Page 7 of Shadowfox

“If he doesn’t want to go, what exactly are we supposed to do?” Sparrow asked, running a hand over her jaw in a very unladylike, un-French way. “We cannot simply kidnap this man. And how big is this machine of his? Could we not steal it instead?”

Her painted-on French accent was so discordant with the woman I remembered that my temples began to throb with each word.

Manakin flipped through a file until he found a photograph of the British machine created by Turing and his team to decode the German Enigma. It was much larger than I remembered, a box taller than an average man and as long as some cars. It was covered in gears in a mystical show of algorithmic magic. I picked up the photo and studied the image.

Manakin met Thomas’s gaze. “Your job is to convince him it’s in his best interest to leave. Make him want to come into the loving arms of the West. If necessary, show him what the Soviets are capable of. Last resort? Destroy the machine and kidnap him. One way or another, he will come back with you. Period.”

Raines flicked his cigarette against the ashtray, watching the embers scatter. “Let’s make this simple: If he hesitates, you remind him what is at stake. If he refuses, you extract him anyway.”

“Forced extraction,” Egret muttered, glancing at Thomas. “So a polite invitation, then?”

Raines smirked. “Something like that.”

I sighed, leaning back. “Who else knows we’re coming?”

Manakin shook his head. “No one outside this room. Soviet intelligence is already moving on him. They have been monitoring his progress since he started his project. Our sources inside the Soviet intel community report they believe he is their asset. He has a code name and everything. Hell, the Reds even gave the machine a code name.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and tossed the photo across the table at Manakin. “We’re doing this alone? Four Americans who don’t speak Hungarian and only know passable Russian?”

“I am French now,” Sparrow said, flicking her hair.

I bristled.

Thomas patted my arm. “Fine, I speak Russian. Egret is passable. But Sparrow and Emu—”

“This mission will be you four and no one else,” Manakin cut Thomas off. “If we send a larger team, we lose deniability. The moment Moscow knows we are trying to pull him out, they will shut the city down.”

Thomas exhaled sharply. “So it’s just us.”

Manakin nodded. “Just you.”

I tapped my fingers against the table. “And this inventor’s family?”

Manakin hesitated. “He has a daughter, Eszter. As far as we know, she’s not a target. Yet.”

That “yet” felt like a loaded gun on the table. We all knew what the Russians were capable of—what they would do to further their own interests. They talked a good game about protecting kids, holding them up as the future of their society; but if using a daughter against a father helped Stalin achieve his aims, he’d slaughter every last girl in Hungary.

I glanced at Thomas. His jaw had tightened, the muscle ticking ever so slightly.

Raines sat forward, his expression dark, giving voice to our obvious thoughts. “If the Soviets realize he’s thinking of defecting, they’ll use her against him.”

They’d use her. Then they’d kill her.

“Understood.”

Raines nodded toward Arty. “You’ll be going in with limited resources, so Stork has a few things for you.”

Thomas leaned back, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I hope it’s a small tank.”

“Not quite.” Arty grinned. “Mine is a more . . .subtleart.”

Then Arty hefted a leather case onto the table, unbuckled the straps, and flipped it open.

“I know you boys like to keep things simple,” Arty said, adjusting his glasses, “but considering Budapest is crawling with people who’d love to see you disappear, I thought you might appreciate a few upgrades.”

He lifted a shiny black fountain pen and held it between two fingers.

“This,” he said, “is your best friend.”

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