The sound of gentle crackling, like a log in a fire, made the hairs on her neck stand. A tiny chunk of ceiling plaster fell and bounced off the couch.
They shouted, “Back! Back!” as bits of crown molding hailed down. Mr. K hooked one arm around Sterling’s waist and pulled her close, protecting her.
The Orient screamed. The warping metal ducts screeched with the fury of centuries of ghosts as the ceiling ripped apart and a thick plume of plaster dust enveloped the room. Mr. K covered Sterling’s head as rubble hit them.
Crash. Boom.
Then everything went quiet, save for the rustle of debris settling. She opened her eyes. One end of the metal tunnel Fernando had crawled through now hung from the ceiling at an unnerving angle, like the Hotel’s broken bone. Like Hedy’s twisted ankle.
Fernando slid out on his back and landed on the debris-dusted couch, clutching something to his chest. He spat out a mouthful of dust, then grinned. The fall had broken his purple glasses and chipped a tooth, but he was too excited by the item in his grasp to care. He wriggled out.
“What’s that?” asked Mr. K, voice croaking. Fernando zipped his lips, warning them to silence, then revealed it.
It was like something from a 1960s spy movie. An old-school tape recorder with a cone-shaped distance microphone. But the plastic was decorated with a cage of gold and diamond details. A red light glowed in the corner.
Fernando walked to the dusty mirror over the fireplace and swiped a message onto it with his finger:Told you she was a spy.
“Oh, please! That could be anything,” whispered Sterling. Fernando shushed her.
The device made a shrill tone. The red light flashed.
“That can’t be good,” she said.
It beeped. Fernando tossed it to the floor out of instinct. The beeping sped up ominously. They all stepped back. The black box whirred and sputtered before a thin wisp of smoke curled from the tape chamber.
“Did it just… self-destruct?” asked Sterling.
The acrid scent of burning plastic prompted Mr. K to grab the fire extinguisher in the hall and spray it at the recorder. The white foam coating everything didn’t make much difference in the chaos. The suite was already in ruins.
“Told you so,” said Fernando.
“How did this get into my Hotel?” shouted Mr. K.
“I assume it arrived with Frau Thursday, Mr. Left, and Mr. Right.Technically, it doesn’t violate the camera ban,” she said, shrugging.
“First, amend the rules. Second, find Frau Thursday,” said Mr. K, vessels pulsing in his forehead. “She’s come here weekly since before my father bought the place, and now I know why.”
“We might want to do something about, um, that,” said Sterling, pointing to the gaping cavern in the ceiling. Thankfully, their repairman was equipped to handle almost any task. He’d seen eager orgies do worse damage.
Mr. K pulled a comb from his pocket and smoothed back hisblond hair, gone powdered-wig gray. His upper lip twitched. He took a calming breath.
Fernando cleaned his cracked glasses, then gently touched his broken tooth. “When I was up there, I thought I heard you say something about giving me a raise. Is that still on the table?”
— 44 —Vierundvierzig
Vienna was called the City of Music but was better known as the City of Spies. It made sense, given it housed the Vienna International Center, a complex that held UN offices along with an alphabet soup of agencies specializing in atomic energy, space affairs, trade law, and nuclear weaponry.
Sterling liked to keep friends with VIC access badges for their greatest power: They could buy American kosher dill pickles from the center’s commissary shop.Tax-freekosher dill pickles, no less.
But to find Frau Thursday, she wasn’t bothering with anything near the VIC. Instead, she headed to a quaint little corner of the city center. Sterling had heard a rumor once about a local coffeehouse frequented by intellectuals and intelligence agents alike.
Kleines Café was a teeny place with a teal-blue facade. Years ago, Sterling had heard gossip from an ex who briefly worked there that regulars spent so much time at the counter, they received mail there and left packages for each other, asking servers to deliver them to other regulars whenever they showed up. Unmarked envelopes, dog-eared books. The ex suspected it was espionage.
Sterling wasn’t convinced by his stories or her plan. But it was too late now. She sat at the bar, ordered coffee, and pulled a copy ofTraumnovellefrom her bag.
She’d circled six words inside it:We. Need. Your. Help. With. Nightingale.
It was a clear message. It had to be. But the scheme had lost its shine somewhere between the front door and the bar counter.
