Mulaghesh says, “You’re a different person now.”
“And so is she,” he says. “I thought I knew her. But I was foolish to think so.”
“Why?”
“Well.” He struggles with the words for a moment. “When I was a young man, and she was just a little girl, long ago, I…I used to chase her through the forest near our home. It was a game. She would hide, and I would pretend to chase her. And then she would pretend to chase me. And, later, when I was in prison…when I thought I would go mad…I held on to this very tightly, this memory of the little blond girl laughing as she ran through the forest. This tiny, perfect creature, darting among these great big trees. When the world grinds you down, you pick a handful of fires to hold close to your heart. And that was one of mine. Perhaps the brightest, the warmest. And after Bulikov, after Shara suggested I come back, and find my family and rebuild my country…I suppose I just assumed that she would remember this, too. That she would see me and remember that moment in the trees, laughing as we ran. But she does not remember. And perhaps I was foolish to think she would.” He pauses for a long time. “I have been hurt in many ways in my life, Turyin Mulaghesh. But I have never been hurt in this manner before. What should I do? What should I do with this strange young woman who does not care for me?”
“Talk to her, I suppose. Start there. And listen to her. Don’t expect her to say things you want to hear, but listen to her. She’s lived a life very separate from yours.”
“I have tried that. When I try to explain myself, all my words dry up.” He shakes his head. “Perhaps it would have been better for me to have died, after reclaiming my country. End on a high note, as they say. Or escape into the wilderness.”
“I never figured you as one for self-pity.”
“And I never thought I would be a father again,” says Sigrud. “Yet here I am.”
He stares into her notebook, and she suddenly realizes how intensely lonely Sigrud must feel, forced to play many roles—prince, husband, father—that feel hopelessly beyond him.
Then his eye falls on something: a seven-pointed star Mulaghesh copied in her notes. He sits up and points at it. “Wait. This…This star here. Did you copy it exactly?”
“Uh, maybe?”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so?”
“And it was found in Choudhry’s room?”
“Yes. Why?”
He scratches his beard, anxious. “It’s a…a signal, a piece of tradecraft. She’s telling us what code she’s going to use, what language she’ll speak to us in. This star means she will be using Old Bulikov rules.”
“Uh, what? Old Bulikov rules? I never heard of those, and I was stuck there for twenty years.”
“When the Ministry first truly began its intelligence operations,” says Sigrud, “most of its work was focused in Bulikov. But they had no technology then, no signals and lights and telephones or whatnot. So they had to use much cruder means—a stroke of chalk, a pin in a wall, a carving in wood, or a splotch of paint. Things like this. It was mostly used to direct operatives to dead drops, often when someone felt they were being pursued.”
“As in, they might not survive, but they still wanted to send a message?”
“To leave behind information,” says Sigrud. “Yes.”
“Can we trust that, though? If all signs point to Choudhry as the suspect, do we really want to believe whatever it is she’s trying to tell us?”
“You said she went mad. So perhaps once she was not mad. Perhaps she did this when she was still a good agent.”
“I wouldn’t know what to look for, though. I don’t know the first thing about Old Bulikov rules.”
“And I cannot go with you. It would be rather difficult to explain away my absence here and my presence there. Even though I would much rather be doing that than this.”
“You’d rather be digging around in the affairs of a madwoman than work here with your daughter?”
Sigrud grumbles to himself. “When you say it like that, I do not sound very reasonable at all.” He sighs. “I wish I did not have to do this. I was never a good controller, never a good case officer. I was always the man down in the muck, not the one waiting at home. That was Shara’s game.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am saying that you are an operative in need of a case officer,” says Sigrud. “You are all alone up here, and maybe this work is so sensitive that Shara could not bring anyone on board….But, you suffer for the lack of one. And I do not exactly see anyone else around who could do the job.”
“You don’t work for Saypur anymore, you know.”
“If what you say is right, then everything happening in Voortyashtan is under threat. Including the harbor, the one thing currently sustaining my whole country’s economy. Frankly, I wish Shara had brought me on sooner—but she likely did not know what you would find here.”
“So what now?”
He looks at the clock. “So now, I suggest you get comfortable. And put the liquor down.”
“Why?”
“Because you are going to have to memorize a lot of tradecraft before morning, if you want to do this right.”
***
“So it was not Choudhry’s body they found, ma’am?” asks Nadar the next morning as they walk through the fortress.
“No, it wasn’t,” says Mulaghesh. “I don’t know whose body it was, but it wasn’t hers.” She wipes a bead of sweat from her brow and tries not to shiver. She hiked up here rather than be chauffeured, and now her perspiration grows frigid in the cold air of the fortress, like she’s being wrapped in bedsheets pulled from an icy lake.
“Fucking shtanis,” says Nadar, shaking her head.
“Shtanis?”
“They’re mocking us, ma’am. They must be. A Saypuri corpse, butchered and put on display just beyond where they blew up the mines? They’re showing us how close they can get to us, General. I’ve increased patrols, but as yet we’ve spotted nothing. They’re talented in moving unseen in this terrain.” Nadar shakes out her keys and begins opening the door to Choudhry’s rooms.
“Have you…considered any alternatives?” asks Mulaghesh, uncertain how to phrase this.
“Alternatives, ma’am?”
“Yes. I had been considering that it was Sumitra Choudhry herself who was involved in the murders, Captain,” says Mulaghesh.
“Choudhry?” says Nadar, startled. “Why, General?”
“These murders…They’re like some kind of old Divine ritual.” The door swings open. Both of them stare in at the graffiti-covered room. “And everything here suggests Choudhry was neck-deep in the Divine. To her misfortune.”
Mulaghesh walks into the room, watching Nadar over her shoulder. She can’t tell Nadar everything, but she needs someone in command here to start thinking in the right direction. If she can get Biswal or Nadar to consider it, then perhaps they can call in more Ministry reinforcements, who might be able to find something solid—something verifiably Divine.
But Nadar’s face has gone cold and closed. “It seems unlikely that a Ministry operative could be capable of all that, ma’am.”