The five of them had gone to the MI6 hotel, starting out in the bar, and not being able to talk freely, had retreated to Jimmy McLean’s room. They had talked for hours over drinks, trying their best to understand everything that had happened and everything they needed to accomplish in the future. The facts? Jake Adams had found a metal box that the old Soviet guard had lost in the Arctic. A box containing one of the most deadly flu viruses to ever spread throughout the world. A pandemic virus modified in some way. But to what end? And now Jake was to deliver the box to scientists that were currently somewhere over the Atlantic on their way to Oslo.
She watched as the other four of them bantered about the room, finishing off all the alcohol from the mini-bar. Velda had already raided the little bottles from her own room, but now they were dangerously low and in fact running out. That was good. Toni hadn’t gotten much sleep on the flight over the pond, barely slept the night before in the colonel’s room, and it was well past two in the morning. She was getting too old for this type of late night.
Toni’s secure cell phone went off and she picked up, moving into the bathroom. She recognized the number as that from the Agency.
“Yeah.”
“Is that any way to talk to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency?”
“Sir. It’s zero two twenty here and I feel like I’m babysitting.” She told Kurt Jenkins about how they had caught up with the two MI6 officers, and how the three agencies were now working together.
“How’s the NIS handling this?” Jenkins asked her.
“Just the one officer. An odd fellow.”
“There’s also the woman with Jake,” he reminded her.
“Well, we haven’t met yet. But so far I’m not that impressed.”
“They’re working in the background, providing us some great intel and helping keep Jake out of trouble. Which reminds me…” He stopped and the line went dead for a second.
Toni glanced around the bathroom, noticing that Jimmy McLean kept a low profile. Tooth brush and paste and razor and small can of shaving cream. Speed stick. That was it.
Jenkins came back on the line. “Sorry about that, Toni. Had to deal with something. What was I saying?”
“Something about Jake.”
“Right. He’ll arrive in Mora, Sweden at zero eight forty by train.”
“How far is that from here?”
Jenkins asked the question to someone on his end and came back. “About two hundred kilometers by air. Longer by road.”
“How’s Jake traveling?” she asked.
“No idea. He wouldn’t say.”
She smiled. That sounded like the Jake she knew. “Let me guess. He doesn’t want to get into Oslo and sit around waiting for the scientists.”
“Exactly.”
She couldn’t blame him. With a deadly virus like that, she was surprised he had even gotten on a train. “What’s the ETA on the scientists?”
Jenkins hesitated as if he was asking the question, but he never left the line. “Be there by noon. They stopped off in Iceland to refuel.”
Toni calculated how long it would take Jake to drive two hundred fifty to three hundred kilometers. Depending on the roads and traffic. Never. There was no way he would drive the virus to them. He had another plan. She was sure of that.
The Agency director broke her thoughts. “Do you have any idea what that little madman is up to now?”
“Jake?”
“No. Victor Petrova.”
“No. We think he’s in Oslo still, but can’t verify that. We suspect he’ll strike when Jake gets close. We plan on checking out of our hotel this morning and moving out toward the airport.”
“Good idea. The scientists will be landing on the Royal Norwegian Air Force Station at Gardermoen, just across the runway from the Oslo Airport.”
“I just landed there yesterday.”
“That’s right.”
What the hell was the matter with him? “Are you all right? Sounds like you’re having a stroke.”
“No. I mean yes. I’m fine. I just can’t let this virus get into the wrong hands. Not under my watch.”
Now that was the man she knew. “Don’t worry,” Toni said. “Not gonna happen as long as I’m around.” And Jake, she thought.
They both hung up at the same time and she went back out into the hotel room. She’d have to split up this slumber party in a hurry. She needed them fresh by noon.
Victor Petrova woke to the sound of his cell phone playing Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. He was staying in the most expensive hotel in Oslo, registered under the name Vladislav Petrenko, his newest alias. He rolled over in the darkness and waited for the song to recycle. He loved the Nutcracker, watching all those lithe people jumping around in tights. He imagined them now.
Finally he picked up the phone. “Yes,” he said, and then listened carefully to the man speaking English, the only common language he had with some of his men. He was expecting good news from Sweden.
But the man on the other end didn’t have good news.
“What do you mean missing? You’re their back up crew,” he reminded the man. “Find them. You’re talking about two women and a drunk.”
He listened longer now to excuses, wanting nothing more than to reach through the phone and grab this man by the throat. He hated working with the Swedes. They had a damn excuse for everything.
“Just do your damn job or I’ll send someone to do it for you.” He meant do them as well, and the man would understand without him actually saying it. Then Victor slapped his phone shut and set it on the nightstand. He knew he should have used Russians. They were so conditioned to having nothing, they rarely complained. At least those who had worked in the government.
Maybe he had underestimated Jake Adams. No. The game was early and he had a lot of moves. After all, he had found out the other players, played the old colonel like a pawn, and would soon take their queen. Not long for mate and one step closer to checkmate. He rolled over in his bed and went back to sleep almost immediately.
21
They had locked up Jake and Anna’s room, not wanting some wandering drunk or porter or both stumbling onto a dead man and another drugged and tied up like a pig. But Jake was disturbed by the men finding them on the train. Who knew they were there? The Agency. The Norwegian Intelligence Service. Perhaps Interpol, if Anna had called in their position and travel plans. But he doubted that. As far as he knew, and she had said, her last call had been from Spitsbergen, where she had told them about the virus, against Jake’s better wishes. Yet, they were traveling in Sweden, Victor Petrova’s new home base. He could have had eyes and ears on all transportation routes, heard recently about the police officer on the train, the abandoned rental car, and done the math. After all, Petrova was a bona fide genius with years of experience in the field and behind the scenes. That wasn’t it, though, and he knew it. Regardless of how they had been found, the fact was that they had been discovered, and they would have to do something to change that fact. They had two choices. They could split up or change their transportation again.