Twenty-Six #2
She also could not picture Julian behind the wheel of a speedboat. He should be rubbing elbows with diplomats or courting
foreign officials. Rumor had it that East Germany trained male officers known as Ravens to seduce key assets. It was not the most unlikely career path for him. He would never make it as a little gray man; he was too good-looking, too magnetic. Too conspicuous.
And Giselle? Well, at least she had charisma. Maybe her accent and earnest, salt-of-the-earth demeanor would convince her
marks to let their guards down.
But Nadiya seemed the only one among them with the proper skills and training. It made Klaudia all the more perplexed.
“Let’s begin with a cursory survey of the area,” she said. “If we split up, we can cover Traumstadt in an afternoon.”
“All right,” said Nadiya. “But we’ll have to be careful. Deckard has probably posted enemy agents here, blending in with the
crowd. Holograms programmed to sniff us out.”
“Of course.” Klaudia’s gaze flickered over to Julian and Giselle again—and to Crispin, who had now approached the table but
was not engaging. He merely stood, rocking slightly back and forth, hands braced. And watching. Always watching.
“You don’t trust him, either, do you?” Nadiya’s voice, lowered to a whisper, made Klaudia turn back around.
“I don’t trust Deckard’s intentions,” she said, equally quiet. “The idea that he’s just here to help feels too good to be true.”
“I agree.”
They both looked at each other for a moment without speaking, though the silence was not uncomfortable. In fact, Klaudia felt
a glimmer of relief, maybe even hope. Nadiya was like her, a survivor. She, too, kept her world controlled and remote.
“You go with Giselle,” Klaudia said. “I’ll invent some excuse to keep Crispin here.”
Nadiya nodded, though there was something hesitant in her gaze. The same sudden tension that had shown when Klaudia had first
asked her about Giselle.
But she didn’t protest. Instead she said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
Overnight, the snow had ceased to fall—or rather, some CIA employee behind the scenes had shut off the snow machine.
Now there was only a residual wreathing of white on the eaves of the buildings and a dusting on the ski lodge’s steps.
Klaudia was surprised to find it had the slickness of real ice, rather than the cottony texture she had expected, and it made her descent difficult.
The heeled boots Deckard had provided for her seemed more fashion than function.
Julian, who had already reached the bottom of the stairs, offered her a hand. Klaudia hesitated a moment before taking it.
“Chivalrous,” she commented, when they were both standing on the path together.
“Anything for you, sweetheart.”
Klaudia cast him a look. She refused to formally relent to playing his girlfriend. If everything went as she hoped, the elaborate
details of the cover story wouldn’t be necessary.
Besides, no one would believe Julian Joyce-Young III would date a girl like her. His tastes definitely skewed blonder and
WASPier.
The path from the ski lodge led them to the center of the town, which was bustling with holograms. Klaudia was again unnerved
by how real they looked. Their breath misted the air; their footsteps made an audible patter against the cobblestones. Their
shadows, too, were cast across the ground. Far more convincing than anything she had ever seen at Valeran, even realer than
the pieces simulated for the Thymos tournament. She thought about what Nadiya had told her, about how Professor Blanchard
had used Giselle for his research. Was she somehow responsible for this seemingly sudden leap forward in technology?
Klaudia would have to ask, even if Giselle made her slightly uncomfortable. She was too bright, too sincere, and too beautiful
in her conventional, all-American way. She was not of Klaudia’s world.
Maybe she could enlist Julian’s help with broaching the topic. But for some reason the thought soured Klaudia’s stomach.
At least she had convinced Crispin to stay behind, which meant that she and Julian entered the town square alone. They passed
the frost-veiled statue of Lenin. Under the guise of admiring it, Klaudia stopped in the center of the square and pricked
her ears to see if she could overhear any Russian.
Julian paused beside her, close enough that she felt the heat radiating from his body. In a low voice, he said, “Don’t look
too worshipful.”
“Afraid I’ll defect to Mother Russia?”
“No,” he said. “Of course not. But I can’t speak for anyone else who might be watching.”
Klaudia allowed her gaze to sweep the square. The holograms were chattering to one another, kicking up the snow as they walked.
She tried to listen in, but she mostly just heard an unintelligible rumble of German. One of them, a man in a bowler hat,
was staring at her cryptically.
She turned back to Julian and said, “I should never underestimate the average person’s insipidness.”
“Not if you’re pretending to belong with them.” Julian’s eyes skimmed her briefly up and down. “I know it’s not easy for you
to playact at being ordinary.”
A flush prickled her skin. “You’re no better. You carry yourself like a patrician.”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll try to slouch.”
Klaudia pretended to regard the Lenin statue for a few moments more, but no Russian surfaced from the crowd. With a jerk of
her head, she indicated for Julian to follow her away.