Page 47
47
Thomas
I woke in pieces.
First to the ache. It was dull and hot, like a coal smoldering just beneath the skin.
Then to the throb—a rhythm out of sync with my pulse, hammering its own beat deep in the socket of my shoulder. Every time I breathed, it flared, sharp and wet, like something inside me was tearing again, piece by piece.
The blanket felt too heavy, too hot when I was under it, too cold when thrown off.
My arm didn’t feel like it was my own.
I tried to shift, and the world tilted. Sweat prickled my skin. I gritted my teeth and counted backward from ten, trying to ride the wave instead of drown in it.
Thank God, we had antibiotics.
That would keep me from dying of fever or rot, but there was nothing for the pain, not even aspirin. Sparrow had apologized, but not gently—the way you do when you know an apology won’t help. And Will . . . he hadn’t left my side, which was probably the only reason I hadn’t completely unraveled in the dark. I blinked against the low light of the room.
The safe house was still, but my body was a war zone.
I was still counting my breaths when I felt a shift beside me. The blanket rustled, then stilled again. A warm palm slid across my ribs and up to my chest—tentative and gentle.
Will.
His voice was a whisper. “You’re awake.”
“So are you,” I rasped. My throat felt like sandpaper.
His head lifted, silhouetted in the gray pre-dawn light spilling through the curtained windows. He looked down at me with eyes I knew better than my own reflection. Tired. Alert. Terrified in the way only someone in love could be.
“You were grinding your teeth in your sleep,” he said. “Could’ve cracked a molar.”
I exhaled something that might’ve been a laugh. “Pain’s not exactly optional.”
“No, but motion is.”
I tried to sit up.
Will pressed a hand to my chest—firm but not harsh. “Don’t.”
“I need to—”
“What you need is to stay alive long enough to escape this damned country.”
I stared at the ceiling.
He didn’t move his hand.
“I hate being still,” I muttered.
“I know.”
“It makes me feel like I’ve already lost.”
“Then we lose together.” Will leaned in, his forehead brushing mine. “For a few minutes, can we just lie here and pretend we’re back home, in bed, craving fresh croissants and rich coffee?”
I closed my eyes and let that moment hold me, ground me against the ever-present pulsing of my shoulder.
The world was quiet except for the ticking of some unseen clock, the hum of a pipe in the wall, and the sound of his breath beside mine.
Until a knock at the door ruined all of it.
Sparrow’s voice slipped through—muffled but unmistakable. “Rise and shine, wounded prince. Planning waits for no man, even one who got himself ventilated.”
Will didn’t lift his head. I felt his smile against my chest where he’d rested his head.
“Still think I should’ve taken the bullet?” he asked.
I opened one eye. “You’d make a terrible patient.”
“That’s fair.”
He helped me sit up, slow and careful, supporting every inch of me like I was made of glass.
Maybe I was.
But if I cracked, it would be with him holding the pieces, and that gave me an odd sense of comfort and calm.
“We should get up. The others are—”
“You’re not going anywhere, sailor,” Will said, lifting himself off me to sit upright. “We can bring kitchen chairs in here and talk all you like, but your pretty ass is staying in this bed if I have to strap you down.”
Despite the pain, I grinned. “I can’t tell which I like better: you calling my ass pretty or threatening to strap me down.”
He shook his head through a chuckle. “When this is all over and your shoulder is healed, I’m going to punch you for that one.”
“Yes, sir. Punish me, please, sir. Whatever you want, sir.”
“Fuck off,” he said, barking a laugh loud enough to get Sparrow to crack the door and peek through.
“You two okay in here?” she asked.
“Fine.” I snorted. “Your patient is being a pain in the ass.”
“A pain in the pretty ass,” he corrected.
Sparrow cocked a brow.
I shook my head. “You don’t want to know. Trust me.”
The others gathered around me, dragging sturdy, mismatched wooden chairs to surround my cloud of blankets. Farkas tried to get Eszter to stay outside, to read a book they’d found somewhere in this foreign home, but the stubborn girl would have none of it. So, there we were, five sets of eyes staring at their wounded leader.
Will poured strong coffee into chipped mugs and pressed one into my good hand before taking the seat beside me. Sparrow sat forward in her chair, back straight, eyes bright. Egret slumped with his arms crossed, drumming the fingers of one hand on his other arm. Eszter sat curled on a stool, legs folded beneath her butt and a blanket around her shoulders like armor.
No one spoke at first.
I took a sip of coffee, winced, then handed the mug back to Will. It had been a good idea—and a very bad one.
“We need to get out,” I said.
“Brilliant thought.” Egret snorted. “Really narrows it down.”
“We can’t trust Lark.” I ignored his jibes. Egret meant well, to lighten the mood. It wasn’t his fault that he was socially retarded and had no idea how his quips came across most of the time. For whatever reason, we understood and were grateful for the big lug, snarky comments and all. “And we don’t have a clear line to Manakin. That means whatever we do, we’re on our own.”
“And you know the Soviets are crawling all over this city, probably miles around it, too,” Sparrow added. “Checkpoints, patrols, surveillance sweeps. They know someone got László and Eszter. They know someone shot up four of their men. Our minders will be in full panic mode, knowing they’ve lost us and will likely not see us return to our hotels.”
It sounded strange, hearing Sparrow use Farkas’s first name. None of us had called him anything but either his code name or surname throughout our time in-country, but I supposed we were past the niceties of tradecraft at that point and held my tongue.
“Shit,” Will muttered.
She went on. “If they’re as good as we know they are, they’ve probably already pieced it all together, figured out that we were the ones responsible for the whole thing. The only thing left for them to learn is where we are.”
“Nothing like a ticking clock.” Egret shrugged. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”
Will looked at him. “And how do you propose we do that? Disguise ourselves as fog?”
“No,” Egret said with a grin. “Priests.”
Sparrow blinked. “What?”
Egret gestured wildly. “Think about it—people trust priests. Nobody searches a confession box. We dress up like a mobile clergy unit. Toss a white collar on Condor, make Emu the acolyte, Sparrow’s a nun—”
“I’m not wearing a habit,” Sparrow cut in.
“You’d look great in one.” He nudged her with his shoulder, a suggestive grin curling his lips.
“Still no.” She rolled her eyes at his flirtation.
I raised a hand. “Focus, people.”
Will leaned forward. “What about forged papers? Austrian IDs or Swiss humanitarian credentials. I know someone who taught forgeries in the OSS—”
“Unless you know someone here in Budapest who could make those papers, I don’t see how we could even start down that road,” I said.
“Say we did know a forger. There are still too many checkpoints,” Sparrow added. “Even if the papers hold up, they’ll have sketches of our faces everywhere within days. There’s no way we’ll be able to slip past without being recognized, especially with her.” She nodded toward Eszter.
Silence followed, and I could feel the weight settling in again.
“Boat?” I offered. “Up the Danube. Find someone who knows the old crossings.”
Egret frowned. “The river will be under surveillance. The Reds have been fighting smugglers since they occupied the place. Plus, there are probably minefields in some sections, post-war gifts from Hitler they still haven’t cleared out.”
Sparrow stepped away from the stove. “What if we don’t go out? What if we hide? Wait it out until heat dies down?”
“Not an option.” I shook my head, wincing at the sudden movement. “They’ll tear this city apart, find us eventually.”
Eszter, quiet until now, spoke from behind her mug.
“What if we . . . get inside something?”
We all looked at her. A child at a table of spies who was unafraid to speak, to suggest, to contribute. I couldn’t stop a small smile from forming as I encouraged her, “Okay. Go on.”
“Like,” she said, “a delivery truck. Or . . . or a coffin. Something no one would want to open.”
Egret made a sound. “Please tell me you’re not suggesting we fake our own funerals.”
“Who says we’d be faking yours?” Will jabbed.
Egret grinned. “Good one. You’re getting better.”
Eszter was undaunted. “I’m saying . . . people don’t check the dead. Or the boxes full of grain. Or . . . or museum crates.”
Sparrow cocked her head. “She’s not wrong.”
“Not wrong is a long way from right,” I muttered.
“What about a traveling circus?” Will offered, cracking a grin. “Slap a beard on Sparrow, make Egret dress in one of those skimpy wrestler outfits and pretend to be strong.”
“Hey!” He unfurled his arms and flexed one, balling a bicep into an impressive mass.
“That’s cute,” I teased. “But it might fool some people into thinking you’re a strong man.”
Sparrow joined in my ridiculousness. “We juggle our way to freedom.”
“I can juggle,” Egret said seriously.
“Of course you can.” Will chuckled, but the tension didn’t really lift.
“Those are great ideas, Eszter.” Sparrow nodded toward the girl in an almost maternal gesture, then rubbed her forehead. “What about . . . what about a pilgrimage group?”
I blinked. “A what?”
“There’s a pretty well-known one that goes from here to a Marian shrine in Mariazell, Austria, every year. I read about it in some of the papers Manakin gave us to get up to speed on the culture here. I bet the Soviets still allow it to happen. They might not love other religions, but even Stalin gets the local value of religious tolerance in a country he’s trying to control, Soviet PR and all.”
“Huh.” Egret sat forward, all humor replaced by deep thought—a look I found particularly amusing on the grumpy guy.
“We could hide among the travelers, alongside priests, a bunch of nuns, some poor children . . . No one would look too closely.”
“How far is it from here to Mariazell?” I asked.
Sparrow hesitated, then said, “A little over two hundred miles.”
“Two hundred—?” Will gasped. “With Thomas delirious and a teenage girl in tow?”
“I can walk,” I said, not quite believing my own words. It was one thing to walk from the bedroom to the den, but a twenty-six-day jaunt across foreign territory under the watchful eye of Soviet soldiers? The whole thing sounded more mad with every passing moment.
“It’s freezing outside,” Will protested. “There’s no way we’ll last that long. This is insane.”
Farkas finally spoke, turning every head. “The pilgrimage will be filled with the elderly and frail. The priests will be prepared to help them, to keep the pace reasonable, to ensure no one falls behind. They do this every year and are quite good at it.”
Another silence filled the room as each of us sorted through the mental math.
This still sounded mad to me.
“I hate this,” Will said, locking eyes with me. “You don’t have enough pain meds to make it that far. What are you going to do a week from now when we’re stranded on the side of a road in the freezing rain or snow?”
I tried to smile. “I’ll have you, remember?”
Will’s eyes narrowed, and his scowl deepened.
“The border is only two-thirds of the way. Once we’re in Austria, we’ll be safe,” Farkas said.
Sparrow leaned forward. “What’s to say we take the pilgrimage out of Budapest long enough to find a bus station or car to steal?”
“The border checkpoint—” Will began.
Sparrow cut him off. “You’re assuming the Soviets will have distributed flyers a hundred seventy miles from Budapest within a few days of learning about all this. Do we really think they’re that good?”
“If they are, we’re dead,” Will retorted.
A moment passed before Egret’s voice cut through the room. “It’s your call, Condor. I follow where you lead.”
It was an unusual show of support, almost submission, on Egret’s part. I looked up and gave him a grateful nod. He nodded back, as if to say, “I’ve got you, brother.”
“All right. We go with the pilgrimage cover, but we look for any opportunity to slip away and cut the trek short. None of us need to be out in the cold any longer than necessary.”
Farkas stood and resumed his pacing.
Eszter blinked without a word.
Will snorted. “So we’ve gone from papers and forgeries to hiding in wheat sacks and now praying our way out of Hungary.”
“It’s not the worst idea,” I said.
“Which part?” Will asked.
“The praying.” I brought my hands together in mock prayer, a wave of pain swiftly punishing me for the sudden movement.
Sparrow sat back. “So what do we do?”
All eyes—even Egret’s—turned to me. I was their leader, the strategic mind of the group. They weren’t just looking to me for answers; this was my call. The weight of expectation, of the risk to my friends’ lives, pressed down even heavier than the pain coursing through my shoulder.
“The pilgrimage thing is crazy but plausible,” I said. “It’s something they won’t expect—but it also fits a narrative, something they can’t stop without looking terrible on the world stage, and we all know how Stalin feels about that right now.”
Will shifted in his chair. “It’s something visible, not hidden.”
Egret nodded. “You’re thinking misdirection.”
“Exactly,” I said.
We fell quiet again. No one said it, but the seed had been planted, and just like that, we stopped trying to hide and started thinking about how to vanish in plain sight.
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