The train ended in Mora, Sweden. They could take a bus, not a good choice, catch a commuter flight, a possibility, or go by car. Not long to decide, either. They were a half hour out of Falun, a ten minute stop in a former mining town, before an hour and a half final leg to Mora. Maybe their best choice would come to him.
The three of them were together in the sleeper car next door to the one with the two men who had attacked them. It would be difficult now to explain this to the Swedish police, especially if they were able to tie them to what had happened to their man farther north.
Anna was sleeping soundly on the upper bunk, and Jake and Kjersti shared the lower bunk — Jake sitting up on the end waiting for a possible second team to attack, while Kjersti lay in a fetal position taking up the rest of the bed. But Jake could tell she wasn’t getting much rest. She was tossing and turning for the past few hours, occasionally kicking him in the process.
Now she sat up onto her side and stared at Jake. “What time is it?” Kjersti whispered to him.
“Almost six thirty.”
“Should be to Falun soon,” she said, pulling herself from under the covers and sitting closer to him.
“Yeah. I’m thinking we should get off there.”
“They have camera security on the train,” she said. “When they find our friends next door, they’ll review the digital files and see we were involved.”
“I know. But if we get off at Falun that’ll give us at least an hour and a half head start before we have every law enforcement agency in Sweden after us.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her eyes. “Not to mention the bad guys. I’ve been laying here trying to figure out how they found us.”
“I know how.” Jake reached down to his backpack and found his SAT phone. The one Colonel Reed had given him to use. “With this.” He turned the phone in his hand.
“I thought you disabled the GPS by turning it off,” she said, her face concerned.
“No. This is a newer version. Doesn’t have to be on to track the GPS chip inside.”
“But why? Why not throw the SAT phone away a long time ago if you knew this?”
“I needed to know who our friends were and who might come for us.”
He could tell her mind was reeling, trying to understand Jake’s actions.
She said, “You knew they’d come for us. You expected it.”
“Yes.”
“And what does that tell you?”
“That depends. It depends on whether my good friend Colonel Reed had been tracking us or if Victor Petrova had been.”
“What’s your gut say?”
That was what had kept Jake awake the past few hours, even more than the possibility of a second crew coming for them. He didn’t entirely believe that his old commander, a former Air Force colonel and CIA and Agency officer, had actually sold him out. Couldn’t believe that. The more he thought about the box, the purported virus within, and the colonel’s reaction to Jake discovering it, the more Jake guessed Colonel Reed had not fixed their location and given it to Petrova. After all, the colonel knew that Jake would know about the GPS tracking function, active or passive.
Jake finally said, “My gut tells me that Petrova provided the SAT phone to Colonel Reed to keep track of my progress. He planned all along to cut us off at the pass. Not let us get to Oslo with the virus. He assumed I wouldn’t take the biohazard on a commercial flight, and would do everything within my power to get it to my government. Which meant I would either drive or take a train. Perhaps a boat, but that would have been ruled out because of the time and distance. He knew that we could either pick up a train in Bodo, Norway or Gallivare, Sweden. They probably had a team waiting at both, and once they saw we had flown to Tromso and were driving south into Sweden, they shifted their people this way.”
“Makes sense,” Kjersti said. “But if they were waiting for us in Gallivare, what took them so long to come for us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were under orders at that time to just follow. Or perhaps they figured we weren’t going anywhere. Remember, we could have switched trains last night in Gavle and gone to Stockholm. They probably didn’t want us to get lost in the transfer.”
“But they still had the GPS.”
“Right,” Jake said. “Which I could have sent on a ride by itself on the Stockholm train. Or, left it on this train and jumped onto Stockholm without the SAT phone. Who knows why they came when they did.” Well, Jake had a better idea, knowing what was really in the metal box he had found at the Svalbard MiG crash site. “Time to get going.”
He got up and shook Anna awake. She reluctantly got up rubbing her eyes and yawning.
“Where we going?” Anna asked.
Jake quickly explained that they would be getting off at Falun instead of going all the way to Mora, and what they would do once off the train. They packed all of their carry-on into their backpacks, their only luggage, and headed out of the sleeper, planning on jumping off the train as soon as they stopped. Overhead, a soft woman’s voice said they would be in Falun in five minutes.
Outside, Jake opened the compartment next door and saw that the man was still sleeping on the floor, but the berthing area smelled like iron from the dried blood. He guessed it would soon start smelling like rotting flesh.
The three of them split up and made their way through the dining car and into the regular seating area, taking seats separate.
The train stopped in Falun and the three of them got off and walked slowly with the others toward the terminal.
Jake would have to find them transportation. But first he had to make sure they were not being followed. He would stop and change directions. Stop and pretend to tie his shoes. Watch behind him in glass reflections. Finally, as the train pulled away behind them, he was certain they had not been followed off the train.
Now inside the terminal, he observed people coming from the small parking area, spotted a possible target, and followed her as she went to the ticket booth. The woman, in her early thirties, bought a ticket for Stockholm, which would leave in half an hour. Perfect. As the woman turned with her ticket, she bumped into Jake, who excused himself, and caught the attention of Anna across the terminal. The woman also excused herself, smiled and walked away.
The ticket agent asked Jake where he would like to go, but Jake felt for his wallet and said he had left it in his car. Jake walked around the corner and turned to see the action.
First, Anna walked up to the woman, discreetly showed her Interpol credentials, and had the woman move over to the side wall. The woman showed Anna her identification, her ticket and looked quite concerned. Then the woman handed her purse to Anna, who made a quick pass through the purse and handed it back to the woman. Anna smiled and waved the woman away. The entire encounter lasted perhaps two minutes. Maybe less.
Kjersti now walked through the terminal carrying Anna’s pack and her own. She caught up with Jake at the doors but didn’t acknowledge him. Moments later, Jake walked out to the parking lot, followed back a ways by Kjersti, with Anna trailing even farther back.
Jake stopped at the rear end of a new silver metallic Saab 9–3 sport sedan. Kjersti came and set the bags next to Jake, and then Anna showed up and opened the trunk remotely.
“Nice ride,” Anna said. “When do you suppose she’ll realize her keys are gone?”
Jake loaded the bags into the back. “Four days from now. Around the time she tries to open her car after returning from the big city.”
“That’s when she returns?” Kjersti asked.