The credentials felt like a lie pressed into my palm, a thin piece of cardstock separating me from a bullet in the back of the head. I walked through the grand entrance of the Soviet Embassy in Zurich with the stiff posture of a man impersonating a minor French functionary. The air inside was warm and thick, smelling of floor wax, expensive perfume, and the faint, cloying sweetness of champagne. A massive blood-red banner bearing the hammer and sickle hung from the second-floor balcony, a silent declaration of ownership over this small patch of Swiss soil. Anja Petrova and I were ghosts at a party, hiding in plain sight among the thirty or so diplomats and their wives who drifted across the polished marble floor.
Their objective was simple, their position impossible. They had to reach the secure communications terminal on the second floor, trace Kestrel’s signal, and walk back out. Every face in the crowd was a potential enemy, every polite smile a mask. Petrova moved with a confidence that chilled him. This was her world, the architecture of her former masters. She navigated the clusters of chattering guests not like an intruder, but like a woman walking through her own home, her expression a perfect blend of polite boredom and professional focus. She belonged here in a way he never could. It was this familiarity that kept them from being noticed.
Sineus was her shadow, his senses stretched thin, listening to the cadence of the conversations, the mix of French, German, and clipped Russian. He scanned the room, his gaze sweeping over the faces, the exits, the placement of the uniformed KGB guards. The guards were easy. They were furniture, trained to watch for overt threats. The real danger was the men who looked like they were doing nothing at all. He felt a low hum of psychic residue in the air, the faint static of countless secrets and lies soaked into the very walls of the building. It was a background noise he had learned to ignore, but here it felt different. Heavier.
Petrova led them toward the grand staircase, her pace unhurried. A portly man with a Legion of Honour pin on his lapel intercepted them, his French a booming fog of pleasantries. Sineus offered a tight smile and a noncommittal nod, letting Petrova handle it. She murmured something about a scheduled call with Paris, her voice a smooth, practiced dismissal. The man bowed slightly and moved on. The price of their cover was constant performance, a resource that drained faster than ammunition.
They reached the top of the stairs. The reception was concentrated in the main ballroom to their right. To their left was the quiet, wood-paneled corridor leading to the library and the secure wing. It was less crowded here. The air was cooler. And then he saw him.
Standing near an archway, observing the main hall, was a man who seemed to absorb the light around him. He was built like a concrete pillar, his broad face a mask of brutalist angles, his dark suit immaculate. It was Viktor Morozov. The bloodhound from the Ninth Directorate. The man who didn’t bring the families back. He wasn’t looking at them. He was scanning the crowd with a patient, predatory stillness, his eyes missing nothing. The file photo hadn’t done him justice. The picture was a shadow; this was the thing that cast it. The risk of the mission had just escalated from critical to absolute.
Sineus felt a cold knot tighten in his gut. He didn’t need to touch Petrova, didn’t need to speak. She felt the change in him, the sudden tension. Her eyes flickered towards Morozov for a barest fraction of a second, a micro-expression of recognition, before she turned away. Her composure was flawless. She altered her course without breaking stride, leading him away from the main corridor and toward a small, unmarked door. A service elevator. The move was instant, instinctual. It was the only reason they were still breathing.
The elevator was a small, cramped box, smelling of grease and disinfectant. The doors slid shut, encasing them in a sudden, profound silence. The muffled sounds of the reception vanished. For a moment, there was only the low hum of the motor and the sound of their own breathing. Petrova leaned against the wall, her eyes closed. The mask of the confident aide had fallen away, leaving the stark face of a defector in the belly of the beast. The detour had cost them time they didn't have. Morozov was here, which meant the KGB knew something. They were no longer just hunting Kestrel; they were actively being hunted themselves.
— He wasn’t supposed to be here, — she whispered, her voice tight.
— They know, — Sineus said. It wasn’t a question. — They know you’re a possibility.
The elevator stopped. The doors opened onto a sterile, empty hallway on the second floor. This was the back of the house, a world away from the chandeliers and champagne below. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a flat, shadowless glare on the linoleum floor. They moved quickly, their soft-soled shoes making no sound. Two doors down, they found it: a heavy steel door with a small, stenciled sign in Cyrillic. Communications.
The room was empty. A bank of humming machines lined one wall, reels of magnetic tape spinning slowly behind glass panels. The air was cool and smelled of ozone, the scent of electricity hard at work. It was a gift, a brief window of opportunity. Sineus’s hand went to the pistol tucked in the small of his back. He stood by the door, listening, his senses pushed out into the hallway, feeling for the psychic signature of approaching footsteps.
Petrova didn’t hesitate. She went straight to a specific terminal at the end of the row, a newer model with a small, circular screen. She sat down and her fingers flew across the keyboard, entering a string of commands. She was a surgeon, and this machine was her patient. The screen, which had been dark, flickered to life, displaying lines of glowing green code. She was in.
The primary goal of the infiltration was in motion. She worked to isolate the frequency from the Black Parliament’s dossier, to trace its point of origin. Sineus watched the door, every nerve alight. The silence of the room was a drum beating louder and louder. Below them, Morozov was still scanning the crowd, a patient hunter who knew his prey was in the building. They had a handful of minutes at most.
On the screen, patterns of light swirled. Petrova’s face was illuminated by the green glow, her expression a mask of intense concentration. A flicker of visual static, like a rash, spread across a corner of the display. She typed a command and the static receded, filtered out. She was chasing a ghost through a forest of noise.
— I have the handshake protocol, — she murmured, her eyes locked on the screen. — The signal is bouncing through three different relays, but the source is… it’s not a fixed broadcast. It’s a mobile unit.
More static. This time it was angrier, more insistent. It was the symbol of the world’s decay, the sound of memory unraveling. For a second, the green code was almost completely obscured by a shower of shimmering, chaotic light.
— Almost there, — she said, her knuckles white as she gripped the edge of the console. A new set of coordinates began to resolve on the screen. A location. Not a city, but a specific point in the Ural Mountains. The same area the dealer Haas had named.
They had it. The location of the Echo Protocol.
Sineus allowed himself a single, sharp exhale. He turned from the door, taking a step toward her.
And in that moment, he heard it.
A soft, metallic click from the hallway. The sound of a lock disengaging. The handle on their door was turning.
