Rising Tiger

by Trevor Scott

  Alexandra stood and gazed at herself in the large mirror against the far wall. She had to admit that this undercover job had actually helped with her appearance. She was required to wear the gray business skirt and matching top, but she made sure her white silk blouse showed more cleavage than normal or necessary for her position. It was important to distract those men in the office with any power or control. She needed them to see her as competent but nothing more than tits and ass. And she exercised both assets to perfection. Her hair, which was normally curly and flowing over her shoulders, was now pulled back tight and rolled up in a French braid at the back. Her look gave her the appearance of a much younger woman. She wished she had a Euro for every time a man, and a few women, in the office hit on her.

  Just as she turned to check out her tight butt and straighten out her wool skirt, the door opened and her newest boss strut in.

  Alfred himself stopped at the mirror to check on his long blond hair before taking a seat behind his enormous desk.

  Alexandra had a theory about men with big desks. They usually had small dicks. They had something to prove. If not in the bedroom, then at least in the office. She took a seat across from the man and noticed his finger nails looked better than hers.

  “How’s it going?” her boss asked.

  “Wonderful,” she answered with a touch of attitude.

  “How long have you been at Kreuzwelt Industries?”

  “A month.”

  “I doubt you have found anything interesting,” Alfred said. “I didn’t expect you would.”

  “If you look to find nothing, you will find nothing,” she said with derision.

  He shrugged and put his hands in the air. “If there is nothing to find, your work is done.”

  Now she was getting pissed, but she held back from reaching across the desk and strangling the bastard. After all, she would like to retire with a pension and not summary dismissal.

  “I didn’t say there was nothing to find,” she assured him. “Our government has sold diesel submarine engines to the Chinese, along with many other arms that should be restricted based not only on EU regulations, but on our alliance with NATO.”

  “I understand,” Alfred said. But now he had picked up his cell phone to check for texts. Either that or he was playing a game again.

  “Those submarines will run so quiet that even our American allies will have a hard time finding them,” Alexander declared. “Just last year a Chinese sub surfaced within torpedo range of an American aircraft carrier. Now they have carrier-busting missiles.”

  “Maybe that will make the American fleet obsolete,” her boss postulated. “It’s good that they get knocked down a notch or two.”

  “Our American friends could have taken over Germany after the war. But instead they helped us rebuild and protected us from the Russians for decades.”

  Alfred put his finger in the air as if scolding Alexandra. “For their own greedy needs.”

  “Herr Schlemm, your family has made billions since the war because of your freedom to do business here without the interference of the Soviet Union and Russia.” She said this with increasing harshness.

  Alfred was about ready to explode, his face beet red. “Your problem is you don’t know your place.”

  “You mean because I’m a woman?”

  He hesitated with uncertainty. “Because I am your boss.”

  “I’ve worked here more than twenty years. You’ve worked here less than twenty months. I’m sure they taught you math at gymnasium.” She knew that Alfred had only finished two years at the University of Trier, where he studied mostly soccer and women. It was a sore point she had used against the man since he was put in charge of her.

  He stared at her with the least bit of intimidation. The man couldn’t scare a toddler.

  “I need results,” Alfred finally said. “What do you have for me?”

  She had plenty, including the fact that the Chinese were not only buying up technology from Kreuzwelt Industries, they were secretly buying up shares of their stock. Alexandra suspected they were intent on not just licensing German weapons technology, they intended to purchase the company in a leveraged buyout. But she didn’t want to tell her boss this. Not yet.

  “I need just a little more time,” she said.

  He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Finally he said, “Is the rumor true?”

  “What rumor?”

  “That you plan to retire after this case.”

  She had intimated her displeasure with her work at the BND with her former boss recently, but had no idea that her words had reached Alfred Schlemm. “I have the time in. Perhaps I need to move on.”

  “Perhaps you are correct.”

  Great. Now this bastard would spread rumors within the service that he had forced her out. That smug asshole.

  “When will you be done with this case?” Alfred asked.

  She considered her answer carefully and then checked her watch. Jumping to her feet, she said, “I’ve got to get back to the office. I took a long lunch and asked for time off to bring a friend to the airport.” She started for the door.

  “Alexandra.”

  She stopped and turned.

  “I’ll give you to the end of next week,” he ordered.

  She got out of the BND headquarters as fast as she could. Now, perhaps, she finally had a retirement date. Herr Schlemm had practically made the choice for her. This would be her last case. Then she would either take an extended vacation before retirement, or she would let them pay out her vacation to her as a departing bonus.

  Alexandra got back to Kreuzwelt Industries on the northern outskirts of Munich just after 1300, her disposition somewhat subdued by the realization that her current career was coming to an end. Perhaps she could just stay on with this company as an administrative assistant. She smiled at that thought. No, they couldn’t afford her, she guessed. Only if she lowered her expectations of her future. What does an ex-spy do after retiring? Most in Germany went to work for companies like this. And then there was her good friend, Jake Adams. He had created a security consultant firm of one, and from what Jake had told her, he had been paid quite well for a number of his cases. Enough so that he could really retire.

  But she had work to do here. Her last case. If she had anything to say about it, she would nail these bastards to the wall and let buzzards pick away at their flesh. They were selling weapons and weapons-related dual-use items to the Chinese. The problem was her boss didn’t seem to give a crap, and she had a pretty good suspicion that those at higher levels of government knew about this as well. She could leak the information to the German press, but they would probably applaud the move—anything to do as her boss said to ‘take the Americans down a notch.’

  It was Friday afternoon and she needed to make a bold move. Nearly all of the upper management left early on Friday, and many had gone to Garmisch skiing after a nice snowfall last night. Despite what her real boss said, she knew that not all was right with this company. But she could do this right.

  Having spent weeks gathering access to the most secure areas of this building, she used the lazy Friday afternoon to get into the main computer room—the only way to access certain files on a dedicated highly-encrypted system.

  First, from her desk computer, she accessed the security camera system, recorded a fifteen minute loop, and then turned the recording on so the security men on the first level would see nothing but that recording. She could only do this for fifteen minutes, she knew, because the system automatically rebooted after fifteen minutes.

  Then she made her way through the first cipher lock without a problem. The code was due to be changed on Monday. She looked up at the camera and smiled.

  The computer room was a little more difficult. It had a retina scanner along with a magnetic strip on her identification name tag. Both had to match to get her inside. Of course she had no access to this room officially. But she had upgraded her access to every le
vel in the building just minutes ago. There would be a record of her entry that she would not be able to erase, but she didn’t plan on coming in on Monday anyway. She hoped to have everything she needed.

  Once she got onto the computer she had just ten minutes to find what she needed. Since it was not connected to the internet, she had just one choice—to download the information she needed.

  God there where thousands of massive files. She tried to sift through them to find anything of importance, but she wouldn’t have time.

  Checking the clock on the wall, she had just six minutes to get out of there.

  What about wireless, she thought. The entire building had wireless internet access. But if they were smart they would have shielded this room from the internet.

  She tried anyway, plugging a small wireless adapter into a USB port. Good to go.

  Alexandra glanced at the wall clock again. Just four minutes. Not enough time to download what she needed.

  And where to send it? She had thought of this already, knowing she couldn’t just send the data to her home computer or to the BND. But she still knew the access encryption code to Jake’s server in Innsbruck, Austria.

  She collected all the files she guessed she needed and started the transfer to Jake’s computer. Damn it! Based on the size of the files it would take at least a half hour to transfer the files.

  Checking the clock, she had just one minute. She would have to leave the computer. She minimized everything and turned off the screen. But she would have to leave the wireless adapter and get it another time. Or just leave it. There was no way to trace it back to her.

  Heading toward the door, she hesitated for a second. Would the link to Jake’s server remain open after the files transferred? She could call Jake and have him restart his system.

  Get out, Alexandra.

  She rushed to the first door and got through to the outer area. So far so good.

  Her wrist watch said she had just twenty seconds. A little more nervous now as she went out through the cipher door.

  She made it, breathing a heavy sigh of relief as she went down a level to her desk. The place was entirely empty now.

  Back at her desk, she cleared everything from the cache. Then she executed an entire hard drive reformatting. She had been in and out of areas in the company computer system that she had no access for or reason to access. As she let the computer reformat, she started toward the elevators, her high heels clicking on the tile floors. Just as she pressed the elevator down button, the door opened and two large security guards startled her.

  “Guten abend,” she said, as she tried to brush past the men.

  But instead of going past her, they grabbed her arms.

  Now her training and instincts kicked in. She twisted out of the grasp of one man while kicking the other one in the nuts. Whereas the two guards were simply trying to subdue her, she was using everything short of deadly force to get away. But the fight lasted just thirty seconds. In the end her training ruled over brawn. Both men were knocked out and without radios as she got into the elevator and pushed the ground level button.

  Once she got to the ground floor, she set the radios in a corner and hit the top floor button. Then she scooted out and let the elevator go for a ride.

  Now she still had to pass through the secure front entrance. How many guards were on duty? Should be two more, she thought.

  As she got closer to the front entrance, she wished she had worn quieter shoes instead of the business three-inch heels.

  She waved at the two security men off to the side at the front desk and tried not to speed her steps toward the front entrance. Had she overreacted with the security men upstairs?

  Just as she reached the front doors she heard a man yell from behind her, “Halt, Fraulein.”

  But she didn’t stop. She could see in the reflection of the windows, one of the men she had disabled upstairs was now accompanied by the two men from the front desk in pursuit.

  Getting outside the door, she slipped off her high heels, picked them up, and ran as fast as she could toward the parking lot. She had her keys out and looked briefly behind her to see if the security guards were still following. They were, and were gaining ground.

  Clicking her key as she approached the ten-year-old VW Passat, the security system sounded and lights flashed briefly.

  She jumped behind the wheel, locked her doors, and turned over the engine just as the security men reached the car. One man had his pepper spray out and another had a Tazer. She reached inside the console and pulled out her 9mm Glock, pointing it at the two of them until they backed away from her car.

  She smiled and pulled out of the lot, picking up speed and jamming the stick into third gear.

  Crap. She just remembered the front gate into the parking lot. The guards would have radioed forward and have the gate down, forcing her to stop.

  The front gate guard was outside the station, radio in hand, but with no gun to stop her. He only had the metal gate to slow her down.

  Alexandra shoved her foot down onto the gas and rammed through the gate, shattering the metal but also smashing her windshield. Good thing this wasn’t her personal vehicle. It was a BND loaner registered to her fake identity at an address that did not exist.

  When she got to the main frontage road to the autobahn, she cranked the wheel hard to the right and almost rounded the corner on two wheels.

  She thought about what had just happened and knew she was not only burned at the defense contractor, but she might have compromised her good friend Jake Adams in the process. She had to contact him quickly before security realized what she had been doing in the computer room.

  Just as she entered the westbound autobahn, she found her cell phone and punched in Jake’s number from memory.

  “Come on, Jake. Answer your damn phone.”

  3

  Taipei, Taiwan

  When Jake’s cell phone rang, at first it surprised him. Only a few people had his number. One was the former CIA Director, Kurt Jenkins. Toni Contardo used to have his number, but she was killed recently. That left. . .

  He checked his phone. The incoming caller read ‘Hofbrauhaus.’

  Picking up his phone from the hotel nightstand, Jake accepted the call and said, “Ich habe eine Brezel und ein großes Bier.”

  “Funny, Jake. Did I wake you?”

  “I was just in bed thinking about you,” he said. “Are you driving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus, on the autobahn?”

  “Jake, I’m in trouble. I screwed up.” She quickly briefed him on what she had been up to, including the transfer of data to his server.

  He sat up in bed and clicked on the light on the table next to him. “Don’t worry about it. That’s why I have the server and why I gave you the encryption code.”

  “Will they be able to trace the upload to your server?” she asked.

  Jake laughed. “Yeah. They’ll have fun with that. It’ll bounce around the world five times and eventually lead them right to a computer at the Vatican.”

  “But I had to leave the wireless device connected.”

  “That’s not a problem,” he assured her. “I have my system set up to break the connection thirty seconds after the last file transfers.”

  “Aren’t you the smarty pants.”

  “Check out the German using American idioms.”

  There was a long pause on the other end, and Jake wasn’t sure if Alexandra was simply concentrating on her driving or contemplating something important.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked her.

  She let out a heavy sigh and said, “I don’t know, Jake. I’m leaving the service.”

  “We talked about this,” he said. “I thought you planned on staying through the end of the year.”

  “I know what I said. But I can’t do this anymore. My country has lost its way. They’re selling major weapons systems to the Chinese.”

  Jake laughed. “Funny you should s
ay that. I’m in Taiwan right now.”

  “Seriously? What time is it there? I’m sorry. I thought you were still in Costa Rica.”

  “No problem. It’s just after midnight here.” He tried to calculate the time in Germany, or the day for that matter, but he was coming up with a blank. “What day and time is it there?”

  “Friday. Just after seventeen hundred. What are you doing in Taiwan?”

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “My old employer got me involved with something.”

  Hesitation on the other end. Finally, she said, “You’re searching for Remington. We got an alert on him weeks ago. We have bets back at the office as to where he will eventually turn up. Do you have any inside information to make me some money?”

  He explained the situation with the banker and his death earlier that evening. “I’m still trying to go over the data. Almost everything is in Chinese, though.”

  “I can’t help you there,” she said. “What about that old girlfriend of yours.”

  Jake knew she meant Chang Su. The two of them had met a couple of times in Austria. “I guess I could ask for her help.”

  “You don’t have a local contact?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t know who to trust. Remington still has friends in the Agency all over the world. The local office doesn’t even know I’m in country.” At least he didn’t think so.

  Engine noise from the other end of the line increased suddenly.

  “Is everything all right?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah. I just had to kick up my speed a little bit.”

  “You have to be careful,” Jake said. “That German defense contractor has a lot of pull in your country. If they find out you stole information from them, they will come after you.”

  “I know, Jake.” She was silent for a moment. “I just didn’t want them coming after you also.”