He took a quick shower, toweled off and came back in the room. Anna had picked up after him and placed his fresh clothes on the bed.
As she glanced at his clean, naked body, Jake thought he saw a new attitude in Anna. Maybe she had calmed down.
She sat onto the end of the bed and threw his underwear at him, which he caught and slipped on.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I must have overslept.”
“Passed out.” English. That was better.
“Tomato potato.”
“That’s not the way it goes,” she said.
Putting his pants on, he said, “That’s my way. Why’d you want to meet me downstairs at the bar anyway?”
“I didn’t. The restaurant.”
She had a point. Although they were technically connected. “Right. Why don’t I take you someplace nicer. I’m sure Oslo has a decent JapaChinese place. Tai? Indian?” He strapped his watch to his left wrist. “Where have you been for the past three hours?”
“Shopping.”
“You have no bags.”
“Shopping is not buying.”
“It is when you go,” he reminder her as he stretched a polo shirt over his head and then combed out his longer than normal hair with his fingers. Jesus, he had let his hair get long again.
“Must you always be a smart ass, Jake?”
“That’s rhetorical, right? That’s like asking me to piss sitting down.”
A slight smile crept up the right side of her mouth. Okay, he had her now. She was cooling down.
Reaching his hands to her, he said, “Come on. I’ll buy you some Sushi.”
“Sushi with a hangover?”
She put her hands out and Jake pulled her up from the bed and into his arms. They kissed and she pulled away from him.
“Hangover assumes I still don’t have a shine on,” he said, knowing she had pulled away because of the alcohol on his breath.
“You’ve got to slow down, Jake. It’s not good for you.”
No shit. Maybe that was the point. He was bored out of his skull. “I know. I need to get back into the game.”
A knock on the door surprised Jake, but Anna didn’t seem to flinch. Maybe she had ordered room service.
After hesitating another moment, Anna went to the door, looked through the peep and opened the door.
Jake expected to see some room service dude. Instead, there stood a man in his late 50s, gray hair in a military flat top, and dressed in nice tan Dockers and tight black polo shirt that showed the guy was still full of muscle and vitality. Even though it had been ten years since Jake had seen the man, that time passed would not hide his ex-commander, Colonel Russ Reed.
“Jesus,” Jake said, his head shaking. “What the hell you doing here, colonel?”
The two of them embraced like brothers, for that’s what they had been, first in Air Force intelligence stationed in Germany, and later, when the colonel retired and Jake moved on from the military early, where their paths crossed many times in the old CIA. Jake had spent much of his CIA time in Western Europe, and Colonel Reed had been assigned at various embassies in Eastern Europe. Although they hadn’t seen each other in years, they had talked on the phone and corresponded by e-mail.
Anna closed the door and stared at Jake.
“I’m sorry, Russ,” Jake said. “This is Anna, my—”
“We’ve met,” the colonel said.
Jake was rightfully confused. But then he remembered that Anna had opened the door without hesitation. She had recognized him. His head swirled and he had a feeling the alcohol was only part of the problem.
“Have a seat, Jake,” Colonel Reed said. It was more of a order than a request.
He would have protested, but Jake felt like shit and maybe close to throwing up. Reluctantly, he sat on the end of the bed. “What is this some kind of intervention? I admit I’ve been drinking too much. But come on… ”
Anna pulled a chair from a small table, took a seat, and cast her gaze on the colonel. “You want me to talk?” she asked the colonel.
“Let me start,” Colonel Reed said.
He remained standing, his fully-expressive, ruddy face his only tell. Something was seriously disturbing him, Jake could see.
“I contacted Anna in Vienna,” the colonel continued. “You had mentioned she worked for Interpol, and more specifically The Public Safety and Terrorism Sub-Directorate.”
Jake looked at Anna and said, “That wasn’t exactly a secret. After all, your mother and father in Zell am See know that much.”
She didn’t say a word.
“Anyway,” the colonel said, “you had also told her about my background. So Anna knew, to a certain extent, where I was coming from. As you might know, there’s been a huge shake-up in the U.S. intelligence community.”
Jake knew. Nearly a decade ago the old CIA, FBI, NSA, ATF, and nearly every other alphabet soup agency had been swallowed up in one major intelligence agency, the new Agency. The Agency also included members of the military intelligence community. Unfortunately, the expected streamlining had also developed at times into an even more cumbersome bureaucracy. Jake had been called back to the new Agency, which he had never really been a part of, on a number of occasions over the years. And it was always the same old mantra — your country needs you. Each time had almost cost him his life.
“What’s the Agency need this time?” Jake asked callously. “Who do you need killed.”
Colonel Reed laughed. “You’re still a funny guy, Jake. But it’s nothing like that.” His eyes shifted toward Anna and then settled back on Jake.
“Wait a minute,” Jake said. “You could have just dropped by our flat in Vienna. Oslo is kind of out of the way. A connection too far. You convinced Anna that she and I needed a vacation in Norway in August. But why?”
Anna leaned back in her chair, her expression defiant yet defeated.
“Well,” Colonel Reed said. “Glad to see your training hasn’t entirely been washed away by schnapps.”
“Did you come here to insult me, or tell me I just won the Megabucks Lotto?”
The colonel hesitated, selecting his words. “You remember a guy named Captain Steve Olson?”
“Of course. You only had seven officers at any one time under your command in our tactical intel squadron. Steve and I hung out a lot. But you know that. What about him? He was reassigned as a military attaché here in Oslo until he died in a plane crash.”
“There was no plane crash,” the colonel muttered.
Jake’s mind tried to recall the circumstances of his old friend’s death, but it had been nearly two decades ago, and too much had happened between then and now. “A cover story,” he finally surmised.
“Right.”
“Okay…so how did Steve die?”
“We don’t know for sure,” the colonel said somewhat reticently. “But we might know now.”
Glancing at Anna, Jake said, “And how does this impact Anna and Interpol?”
“It doesn’t,” Reed said. Perhaps too forcefully.
“It doesn’t but it does,” Jake said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked her to be here. You would have just called me in Vienna and told me what you’re going to tell me right now. Come on, Russ, before my buzz wears off.”
“Right to the point. I always liked that about you, Jake. All right. Steve and the assistant Oslo station chief, John Korkala, went missing together back in October of 1986. They had heard of a plane crash on Spitsbergen Island in Svalbard and went to investigate. Last the CIA heard they were following four KGB officers. Something went wrong up there, because not one of the six ever left that island.”
Thinking of the scenario, Jake tried to remember the Svalbard Archipelago. He had flown over the islands once during a mission. To call them remote would be like calling the sky blue.
“Svalbard made news recently,” Jake said. “The Norwegian Seed Bank.”