Page 124 of Shadowfox

“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 theprettyass,” 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’mnotwearing 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.

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