The apartment was a sterile box of white walls and Scandinavian furniture that smelled of lemon polish and nothing else. It was a place provided by the neutral Swiss, a functional expression of their neutrality, offering no comfort, only temporary concealment. Rain lashed against the picture window, turning the lights of Zurich into a bleeding watercolor. For the last hour, I had been sifting through the price of our fragile victory: the intelligence dossier from the Black Parliament. It was a mountain of paper, a monument to institutional paranoia. Reports from the CIA, MI6, the BND, and even the KGB, each one a carefully curated mix of truth, omission, and outright lies, all salted with just enough actionable data to prove cooperation.
Anja Petrova sat hunched over a microfiche reader at the other end of the long table, the machine’s low hum the only sound besides the rain. The projected light illuminated her face, casting the sharp planes of her cheekbones into stark relief. She was the signal hunter, the one who could see the ghost of a pattern in the noise. The dossier was a weapon, but a flawed one, and she was the only gunsmith who could true its sights. He watched her work, her focus absolute. She was a creature of data and discipline.
She stopped, her finger tapping the screen. A flicker of visual static, a ghost in the machine, danced across the projected text before settling.
— Here, — she said, her voice quiet but sharp. — This frequency. It appears in three separate reports. A CIA intercept from a listening post in Turkey, a British signals intelligence summary from Cyprus, and a redacted KGB internal memo. They all logged the same encrypted burst, just before the Kholodny-12 event.
Sineus moved to stand behind her, looking at the screen. The frequency was just a string of numbers, meaningless to him. But to her, it was a signature. She cross-referenced the number with a directory of known Soviet transmission sites. The machine whirred. A line of text appeared, stark and clear. Zurich Rezidentura. Secure Communications Terminal.
— It’s here, — Petrova said. — In the city. The signal is coming from the Soviet Embassy.
The embassy. A fortress of diplomatic immunity, a sovereign piece of the Union planted in the heart of the West. A place where the Black Parliament’s fragile truce meant less than nothing. Sineus felt the cold logic of the situation settle in his bones. The lead was good. It was also a perfect trap.
— The truce doesn’t apply to you, Doctor, — he said, his voice flat. He was not stating an opinion. He was repeating the promise he’d heard in General Volkov’s voice. — To them, you’re not a partner in this. You’re stolen property. They’ll be waiting for you.
Petrova looked up from the screen, her eyes meeting his. There was no fear in them, only a cold, hard calculation. She had weighed the risk before he even spoke. This was her choice, a move toward asserting her own will against the state that had tried to own her mind and her work.
— They will guard the borders, the airports, the rail lines, — she countered, her voice precise. — They will hunt for a ghost trying to flee. They will not be watching the front door. The most dangerous place in this city is now the safest for me. They won’t expect me to walk in.
Her resolve was absolute. It was the logic of a physicist who understood that the straightest line was not always the safest path. It was a gamble, but it was their only move. To hesitate was to let Kestrel win. To be inactive was to accept the subjugation of the world to his madness. The price of this choice was her life, laid down on the table as a bet. He gave a single, sharp nod. It was her decision to make.
He returned to the paper files, leaving her to the glowing screen. He sifted through the personnel reports, the faces of men and women who lived and died in the shadows. He was looking for a specific kind of threat, the kind the KGB would send to retrieve a high-value asset like Petrova. He saw her reflection in the dark window, saw her pause her own search. She had landed on a file.
He walked back over. On the screen was a photograph of a man in a general’s uniform, but it was the man standing beside him that held her attention. The file was for a KGB officer named Viktor Morozov. The photo was grainy, but the face was clear enough. It looked like it had been carved from a block of granite, a face built to express nothing but pressure. His function was listed in cold, bureaucratic print: Asset Recovery, Ninth Directorate. A clean name for a dirty job.
— I know him, — Petrova said, her voice a low whisper. She did not look away from the screen. — He was the one they sent when a project lead at Arzamas-16 tried to defect with his family. They found them in a farmhouse outside of Minsk. Morozov brought the scientist back. The family, he did not.
Sineus looked at the picture. This was not a spy. This was a bloodhound, a physical instrument of the state’s will. He was the man Volkov would send. The threat of the embassy was no longer an abstract danger. It now had a name and a face.
They spent the next hour working in near silence, the only sounds the rustle of paper and the click of the microfiche reader. The plan they built was simple, audacious. It was a two-pronged key, forged from his fieldcraft and her institutional knowledge. The embassy was hosting a minor diplomatic reception the next day. An opportunity.
— We go in as aides to the French delegation, — Sineus said, sketching a rough layout of the embassy’s ground floor. — Thorne’s man in Paris owes me a favor. He can get us the credentials. We use the crowd for cover.
— The communications room is on the second floor, west wing, — Petrova added, pointing to a spot on his drawing. — It’s restricted, but adjacent to the library. During a reception, the library is open. There is a service door connecting them. It is for catering staff. It is always left unlocked.
— We get to the terminal, you trace the signal’s origin, and we walk out, — he finished.
It was insane. It relied on a dozen things going right. It relied on the truce holding just long enough. It relied on Viktor Morozov being occupied elsewhere. But it was a plan. It was a move. In the quiet of the safe apartment, with the rain hissing against the glass like faint static, the decision settled. They would not wait to be hunted. They would walk into the lion’s den.
We had a plan. We were going to walk into the lion's den.
