by Trevor Scott
“Which department?”
“A.”
“Let me guess. The disinformation department. And you believed anything that came out of his mouth?”
“He wasn’t trying to sell me a damn bridge. I knew the man. And I checked him out. What he knew was confirmed by my sources.”
Who in the hell was feeding Colonel Reed information from the Agency? That wasn’t important right now. For now she needed to find out what Jake was into. “Tell me what you know about the virus.”
He explained all he knew about the virus, including how it had been modified by the Soviets. As far as he knew, the Russians still had other samples of the virus in labs outside Moscow. Didn’t know how secure those samples were, though. While he talked, Toni could tell one thing for sure—the man was telling the truth.
“So you were just going to turn this deadly virus over to the Russian?” she asked him.
“Of course not. I knew that Jake would find the metal box if it was there. I bet on it. I also bet that there was no way Jake would turn over the virus to anyone but the Agency. Why the hell do you think I chose him to go there?”
She leaned back into her chair, her eyes concentrating on his, but her mind spinning. Damn it. The guy made sense. If you had to choose a man you could trust, then Jake was that man. He couldn’t and wouldn’t turn it over to anyone. She thought about possible Russians who could know about this from the old First Directorate. Time to play a little poker.
“When’s the last time you heard from Jake?”
“Yesterday. We talked by SAT phone.”
“While you were in Stockholm?”
“Yes.”
“So you saw Victor Petrova.” A guess, but an educated one, since she had heard the little dwarf had retired there years ago. Judging by his reaction, she was right.
“How the. . .”
“Hello. Who the hell do you think I work for, Colonel Reed? So that little midget hired you. What’s Victor up to these days? About three feet?”
“About that.”
They stared at each other for a minute, neither saying a word, but Toni considering what to do with the good colonel. She felt like sticking him on a damn plane and flying him back to Camp Springs for debriefing.
●
Jimmy McLean and Velda Crane had spent the last evening keeping track of Gary Dixon, who had not left his hotel since he got there. He had eaten dinner there with the Russian, an expensive steak from the money on the debit card Jimmy had given him, and then three pints of Guinness at the hotel bar before locking himself in his room. All of this was verified by Jimmy on his laptop. He loved it. Everything was electronic. Nothing was secret anymore. There wasn’t a hotel in Europe that still used the basic key and lock. Jimmy had been able to get a digital photo of the Russian and had sent it to London for possible identification. Of course Velda had also planted a bug in Dixon’s room, which had produced hours of snoring and farting and not much else.
Now, Jimmy clicked through his computer looking for any information that would help him understand what that little troll was up to in Oslo. So far nothing. There was a knock on his door just as his cell phone rang. Looking through the peep hole and seeing the top of a head, he let in Velda and then flipped open his phone and gestured for Velda to take a seat.
“Yeah?” Jimmy said in the phone. It was an analyst at MI6 headquarters. He listened for more than two minutes without saying a word.
“Are you sure?” He smiled at Velda, who had taken a flying leap onto his bed.
“We’ll stick with him,” Jimmy pledged. “Thanks. We will.” He clapped the phone shut and threw it to a chair.
“What’s the word?” Velda asked. “The muckity mucks have a plan?”
Jimmy plopped down into a chair. “They identified that man from last night eating dinner with Dixon. The Russian. He’s a guy named Victor Petrova, a former KGB officer in the First Directorate.”
Velda scooted her little legs over the side of the bed. “Department A?”
“Yep. Disinformation.”
“Wonderful. Where do we go from here?”
Jimmy rolled his eyes up in thought, recalling the conversation. “There’s more. London decided they needed to coordinate with the Americans. Make sure we weren’t stepping on toes. International coordination.”
Velda seemed to sense what was coming, her head shaking side to side.
“It’s complex,” Jimmy said. “They have some assets in place. This is big. Really big.”
Suddenly an alarm sounded from the laptop and Jimmy turned to look at the screen.
“Dixon is on the move. Let’s go.”
17
The train slowly pulled out of the Gallivare, Sweden station. Jake and Anna sat together in a second class section, with Kjersti facing them and across the aisle six rows forward. They had decided to split up. They were all dead tired. Kjersti was already dozing off and Anna had her head against Jake’s shoulder. The train was less than half full, so the two of them had no one else across from them or directly behind them.
He squeezed down on Anna’s hand, wanting to tell her what he had found out about the box. But this was not the right time or place. At least he was no longer shaking. Perhaps he had simply been tired and his body was reacting appropriately. But he had to admit that, at the time, he thought it had been some kind of reaction to the old Soviet virus.
She brought her face up and kissed him on the cheek. “What you thinking?” she whispered to him in German. It was more likely someone there spoke English than German.
“Maybe we should have just flown down to Oslo and get rid of this damn box.” His eyes rose to the overhead compartment that contained his backpack and the metal box before settling on her again.
“This is safer,” she assured him. “It’s more logical to be safe and make sure we don’t expose too many people.”
“We could have just kept the rental car.”
She shook her head. “Not if the Finns had reported us. What’s bothering you?”
Should he tell her? Not yet. He had been taken in by Colonel Reed, and by extension so had she. And that tightened his jaw. When he caught up with his old friend they would have more than words.
“Let’s get some sleep,” Jake said, sticking with the German. “We have about two hours to Boden, our next stop, and then another three or four to Umea.”
“Is that where we switch to the sleeper car?”
He nodded his head.
The two of them rested their heads together, holding hands, and drifted off to sleep.
Jake opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was the Swedish police officer standing next to Kjersti, his right hand on the butt of his gun and the left looking at her passport and ticket. Anna was still sleeping, her head against the window now.
Kjersti tried not to look at Jake, but she was concerned. He could tell that much.
He slowly rose and stretched with the rocking train. Then he made his way up the aisle toward Kjersti, stopping because the police officer blocked his way.
The police was speaking English to Kjersti. Something about a rental car. Crap. They had already found it.
“Why didn’t you report the car stolen, then?” the policeman asked Kjersti.
She needed to come clean with the police and tell them she worked for Norwegian Intelligence. Or not. How could she explain running an op in Sweden without coordinating it with the Swedish Security Service, SAPO? No. She was right to not tell them. It was never a good idea to run something in another country without the home team knowing about it.
Jake got uncomfortably close to the police officer and shoved a thumb into his kidney, pushing him forward to the train window. The policeman dropped Kjersti’s passport while Jake rushed to the front of the car and through the door toward the next car.
Time seemed to stand still for a moment as the policeman and Kjersti were both caught off guard by Jake’s action. The policeman recovered and started after Jake.
When he heard the door between the car swish, he timed his exit and swung the door open with great force, smashing it into the cop’s face. He went down to his knees and Jake swept his foot up into his crotch, bringing the man to a rolling ball on the floor.
Quickly, Jake took the man’s gun and radio. He hated to do this. The guy was only doing his job. But Jake couldn’t let him stop them. Not now.
As the man held his nuts in a fetal position, something started to happen. Something that gave Jake an idea. The train was beginning to slow for their stop in Boden.
At that exact moment, the door opened and Jake turned to see Kjersti standing there, her mind obviously conflicted.
“What have you done?” Kjersti said.
The policeman got to his knees and Jake swiftly wrapped him in a sleeper hold. Seconds later the man passed out and Jake lay him on the ground.
“Jesus,” she said. “What do we do with him?”
“How long is our stop in Boden?”
“Five minutes. No more.”
“Good.”
“Go swap seats with Anna. I need Interpol for this.”
Kjersti left immediately.
While she was gone, Jake took off the man’s clothes, leaving him only in his underwear. He shoved the clothes, the gun and the radio and other gear into the closest sleeper unit, keeping only his handcuffs and the key.
When the door opened next, Anna entered and then stood there with her arms crossed. Jake was crouching over the near-naked man and it looked like he was trying to have man sex with him.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Jake said. “Help me get him to the end of this car.” He explained his plan to her and she shook her head and helped him.
Jake cuffed the man behind his back and dragged him to the front of the car. By now the train was almost stopped.
“You think this will work?” Anna asked him.
“Yes. He has no clothes.” Then his plan got even more interesting. “Go get those sleeping pills of yours and those two little bottles of whiskey you took from the room in Longyearbyen.”
“They’re a sleep aid,” she corrected, and then hurried off.
By the time she got back, the train had stopped in the station and Jake was between cars with the man.
“How many should we give him?” Jake asked her.
“Two knock me out.” She opened a bottle of water.
“Give him three.”
“He’s out cold,” she protested.
Jake lifted the man up to a sitting position, cranked his head back, and pulled the man’s mouth open. “Shove three in.”
She did it and followed them with the bottle of water. Jake shoved the man’s mouth closed and held his hand over it. The man tried to choke, but finally got the water and pills down. The activity woke the policeman, though. He moved his head from side to side.
“Now the whisky.”
“It could kill him,” she said.
“Bullshit. He’s a big guy. He can handle it. Besides, I don’t care if it all goes down. He just needs to smell drunk.”
“But the pills will take fifteen minutes to react.”
Crap. He hadn’t thought of that.
The man came more to life and Jake could feel his muscles tense beneath him.
“Get a baggage cart,” Jake ordered.
Anna looked concerned, but she did what he said.
When she was gone the man tried to struggle free, so Jake elbowed him in the head. That just made him more mad. He hated to do it, but Jake put him in another sleeper hold until the man passed out. He knew it could be dangerous making the man pass out twice in such a short period of time, but he had no other choice.
Jake dragged him outside the train onto the cart Anna had brought. People stared, wondering what was going on. Jake pushed the cart inside to the first police officer they could find. He was an older man. Anna showed her Interpol identification, which impressed the local cop, and explained that the man had been drunk and obnoxious. This kind gentleman with her had helped her subdue the drunk. But they had to get back on the train. She was tracking a possible terrorist. A real pro, Jake thought, as the two of them hurried back to catch the train. They just got aboard and the doors closed. The train pulled away from the station.
“Great job,” Jake said. “He should be out cold for about eight hours.”
“Will that be enough time?”
“No. But it’ll be the middle of the night. He’ll tell a story and it will take them a while to check into it. Probably until morning. By then we’ll be to our stop in Falun or Mora. Go back to your seat. I’ll get rid of the cop’s clothes, gun and ID.”
She smiled at him. “This is all too natural to you. Are you sure you worked for the government?”
He put his hand behind her head and kissed her on the lips. They embraced and she finally pulled away.
“Sure, change the subject,” she said as she wandered off through the sleeper car.
Alone now, Jake went into the sleeper compartment where he had stuck the cop’s gear. First he made sure he had not left any fingerprints on the man’s gun, and then he pulled a pillow case from a pillow and shoved everything inside. Then he looked at the window. They opened. Great.
He watched as they reached the countryside between Boden and Lulea. They were traveling at least sixty miles per hour.
The window propped inward about six inches maximum. Squishing everything in the bag as tightly as he could, he jammed the pillowcase and gear through the narrow opening. It got stuck halfway. He shoved it harder and it finally released, falling down toward the tracks below. He pushed the window shut and took a seat on the bed. How the hell had it come to this? Whatever happened to simply flying from Vienna to Oslo for a little vacation? Drink a few beers, some wine, maybe a martini or two. But no. He had to go off on some wild-ass goose chase to Bumfuck, Norway, some Arctic islands that most couldn’t even find on a map, get shot at there, and fly back to the mainland, only to run into overzealous Finnish border guards and a super-vigilant Swedish cop. What next? That was his problem. He knew it would probably only get worse. Especially once he confronted Colonel Reed about the contents of the metal box. That was one helluva deadly flu virus, he quipped to himself. Time to get back to the lovely ladies. Damn, he could use a stiff drink right now.
18
Oslo, Norway
Jimmy McLean spent most of the day traveling around the city, trying his best to not be seen by the little man, Gary Dixon. Something was going down, Jimmy was sure of that. Dixon stopped a dozen times to talk with various people, many just as small as him, and kept checking his watch. It was as if he was on a strict time schedule. Like he had to hurry to contact all of these people before a certain deadline. There were too many of them. Jimmy had Velda in the car calling in photos and names to their headquarters. Some had been easy to ID, since they were owners of small businesses. Others they might never identify, though. At least not without a lot more manpower then the two of them. And that was the problem. With the Russians and the Chinese running so many spies inside of the U.K., most of their assets were keeping track of those thousands of operatives. Not to mention those dedicated to the war on terror. They were stretched too thin in all directions. It was amazing to Jimmy they had dedicated he and Velda to this cause.
Now, Jimmy pulled over to the curb in front of Dixon’s hotel. The little man had just scooted out of his cab and into the lobby.
“What you think Gary is into?” Velda asked.
“Who knows. It’s hard to believe he could be into anything dealing with international terrorism. The guy can barely keep his own shoes tied. And everything he has ever done involves thievery of some sort. The guy started out in a pickpocket crew in Aberdeen. Then he moved onto ripping off tourists in Edinburgh and Glasgow. All before the age of eighteen.”
“But he’s never done
more than a few days in jail,” Velda reminded her colleague.
“True. But it wasn’t from being too slick to get caught. He’s been snitching for years.”
“Maybe for both sides.”
That was a distinct possibility. But did that matter at this point? Suddenly the little guy was associating himself with a heavy Russian player. A former KGB officer with criminal activity, supposedly, from Moscow to London and all points between. According to their MI6 briefing, Petrova had built one of the largest gang of thieves in decades. But word also said that Petrova worked out of greed, not ideology. The guy had even sold his own sperm on eBay—touting it as that from a genius former Cold War KGB officer. He hadn’t lied. And he had gotten bids past five thousand Euros until the website shut him down. A true entrepreneur.
●
They had followed the tall man and the little woman all over Oslo, with Colonel Reed behind the wheel and Toni Contardo in the front seat researching on the fly. She had gotten word from the Agency about the Scottish man, a dwarf by the name of Gary Dixon, saying he was involved somehow with the Russian, Victor Petrova. Just as she and the colonel had gotten to Dixon’s hotel, the little man came shuffling out the front door. Then Toni spotted the other two following Dixon at a safe distance. She suspected the Norwegian Intelligence Service was running some surveillance on the little man, but had called her NIS contact, Thom Hagen, and he had confirmed they had nothing going on.
So the chase was on. The little man, Dixon, went from place to place talking with others of his stature, and even some standard size folks, while the tall man and the little woman followed him. And then Toni and the colonel kept their distance, changing places with Thom Hagen, who had caught up with them after about an hour of playing that game.
But now the little man had gone into the hotel and the cat and mouse had come to an abrupt stop. On the other hand, as far as Toni could tell they had not come across the Russian, Victor Petrova, who was now using the name Oberon.
Toni set the laptop on the car floor, checked her gun inside her jacket, and said to Colonel Reed, “All right. I’m gonna go up and see who the hell we’ve been following all day.”
