Page 69 of Shadowfox

We dressed without words. Will fixed his collar in the mirror with a smirk that said he was aware of how well it sat on him. When he caught me watching, his smirk grew even more annoying. I buttoned my coat and handed him his scarf. He looped it once, let it fall unevenly, and still looked like a film star lost in Soviet-occupied Europe. It took everything in me to not reach for the radio dial and restart our session from the night before.

Instead, I opened the window to check the weather and lost feeling in my teeth.

“Bracing,” I said.

“You say that like a man who enjoys suffering.”

I shrugged and grinned again. “Occupational hazard.”

Downstairs, the lobby was quiet. A sleepy concierge lifted a hand in greeting, barely looking up from his morning paper. The ashtray near the fireplace was still warm, but the fire had died to embers. A cat curled beside the radiator—how it got in, I had no idea—and didn’t stir as we passed.

We stepped into the cold with our coats pulled tight.

The sky was the color of tin, the sun a dull smudge behind it. The streets were wet from early frost, but the footpaths were dry enough to walk without slipping. Will fell into step beside me with ease.

“Any plan for the morning?” he asked.

“Walk. Breathe. Eat.” I paused. “No inspections. I can’t take another electrical plant tour, at least, not on an empty stomach.”

We didn’t have any tours planned. It was the weekend. My words were only for those close enough to hear. I desperately wanted to have a normal morning in which our gravest concern was the cook on our eggs.

“Just a typical Saturday in Budapest,” Will said.

Our tail followed at forty meters. It was the same man as last night, wearing the same coat, and walking at the same too-slow pace. Part of me wanted to ask him for a cigarette, if only to shatter any illusion that we didn’t know he was there, but we chose the professional route and ignored him.

We stopped at a café tucked between a newspaper stand and a tailor’s shop, where the lace curtains in the window looked like they hadn’t been washed since the Great War. The chalkboard outside promisedtojáshabos kávéandkenyérlekvárral—egg-foamed coffee and thick bread with plum jam. Inside, the tables were small and the chairs even smaller. The radio on the shelf by the counter crackled with a string quartet, something Hungarian and half forgotten.

We took a booth at the back. Our tail, apparently no longer wishing to freeze his hammer and sickle off, stepped inside and sat at a table by the door, far enough away that we could speak without being overheard.

Will sat sideways, his legs stretched under the table, one hand wrapped around his coffee mug, the other tracing idle shapes on the tabletop.

“Do you ever think,” he said, staring past me, “that if we made it through all this, we’d open a place like this? Run a café somewhere with bad lighting and a great playlist?”

“You hate customers.”

“So?” His lower lip protested. “You’d do the talking. I’d do the brewing.”

“You can’t even make tea without setting something on fire.”

“Minor detail.”

He looked at me then—truly looked—and his smile shifted. It became something softer, something that looked like amaybe.

I reached across and tapped the table twice, a habit from London. It was a signal—oursignal—that meant: I see you. I remember. Me, too.

And a hundred other feelings no words could capture.

After brunch, we wandered back into the city with the easy gaits of men who had nowhere urgent to be. Our route wound through side streets and half-frozen parks, up a cobbled hill and down again. To anyone watching, we were just tourists. Curious. Bored. Probably American. Possibly harmless.

But in the game we played, every turn was deliberate. Always.

I knew the spot. I’d chosen it myself before we’d ever left Paris. It was a quiet flower kiosk, where the awning was always red and the roses always a little too bright for winter. The owner changed the display every day. That was the trick.

Today, I was looking for a blue carnation in the front row of crimson blooms.

If it was there, it meant Lark had contacted Farkas. If the roses surrounding it were red, the meeting would be at midday. Yellow, it was dusk. No carnation at all: abort.

We rounded the corner. I didn’t look right away, just slowed, reached into my pocket for a coin, and pretended to fumble with my gloves.

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