Page 88 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
“Oh.”
It didn’t explain the way that he was acting, except for all the ways that, maybe, it did.
“Did you hate that?”
“No.” He shook his head and studied her, gaze sharper than the knives and twice as deadly. “Not even a little bit.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Present Day
Somewhere in Portugal
Alex
So it turned out, once Alex wasn’t about to pass out from blood loss, she was able to reevaluate her opinion on the safe house. The walls were covered with fishing nets and rusty hooks. Taxidermied turtles, old hats, and two hundred magazines from the summer of 1968.
“It’s... something.”
“My understanding is that it came fully furnished.” King sounded almost amused.
When Alex looked out the window, she saw they were right on the water. She heard crashing waves and squawking seagulls. The house was at the top of a cliff, but a narrow staircase zigzagged its way to the shore. If she looked straight down, she could just make out a rocky beach and a little cove that must have been great for smuggling.
“It was his favorite safe house for seafaring escapades.”
“Were there a lot of those?”
“There was every kind of escapade. He did it for a long time.”
“Your grandfather?” King looked at her like he didn’t understand the question. “Not your father?”
They’d known each other for ten years, and she’d never mentioned his dad. She’d never asked the obvious questions. Maybe because she didn’t want to pry or maybe because she didn’t want to die, but Alex was out of patience. And they were out of time.
“A long time ago, you said that you’d tell me—”
“I know.”
“I don’t care how much it hurts, King. It’s time. We have to talk about it. You have to tell me.”
Honestly, the scary part was that he didn’t even try to argue. He just nodded and said, “My grandfather—”
“Was the Berlin station chief in sixty-two...” She remembered.
“It was the height of the Cold War. The Soviets and the CIA were in a never-ending chess match, constantly moving pieces on the board. One of those pieces was an operative they called Nikolai. He was their queen. Seemingly everywhere. Doing everything. But the thing you need to know about Nikolai is... he doesn’t exist.”
“But—”
King closed his eyes and cut her off. “He was a legend—a ghost story.Be good or Nikolai will get you. Even if hehadexisted—which my grandfather swore he didn’t—he’d either be dead or a very old man by now.” Alex remembered the way the two guys at the Farm had talked about Nikolai—like he was the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. But also like he was the only dark spot in the legacy of spies named Michael Kingsley.
“There was always chatter,” he went on. “Was he real? A lie made up by the KGB—a boogeyman custom-made to keep the Agency guessing? My grandfather’s theory was that he was an amalgamation of a dozen different operatives operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. And then the Curtain fell, and the Soviet Union crumbled, and the oligarchs rose up in its place. No one should have cared about an old spy who probably never existed.... No onedidcare.”
“And then...” Alex was afraid of whatever came next. But she had to know. In a way, it felt like their story had been building toward this for ten years—longer.
“And then we ran out of milk, and my mother and grandmother decided to go to the store, and our car exploded in the driveway.”
Alex could have formed a million theories, but none would have would have come close to that.
For a long time, she just stood there, slack-jawed and stunned.She couldn’t even say she was sorry. There wasn’t a word in any of her languages that could make it better, so she didn’t say a thing.
