38

Thomas

W e dressed in silence—not in field gear or suits.

Throughout our stay, we’d observed the hotel staff, watched them as they went about their routines, noted doors that led to storage rooms or private passages. Finding the laundry where uniforms were tended was among our top priorities. Lifting two sets of trousers and shirts with an approximation of correct sizes was more challenging that I’d anticipated.

But we’d done it.

White shirts. Black trousers. Service aprons.

My collar was too tight, and Will’s shirt sleeves were an inch too short, but in Russia’s Budapest, that meant they were perfect.

Will rolled and tucked two other sets of clothes into a duffel bag beside the bed. I caught his eye in a mirror bolted to the wall as I buttoned the last of my cuffs. He gave me a look—one that said we’re both about to do something stupid, and “I’d rather do it with you than anyone else.”

He tossed a coat over the duffel bag, hiding the bulk of civilian clothes we’d stashed for the return trip.

“Ready?” he mouthed without speaking.

I nodded.

We slipped out of the room and down the back stairwell, our boots a whisper against the cracked tile. The building’s side entrance was meant for staff. Nobody used it after eight—except the occasional porter taking a smoke break, or a pair of American spies determined to evade their watcher.

The door let out a soft groan when I pushed it open. Cold air rushed in, as though we were walking into the coldest icebox ever invented. We stepped out into the alley beside the hotel and closed the door behind us.

Will didn’t look across the street, but I did.

Our tail was still in his car—a rust-colored sedan that hadn’t moved all day. From where we stood, I could just see the slope of his head resting against the window.

He looked asleep.

I didn’t believe it for a second. Soviets were far too disciplined—and their personnel too used to being disposable—to allow for such a lapse.

We waited a moment. Then another.

Still no motion. No radio. No door opening. The man’s head never moved. He never looked up. From the distance, I couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest, but I imagined his breaths, slow and steady. I could hardly believe it.

He really was asleep.

So we walked.

Five blocks later, we flagged a cab—not from a queue, just a lone driver in a peaked cap who probably hadn’t been licensed since before the war. I climbed in first, sliding across the cracked leather seat. Will climbed in after me.

The man glanced at us through the rearview mirror and asked, “ Hová ?”

I didn’t know that word—or many others in Hungarian. Will knew even fewer but assumed the man was asking what any cab driver might and rattled off a street he’d spotted close to the train yards—close enough to the mansion for an approach on foot, but not so close it would spark interest.

We rode in silence.

Outside the window, Budapest turned stranger by the block—shadows pulling long across buildings scarred by war and patched by neglect. Neon signs flickered half-heartedly. A woman on a bicycle pedaled past us with a sack of something steaming slung across her handlebars.

We paid the driver in folded forints, exited at a nondescript corner, and walked the final four blocks with our collars turned up and our pace casual.

The mansion was exactly as Will had described it—and more. In the dimness of twilight, it appeared as stately as any manor one might see in New England or the poshest suburbs of London. The architectural style was a rare blend of Neo-Renaissance and Transylvanian Secessionist. Had we not been working undercover with a tangible fear of discovery, I might’ve bragged to Will about recognizing the architectural fingerprints that marked the place. I was, after all, a bit of a Renaissance man, or so my ridiculously wealthy family back home always hoped.

The place wore its elegance like a dame attending a ball.

Rich with intricate scrollwork, deep eaves, and ornately turned balustrades.

Every column, every corner bracket was hand-shaped—wood lacework framing the structure like frozen notes on some composer’s sheet. The roof rose steep and gabled, covered in dark green. Turrets flanked the eastern and western wings—one capped in a copper spire now turned to pale verdigris, the other topped with a domed cupola where pigeons nested under the rafters. A widow’s walk circled the upper level, cordoned by delicate rails, offering a view of the city.

I shifted my gaze to the front, where wide wooden steps led up to a double front door of cherry-stained oak. Stained-glass panels flanked the entrance, their colors muted but still catching the light in fractured shards of ruby and cobalt.

Surrounding the mansion was a tall, wrought-iron fence, its bars twisted into the shape of climbing vines and leaves. Atop the posts were sharp finials shaped like bayonets, black with age and soot. The gate at the front bore no insignia, only an unadorned lock and two sentry lamps.

We moved down the block, keeping to the side streets and hedges, crouching behind a line of overgrown bushes near the northeast perimeter. The earth was frozen, but the ground cover muffled our movements.

From there, we could see the front gate. Two guards in charcoal uniforms with crimson pins stood—one armed with a sidearm, the other with a PPSh-41 submachine gun slung loose on his shoulder. They didn’t talk. They didn’t smoke. Their eyes never settled, only scanned . . . and searched . . . and watched.

Motion tugged at my gaze.

Two more guards moved along the fence line. I checked my watch, making a mental note, then waited. The pair passed us every eight minutes. The Soviets were rigid in their consistency. I had to grant them that.

Inside the manse?

We had no idea.

The windows were too high and too dark. We could see no lights in the widows of the top floor.

On a side wing, a light flickered. A silhouette passed the illuminated window and was gone. The light winked out.

Will reached into the duffel bag and pulled out a pair of binoculars we’d found at a secondhand store in one of the shopping districts, a likely relic from some long-dead soldier lost during the war. He scanned slowly, methodically, handing them to me after a few minutes.

“Four outside,” he whispered. “I think that’s it.”

I nodded. “Could be more at the rear. Could be dogs.”

He didn’t reply, just kept scanning.

I’d hoped . . . I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped for. Fewer guards? More clarity? A better lay of the land? For Eszter to appear in a window, lock eyes with us, and mouth, “There aren’t any guards inside”?

Ridiculous.

We knew so little. Hell, we knew nothing about the inside of the house. Not the layout. Not the number of guards. Not even, with certainty, the presence of our target.

We weren’t operating in darkness. We were blind.

Every mission we accepted carried the possibility—no, the probability—that one of us might not return home. Nothing was ever simple, never easy. They didn’t send us in when the sun shone and birds sang. We were the tip of a very dark spear, one made for the night and coated in blood.

We watched for another twenty minutes. Every sound stretched. Every blink a gamble. Somewhere in the street behind us, a cat hissed, and I felt my heart pause.

Will and I moved in silence for the first few blocks.

We kept our hands buried deep in our coat pockets, our heads down, and our steps casual. The neighborhood had returned to its nighttime hush—one broken by the low growl of a passing truck or the distant bark of a dog.

Behind us, there was no echo of footsteps. No tail. No flickering light that didn’t belong.

Still, I checked.

Every corner.

Every car.

Every shadow.

A spy doesn’t survive very long by trusting the quiet. That was one of our first lessons back at Camp X, when we were young and new and thought we might make a difference.

We still wanted to believe that, hoped our efforts might do a little good in a dark world, but one never knew what mark they left until it was too late to see it.

“I don’t like it,” I said, finally breaking the silence.

Will glanced at me. “What part?”

“The back of the property, we couldn’t see it. There were too many trees. That whole rear wall could be crawling with guards or have an exit we can’t control. There might be dogs or listening devices or—shit, we just don’t know. For that matter, the girl could already be gone, and we wouldn’t know until it was too late. We never saw her—or any sign of her.”

He didn’t answer right away. We walked another hundred feet before he said, “She’s still there. I saw the lights flicker in what looked like a bedroom.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s there.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s not.”

I looked at him.

His voice had that steel edge to it—the one that came out when he was pretending not to care about something he cared about deeply.

“Four guards,” I said, forcing my tone neutral. “Two at the front, two on patrol. Eight-minute loops. That’s the outside.”

“Inside could be double that—or more—especially if they’re nervous.”

“Do you think they are? Have we tipped our hand?” I asked, suddenly worried he might affirm that suspicion.

He thought a moment. “No, I don’t think so. There’s been nothing to connect us to the girl. If anything, they could think we might go after her father. Still, I doubt they suspect what we’re after.”

We turned down a narrow side street and continued on foot, still watching for a cab. Budapest wasn’t a city that moved quickly at night. The trams stopped too early, the taxis disappeared like ghosts, and the people—especially the ones not aligned, not privileged—stayed inside behind curtains and padlocked doors.

Will reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his gloves, chewing his lip as he put them on. “If we hit the front,” he said, “we draw all the fire; but if we hit the back, and they’ve got a second fence or guard shack, we get trapped.”

“We’ll need eyes on both. At once.”

Will nodded. “Two-pronged. Diversion at the gate. Pressure the perimeter. That draws them forward, then we go in the back.”

What the hell kind of diversion could we create that wouldn’t raise suspicion in a posh residential neighborhood? The hissing cat wouldn’t be enough, but our options were limited. I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping a little pressure might jar an idea free. It didn’t work.

A cab finally rolled past at the next intersection. Will raised a hand, but it kept going. The driver barely looked at us. Maybe he knew. Maybe he just didn’t want trouble.

We kept walking.

I counted the blocks in my head. We’d need to circle back toward the major boulevard in ten minutes or we’d draw attention.

“Tomorrow night,” I said. “It has to be. We’re running out of room, and if they move her, we’ll lose our window.”

Will didn’t argue. He just stepped a little closer to me on the sidewalk and muttered, “Egret’s going to hate this.”

I smirked. “Sparrow will be the one to talk him down. She always is.”

“She’s the one with sense.”

I grinned. “She’s the one with good aim.”

We paused at the corner of a wide avenue. A tram clattered by, dark and empty, likely headed back to its station for a night of rest. Sparks snapped off the line overhead like fireflies under siege.

I glanced across the street.

A cab sat idling near a café, its engine puffing into the frosty night. A single light still burned in the café window, golden and soft.

Will nudged me. “That one?”

I nodded.

He stepped into the street, hand up, and the cabbie waved us in with a tired glance.

As we slid into the back seat, I felt warmth crawl up my legs from the heater, sudden and almost too much. Will leaned back, head against the window. I could still see the strain in his jaw.

“We’ll get her,” I whispered.

His hand found mine in the space between us.

“I know,” he said.