Page 3

3

Will

T homas and I moved in silence, our steps quiet against the cobblestones. The rain had come earlier, leaving the air heavy and sidewalks littered with murky puddles.

Ahead, an unassuming café flickered with warm light, the kind of place where Parisians spent their mornings reading newspapers, oblivious to the way the world crumbled in the shadows beneath them. But we weren’t here for coffee and pastries.

We were here for war.

The man behind the counter glanced up as we entered. His hands worked methodically, tamping down espresso grounds with precision, steam curling in the air like cigarette smoke. I tapped twice on the worn wooden bar.

He didn’t acknowledge me, just turned and disappeared through a narrow door at the back, abandoning whatever drink he’d been mixing.

Thomas and I followed.

The hallway beyond was dark, the echoes of dust and old wood pressing in around us. A second door waited at the end, its surface scarred with age. A lone light bulb hung from a flimsy cord above, making the passage feel either haunted or like a police interrogation room.

The barista knocked once. Paused. Knocked twice more.

The lock slid back. Our guide stepped aside.

We walked inside.

The room we entered was a hollowed-out relic of the war, a forgotten basement carved beneath the remnants of a building that had seen better days. Low-hanging lights, mere bulbs like the one in the hallway, cast long shadows across the scuffed wooden table at the center. The table’s surface was littered with maps, files, and the unmistakable presence of cigarette ash that had settled like a permanent fixture.

Lieutenant-Commander Raines sat at one end, his expression carved from steel, eyes sharp and calculating beneath the low brim of his fedora. Manakin stood beside him, his arms folded, his finely pressed suit looking out of place against the peeling plaster walls.

But my eyes immediately landed on Sparrow.

She was perched in a chair beside Arty, leaning forward, her hands gesturing animatedly as she spoke, her French accent curling around every syllable like a lazy cat in a sunbeam. I didn’t have a clue why she was even there, much less what prompted her to affect an accent while surrounded by veterans of past missions, but it seemed to suit her. Arty, ever the polite captive, was nodding along, sipping from a steaming cup, though there was an unmistakable glazed look in his eyes.

“—and that is why, mon ami , you must always carry a bottle of cognac when crossing the Pyrenees in winter,” Sparrow was saying, lifting a hand as though imparting divine wisdom.

Arty blinked, deadpan. “I feel like that’s more of a ‘you’ problem than a universal issue.”

Before Sparrow could argue, Thomas let out a short laugh. “Still terrorizing Arty with your useless survival tips, Sparrow?”

Sparrow’s head snapped toward us, and her face immediately lit up with a wide, foxlike grin.

“ Mon dieu ! Look at this!” She was up in an instant, crossing the room in two strides and wrapping Thomas in a heartfelt embrace. The moment her eyes found mine, her hand shot out and pulled me into the three-way hug. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me, cher .”

I smirked. “Trust me, Sparrow, it’s impossible to forget you.”

“You wound me.” She sighed, the back of her hand pressing to her forehead. Then her grin widened. “But it is good to see you, truly.”

Thomas arched a brow. “And you, somehow, still haven’t been shot? And you’ve become French?”

“Not for lack of trying, my friend.” Sparrow tsked. “I am getting into character for our mission. It is never too early to slip into one’s skin, no?”

I was about to respond when a quiet voice cut through the room.

“Close the damn door. You’re letting the cold in.”

I turned toward the far wall, where a man stood half shadowed, a glass of amber liquor balanced between his fingers. The man was dressed in muted elegance—sharp lines, an understated watch, and an expression as unreadable as a classified file.

I smirked. “Missed you, too, Egret.”

He took a slow sip, his dark eyes watching us over the rim of the glass. “You two look like hell.”

Sparrow laughed. “Ah, but they wear it so well.”

I tilted my head. “And you look just as disinterested as ever. I was beginning to think we weren’t friends.”

Egret exhaled, his lips curving ever so slightly. “That depends on your definition of friendship, Emu.” He lifted his glass in a mock toast, then drained it in one go before setting it down on the table with a decisive clink. The easy use of our code names should’ve shocked me after so long apart, but our little family never struggled with reunions. We’d survived too much together to let a little thing like time apart fray our friendship.

Thomas smirked. “Still drinking whiskey like it’s water, I see.”

“Water doesn’t get the job done.” He turned to Manakin. “Are we doing this briefing, or are we waiting for more reunions? If you make me hug Condor, I might toss my glass.”

“Not until I get my damn hugs,” Arty barked, standing and planting balled fists on his scrawny hips. His spectacles were a touch too large for his face, making him look like some kind of bug with ridiculous rapidly blinking eyes.

Thomas and I closed the gap at the same time, sandwiching our old compadre and squeezing for all our worth.

“Guys . . . gotta breathe . . . down here . . . help . . . Manakin . . . EGRET!”

“Fuckin’ on your own, little man. You begged for it.” Egret strode by, ice rattling in his glass as he passed.

Sparrow’s laughter was music on the wind.

Manakin chuckled, the most emotion we’d likely get out of the man. “Enough. Leave my chief doo-dad architect in one piece, please.”

“Doo-dad architect? Is that an official spy title now?” I whispered to Thomas.

Arty scooted back from us, then slapped my arm like I’d just told a joke about his mother.

Thomas cocked a brow—and a grin—and shrugged.

Raines tapped ash into a tray, his voice smooth. “Take a seat, ladies and gents. We’ve got work to do.”

Egret made his way to the table, set down his glass, then grabbed Thomas and pulled him into an embrace, shocking everyone. He liked to play tough, but the guy was as solid as gold. A second or two passed, then he grabbed me and repeated the gesture, this time whispering in my ear, “It’s good to see you, you little shit.”

I was all teeth and lips as I pulled back and studied our old teammate. He hadn’t changed, hadn’t aged, hadn’t added scars or facial hair. If anything, he looked younger than when I’d seen him last. My mind wandered down the path of how I might look to him after so long, but such musing would have to wait.

Manakin cleared his throat, so we took our seats around the now-crowded table.

“We don’t have much time, so let’s skip the pleasantries.” He tapped the map in front of him, Budapest staring back at us in cold, inked lines. “Dr. László Farkas is the target. He’s a Hungarian cryptographer who developed a machine unlike anything our people have seen. Think of it as the Brit’s Enigma decoder machine gone nuclear. If he finishes it, the Soviets will be able to decode every major intelligence transmission before it reaches its intended recipient—across every country, foreign service, government, business, or little old lady’s phone call, you name it.”

“Dear God,” I muttered, glancing at Thomas. His face remained unreadable.

Manakin continued. “We don’t know exactly how far along he is, but if Moscow already has his research—or enough of it to recreate the machine themselves—we’re looking at a situation we won’t be able to recover from for decades, possibly ever.”

I leaned forward. “So we get him out.”

Manakin hesitated.

And that hesitation set my nerves on edge.

“What?” Egret pressed, voice flat.

Manakin exhaled. “We’re not sure he wants to leave.”

Silence.

“If he doesn’t want to go, what exactly are we supposed to do?” Sparrow asked, running a hand over her jaw in a very unladylike, un-French way. “We cannot simply kidnap this man. And how big is this machine of his? Could we not steal it instead?”

Her painted-on French accent was so discordant with the woman I remembered that my temples began to throb with each word.

Manakin flipped through a file until he found a photograph of the British machine created by Turing and his team to decode the German Enigma. It was much larger than I remembered, a box taller than an average man and as long as some cars. It was covered in gears in a mystical show of algorithmic magic. I picked up the photo and studied the image.

Manakin met Thomas’s gaze. “Your job is to convince him it’s in his best interest to leave. Make him want to come into the loving arms of the West. If necessary, show him what the Soviets are capable of. Last resort? Destroy the machine and kidnap him. One way or another, he will come back with you. Period.”

Raines flicked his cigarette against the ashtray, watching the embers scatter. “Let’s make this simple: If he hesitates, you remind him what is at stake. If he refuses, you extract him anyway.”

“Forced extraction,” Egret muttered, glancing at Thomas. “So a polite invitation, then?”

Raines smirked. “Something like that.”

I sighed, leaning back. “Who else knows we’re coming?”

Manakin shook his head. “No one outside this room. Soviet intelligence is already moving on him. They have been monitoring his progress since he started his project. Our sources inside the Soviet intel community report they believe he is their asset. He has a code name and everything. Hell, the Reds even gave the machine a code name.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and tossed the photo across the table at Manakin. “We’re doing this alone? Four Americans who don’t speak Hungarian and only know passable Russian?”

“I am French now,” Sparrow said, flicking her hair.

I bristled.

Thomas patted my arm. “Fine, I speak Russian. Egret is passable. But Sparrow and Emu—”

“This mission will be you four and no one else,” Manakin cut Thomas off. “If we send a larger team, we lose deniability. The moment Moscow knows we are trying to pull him out, they will shut the city down.”

Thomas exhaled sharply. “So it’s just us.”

Manakin nodded. “Just you.”

I tapped my fingers against the table. “And this inventor’s family?”

Manakin hesitated. “He has a daughter, Eszter. As far as we know, she’s not a target. Yet.”

That “yet” felt like a loaded gun on the table. We all knew what the Russians were capable of—what they would do to further their own interests. They talked a good game about protecting kids, holding them up as the future of their society; but if using a daughter against a father helped Stalin achieve his aims, he’d slaughter every last girl in Hungary.

I glanced at Thomas. His jaw had tightened, the muscle ticking ever so slightly.

Raines sat forward, his expression dark, giving voice to our obvious thoughts. “If the Soviets realize he’s thinking of defecting, they’ll use her against him.”

They’d use her. Then they’d kill her.

“Understood.”

Raines nodded toward Arty. “You’ll be going in with limited resources, so Stork has a few things for you.”

Thomas leaned back, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I hope it’s a small tank.”

“Not quite.” Arty grinned. “Mine is a more . . . subtle art.”

Then Arty hefted a leather case onto the table, unbuckled the straps, and flipped it open.

“I know you boys like to keep things simple,” Arty said, adjusting his glasses, “but considering Budapest is crawling with people who’d love to see you disappear, I thought you might appreciate a few upgrades.”

He lifted a shiny black fountain pen and held it between two fingers.

“This,” he said, “is your best friend.”

Thomas arched a brow. “A pen?”

“A pressurized ink-injector pen,” Arty corrected. “Filled with a lovely concoction of tetrodotoxin. One click to release the safety, another to administer the dose. Instant paralysis.” He twirled it between his fingers. “But don’t jab yourself unless you’d like to experience firsthand how fast the human nervous system shuts down.”

I reached out and took it, weighing it in my palm. It felt natural, heavy, dangerous. I uncapped it and admired the gold nib. “Does this thing actually write?”

“It’s a pen. Of course, it does . . . at least, until you cock the mechanism, readying to deploy the serum.” Arty smirked at a thoroughly enchanted Thomas. “Figured you’d like that one.”

He moved on, picking up a watch with an unassuming black leather strap. “This is for emergencies.”

I lifted a brow. “What kind of emergencies?”

Arty grinned. “The kind where you need to blow something up.”

Thomas set the pen on the table and sat up straighter. “I’m listening.”

Arty flipped the watch over, tapping a small hidden dial on the back. “There’s a detonator fuse hidden inside the casing. One tap arms the charge. Tap twice, boom.”

“Boom?” I repeated.

“Boom,” Arty confirmed.

I exchanged a look with Thomas. He was already far too excited.

“Wait,” Thomas said before he could move on to the next item. “What goes boom? I can’t push the button and blow up a watch I’m holding in my hand.”

“Okay.” Arty held up a palm. “The second tap doesn’t make it go boom. It starts a sixty-second timer that ends in boom. Feel better now?”

Thomas nodded. “Much.”

Arty moved on to a pair of cufflinks. “These are a little more subtle,” he said, tossing them onto the table. “Each contains a single-use incendiary charge. Pop one, and you’ve got yourself a distraction that burns at 1200 degrees.”

“In a cufflink?” I said, astonished. I picked one up, turning it between my fingers.

“It should last a few minutes, long enough to grab the attention of guards or whoever you’re trying to avoid. Just be sure to toss it within five seconds of popping the switch. Think of it like a grenade without a failsafe or reset pin.” Arty adjusted his glasses.

I set the cufflink down and met his gaze. “Thanks, Ar—Stork.” We were among our closest allies; still, I had to remind myself to follow protocol. In our game, we could never be too careful.

Raines exhaled, standing. “The train leaves in three hours. You need to be on it.”

I glanced at Thomas. We were in.

There was no turning back.

There were no second chances.

Raines gathered a few maps and other papers.

Thomas didn’t budge. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”

Raines scrunched up his brow.

Manakin never missed a beat. “You might want your cover identities and papers?”

Raines’s expression shifted to “Oh, right,” as he retook his seat.

Manakin stood and let his gaze fall on each of us one at a time, as though considering whether to continue the discussion. “Let’s talk covers and insertion.”

“Sounds like a kinky night out. I’m in,” Egret quipped, earning a round of laughter from the group—and a scowl from Manakin.