Rising Tiger (3 page)

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.”

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 gro
ßes 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 say 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.”

“I can handle myself.”

“And I can’t?”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m just a lot harder to reach right now.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m just messing with you.”

He almost forgot about her great sense of humor. Jake really missed his old friend. “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know. Do you have any plans on taking on a partner?”

He laughed. “My plans were to retire and go fishing. You see how that’s worked out for me. The bastards keep pulling me back into the game.”

“I hope you charged them this time.”

“Damn right. It’s all off books, of course. The money is filtered through a U.S. consultant group to one of my offshore accounts.”

“Brilliant. But you know they’ll hang you out to dry if anything happens to you. Especially with Kurt Jenkins gone. And Toni.”

Jake had tried his best to block out the murder of his old friend and onetime lover, Toni Contardo. But it was hard to do so, especially with the revelation at her memorial service that the two of them had had a child together over twenty years ago.

“I’m sorry, Jake. I didn’t mean to bring her up.”

“You were friends also, Alexandra.”

“I know.”

There was a long silence. Jake stood and looked at himself in the full length mirror. His body was still relatively toned from simple push-ups and crunches. But his skin was blemished with scars from bullet and knife wounds over his long career. Many of those had happened with Toni in close proximity. Then he ran his hands through his longer hair, which was streaked now with gray against the darker locks. He was afraid to let his beard grow out completely for fear of looking like an old man.

Finally, Jake said, “Are you serious?”

“About?”

“A partnership.”

Without hesitation, Alexandra said, “Yes, of course. I love working with you.”

“Then let’s do it. But we keep it informal. I don’t want anything I do to fall back on you.” He also didn’t want to put her in any more danger than necessary. There were still too many people who wanted Jake dead.

“That sounds Wunderbar.”

“What about your current case with the BND?”

“My boss has told me to get over it. I can live with that.”

“How would you like another road trip?”

“You mean like the last time you almost got me killed?”

Jake laughed. “So you know what you’re getting into.” He sat back on the bed.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Do you still have your Canadian passport?”

“Of course.”

“Then get your nice butt on the next flight out of Munich and fly to Singapore.”

“Why Singapore?”

“That’s where I’m heading next.” He explained a lead he had gotten from Jenkins before taking off from Costa Rica. “But I still have to talk to a man tomorrow here in Taipei.”

“What about the files I sent to your server?” she asked.

“You won’t be able to download them until after my system reset itself. We can download them when we meet in Singapore.”

He worked out details on where they would meet in Singapore, and then they both clicked off their phones. Jake grabbed his laptop, opened it and got back into the files he had downloaded from the jump drive he had gotten from the Taipei banker before the guy was murdered. He really did need to get some help with the Chinese parts of these files. But what he could understand was what he had suspected. The deposits into various accounts had come from banks in Beijing and Shanghai. The so-called Chinese communists were quickly learning the tricks of capitalists. And he knew that Remington must have had something to do with this.

He closed the computer, turned off the table light, and tried to get to sleep. But this new prospect of working with Alexandra had invigorated him. During their last time together, they had actually discussed this possibility. Yet Jake had no idea it would happen so soon, if at all. It had just been talk over beers and a camp fire.

Then his mind drifted back to his current case. The banker had been killed because of the information he had transferred to Jake. Whatever was on his computer was damning enough to kill over, and that meant Jake was on the right track. He only wished he had spent some time talking with those two men in the alley earlier in the evening. But instead he had just gotten a few more bruises and a sliced arm on his leather coat.

Taipei, Taiwan

Shangwei stepped off the Red Line subway car at the Jiantan Station, the clock on the wall reading just after one in the morning. Glancing to street level, he could tell that the Shilin Night Market was winding down, with many of the kiosk stalls closed down and others being broken down now. Within the hour, he knew, these streets would look just like all the rest in this north Taipei district. He had tried to catch up with his target, hoping the man would get off after a few stops. But he never did find the man with the hat.