Complicating Factors Read online

  The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2, Episode 2: Complicating Factors © 2017 text by Serial Box Publishing, LLC.

  All materials, including, without limitation, the characters, names, titles, and settings, are the exclusive property of Serial Box Publishing, LLC. All Rights Reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part, in any audio, electronic, mechanical, physical, or recording format. Originally published in the United States of America: 2017.

  For additional information and permission requests, write to the publisher at Serial Box Publishing 175 Varick St. 4th Fl, New York, NY, 10014.

  Serial Box™, Serial Box Publishing™, The Witch Who Came In From The Cold™, and Join the Plot™ are trademarks of Serial Box Publishing, LLC.

  ISBN: 978-1-68210-136-0

  This literary work is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, incidents, and events are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Written by: Max Gladstone

  Cover Illustration by: Mark Weaver

  Art Director: Charles Orr

  Lead Writer: Lindsay Smith

  Editor: Juliet Ulman

  Producer: Julian Yap

  The Witch Who Came In From The Cold original concept by Lindsay Smith and Max Gladstone

  Thank you for downloading this episode from Serial Box Publishing.

  Please visit us at serialbox.com to never miss an episode!

  The Witch Who Came In From The Cold

  The Cold War rages in the back rooms and dark alleys of 1970s Prague and crackling beneath the surface of it all is a vein of magic, raw and waiting to be tapped. Covert agents from the CIA and KGB are fighting two wars: one between the United States and the Soviet Union, and another between ancient magical societies, the Consortium of Ice and the Acolytes of Flame.

  Previously on The Witch Who Came In From The Cold

  Edith Lowell arrived from Langley to investigate the mole Dominic Alvarez and the ANCHISES mishap as Terzian, a leader of the Flame, arrived to take the Prague operation in hand. The Flame’s attempt to steal the Hosts being held in stasis by the Ice went awry when a mysterious interloper set the barge on fire. In the ensuing chaos, they managed to make off with three while the rest were either killed or left with the Ice. Tanya returned from Moscow to a precarious and personal Cold War as she resumed working under Sasha, her boss at the KGB and a secret Flame Acolyte who attempted to have her killed last season.

  Who’s Who on The Witch Who Came In From The Cold

  Tanya Morozova – KGB intelligence operative and member of the Ice

  Gabe Pritchard – CIA operative and reluctant Ice recruit.

  Nadia Ostrokhina – Tanya’s friend in the KGB, and the Ice

  Joshua Toms – Rookie CIA operative with a secret

  Franklin Drummond, “Frank” – CIA Station Chief for Prague

  Zerena Pulnoc – Flame Acolyte and wife to the Soviet ambassador

  Alestair Winthrop – MI6 operative and Ice Sorcerer

  Andula Zlata – Czech student and elemental Host

  Jordan Rhemes – Neutral witch and wwner of Bar Vodnář

  Edith Lowell – American Counterintelligence agent

  Terzian – High ranking Acolyte of the Flame

  The Witch Who Came In From The Cold

  Season 2, Episode 2

  Complicating Factors

  Max Gladstone

  Prague, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic

  April 4, 1970

  1.

  The CIA needed a union.

  Josh, on his fourth cup of coffee and second Tylenol of the morning, wobbly-limbed and poor of focus as he climbed the embassy steps, would go thirteen rounds with anyone who suggested otherwise. Back in the 1890s, when long factory shifts wrung blood from brows and tired men and women lost their hands to hungry gears, American workers unionized, fought, and died for a living wage and a forty-hour workweek. Unions saved lives.

  And if unions saved lives on the factory floor, how many more would they save in the field? If Josh put his foot wrong on an assignment, he might die, and his assets might talk, then die, and an American carrier group somewhere might die too. If he misread a critical piece of paper, the whole world might fall apart. A buddy of his, who spoke better Russian, said that the whole “we will bury you” line hadn’t been meant so threateningly in the original—had been some kind of weird literary reference. One translator’s screwup and the world took a collective step toward mutual thermonuclear annihilation. And spies were translators, after a fashion: They interpreted the language of the world to higher-ups back home who decided what sense to make of it.

  Forty-hour workweek? Maybe less. Josh had friends in private industry; they worked forty hours and joked about slips on the job. Joked! But then, of course they joked. In their world, a slip on the job didn’t kill.

  There was, technically, a government employee’s union. But Josh’s headache suggested that the spy profession sported sufficient idiosyncrasies to demand its own collective bargaining.

  Sufficient idiosyncrasies—damn. He really was tired.

  As he searched his pocket for his office keys, he realized Edith had passed him, and said hi; he turned to respond, but she was already gone. He found his keys in the first pocket he’d checked, but only after he checked every other pocket and worked his way back around to the first. He shoved the key into the lock, but the doorknob didn’t turn when he turned the key.

  The doorknob didn’t turn because someone else was holding it.

  Josh followed the hand up the arm to the shoulder and, after losing his way once or twice, found himself face-to-face with Frank.

  The CIA station chief did not look happy. Josh would not have included this information in a report: Not looking happy was sort of Frank’s baseline state.

  “We need a union,” Josh said.

  Frank looked even less happy. “We have a union.”

  “We need a better union.”

  “You need to get on the job.”

  “I was on the job,” Josh said, “last night. Drahomir passed us production figures. It’s all in my report.”

  “We have to back-burner Drahomir,” Frank said. “Come into my office.”

  “I was just going to.” Josh made a vague gesture with his briefcase. “And then get coffee.”

  “That can wait.”

  The windows in Frank’s office seemed narrower than ever. Josh set his briefcase down by the door. “Sir, with all due respect, it’s been a long night—”

  “Longer for the Russians.”

  “Sir?”

  Frank tossed a folder on the desk. Black-and-white photographs spilled out. Josh knew the Vltava’s course from maps, but he needed a breath to orient himself, looking at the photos. “This is the riverbend at Kralupy nad Vltavou. Is that boat on fire?”

  “Flyover took these two nights ago,” Frank said. “With an experimental low-light film. This is as clear a picture as we could manage. Those sparks on the bank, we think they’re muzzle flashes. SIGINT suggests the Russians and the Czechs are hunting the culprits; we don’t know what was on that barge, and it sounds like they don’t, either. Between that and the firepower in evidence here, we’re seeing some interesting possibilities.”

  As Josh paged through the photos, the barge burned, like some sick flip-book. What about the sailors? Had they survived? How had the barge smelled, at night, aflame? Were there screams? Irrelevant questions, for the moment. He forced himself to consider relevant ones. “Czech guerrillas?”

  “Or organized crime. Either way, we suspect two groups at play, neither of which seems—and I w
ant to stress the seems, here, Josh—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “—to be on the Soviet side. We don’t have solid leads on the attackers, yet, but we think the barge passed through Prague a few weeks ago, which means its contents should have been registered—but the customs forms show it full of tapioca.”

  Josh returned to the first picture, of the flames. “Seems a lot of trouble to go to for tapioca.”

  “Some organization moved a shipment of something through Prague without the Soviets knowing, and another organization tried to snatch whatever they were moving. The Soviets and their cronies like being the only game in town. The way they see it, it’s one short hop from organized crime to armed resistance. And even if these aren’t guerrillas we could finance, they could be a way to move people, and information, across the Iron Curtain. So look into it. If there are Prague mobsters, let’s get them on our side.”

  Josh stood. He needed more coffee, but the stuff in his system already wasn’t doing him any favors. His heart rate spiked. Furniture grew sharp edges. “Frank, I really don’t think that’s a good idea. This is really—this is not my line of work.”

  Frank perched on the edge of his desk, and waited.

  “I know I got more involved with fieldwork around ANCHISES, but that was a stopgap.”

  Frank crossed his arms.

  “And I had support, and you know the Russians will pay attention on this one—”

  “You’ll have support,” Frank said. “You’ll do fine. We have leads. All I want is for you to look around. Make contact if, and only if, you feel comfortable. You’ve done a good job with Drahomir. The Czechs like you. Use that.”

  “This is Gabe’s thing, not mine.”

  “Gabe.” Frank, Josh realized, stood very still. “Gabe, much as I would wish otherwise, is… stuck with the counterintelligence investigation. Even though he was at the center of the botched op, the dead defector, Alvarez’s betrayal, our own suspicions. Langley wants him on the job. I passed it up the vine to my old buddy in SACEUR, but unless and until he can do anything, we proceed as ordered. Neither of us wants Gabe there, but we have to trust,” which he said with a straight face that clearly took effort to maintain, “the investigation. Edith is a very good officer. But Gabe is out of the picture for the moment. We need to move on this question, now. And that means you. Which is half my reason for bringing this to you.”

  Josh felt pinned by Frank’s eyes. “What’s the other half?”

  “The other half,” Frank said, “is that Edith is a very good officer.”

  “You said that already, sir.”

  Frank didn’t look away. “You know anything about dachshunds?”

  “The wiener dogs?”

  “Dachs means badger in German. When badgers fight dogs, they go at the throat from underneath. So the Germans made a dog built low to the ground, a dog the badger’s tricks don’t work against. Edith has deep roots in the Company. She doesn’t like people. She’s determined, and perceptive. Men in our line of work have ways of keeping secrets, and those ways don’t work on her. So. While she’s in town I think you need to get out of the office more. Into the field.” His lips curled up, but the humor, if there were any, did not reach his eyes. “You’re looking a little pale.”

  “Sir?” Josh could pretend, one way or the other, but he knew what Frank meant. He’d been discreet—he’d tried to be discreet. His whatever-you-called-it with Alestair Winthrop, that passed casual muster as a less-dangerous liaison for the sake of interagency cooperation. But he’d grown too confident here, with Frank’s tacit knowledge, and Gabe’s. If Edith learned he liked men, there’d be no escape. “Fine,” he said. “Give me the file.”

  Frank passed it along. “I’ll give you all the help I can.”

  “We should have a better union.”

  “Spies don’t get one,” Frank said. “We love our jobs too much.”

  • • •

  Gabe hated his job.

  There were too many goddamn papers, for one thing. He was used to a certain amount of paper shifting in day-to-day spy work, expense reports and documentation being, as someone he’d disliked once told him, the lifeblood of bureaucracy, but the reams and piles and boxes of paper an internal affairs investigation required made the worst red tape he’d ever faced seem charmingly rules-light by comparison. From where he sat, he could barely see the office window. Paper ramparts walled him in. These pages held everything they knew about Dom. Everything they could find about everyone Dom had ever worked with. Everything they could find about Dom’s landlord, about Dom’s pets, Dom’s family, Dom’s phone records. Gabe hadn’t exactly liked the guy in person, and here he was, now the world’s biggest goddamn Dom Alvarez expert.

  He stood, stretched his back and popped his shoulders, and rounded the rampart to the window.

  “Did you find something?”

  The second reason he hated his job looked up from her work for the first time in three hours. Edith Lowell, Langley’s agent of everything-but-mercy, wore a blazer, a sweater, a blouse, and a thin string of pearls. She was starting to wear on Gabe’s nerves.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Someone more like Tanya, maybe, or Nadia, that jagged professional edge. If Edith had arrived furious, with Gabe and with Prague Station, that might have made sense. If she had been cold, he would have understood that, too. But Edith didn’t chew scenery. Edith made no pronouncements. She didn’t pledge to catch her man or get to the bottom of this; she’d never made hay of Prague Station’s incompetence. She just worked.

  She worked constantly, and perfectly. She worked for hours at a time in utter silence, sipping maybe every twenty minutes from a mug of long-cooled black tea, no milk, no sugar. She never touched her face or her hair. She sat with her back arched slightly, head so still Gabe could have balanced a book on top of it. Sometimes she rubbed a pearl earring between thumb and forefinger. That was the closest thing she had to a nervous twitch. Edith made no sound save for page turns. Edith never cleared her throat, never coughed, and Gabe, whose hearing was just fine, thank you very much, couldn’t hear her breathe. Two hours ago he’d thought she might have gone to the bathroom, or for more tea, and glanced over the rampart to check, but she was still there, still silent, still working.

  Perfect. Then again, Dom had been perfect too—a different kind of perfect, the perfect jingoistic ex-jarhead, complete with cigar stub. The Marines turned out guys like him by the twelve-pack. He had also been a Flame agent in disguise, and Gabe had never suspected a thing.

  He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  “Not a damn thing,” he said. “His service record is pretty much spotless. The closest thing I can find to a blemish is a poor fitness report from a CO who didn’t like Cubans, which the base commander overturned. If I never read the word exemplary again, it’ll be too goddamn soon.” He waited for Edith to react to the curse. She didn’t. “I don’t think there’s anything in there.”

  “We’re not just looking for bad marks on his service record,” she said, with that sharp Kennedy accent. None of the Boston kids he knew in the service talked like that. “We’re looking for connections between his service record and his other files—bonds that might have been turned against him, people he might have subverted. Now that we’ve established his background, we’ll investigate the records of any close contacts he developed in his early days of service.”

  “Half the guys Dom served with have command rank now. You want us to look at all of them?”

  “If we must.” She turned from her open file. “If you’re tired of reviewing his service records—”

  “Yes.”

  She slid a thick folder out from beneath the one whose contents she was reviewing. “We got this from Karovich in the Transportation Ministry: entrance and exit visas surrounding Dom’s time in Prague. Dom’s pilot was East German—or at least the papers he filed with the tower in Prague were. We’re looking for relevant nationals.”

  Gab
e glanced from the inch-thick folder to Edith’s sharp green eyes. Even if he’d known what he was looking for there, he wouldn’t have been able to find it.

  He took the folder and walked to the window. Edith returned to her work.

  The early spring street outside the embassy taunted him. It wasn’t nearly so warm as it looked, but the sun shone, and the skies were blue behind the clouds. Even the pavement seemed welcoming, and the people, who still hadn’t warmed enough to shed their thick winter coats, almost looked happy. He wanted to be out there, almost happy himself, among those people, milling, reading newspapers, just strolling, hands pocketed, eyes skyward, or like that guy over there, waiting at the corner, smoking—

  Gabe blinked.

  Waiting at the corner, smoking a cigarette, wearing a bright red pocket square and a bright red tie.

  “Do you smoke?”

  Edith did not look up. “No.”

  “Mind if I do?”

  “A bit,” Edith said.

  Thank God. “I’m stepping outside for a half hour. All this paper’s getting to me. I need to clear my head.” He used his most offhand tone of voice, but expected an argument.

  “Go ahead. There’ll be plenty of work left when you get back.”

  And more after that, and more. As if his absence meant nothing, which meant his presence meant nothing, which raised a whole bunch of questions whose implications he did not want to consider. Most proximately: she didn’t trust him.

  He needed to fix that somehow. How, exactly, remained a mystery.

  Well, he thought, with what even he realized was gallows humor, if he had to clean up this mess anyway, he might as well make it a little worse, first. He cursed, grabbed his coat, and went to find Tanya Morozova.

  2.

  Josh went looking for the mob.

  Frank had dossiers on organized crime, or at least slightly-less-disorganized crime, in Prague, tracing back to before the war. There was a black market here, as anywhere—people traded, banded together, built trust and expanded. Some organizations boasted ancient histories by the standards of the trade, resistance fighters who never let their networks lapse, or the grand old scumbags of empire. The Soviets made criminals of their own, too, and like everything Soviet-made, their crooks tended to be overbuilt, under-designed, and graceless. These were back-alley crooks, the kind of people who’d break kneecaps over a crate of counterfeit Levis and smuggled Beatles LPs. Certainly none of the groups on file had the gumption to attack river shipping, even under the cover of darkness.