The Cold Edge (13 page)

The colonel threw his three-day bag in the back seat and climbed into the front, settling into the plush leather seat.

The Russian pulled away from the arrivals area, his eyes concentrating on the road, and his ubiquitous mini-cigar hanging from the right side of his mouth. Neither said a word for a couple minutes.

Finally, the Russian said, “How was that little troll in Stockholm?”

Colonel Reed shook his head. “He calls himself Oberon now.”

The Russian laughed. “We used to call him little Stalin. You know what Oberon means?”

The colonel shook his head.

“King of the Fairies.”

“You mean like. . .” Colonel Reed flapped a limp wrist toward the driver.

“The other one. At least traditionally.”

“Magical and fantastical.”

“Right.”

Leaning back in his seat, the colonel thought about what Jake had told him. About being shot at in Spitsbergen.

“By your silence, I'm guessing your man found the box at the crash site.” The Russian sucked in and blew out smoke almost simultaneously.

“He was nearly killed,” Reed said.

“Wasn't my guys.”

Since the International Airport was nearly forty miles north of Oslo, it took them a while to get to the city. Now they drove toward downtown Oslo, the traffic lighter than normal for that time of day. The colonel had been in deep thought for much of the drive, observing the plush green hills, neither saying a word for miles.

Finally, the Russian asked, “Does he know what's inside the box?”

Colonel Reed hesitated. But not too long. “I told him.”

“Good. Then he'll be damn careful with it. I got you your same hotel. Fourth floor. Street view, just like you asked.”

“You'd make a good travel agent,” Colonel Reed said.

“Don't need them any more with the internet.”

Good point. “If you're going to smoke those things in my car, at least give me one.”

The Russian reached inside his jacket, pulled out the little box of cigars, tapped the bottom on the shifter, bringing one out, and the colonel took it from him. He lit it with the car lighter and puffed hard to get the smoke rolling into his lungs. The colonel liked a cigar from time to time, but only when a mission was accomplished. He guessed this one was far from over.

●

Toni Contardo stepped down out of the U.S. Air Force Gulfstream jet and collected her bag from a staff sergeant dressed in civilian clothes. The flight from Camp Springs, Maryland to Oslo included a refueling stop in Reykjavik, Iceland. She had not been able to sleep much of the trip, her mind drifting back to images of her and Jake Adams through the years. They had once been so close. And that also bothered her, because she had used their love-making as a barometer for subsequent affairs, and none had met that intensity, the same depth—including her recent marriage. Yet, she was happy, she kept telling herself.

A rental car waited for her on the tarmac, a charcoal BMW 5-series. A man sat in the passenger seat. A man who looked just out of college. Slight build, but chiseled features. Great. Babysitting. She set her bag into the trunk and got in behind the wheel.

“Thom Hagen,” the young man said, reaching his hand to Toni. “Norwegian Intelligence Service.”

She left his hand there for a moment before squeezing down hard on him. “Toni,” she said. “Are you my tour guide?”

He didn't say anything, searching for his thoughts and trying to shake some life back into his hand.

She didn't wait for him. “So NIS is pulling from the middle schools now?” She cranked over the car and pulled away, squealing the tires and planting the man back into his chair.

Finding her way out of the airport, they drove for a while in silence.

“I'm twenty-nine,” the NIS officer said. “Four years in Army Intelligence in NATO units in Mid-East wars, before joining NIS.”

Toni shook her head and said, “I read your file on the flight.”

“Really?”

“I don't work with just anyone,” she assured him. “I demand professionalism and expertise with weapons. I will not baby-sit anyone. So if you want your hand held or your dick serviced, you can go elsewhere.”

“I'm married with two children. And you're not my type.”

Type? She guessed the guy's wife was on the demure side. “Stay the hell out of my way and we'll be fine.”

The NIS officer slouched in his leather chair, his gaze straight ahead.

All right. A little harsh. “Listen,” she said. “I've got nothing against you. It's been a long flight. I'm tired.”

Still nothing from him.

She picked up the freeway toward Oslo and gunned the gas, sliding into traffic. Her passenger grasped the door handle with a death grip.

Time to get to work. “Where are they?”

“You mean your old friend, Jake Adams?” the man asked.

“And your old friend, Kjersti Nilsen?”

He swiveled his head toward her. “How did you. . .”

“I told you. I leave nothing to chance. So I knew you were more into blondes. I also knew that you and Miss Nilsen were lovers while she was an Army pilot and you worked intel with her unit. You both only got written reprimands for your affair. You shouldn't have gotten that, since you were both junior officers and there was no reason not to have a sexual relationship. But your commander had his own desires toward Kjersti, which he had tried to act on but she said no. Tell me when I get something wrong.”

His head lowered to his chest. “Sounds about right. But I didn't know about our commander.”

“All right,” she said. “Let's get to work. Where are they? And I mean Jake, Kjersti and Jake's girlfriend, Anna.”

“Right. They flew from Svalbard to Tromso by helicopter, refueling on one of our coast guard ships half way there. The coast guard captain gave them some weapons, but he was not given any information on their true mission.” He went on for a while giving great details on what they knew about the activity in Svalbard, including the shoot out. He mentioned the virus in passing and without much concern.

“You never found the other helicopter and the shooters?” she asked him.

“No. As far as we know, they're still on the island of Spitsbergen. But we'll find them. What's our plan to bring them in from the cold?”

Great. This guy's been watching too many spy movies.

“We get them to Oslo and pick up the box,” she said. “It's as simple as that.” However, she knew it was never a simple task. Something always went wrong. She continued, “We have scientists on their way who will render the virus inactive and bring it back to America.”

“You can have it,” Hagen said.

Forty-five minutes later, they drove into downtown Oslo and Toni found her hotel without asking for directions, pulling into the underground parking garage and finding a spot. She had studied the maps on the plane during her sleepless flight.

The two of them agreed to meet first thing in the morning for breakfast in the hotel. She needed to get some sleep. He walked off to catch a cab and she checked into her hotel on Karl Johans Gate.

In her room, she took a long, hot shower, which woke her up considerably. She dressed in black, from spandex pants to the skin-tight Under Armor long-sleeve shirt that accentuated her perfectly-large breasts and fit torso.

Then she checked her equipment. Secure cell phone. GPS enabled secure SAT phone. Wireless PDA with tracking. Stiletto. And more.

She quickly lifted out a Glock 23 handgun in .40 cal, slapped a magazine into the handle and cycled a round into the chamber. She aimed the gun around the room, feeling the weight and balance and visualizing targets and eventual recoil. Setting that gun aside, she pulled an identical handgun from the bag and went through the same process. When she was done, her mind in the proper place, she strapped a holster under her left arm and shoved a gun into it. To conceal the gun, she put on a black zip-up jacket, but left it open most of the way. To finish off the outfit, she put on quiet black athletic trainer shoes.

Now she would wait. But not long. She had sat on the bed for only five minutes when the cell call came in with a vibrate. She listened and hung up. Time to move.

She walked down the hotel corridor to the stairway and went down one flight to the fourth floor, checked around the corner, and continued down to room 425. Listening against the door, she smiled. Then she took out her PDA in her left hand and her Glock in her right hand. She punched in some pre-programmed numbers, pointed the infrared beam at the electronic key box and the light turned green.

Quietly, she opened the door, could hear the voices in the room better now, and gently closed the door behind her. Only a small floor lamp lit the back corner of the room.

As she stepped lightly toward the bed, which was moving up and down with great ferocity, the woman voicing approval as the headboard slammed against the wall, she stopped at the corner, her Glock ready. Wait for them to finish? She smiled as she peered around the corner. Give them that.

Even more gently now, she took a seat on a chair at the foot of the bed and crossed her legs, the gun on her lap. They were doing it on top of the sheets, the man on top of a woman with dark hair, stroking in and out of her.

Finally, the man finished with a final thrust and pulled out, a condom full and drooping from the end of an unremarkable penis.

As the older man rolled off the beautiful brunette with the perfect body, she saw Toni first but could not even get a squeak out of her mouth.

Toni smiled at her, the Glock pointed at the couple on the bed.

“Hey,” the woman said, tapping the man and then pointing at Toni.

Turning his head toward Toni, the man was shocked to see her, pulling the sheets over his body.

“Who the hell are you?” the man said.

She ignored him, pointing her gun at the woman. “You. Put on your clothes and get out.”

With no words, Miss Perfect Body stood up, not concerned that Toni saw her, and started to get dressed. When she was done, she hesitated until Toni trained the gun on her.

“You have a question?” Toni asked her.

“I was hoping for a tip.”

“Right. Here's a tip. Find a new profession.” Toni waved the gun for her to leave, which she did, with lips pouting.

After the door was securely locked, Toni cast her gaze on the man in the bed, her Glock pointed in his general direction.

“Who are you?” the man asked. “And what the hell do you want?”

“Your memory is as short as your dick,” she said, trying to be as serious as possible under the circumstances.

He said nothing, waiting for her.

“You don't remember me?” she asked. “I'm hurt. Well, Colonel Reed, I remember you.”

“Shit. Agency.”

“Before that,” she said.

His mind was working overtime. Then it came to him. “You were with Jake Adams. Your hair was different.”

Her hair had always been long, black and curly—the benefit of her Italian father and mother. “Close enough. You sent Jake to Bumfuck, Norway on a fool's errand.”

Colonel Reed propped himself on his elbows, but didn't say a word.

Toni continued, “You should have mentioned something to the Agency before going off like this.”

He shook his head and released air from his nose. “You think I'm some rogue officer.”

“What should we think? You no longer work for us, yet you send one of our former agents into harm's way to secure one of the most deadly flu viruses to ever strike planet Earth.”

The colonel sat up now, but kept his lower body covered. “It's not what you think.”

“You'd be surprised what I think.”

“Can you put the gun away? It's Toni, right? Toni something Italian.”

She waved the gun toward his clothes thrown to the floor haphazardly. “Get dressed, colonel. We've got a long talk ahead of us.”

Tromso, Norway

They had made it across the ocean with plenty of fuel, landed at a small airport near Tromso, the city called the ‘Paris of the North,' which Jake wasn't buying, and rented a car with cash. Tromso was far more beautiful than Paris, with the snow-capped mountains ringing the town and the ocean-front fjords that ran through the area like a spider web. He had come to hate the crowded big cities of Europe. Although Vienna didn't seem big to him, the traffic could be a nightmare. Rome was worse and Paris perverse. No, he missed living in Innsbruck. Tromso might have been in the running if it weren't for the cold winters and the bug-filled summers. Not to mention the strange lighting—long summer nights and nonexistent daylight in the winter.

Now, the three of them were together in more confined space, having transferred their gear from the helo to the rental Volvo sedan. They had just grabbed dinner, decided it would be better to keep moving, so they would drive through the night in shifts. Jake had taken the wheel first, with Anna at his side, and Kjersti sprawled out in the back sleeping. It was closing in on midnight, but the sky was still a strange glow of light. The Land of the Midnight Sun finally made sense to Jake. Most of the night would be in that weird glow. The highway they were driving resembled a tunnel as it wound along a river, the canyon walls periodically steep and narrow.

According to the map, they would reach the border in a few miles. They were at the top of the world here, with Norway, Sweden and Finland coming together in a narrow stretch of land. Not far to the northeast and they could have crossed into Russia. Traffic? In the past fifty kilometers they had come across only two other cars.

“Are you sure we cross into Finland?” Anna asked Jake, her voice quiet and confused.

“Yes,” he said. “But for only about a hundred and twenty kilometers. Then we head south into Sweden.”

“Wow. I had no idea they all came together like this. Where do we go from there?”