coat, and walking at the same too-slow pace. Part of me wanted to ask him for a cigarette, if only to shatter any illusion that we didn’t know he was there, but we chose the professional route and ignored him.

We stopped at a café tucked between a newspaper stand and a tailor’s shop, where the lace curtains in the window looked like they hadn’t been washed since the Great War. The chalkboard outside promised tojáshabos kávé and kenyérlekvárral —egg-foamed coffee and thick bread with plum jam. Inside, the tables were small and the chairs even smaller. The radio on the shelf by the counter crackled with a string quartet, something Hungarian and half forgotten.

We took a booth at the back. Our tail, apparently no longer wishing to freeze his hammer and sickle off, stepped inside and sat at a table by the door, far enough away that we could speak without being overheard.

Will sat sideways, his legs stretched under the table, one hand wrapped around his coffee mug, the other tracing idle shapes on the tabletop.

“Do you ever think,” he said, staring past me, “that if we made it through all this, we’d open a place like this? Run a café somewhere with bad lighting and a great playlist?”

“You hate customers.”

“So?” His lower lip protested. “You’d do the talking. I’d do the brewing.”

“You can’t even make tea without setting something on fire.”

“Minor detail.”

He looked at me then—truly looked—and his smile shifted. It became something softer, something that looked like a maybe .

I reached across and tapped the table twice, a habit from London. It was a signal— our signal—that meant: I see you. I remember. Me, too.

And a hundred other feelings no words could capture.

After brunch, we wandered back into the city with the easy gaits of men who had nowhere urgent to be. Our route wound through side streets and half-frozen parks, up a cobbled hill and down again. To anyone watching, we were just tourists. Curious. Bored. Probably American. Possibly harmless.

But in the game we played, every turn was deliberate. Always.

I knew the spot. I’d chosen it myself before we’d ever left Paris. It was a quiet flower kiosk, where the awning was always red and the roses always a little too bright for winter. The owner changed the display every day. That was the trick.

Today, I was looking for a blue carnation in the front row of crimson blooms.

If it was there, it meant Lark had contacted Farkas. If the roses surrounding it were red, the meeting would be at midday. Yellow, it was dusk. No carnation at all: abort.

We rounded the corner. I didn’t look right away, just slowed, reached into my pocket for a coin, and pretended to fumble with my gloves.

Our tail was ten paces behind now. Too close—and getting closer.

I moved to the kiosk, scanned the buckets. My heart ticked once, then twice.

There it was.

One blue carnation, wedged between two anemic-looking golden blossoms.

I handed the vendor a few forints and pointed to a bundle of lavender. She smiled, wrapped them in paper, and said nothing about the fact that I hadn’t chosen the flower we both knew I was looking at.

We turned, walked away, and let the city close behind us like a curtain. We didn’t speak until we were several blocks away.

“Dusk,” Will said.

“Dusk,” I confirmed.

“We ready?”

“We better be.”

The man behind us paused at the corner and lit a cigarette.

Dinner was too warm, too loud, and altogether too normal for four people living on the edge of being disappeared. The restaurant smelled of butter and roasted garlic, and the candles on the table flickered every time the front door opened to let in another burst of bitter winter air. The place was full enough to mask conversation but quiet enough for us to recognize every patron within a ten-foot radius.

Egret was telling some outlandish story about a Polish informant, a bowl of soup, and a misplaced cyanide capsule. Will laughed too easily. Sparrow smirked without looking up from her glass.

I played the part of the quiet Brit in the corner, which required very little effort.

None of us ate much.

The check came. No one lingered.

As planned, we stood and exchanged a few casual goodbyes as if splitting for separate nightcaps or cigarettes in the cold.

Sparrow wandered left.

Egret ducked toward an alley.

Will adjusted his gloves and crossed the street.

I turned right and slipped behind a tram just as it hissed and rolled away.

By the time I reached the market square, the cold had crept through every stitch of wool in my coat. The air was iron-sharp. I was fairly certain no one had followed me.

Three blocks down, I spotted Will waiting in the shadows of a church facade, cap low, scarf pulled high.

“We clear?” he asked once we were in whispering distance.

“Looks that way.”

“You trust the split to hold?” he asked, referring to our four-way attempt at baffling our minders.

“I trust the chaos we built into it.”

We said nothing else. Just walked.

Our meeting point was a disused train platform, once reserved for military dispatches, now left to rust beneath the skeletal canopy of a half-collapsed roof. The walls still bore the faded insignia of an empire long gone. Bullet holes pocked the bricks where executions may have happened, or maybe careless training drills.

We approached the far edge of the platform where an old ticket window, shuttered and blackened by smoke, overlooked the tracks. The siding there dipped low, obscured from the street above by a line of boxcars frozen in place since the armistice.

“Romantic,” Will muttered, squinting at the twisted iron rails. “You really know how to pick a place for a date.”

“It has the benefit of shadows and silence.”

Will tried to rub warmth into his arms as he said, “It could do with a heater.”

We waited.

Ten minutes passed, maybe twelve.

The cold worked its way beneath my collar and settled into my spine. My fingers ached. Will shifted beside me, rubbing his gloved hands together, tapping one foot in a slow rhythm that echoed off the stone.

Then, finally—

A figure appeared from the far end of the platform. His shoulders were hunched, coat pulled tight, hat low over glasses that caught the glow from a distant streetlamp just enough to flash once. The man—we could tell it was a man—walked with a slight limp. Not affected. Real.

It was Dr. Farkas.

He was alone.

Farkas stopped four paces from us and said nothing at first. He just stared, sizing us up.

“You are not who I expected,” he said in Hungarian-accented English. His voice was dry, cracked, like parchment folded too many times.

“We are never who anyone expects,” I replied.

Farkas hesitated and shifted his weight.

“Where is my contact?” Farkas asked, his voice taking on a demanding edge. “And who are you?”

“She isn’t part of this phase. You’ll understand why shortly.” I let that sink in, then added, “You don’t need to call us anything. Just know we are here to help.”

His eyes narrowed. “I am a scientist. I don’t like changes in plans . . . or mysteries.”

“None of us do, but that’s life.” I glanced at Will, who stepped back, giving us space. “You have built something, Doctor, something that makes many people nervous.”

His jaw clenched.

His glasses fogged at the corners.

“You do not know what it is?” I wasn’t sure if it was more question or statement.

“Not the full shape, but we know enough to understand what it can do. More importantly, we know what the Soviets would do with it.”

Farkas looked away, as if the shadows beyond the platform could answer for him.

“I didn’t build it for them.”

“And yet—”

Silence again.

Then: “You can get me out?”

“We can.”

“The machine—” He stopped, exhaled through his nose. “It is too large. It is not portable in the way you think.”

“We will handle it,” I said, unsure if my words were true.

He swallowed hard.

“And my daughter?”

That stopped me. Only for a breath.

“How old is she?”

“Thirteen.”

Damn. I’d known about his daughter, but knowing about a teenager and being confronted with one were two very different things.

Farkas crossed his arms and set his jaw. “She is . . . she is everything. If she does not go, I do not go.”

I nodded once, slow and certain.

“Our plan accounts for her. We always assumed there would be attachments. You are not the first to make such a demand.”

His shoulders dropped, just slightly, enough to see that he’d been holding a breath since he arrived.

“We need to move,” I said, glancing about. “Tomorrow night. Same time. Different location. You will be contacted with details midday. Pack nothing. That would alert our friends. When the time comes, be ready.”

He didn’t answer, just stared past us, as if already trying to imagine what leaving meant—what staying might cost. After a long moment, he turned and disappeared into the shadows again, his footsteps swallowed by the frost and the waiting dark.

Will stepped up close, as if warmth I didn’t feel might magically flow from my body into his through our layers of clothing and heavy coats.

“Did we just promise to kidnap a teenager, dismantle a revolutionary machine, and smuggle them both past a military blockade?”

“Yes.”

“Cool,” he said, a grin parting his chapped lips.

“Still want to open that café?”

He snorted. “Only if we serve breakfast for spies.”