The Cold Edge (4 page)

“Yes, I hope we see that tomorrow.”

Their food came and Jake kept his eyes on the food, Anna, and through the corner of his eye, the man across the room.

“You all right eating fish?” Anna asked him.

“You know I love fish.” He smiled, put a piece of salmon in his mouth and mumbled. “We have a friend.”

She smiled and said, “Are you sure?”

He held back a laugh. “What do you think?”

“I think you should know.” She finished her fish and continued, “Let me take a trip to the lady's room and get a good look. Which one?”

“Big guy. Dark hair. Your five o'clock.”

She dabbed her mouth with her napkin, put it down and left. The guy tried his best not to watch her, which was hard for any man, and confirmed to Jake that the guy was watching them. Otherwise he would have checked her out more thoroughly.

A few minutes later Anna returned. Same result from the man.

“Well?” she asked.

“The guy barely looked at you,” Jake said. “And, if I'm not mistaken, you added a little sway to your normal gate.”

She took a sip of water and said, “Perhaps. But maybe the guy is more interested in you.”

“I don't think so. Let's head upstairs.”

They paid and left. When they got to their room, Jake quieted Anna with his finger as he moved about the room. “Salmon wasn't too bad,” he said, searching under the lamp shade. He moved along the curtains, checking inside the edges. “I was really tempted to try the whale or the seal. But I hear they're both out of season. And I'd hate like hell to have my first whale of the frozen variety.”

Jake stopped and glanced about the room. Anna looked confused. Settling his gaze on the nightstand, he picked up the small clock radio and smiled. He went to his bag and found a Swiss Army knife; then he opened the radio with a screw driver. Inside, stuck to the small speaker, was what he was looking for. A bug.

“Let's see what the weather report says,” Jake said, switching on the radio and cranking up the sound. With the local radio blaring at its highest level, Jake pried the bug loose and brought it to the bathroom, where he flushed it down the toilet. He swept the room for anything else, including going through their bags, until he was satisfied that was the only device. Only then did he turn down the radio.

“All right,” he said.

Anna sat on the edge of the bed. “I thought you were being paranoid. Why would someone bug our room? And how did you know it was bugged?”

“I wasn't sure until I saw the clock radio had been moved slightly. It had been parallel to the back and side of the table.”

“Someone placed it while we went to dinner?”

“Yes. They had to move it from the other room, which was supposed to be ours.”

“That's why you had us move rooms at the last minute?”

He nodded.

“Wow. What's going on?”

“I didn't want to be, but I'm back in the game.”

She put her hand over her face. “I did this.”

“In the future, when a former friend of mine, a former spook, comes calling, make damn sure you tell me about it immediately. It's usually not good news.”

“But you'd always spoken so highly of Colonel Reed,” she pled. “In fact, he's one of the only people you freely talked about. Why is that?”

Jake sat on the bed next to her, his eyes glancing to the table at the SAT phone, which was still charging. He had already opened the battery compartment to check for bugs, but there was something else.

“Anna, there's a reason for that. Half the people I've worked with are either retired or dead. The other half are divided into the covert realm or at the headquarters. I can't mention those.”

“I understand. But what I don't understand is why the colonel would put you in danger like this. I thought he was your friend.”

“He is. He knows that I know that any time he would ask me for a favor, it could involve something nefarious and dangerous.” Jake got up and picked up the SAT phone from the table, checking the call record again. Even though he had cleared it, she didn't know that. “Why did you call Interpol headquarters?”

Her eyes gave away her embarrassment. “I work for them,” she said. “I needed to extend my vacation for a week.”

Jake was going to hate himself for this, but he plowed forward. “That's why you'd call your Vienna office.”

She rose to her feet. “You bastard. You've been checking up on me.” Her fists were clenched at her side.

He set the SAT phone down and came to her, grasping each of her wrists and moving his face along the side of hers. “I'm sorry. I checked the phone while you were taking a shower, seeing if Colonel Reed had left any numbers in there. I saw the number to your headquarters had been made while I was taking my shower, and deleted the record. Good thing, because whoever planted that bug would have checked the call record and known you work for Interpol.”

Her arms went limp and she leaned into Jake. “I'm such an idiot. But I still don't understand why this is happening. Isn't it a simple search for an old friend?”

“It's never that easy, Anna. The colonel knew I was good friends with Captain Olson. I couldn't refuse. At least not from Oslo. From the comfort of Vienna, maybe. He must have known I had been down and out lately, and figured I would jump at an opportunity. Especially if it involved you.”

He let her hands go and she wrapped them around his back, pulling him tighter to her. “He used me.”

“Yeah. And he did a damn good job. Just like he was trained. Now you need to tell me anything else the colonel might have told you, and what your bosses at Interpol know about this whole thing.”

She sat back onto the bed and Jake followed her down.

“Vienna knows nothing,” she started. “Just think I'm on an extended vacation. But I was required to contact Lyon after any contact with a foreign intelligence officer. You know that. They told me something was up, but they weren't sure what at this time. Told me to keep checking in while they looked into it.”

“You trust them?”

“Of course.”

Jake thought about it. Maybe this could work to their advantage. Pull info from them and the Agency and see how far off each of them is to the truth.

“All right,” Jake said. “But from now on let's be open with our contacts and agree on how much to feed them. We don't give them shit unless they give us something first.”

She nodded and then kissed him.

“Let's hit the sack. Have a feeling tomorrow will be a long day.”

Edinburgh, Scotland

Rain came down in a steady flow, the darkness of midnight broken by the lights of the Edinburgh Castle at the top of the hill at the end of the Royal Mile. A few blocks down from the castle in the Old Town and two blocks down a side street off the Royal Mile, a lone figure walked at a slow clip. He was dressed in dark clothes from top to bottom, no umbrella. When he came upon the pub with the photo of Robert Burns hanging out from the front entrance, he hesitated before stepping inside.

Jimmy McLean, although an officer with British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, was working undercover as an agent with the MI5 Security Service, looking into domestic terrorism.

At this hour the place was still fairly crowded, and that bothered him. He should have never agreed to meet here at this time. Knew better, that was for sure.

There he was in the corner booth. The little man from Aberdeen. His stubby legs swung with the traditional Scottish music a foot from the floor. Gary Dixon had been picked up by MI5 so many times, he damn near had his own coffee mug in the Edinburgh office. They had never stuck him with anything, though, because he was far more valuable on the street. He collected information like a pack rat and sold it to the highest bidder. All MI5 had was leverage to avoid prosecution, and the fear that they would throw the man into a cell with a large man wanting an ass buddy.

Removing his coat, he hung it from a hook at the end of the booth before taking a seat across from his contact.

“You're ten minutes late,” his contact said, his voice a combination of effeminate and Lilliputian.

“Don't get short with me.”

“Hey, no need to start in with the short jokes.”

“Right. I guess you'd be a little concerned with that.” He placed heavy emphasis on the word ‘little.'

“Ha, ha.” He picked up his pint of Guinness with both stubby hands and downed the last of it, placing the glass down hard onto the thick wooden table. “Why don't you get me another one of these.”

McLean got the attention of the pretty, slim young bartender with multiple piercings, her tight stomach exposed, showed her two fingers and got a nod in return.

“What you got for me?” McLean asked the little guy.

“Right to the damn point,” Dixon said. “Jesus, don't they teach you guys any people skills?”

The two pints of Guinness showed up on the table and McLean handed the young woman cash and a heavy tip. She smiled and left them alone.

“I take that back,” Dixon said. “Hot girls still get your attention.” He took a sip of beer and ended up with foam on his thick mustache, which he licked off with his enormous tongue. He caught McLean staring. “It's not the only thing big on me. And the ladies like both.”

“You were saying?” This was getting old.

“All right, all right.” The little guy tried to lean across the table toward McLean, but he couldn't get any leverage to do so. “I was home for a week and heard of something going down across the pond.”

“America?”

He shifted his thick head and said, “Other direction.”

“Scandinavia?”

“Norway. But off the coast on some island.”

McLean thought for a moment, but didn't know what to think. What of importance could possibly come from a Norwegian island. They had huge oil production facilities along the coast. Maybe someone was planning on hitting those. That would be a huge environmental disaster, and could shift the oil wealth equation.

“What's going on? What have you actually heard?” McLean pressed the guy.

“All I can say is it's something big. What's that worth to you?”

“Without details, not a helluva lot,” McLean said. “Who told you, and under what circumstances.”

The little man's eyes shifted around the room. “Listen, if I start giving away names at this point, my life will be shorter than my legs.”

McLean held back a snicker. “Right. But I need more details. Get me more and you get another get out of jail free card. Otherwise, we picked up this massive man recently. . .could have been a basketball player. I understand he's getting lonely. Needs a friend.”

“Hey, hey,” the little man protested. “I came to you, remember. Soon as I heard something might be going down.”

“Then take me to your contact,” McLean said.

“No can do. They'll see MI5 coming a mile away.”

McLean considered his options, taking a long drink from his beer. He didn't have many. He shifted in his chair and reached for his jacket.

“Wait a minute,” Dixon said. “What about a little help.”

Moving back to the center of the booth, McLean said, “You want money for telling me you might have something to tell me? That's incredible.” But he also expected the man would ask for it, so he was ready. He reached into his pants pocket and retrieved a debit card, then slid it across the table at the man, who quickly scooped it up with his stubby fingers and looked it over front and back.

“Who the hell is Amus McCloud?”

“That would be you. That's how you get paid from now on. There's fifty Quid on it now. You give me what I want and there'll be much more.” He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and handed it to the man. “Sign it.”

“Fifty Quid. That isn't much. How do you sign Amus? Let me practice a couple of times.” He scribbled on his coaster a couple times and then made it official on the debit card. Then he put the card into his wallet, which was so stuffed it was hard for him to find a spot for another card. “What if someone asks for additional I.D.?”

“Right.” McLean was also waiting for this. “Here.” He handed the man a new driver's license. “Sign this also.”

“Where'd you get the photo? Wait a minute. . .that was my last booking shot.”

“Right. Well, we had to Photoshop it a little.”

Then he looked more closely. “Hey, I'm not three six. I'm three seven, maybe eight on a good day.”

“Close enough.” McLean sucked down most of his beer, slid to the end, and got out now, putting his long jacket over his shoulders. Then he leaned closer to Dixon and said, “I want a call by noon tomorrow.” He left without waiting for a protest.

Out on the sidewalk the rain had slowed to a light mist. He looked across the street at an alley no wider than three feet. Alleys like that were all over the old town area. They cut off distances, but had also been known for their underground activity across the centuries. McLean saw a dark figure slip down into the shadows, so he crossed the street and made his way to the alley.

By the time he got to the edge, he checked his watch and then slid around the corner, stepping lightly down the wet cobblestones. His only lighting came from a building around the corner ahead, giving him a distinct advantage. He could see better than anyone from that side.

A couple more steps, where the alley widened slightly, he stopped. A hand touched his arm.

“I thought you would come in,” McLean said. “Watch my back from there.”

“No, it works better this way,” came a soft woman's voice. “What did he tell you?”

“Nothing. . .yet.”

Her hand moved from his arm to his crotch. “You gave him the cards?”

McLean cleared his throat. “Listen. You work for me. What do you think? Of course he has them. And you can bet your ass he'll drain the money from it as soon as he gets a chance.”