Page 9

9

Will

T he train pulled into the station under a gunmetal sky. Pregnant clouds hung low and sour. The city beyond the windows looked like a still photograph—gray stone, stiff coats, and unsmiling faces, all pressed under the boot heel of Soviet order.

As the wheels screeched to a halt, Thomas stood from his seat with a quiet, practiced motion and adjusted his tie. I took a breath and followed suit, dusting off the sleeves of my American-bureaucrat-gray overcoat. Sparrow and Egret remained seated for a second longer. Sparrow’s jaw was tight, her face pale but composed. Egret looked like he was going to ask if the train had an in-car espresso bar, as if we hadn’t just survived a brush with a Soviet inspection unit.

Thomas gave them a look as he slung his briefcase strap over his shoulder. “We separate at the platform. Remember who you are. Hotel rooms are likely bugged, so speak accordingly, even when alone. No slips, even in the bathrooms.”

“Not even in the shower?” Egret asked, too lightly.

Thomas gave him a withering stare.

“ Especially not in the shower,” I added. “Just assume the tap water reports to Moscow.”

Egret grinned. Sparrow almost smiled. Almost.

We exited the train into a wave of cold, wet air and something heavier—the oppressive weight of being watched.

Keleti pályaudvar was far from a bustling station. People moved with purpose but without hurry, like they’d been trained to avoid drawing attention. The place reeked of coal smoke, iron, and fear—or maybe resignation.

Soviet soldiers stood near every archway, AKs slung in front of them. Their eyes moved, missing nothing, recording everything.

We split up without a word or backward glance.

Thomas and I headed east across the platform, toward the hired car waiting near the station’s side entrance. Egret and Sparrow peeled off to the left. Sparrow pulled her trench coat tight, while Egret lit a cigarette with theatrical flair.

The way we parted was like watching shadows detach from a wall—silent, smooth, professional.

“They’ll be fine,” Thomas murmured beside me, as if reading my mind.

“I know,” I replied. “But I don’t like not being able to watch their backs.”

He nodded but said nothing more. Neither of us liked this part.

The Gellért stood at the foot of Gellért Hill like a grand, old queen holding her breath—regal but wary. Her stone facade bore the scars of war, wounds that were patched and painted over but not erased. Inside, the lobby gleamed with too much polish. Marble floors, heavy velvet curtains, and brass fixtures—all a little too perfect—were likely designed to distract from microphones in the light fixtures.

At the front desk, a woman with thick eyeliner and sharper eyes checked us in without smiling. She barely glanced at our forged passports.

“Dr. Beckett, Mr. Calloway,” she said, handing over our key. “Room 305. Breakfast is from six to nine.”

“Lovely,” Thomas replied in his crisp, British tone. “I am sure the coffee is dreadful.”

She blinked once, then said, “Yes.”

Thomas arched a brow at me as we turned toward the elevator.

“Charming people,” I muttered.

“This place is one missed appointment away from a military prison,” he replied under his breath. “Keep your tie straight.”

We entered the lift and rode in silence. The elevator groaned like it resented us for making it move.

Our room was what one might expect: two twin beds, a writing desk, a chipped armchair, and heavy curtains that barely held back the pale light from the square below.

Thomas closed the door and flipped the lock, then paused, staring at the ceiling.

“Vent,” he mouthed, nodding upward, then pointed to several other likely hiding spots for our host’s listening devices.

I moved to the desk, opened a drawer, and found the usual courtesy items: a notepad, a single sharpened pencil, and a matchbook from the hotel’s bar. I struck one of the matches and held it near the vent. The flame bent inward.

Thomas nodded. The flame drew air, which meant there was likely a wire stashed inside.

So we don’t say anything stupid while we’re here , I thought.

Thomas grabbed the notepad and scribbled, “We need to arrange the meet now. Talk about the train ride or the weather, maybe the friendly reception. Nothing more. I’ll get the dead drop note ready.”

I nodded and went to the window, pulling aside the curtain to glance down at the square.

Two trams rolled past.

A mother herded two children across the street.

A man in uniform leaned against a lamppost, reading a newspaper upside down.

“Friendly neighborhood,” I said, motioning with my eyes toward our obvious tail.

Thomas joined me and shook his head, as if he’d hoped we wouldn’t have a minder wiping our asses the entire time we were in Hungary.

It was a false hope, and he knew it.

Manakin referred to our contact by his code name, “Lark.” He explained that Lark had worked with Hungarian resistance cells during the war, and now operating independently to smuggle out information—and possibly people. We had no photo, no last name, not even a fake name. All we were given was a signal phrase and a location for a drop.

Thomas opened his case and pulled out a thin strip of wax-coated rice paper that was barely thicker than a matchstick. On it, he wrote a short message in Hungarian, words Manakin made him memorize before we’d left. “Visitors arrived. Requesting tea. Tomorrow nine o’clock?”

The signal phrase was innocuous enough. If Lark found it, he’d reply at a secondary location.

The drop point was a bronze lion’s mouth at the foot of the Chain Bridge, just across the Danube, a centuries-old tourist feature repurposed for espionage.

I grinned and whispered into Thomas’s ear, “I love a little drama with my tradecraft.”

“You would.” Thomas rolled his eyes as he folded the paper into a cigarette. Once rolled, the note looked like any other smoke. He slid it into his silver case beside a few real ones.

We left the hotel with the calm precision of seasoned diplomats. We held no urgency, no lingering glances. Thomas spoke about supply chains and bureaucratic inefficiencies as we strolled along the banks of the Danube, past rusted streetlamps and rain-washed benches. Had we not been playing roles, avoiding Soviet minders, and planning for a terrifying mission, the trek might’ve been romantic.

My eyes scanned, taking in doorways, alley mouths, reflections in shop windows.

Was the man at the café scribbling in his notebook a student? Or a spotter?

Was the boy on the bike just riding in circles, or waiting for a signal?

Every face could’ve been a handler, every bystander an informant. The Soviet grip on Budapest was as much psychological as it was logistical. One didn’t need to be followed. One merely needed to think someone trailed close behind.

We reached the lion at the bridge’s base. Tourists often slipped letters and coins into its open mouth for good luck. Now it swallowed something far less innocent.

Thomas stood to one side, lighting a cigarette. I pretended to fuss with my shoe. In a smooth motion, he flicked the decoy cigarette downward, where it landed just inside the lion’s carved mouth.

We stood for a moment, watching the river, Thomas pretending to smoke.

As much as I might’ve enjoyed watching the river drift by, we didn’t linger. We turned, retraced our steps, and vanished back into the city’s stone face.

And all the while, I felt the weight of eyes on our backs.

We spent the afternoon acting, which is to say, we pretended not to be ourselves.

Which, in a way, meant we were being exactly who we were.

Thomas and I strolled the streets of Budapest like a pair of diplomatic oddballs set loose in a city we had no business understanding. We lingered in shopfronts we didn’t care about, pointed out buildings we already knew the blueprints of, and let ourselves marvel at things that, under different circumstances, might’ve actually stirred awe.

I played the wide-eyed American with all the subtlety of a Broadway star.

“Oh, would you look at that cornice,” I said loudly as we stood at the foot of the Várkert Bazár. “Is that . . . is that Baroque? Neo-Baroque?”

Thomas glanced at me from beneath the brim of his hat. “That’s a retaining wall.”

“I’m sorry you’ve forgotten how to feel joy, Charles,” I replied, stepping back to take in the buttress. “But the rest of us are doing our best to appreciate Hungary’s rich cultural tapestry.”

“You’re making a scene,” he muttered.

“You usually like it when I make a scene,” I said.

He didn’t answer, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. Which, from Thomas, was basically a belly laugh.

We walked farther up the hill, toward the Castle District, where the streets narrowed and the buildings leaned in a little, as if they, too, were keeping secrets.

Every alley whispered.

Every window seemed to blink.

I kept my shoulders relaxed, my eyes wide—an American abroad, enchanted and only slightly out of place. Inside, I was tracking every reflection in every window we passed.

I knew Thomas was, too.

There was a restaurant around the corner from the Gellért—quaint, dimly lit, full of wood paneling and lace curtains, the kind of place where politicians had their mistresses and Soviet informants keep long notebooks.

The ma?tre d’ greeted us with a polite but perfunctory nod and led us to a small table near the front window. The menu was in Hungarian and Russian. The silverware was mismatched.

Thomas studied the wine list like he was reviewing a legal brief.

“Red or white?” I asked.

“Whichever gets us through this without food poisoning.”

“Ah, so red, then.” I winked. “Better camouflage if it turns out to be a trap.”

He didn’t laugh.

We ordered a modest meal—goulash for him, something unpronounceable for me, which I ordered just to annoy him. He muttered something about intestinal regret and then changed the subject to train schedules.

Midway through the second course, I excused myself to the restroom, not because I needed to go, but because I needed to check. The countersign was supposed to be something “in view but overlooked,” something public enough to be hiding in plain sight but clever enough to avoid suspicion.

Lark’s reply, assuming he’d left one, would be found at an old newspaper stand across from the Chain Bridge—one of those half-rotted wooden huts with a posterboard on the side for political pamphlets and state-approved messaging. Lark was to tack a flier advertising a jazz concert from three years ago, featuring a now-dead American saxophonist, to the wall of posters. We’d picked that particular handbill because the Soviets had banned jazz in public spaces, calling it decadent Western noise. No one would dare post something like that—unless they wanted to get a message across.

I stepped outside into the night, my breath misting in the cold air. The kiosk stood where it had that morning, beside the tram stop. A dozen pamphlets fluttered in the breeze, but one that hadn’t been there earlier caught my eye.

A curled image of a horn player, mid-blow. Most of the piece was in Hungarian, but I recognized a city’s untranslatable name: New Orleans.

Glancing about, I snatched the flyer off the corkboard and shoved it into a pocket.

I returned to the restaurant, nodded to the waiter, and resumed my seat with a practiced smile.

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Everything come out all right?”

“Oh, you’re hilarious,” I replied, reaching for my wine. “Did you know Budapest has a thriving music scene?”

His other brow rose.

I grinned and fished the pamphlet out of my pocket, then handed it across the table.

“Who knew Hungarians loved American jazz?” I smiled, as though I’d made a discovery of alien life on Earth. Thomas huffed a half laugh and glanced down at the paper.

“New Orleans? In Budapest? These days?”

I shrugged. “Like I said, quite the music scene. Want to go?”

Thomas made a show of reading the playbill. “Sounds . . . interesting. Why not?”

He folded the flyer as though it had lost his interest, then, as if on a last-second whim, opened it and looked at the back. As quickly as he’d unfolded the paper, he refolded it and shoved it into his own pocket.

“Think they’ll have a sax player?” I asked, unsure how to even phrase, “Was there a spy hookup on the back?” without tipping off anyone who was likely listening.

Thomas—the fucker—grinned. “There will most definitely be a sax player. If he is the one I recall, he is world class. The show begins at nine o’clock.”

“Oh, that’s great. We’ll have time for a nice dinner, then head to the show.”

Thomas nodded, tapping the watch on his wrist. I was fairly sure that meant nine o’clock in the morning rather than evening, but what I’d said sounded plausible.

He sat back, eyes scanning the room out of habit. “I am afraid we can only afford one ticket. You know how tight the budget is.”

“One ticket?” I puzzled at that. “Oh, shit. Okay. I would have enjoyed seeing the show together, but if that’s all we can afford—”

“It is. You’ll have to sit this one out. I’ll make sure you enjoy the next one, all right?”

I didn’t like this, not even a little. Thomas was going to meet Lark, our unknown, unnamed contact, without anyone backing him up. My only comfort was that the meet would take place in the morning, in the light of day. If we were lucky, it would happen in a very public place where the Soviets or their Hungarian puppets were less likely to try anything dangerous, should they catch onto the foreign espionage occurring beneath their noses.

Thomas glanced at me, and for a flicker of a second, something vulnerable passed over his face.

“I don’t love this,” I said, unable to stop the words.

“I know,” Thomas said. “But . . . this lets me check out the show before you waste your time with a rubbish band. Think of this as me prescreening your entertainment.”

I snorted. That was a terrible cover story, and he would catch shit for it later, but for the moment, my job was to nod politely and sip my damn wine.

We lapsed into silence again, but this one was easier, familiar. It was a shared silence, not an empty one, the kind you earn over years of near misses and quiet dinners. I picked at the edge of a bread roll while the waiter refilled our glasses. Then I glanced toward the window, toward the street where we’d last seen Egret and Sparrow parting from us earlier that day.

“You think they’re all right?” I asked, almost casually. “Dr. Weiss and Juliette?”

Thomas gave a small shrug, but I saw the quick flick of his eyes—he’d been wondering, too.

“They’ll be fine,” he said. “Juliette’s sharp, and Dr. Weiss . . .” He paused, then smirked. “Well, he’s got enough sarcasm to keep anyone watching busy for days.”

I laughed, then shook my head.

“I just wonder what they’re up to right now.”

Thomas tilted his head. “Do you really want to know?”

“Maybe.”

He leaned in, lowering his voice like we were schoolboys sneaking gossip in the back row of class. “Will, we’re far too old to understand what the youth are doing in their hotel rooms these days.” He sipped his wine, looking satisfied with himself. “Their poor surveillance detail is probably going to need therapy after this.”

I barked a laugh that I immediately stifled behind a napkin. A Hungarian couple a few tables down flicked their eyes toward us, disapproving. I raised my glass in mock apology and returned my gaze to Thomas, my grin lingering.

Thomas, of course, was already back to his usual calm, like he hadn’t just suggested our colleagues were giving the KGB an unexpected sexual education.

“Do you really think they’re happy?” I asked, quieter now. “Them. Together .”

Thomas considered, his brow furrowed. “She looks at him like she’s already forgiven whatever comes next,” he said. “And he looks at her like he knows he doesn’t deserve her.”

I blinked. That was . . . surprisingly poetic for Thomas.

And uncomfortably accurate.

“Sounds a bit like us,” I murmured.

“We’re more dignified.” He raised his glass in my direction as a lopsided grin unfurled.

“You hide under stoicism, and I monologue about Baroque architecture.”

“A perfect disguise for two hopeless romantics,” he said with a small smile.

“Hope ful ,” I corrected before leaning back. Our laughter faded, leaving behind something softer. “I just wonder if their little piece of paradise is as pleasant as you think.”

Thomas folded his napkin, lined it up perfectly beside his empty plate, then looked at me. “No one gets paradise in this life, not in a world torn apart by old men and war,” he said. “But if they’re lucky, maybe they get the illusion of it.”

I stared at him for a beat, then raised my glass.

“To illusions, then.”

“To surviving them,” he replied.

We finished our wine as the last of the daylight vanished outside. The streets of Budapest took on a dusk-blue tone, just before lamps sparked to life. The city didn’t change at night—it revealed itself.

What it revealed, only the morning knew.