Page 44 of Shadowfox

I turned, walked back the way I came. Not fast. Not slow. Just enough to say: Nothing happened here.

I couldfeelFarkas’s eyes on my back the entire time.

And the Soviets’, too.

Watching. Measuring. Waiting to see if the next act in my performance was worth applause . . .

. . . or a bullet.

15

Thomas

Thelightwasslippinglow by the time I saw him again.

Will rounded the corner near the eastern gate of the Gellért, his pace easy, hands in his pockets as though he was just another man in another city at the end of another day; but I saw the tension in his shoulders, the slight twitch of his mouth as he scanned the street before his gaze landed on me.

I stood beneath a dead streetlamp, watching from the shadow of a closed bakery. Will slipped beside me without a word, his hand brushing mine for the briefest moment before he exhaled through his nose—half relief, half exhaustion.

“He took the folder,” he said, without looking at me. “Didn’t say much. Didn’t have to.”

I gave a slight nod. “Any reaction?”

“Mild annoyance. Disdain for being interrupted. Then a long, uncomfortable silence.” Will tilted his head. “But when I held the folder out, he hesitated.”

“Because he didn’t want it?”

“No.” Will shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think, maybe, because he knew what it meant.”

“And he still took it.”

“With a gloved hand and no eye contact, but yes. He took it.”

We started walking, not toward the hotel but away from it, down a quiet side street that ran parallel to the tram line. The sun had already slipped behind the skyline, and Budapest was entering its evening hush—the hour when the shadows start whispering again.

Our ever-present Soviet minder appeared a couple of blocks away looking even more obvious than when he stood outside our hotel.

I glanced over at Will. His normally expressive face was unreadable.

“Did he say anything interesting?”

Will blew into his hands, warming them before answering.

“He said the pre-war junctions are brittle, that they’re all he has left.”

I turned my head, just slightly. “Did he mean the grid?”

“I’m pretty sure he meant everything. Look around. His whole country’s been devastated and lives under the Soviet boot,” Will said. “He sounded defeated.”

“They all sound like that here,” I said, trying to crack a joke but failing miserably. The place was entirely too sad to turn into a quip.

“Did he give any indication he knew what really was in the folder?” I asked.

“He didn’t even open it. When I offered it, he looked at it like it might burn his fingers, then took it anyway.” Will paused. “I didn’t have a lot of time with him, and he wasn’t in much of a mood to talk, but it was clear he’s a clever man. I think he knew.”

“Clever but not desperate?”

“Not yet,” Will said.

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