Getting out, he checked his watch. Just about midnight. He was thankful the midnight sun had passed this far south. A month earlier and it would have still been light at this time.
He hiked through the woods above the road for a half mile until he came upon a high metal fence with razor wire topping that. Looking more closely through his NVGs, he saw it was also electrified. Great. What was Victor Petrova hiding behind the wire?
Now, Jake could get through the fence, but that was just the first obstacle. He guessed Petrova would also have motion sensors, perhaps dogs. He could handle the dogs. He had brought some treats for them, and bullets if they decided Jake would taste better. But that would also give up his position, because he didn’t have a silencer for the 9mm. His biggest fear, though, was the motion sensors. Because if he didn’t know where they were, he couldn’t avoid them. It wasn’t like the movies, where huge lights would come on and an alarm would sound. Victor Petrova was smarter than that. He would have the motion sensors in synch with cameras, which would pinpoint the movement and silently record. Sure an internal alarm would go off, allowing a security agent to check the monitors and either release the hounds or send those with guns.
Think Jake. What would that little gnome do?
Toni Contardo and Colonel Reed had followed Victor Petrova from his hotel in Oslo, past the airport and toward the north. She knew where they were going as soon as they passed the airport. They had a good deal of information about Petrova’s estate outside of Lillehammer. It was probably more secure than most Norwegian military installations. And why? Norway was one of the most crime-free countries in the world. Most people in the country wouldn’t even lock their doors. But she knew that Victor had a lot of enemies, including those in the Russian government, former KGB officers, and even those in the current SVR. Not to mention those in the criminal world who wanted a piece of his action. No, Victor Petrova was right to be paranoid. Well, not paranoid. Paranoid meant you thought people were out to get you. Petrova knew for a fact people wanted him dead.
Once they confirmed that Petrova had gone to his estate on the lake, Toni had checked into a small B&B on the outskirts of Lillehammer, with cash, her in one room and the colonel next door.
Past midnight now, she flipped open her phone and called a number from memory on her secure cell.
“Yeah, we’re in place.,” she said.
“Jake never showed in Oslo,” Kurt Jenkins said.
“What? Why not?”
“We don’t know for sure.”
“Did you talk with him?” She got off the bed and started to pace the room.
“Earlier in the day. He split up from the two women. Sent them by air to Oslo.”
“So where is Jake?”
A long delay, followed by, “We think he’s going after Victor Petrova.”
Great. “What about the virus? What has he done with that?” Jake would never compromise the safety of so many people unless…
“We don’t know,” Jenkins reiterated brusquely.
Jenkins was getting upset, she could tell.
“Does he know about this place?” she asked.
“Of course,” Jenkins said. “He knows what you know.”
“He knows more than that,” Toni said. “He knows Petrova from the old days. Knows how he’ll react.”
No reaction.
“You didn’t know that?” she asked him. When he didn’t say anything, she continued, “Petrova was heavily involved with the INF Treaty verification process. So was Jake. Their paths crossed many times — in the Ukraine and Russia.”
“How’d that go?”
“Jake never really discussed it. I just came out of the conversations thinking Jake was both impressed and frustrated. There was respect on both sides, but something had happened that Jake wouldn’t discuss with me. Said it was need-to-know.”
“Understand,” Jenkins said. “Yet, there’s nothing in the official record.”
“I think it was more personal.”
Neither said a word for a while.
“What’s the plan?” she finally asked him.
“We’ve got nothing on Petrova. Not officially.”
“We have Petrova hiring Colonel Reed, who hired Jake, to go to the Arctic.”
“Right. To find his old friend.”
“But…” She knew Jenkins was right. They weren’t even sure the colonel had told them the truth. It could have all been a ruse of some sort. A grand bit of disinformation. Petrova’s specialty. “But if Jake has the virus and a link to Petrova that goes back to the 80s, then we have something on the guy. We can stick the guy in one of our prisons until the little man drops dead.”
“But until then,” Jenkins said, “we need to hold back. Sure we have him on possible attempted murder charges, but the local courts in Norway and Sweden would have to fight each other for jurisdiction — if they could even tie Petrova to the shootings in Svalbard and the attack on the train. You need to find Jake.”
She agreed and flipped him shut. But that might be harder than it sounded. If Jake didn’t want to be found, she wouldn’t find him. She lay onto the bed and thought about her old friend. They had been on some dangerous missions in the past with him. Both almost getting killed too many times to count. Now things had changed between them. She was married and he was living with a younger woman. A beautiful blonde Austrian.
25
The Bell 407, almost identical to the helicopter they had used in Svalbard, cruised in the darkness at four thousand feet, Kjersti behind the stick and Anna to her right. Behind them sat a strange group: the MI6 officers, Jimmy McLean and Velda Crane; Norwegian Intelligence Service officer, Thom Hagen; and two beefy men with the Norwegian Police Security Service, the PST. An additional SWAT unit from PST was driving north in their mobile command post and would reach Lillehammer by morning.
It had not taken a great deal of convincing on Anna’s part to get officially involved in the case. She had made one phone call to her boss in Vienna, who had called the Secretary General himself at Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France. By the time word had traveled back to Norway, Anna was not only sanctioned to help with the operation, she would become the lead investigator. She didn’t want that kind of responsibility, considering the possible release of a deadly pandemic flu virus worldwide, but then she also had the advantage of knowing there was no virus — a fact she had failed to reveal to her boss in Vienna and would take to her grave. Regardless of motive or effect, Victor Petrova was either a purveyor of a possible weapon of mass destruction, or a criminal mastermind who was looking to fund his operation for the rest of his life with the theft of precious gems. And who knew what he would do with the money he got from those Alexandrite gems? Besides, he had crossed the line by sending his men to kill her, Jake and Kjersti. Twice. Attempted murder would put Petrova away for the rest of his life. But she wanted more. Petrova was a bad guy and they needed to bring him down.
All of this ran through her mind as the helo flew north.
“What you thinking?” Kjersti asked over the mic.
Anna looked over at Kjersti and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m ready for this responsibility.”
Kjersti nodded her head. “Nobody’s ever ready, Anna. I’m sure Jake would tell you that.”
She was right. Jake probably had told her that. “But he seems to handle these situations so easily. He’s a natural.”
“I could tell. He definitely knows how to take charge.”
That could be part of the problem. Would he let her take over? She had a feeling there was something Jake wasn’t telling her about his relationship with Victor Petrova. It all seemed too personal.