He started walking again. “I don’t give a shit if you shot them outta the sky. Find them. And get me what they’ve found.”
“Sir, how do you know they found it?”
Oberon stopped again, this time looking into the store window reflections for the tail he could feel somewhere behind him.
“Trust me. Jake Adams found it. Now you find him and what’s mine pronto.”
“Yes, sir.” The man hung up.
Shaking his head, Oberon shoved his satellite phone into a fanny pack, zipped it, and swung it to the back of his waist. Then he walked toward his favorite coffee shop.
Two blocks back and across the street, Colonel Reed gazed around the corner of a brick wall at the entrance to a narrow alley. Keeping up with the little man was never a problem, but doing so without being caught was nearly impossible. It was if the man had a sixth sense about being followed, turning around like a spastic absent-minded professor who had lost his way. But Oberon’s moves were all calculated. Reed knew that Victor Petrova had not only been highly trained by the old KGB, he had actually written the book for them on counter surveillance.
Now the little spy had ducked into his favorite coffee shop, and the colonel guessed he would be there for a while.
He was suddenly startled when one of his phones vibrated in his coat pocket. Right side. That would be his satellite phone. Only two people had that number.
Answering with a simple, “Yeah,” the colonel waited.
“I was nearly killed today.”
“Nearly? That’s a weekly occurrence for you, Jake. Where the hell are you?”
“How’d you know? Seems like hell has frozen over.”
The colonel kept his eyes open for anyone near him. The streets were not super busy, but he still needed to stay at the top of his game.
“So, where are you?” the colonel repeated.
“Where you sent my dumb ass. Spitsbergen.”
“What’s that noise in the background?”
“The pilot is fixing a fuel line. Someone got a lucky shot. You don’t seem surprised by this.”
The colonel cleared his throat. “Where exactly are you? And did you find our old friend?”
“Yeah, I found Steve. He was dead just like we guessed. Of course he’s been frozen solid for more than twenty years.”
Their signal was starting to break up and the colonel guessed it had something to do with his proximity to the buildings. So he started walking toward a small park a block away.
“And then someone started shooting at you?”
“Yeah, I don’t have much time for small talk. The shooters were in another helo. I’ve got the specifics. Remember this.” Jake told him the tail markings, model and paint scheme.
“I’ll check into it. Can’t be that many helos on Spitsbergen.” The reception had improved as the colonel reached the open park.
“Listen, colonel,” Jake started and stopped, breathing into the phone heavily. “What have you failed to tell me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know damn well what I mean,” Jake screamed. “Tell me about the frickin’ box.”
“My God, it’s true. Do you have it?”
“It had biohazard written all over it,” Jake said. “Why the hell would I keep that?”
“You didn’t leave it at the site.”
“What’s in it?”
The colonel swiveled his head around, hoping nobody had him under sound surveillance. “Tell me you have it?” he whispered loudly.
“I’m not a complete idiot, colonel,” Jake said. “Do you really think I think you sent me all the way to Bumfuck, Norway to find a frozen friend? Christ, I might have been drinking too much recently, but that doesn’t mean I’m entirely brain-dead.”
“All right,” the colonel said. “No bullshit. You have it right?”
“What’s in the damn box?”
The colonel thought for a moment. Jake had a right to know what he was into, but what he didn’t know might be as important as what he did know. “It’s a weapon the old Soviets developed.”
“What kind of weapon?”
“Don’t know for sure. But I heard it was based on the nineteen-eighteen flu virus. Modified somewhat.”
“Jesus. That killed millions.”
“Between fifty and a hundred million. Over seventeen million in India alone.”
“But don’t we have a way to fight that now?”
“It depends on how they have modified the virus, or if they can catch it before it spreads too rapidly. But remember, back in nineteen-eighteen the main form of transportation for worldwide travel was by boat. Steam ship. It took a month to cross the Atlantic. Now, assuming best case, or worst case, depending on your perspective, the number of people traveling during any given week is astronomical compared to back then. More travel today in one day than traveled in an entire year back then.”
“So, I should destroy it,” Jake said.
“No.”
“It’s heavy, I could drop it into the ocean and it will sink like a rock.”
“No.”
“Or I could just leave it buried in a glacier,” Jake said. “Tell no one where I put it.”
“No.”
“What is wrong with you?” Jake asked him. “This could be the most deadly virus in the world. Why would we hang onto it?”
Silence. Colonel Reed’s eyes shifted around the small park for any sign of danger. Finally, he said, “Our government needs it, Jake. They want to try to come up with a vaccine. This is probably not the only sample of the virus from those old days. What if it gets into the hands of terrorists and they unleash it on the world? We need to have a way to ramp up a vaccine. If we have a head start.” His words hung in the damp air.
“I’ll bring it to Oslo,” Jake said.
“Keep me informed along the way,” the colonel said, and hung up the SAT phone, returning it to his right jacket pocket.
Looking around, Colonel Reed wondered what his little friend was up to now. He guessed that Oberon thought he was at least one step ahead of him, maybe two. But that would have been a false assumption. He smiled and stepped off toward a taxi. Time to leave Stockholm and the land of tall narcissistic blonde bimbos and head to Oslo. At least the women weren’t so damn self-centered.
A few blocks away in the coffee shop, Oberon sat at his normal corner table sipping a cup of cappuccino, swirling his cell phone around on the hard wood surface. He wasn’t concerned about being in front of the window, because the last attempt on his life was only a ruse to impress his American friend. He needed to keep the good colonel on his toes and looking over his shoulder. The more he looked behind him the better chance he would not see something coming from the front or sides.
As the phone jangled an ABBA tune, he smiled and stopped the spinning.
“Yeah?”
“He followed you to the coffee shop. Then he had a long conversation with someone on his SAT phone in the park.”
“Good work. Where is he now?”
“In a taxi a couple of cars in front of us. Looks like he might be heading back to his hotel.”
“All right. Stick with him and keep me informed.”
“Will do.”
Oberon flipped the phone shut and gave it another spin on the table. Then he smiled again and finished the last of his coffee. A long talk on a SAT phone? He must have gotten an update from his man, Jake Adams. Which means his chopper didn’t go down in the ocean off Spitsbergen. Time to take a more active role.
11
Jake had just gotten off the phone when Kjersti closed the side panel below the engine. She had found a small leak, but enough of a hole to lose far too much fuel to allow them to return to Longyearbyen without repairing it.
Kjersti had expertly dropped the chopper down out of the fog bank, found a fifty foot ceiling above the icy ocean, and had expertly flown just above the white caps to a small glacial point at the edge of a deep fjord, setting down on the hard surface to find the fuel leak.