Page 49 of Beehive

Once back in our room, I opened our window and cracked the door, propping it open with a book I’d found in the nightstand.The trickle of air that flowed through our room did little for the stench, but it offered a bit of a respite from the oppressive heat.

Summer had arrived and wasnotin a pleasant mood.

Thomas stepped out of the restroom, fully changed into dark clothing with a determined set to his jaw. He brushed invisible lint off his coat.

The lobby was dimly lit, a single bulb flickering over the reception desk. The clerk, now a thin man with wire-rimmed glasses and the demeanor of someone perpetually afraid of being reported, didn’t even look up as we strode by.

Out the corner of my eye, I caught the faintest movement in a mirror by the staircase. Sergei—or whoever the goldfish was—hadn’t even tried to conceal himself. He simply leaned against the wall by the front door, smoking, as if that were his job.

Maybe it was. The Soviets were strange like that.

Thomas opened the door for me with a mock flourish, and I stepped out. The sector was quieter than usual, the streets emptied by curfews and fear.

“Left or right?” Thomas asked under his breath.

“Left,” I said without hesitation.

We turned, walking at an unhurried pace, the kind that said we had nowhere to be and were in no rush to get there. I didn’t need to look back to know Sergei had followed. His presence felt like a hand between my shoulder blades.

I was sure Boris lurked somewhere nearby, too.

“We just left our hotel after curfew.” Thomas lit a cigarette, the flame of his lighter briefly illuminating his face. “Think they’ll send more men? Follow us into the park?”

“They’ll follow us into hell if they think we’re up to something.”

We passed by the first checkpoint easily enough. A pair of soldiers slouched against a gate, their rifles resting against a nearby stone wall as though forgotten. The men glanced at us as we strode by but did not try to engage or stop us. I thought thatstrange, given the hour, but Soviet ways were a mystery on the best of days.

We didn’t have to walk far, only a few blocks. The spire of an old church rose at the edge of the district, its silhouette jagged against the sky.

“It’s time,” Thomas said softly before stubbing out his cigarette against a lamppost and tossing the butt into the gutter.

We turned down a narrow alley, the kind that smelled like damp stone and regret. The light of the nearest streetlamp barely reached the ground.

I stopped walking and listened for the echo of footsteps behind us.

For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of my own breathing. Then—faint but unmistakable—the creak of a boot.

“Split,” Thomas whispered.

We didn’t hesitate.

He turned sharply at the next junction, his coat flaring briefly behind him before the darkness swallowed him whole. I kept going, my strides long and purposeful.

The trick to shaking a tail is simple: Make them think you don’t know they are there. Speed up just enough to make them work, but not so much that you give yourself away.

I rounded another corner and ducked into the recessed doorway of an abandoned building. My breath was steady, my pulse less so. I counted to ten, then stepped back onto the street.

The alley was empty.

I waited another few minutes. Time ground forward.

Still, no one appeared, and there were no more sounds of scuffing soles.

Hugging the wall that ringed the church, I crept forward, careful to roll my steps.

The grounds were eerily quiet, a place of shadows and whispers, of the wheeze of wind through trees. A stone halfwall came into view, partially obscured by overgrown shrubs. I watched Thomas slide onto a bench.

His long legs stretched out casually, but his eyes were scanning, always scanning.

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