His Spy at Night (Spy Games Book 3) (15 page)

The lawyer’s name was Mike Freeland. He was tall, thin, and stooped, with gray, greasy, combed-over hair. The suit he wore cost more than she earned in a month. She placed him in his late forties. His right forefinger and nailbed bore telltale yellow nicotine stains from heavy smoking. His eyes were red-rimmed. He’d either been drinking or visiting a local coffee shop—which, despite its misleading name, was a place to buy soft drugs without fear of arrest.

“Could you grab me a coffee, sweetheart?” he asked her. “I’m too old for the Amsterdam nightlife.”

Coffee house it was, then. Lawyers made the worst tourists. They knew exactly what they could get away with and where the line was that couldn’t be crossed.

“Of course.” She let his condescension roll off her. She was interested in learning more about his connection to the Ukrainian OEM. Political correctness was a small price to pay in exchange. “Black, or cream and sugar?”

“Black.”

She brought him his coffee.

Meanwhile, Harry had connected with a Dutch government official and the two were deep in private conversation. She wondered where he’d been last night after his meetings had ended. She felt confident in assuming he hadn’t gone to a coffee house with Freeland. He hadn’t been at her flat either.

She shook off a niggling of doubt. It was still too soon to worry about where his conscience might be leading him.

Shortly before five o’clock her cellphone rang, displaying Bernard’s number.

“You look busy,” he said.

He had no idea. It was inconceivable to her how grown men could be so lacking in time management skills. “Where are you?”

“Behind you, three doors to your right.”

She was facing the seminar rooms. She turned, spotted him, and waved. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll meet you at the restaurant.”

The catering and restaurant area was busy when she arrived. People spilled beyond the ropes sectioning it off from the registration zone. Bernard was near the front of the line, his tall frame and blond head easy enough to pick out.

He was quite impressive Lies conceded, with an air that drew people to him—an especially important personal quality to have in an environment such as this, where business representatives sought out the obvious influencers.

The man he was speaking with looked vaguely familiar. She hung back, trying to place him, and then she had it. She didn’t know the second man personally but she’d seen his picture. He was on a CSIS watch list, suspected of domestic terrorism, but had managed to flee Canada before an alert to detain him could be posted. An international helicopter expo wasn’t the first place she would have expected to find him and it didn’t bode well.

He and Bernard finished their conversation and he walked away. Bernard looked around and spotted her. He raised his hand above the crowd to flag her over. As she approached him she saw the Canadian lawyer, Mike Freeland, a few feet to his left. He and Bernard nodded to each other but they didn’t speak.

“Do you know Mr. Freeland?” Lies asked when she reached Bernard’s side. The briefcase she carried instead of a purse bumped the person standing next to her and she excused herself to them. Out of habit she automatically checked the outside pocket where she kept her phone to make sure it was secure.

“We went to law school together.”

At McGill. Lies felt that rush of excitement which meant she’d stumbled onto a piece of the puzzle and where it might fit. “Is he one of the friends you spoke of who has family connections in other countries?”

“He’s hardly a friend. This is the first time I’ve seen him in years.”

That was as evasive a response as she’d ever heard. Something in Bernard’s posture said she’d made the right puzzle piece fit. He, a pot-smoking lawyer, and the Canadian Minister of National Defence had all gone to McGill at around the same time. Freeland was in the Netherlands as part of a trade mission and had arranged a last minute meeting with Ukrainians. If that was his background—and it would be easy enough to find out if it was—then she had a worthwhile piece of information to pass on to John Carmichael.

She’d ask Harry a few questions and see what else she could find out about Freeland.

Chapter Nine

She and Bernard ended up at a table with three strangers.

Since the event was about networking it was an inconvenience to no one but Lies. The one benefit she got was to see how Bernard interacted with people he didn’t know. It turned out he was very charming, despite the obvious fact that the three Germans they’d joined were of no interest to him whatsoever.

It wasn’t long before the Germans got up to leave. Within minutes their vacated seats were claimed by Americans.

Partway through her meal, and between the dull, professional chatter, Lies spotted Harry seated four tables over. He was with the Canadian lawyer and another delegate from the trade mission, and a group of people she didn’t recognize. The lawyer was deep in conversation with a young, sharp-faced man who looked ill-at-ease in Harry’s company. He kept shooting sidelong glances at Harry, who had the intent expression on his face that he used to disguise boredom.

Bernard noticed where her attention continued to stray. “Are you certain you and Harry don’t have a personal interest in each other?”

“He’s my boss,” she reminded him, flustered at having been caught staring. She was normally more circumspect. “That pretty much says it all.”

“Ah. I see. It’s against Harry’s code of ethics.”

Without a doubt. If she’d worked for him for real the other night would never have happened. “Never mind that I might have a few ethics myself.”

Bernard had the audacity to laugh at her, with genuine humor that stretched to his eyes. “I don’t believe you’d allow anything to stand in your way if you were after something you really wanted.”

His assessment of her was startling because, while it suited her purposes, it might be a little too close to the truth. Bernard was good at reading people, with a lot of experience behind him, and she’d do well to remember that she was the rookie not him.

They were speaking to each other in Dutch because the conversation was private, but the Americans appeared to be uncomfortable with it so she switched over to English and addressed the entire table. “Women need to be cautious around men if they want to be taken seriously in the business world. Would you gentlemen agree?”

One of the Americans, a bluff, friendly man with red cheeks and a thick Texas accent, shook his head. “It depends on what you mean by cautious. I’d like to think we’ve come a long way in the last twenty years. The women working for me were hired because they had the right mix of education and experience. They have equal footing.”

“Would you have an office affair with one of them? Or condone any relationship between two of your employees if one was in a position of authority over another?” she pressed him. On one hand she wanted Bernard to believe that any interest she had in Harry was all about what he could do for her. And that yes, she would go after whatever she wanted if it would further her career. On the other hand, she was poking the bear. This was a male-dominated industry and the conversations she’d overheard throughout the day reflected that fact.

“That’s how I met my first wife,” the Texan replied. The others at the table all laughed. He then turned more serious. “I’d be curious as to who was taking advantage of whom. These days nothing’s ever so simple. Most women I know would file a sexual harassment suit quick as a wink if a man tried to hold her career over her head. It would be equally possible that she’s using him to get a promotion. And that’s assuming the man is in the position of power,” he added. “My VP of finance is a woman. If she’s sleeping with one of her staff, no one’s complaining. Her husband might not care for it though. But that’s between them.”

Lies liked him. She hoped he wasn’t all talk.

He also gave her something to think about. She freely acknowledged she might still be defensive over Dan filing that report on her regarding her relationship with Michael. Bernard’s words, however, were the ones that continued to ring in her head long after her evening had ended and he was driving her home.

I don’t believe you’d allow anything to stand in your way if you were after something you really wanted.

They were an accurate assessment of her. She did go after the things she wanted. It was part of what made her a good intelligence officer. But anyone who danced the fine edge of both sides of the law the way she did faced enormous temptation. She often had to decide between what her conscience could live with, what would benefit the greater good, and which was more important in any given situation.

Sleeping with Harry wasn’t only about what she could live with. For him, she wasn’t his employee so that wasn’t his issue. It was that he didn’t like what she did for a living. He valued trust and he’d never pretended that he trusted her. She’d been wrong to dismiss his struggles with his conscience over sleeping with her as his problem, not hers. It was one they shared equally.

Bernard pulled his car into a vacant parking spot along the side of the wide canal that fronted her flat. Aging alder, willow, and elm trees flourished, their branches drooping over the quiet water. The night was young and he didn’t shut off the engine. An elderly woman with a fat pug on a leash waddled past. The pug paused at the flowery shrubs bordering Lies’s building, which butted the street, and lifted a hind leg.

“Thank you for dinner and driving me home,” Lies said. Bernard had insisted on it when he’d found out she’d used public transit. She’d hoped Harry would offer, but he’d disappeared.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Bernard asked.

She was smarter than that. She didn’t think he was suspicious of her, but she was hardly going to give him the chance to search through her things if he was. She didn’t want him planting a wire in her flat either. That was what she planned on doing to him.

There was also the possibility that Harry might drop in unannounced, and she could well imagine what he’d think if he found Bernard already there.

Which brought up another downside to sleeping with Harry. This constant worrying about what he might think or how he’d react could have a negative impact on her investigation. Maybe Dan was right to be so concerned over who intelligence officers slept with. It wasn’t always about giving away secrets. Right now she wasn’t paying enough attention to her job.

“My place is a mess,” she said, offering it as a shame-faced confession, not the lame excuse that it was. “I’m not set up for entertaining yet. We could go to your place instead.” She made the suggestion with youthful enthusiasm, as if it were spur-of-the-moment, when she’d been trying to finagle an invitation to his home all through dinner.

“I’m afraid it isn’t convenient for me to have visitors this evening either,” Bernard said. “I’m having my condo painted.” He was quiet for a moment, as if trying to make up his mind. “I’m having a small dinner party on Saturday. Would you care to join me?”

She gave herself a mental high five. A party with other people in attendance would give her the freedom to move around. It was perfect. “I’d love to.”

“I’ll pick you up at seven.”

He leaned across the console, and before she could prevent it, he kissed her. It was thorough and far from unpleasant. In fact, it was quite nice. He knew what he was doing.

Far better than she did.

The kiss ended. She gathered her briefcase bag and umbrella, scrabbling for the latch on the car door, and nearly knocked over a man on a bicycle in her hurry to get it open. The man swerved to avoid a collision and called angrily over his shoulder for her to watch what she was doing. Lies ignored him, her head a swirl of confusion as she stepped out. Night air tugged at her hair and she reached up to smooth the curls off her cheek.

Bernard, if anything, found her reaction amusing. He rolled down the passenger side window, his smile smug. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She sank onto a bench and watched his car as it crossed the narrow bridge spanning the canal before disappearing into traffic on the far side. The one bright spot was that nothing about her reaction had screamed intelligence officer. There’d been nothing intelligent about it at all.

She rubbed her forehead, closing her eyes as she pulled herself back together. A month ago—maybe even two days—being thoroughly kissed by a man she found attractive wouldn’t have bothered her. But now, whether Bernard’s kisses were nice or not, he wasn’t Harry.

And this.

This wasn’t a game she could win.

* * *

Harry stared at the ceiling of his bedroom, trying to figure Lies out and where they now stood, or where he wanted them to.

He’d deliberately not stayed the whole night in her bed. If he had it would have led to expectations, more on his part than hers. She was the last thing he needed and he was far from the right man for her. He didn’t have the mental fortitude a woman like Lies would require. He’d had a friend who’d lost a finger playing with fireworks when they were kids. Lies was the firecracker and he hated to think of what he stood to lose.

She’d acted as if a man cutting and running after a few hours of great sex was nothing unusual for her, and that was driving him mad, because in his estimation the sex had been better than great. It was all he could do not to head over to her place right now, despite it being well after midnight.