“Ha, ha.”
Jake casually glanced at a picture on the wall, as if admiring the photo of mountains and glaciers, but in reality was looking at the reflection. He pointed at the photo. “Isn’t that a beautiful place,” Jake said to Anna.
“Yes, I hope we see that tomorrow.”
Their food came and Jake kept his eyes on the food, Anna, and through the corner of his eye, the man across the room.
“You all right eating fish?” Anna asked him.
“You know I love fish.” He smiled, put a piece of salmon in his mouth and mumbled. “We have a friend.”
She smiled and said, “Are you sure?”
He held back a laugh. “What do you think?”
“I think you should know.” She finished her fish and continued, “Let me take a trip to the lady’s room and get a good look. Which one?”
“Big guy. Dark hair. Your five o’clock.”
She dabbed her mouth with her napkin, put it down and left. The guy tried his best not to watch her, which was hard for any man, and confirmed to Jake that the guy was watching them. Otherwise he would have checked her out more thoroughly.
A few minutes later Anna returned. Same result from the man.
“Well?” she asked.
“The guy barely looked at you,” Jake said. “And, if I’m not mistaken, you added a little sway to your normal gate.”
She took a sip of water and said, “Perhaps. But maybe the guy is more interested in you.”
“I don’t think so. Let’s head upstairs.”
They paid and left. When they got to their room, Jake quieted Anna with his finger as he moved about the room. “Salmon wasn’t too bad,” he said, searching under the lamp shade. He moved along the curtains, checking inside the edges. “I was really tempted to try the whale or the seal. But I hear they’re both out of season. And I’d hate like hell to have my first whale of the frozen variety.”
Jake stopped and glanced about the room. Anna looked confused. Settling his gaze on the nightstand, he picked up the small clock radio and smiled. He went to his bag and found a Swiss Army knife; then he opened the radio with a screw driver. Inside, stuck to the small speaker, was what he was looking for. A bug.
“Let’s see what the weather report says,” Jake said, switching on the radio and cranking up the sound. With the local radio blaring at its highest level, Jake pried the bug loose and brought it to the bathroom, where he flushed it down the toilet. He swept the room for anything else, including going through their bags, until he was satisfied that was the only device. Only then did he turn down the radio.
“All right,” he said.
Anna sat on the edge of the bed. “I thought you were being paranoid. Why would someone bug our room? And how did you know it was bugged?”
“I wasn’t sure until I saw the clock radio had been moved slightly. It had been parallel to the back and side of the table.”
“Someone placed it while we went to dinner?”
“Yes. They had to move it from the other room, which was supposed to be ours.”
“That’s why you had us move rooms at the last minute?”
He nodded.
“Wow. What’s going on?”
“I didn’t want to be, but I’m back in the game.”
She put her hand over her face. “I did this.”
“In the future, when a former friend of mine, a former spook, comes calling, make damn sure you tell me about it immediately. It’s usually not good news.”
“But you’d always spoken so highly of Colonel Reed,” she pled. “In fact, he’s one of the only people you freely talked about. Why is that?”
Jake sat on the bed next to her, his eyes glancing to the table at the SAT phone, which was still charging. He had already opened the battery compartment to check for bugs, but there was something else.
“Anna, there’s a reason for that. Half the people I’ve worked with are either retired or dead. The other half are divided into the covert realm or at the headquarters. I can’t mention those.”
“I understand. But what I don’t understand is why the colonel would put you in danger like this. I thought he was your friend.”
“He is. He knows that I know that any time he would ask me for a favor, it could involve something nefarious and dangerous.” Jake got up and picked up the SAT phone from the table, checking the call record again. Even though he had cleared it, she didn’t know that. “Why did you call Interpol headquarters?”
Her eyes gave away her embarrassment. “I work for them,” she said. “I needed to extend my vacation for a week.”
Jake was going to hate himself for this, but he plowed forward. “That’s why you’d call your Vienna office.”
She rose to her feet. “You bastard. You’ve been checking up on me.” Her fists were clenched at her side.
He set the SAT phone down and came to her, grasping each of her wrists and moving his face along the side of hers. “I’m sorry. I checked the phone while you were taking a shower, seeing if Colonel Reed had left any numbers in there. I saw the number to your headquarters had been made while I was taking my shower, and deleted the record. Good thing, because whoever planted that bug would have checked the call record and known you work for Interpol.”
Her arms went limp and she leaned into Jake. “I’m such an idiot. But I still don’t understand why this is happening. Isn’t it a simple search for an old friend?”
“It’s never that easy, Anna. The colonel knew I was good friends with Captain Olson. I couldn’t refuse. At least not from Oslo. From the comfort of Vienna, maybe. He must have known I had been down and out lately, and figured I would jump at an opportunity. Especially if it involved you.”
He let her hands go and she wrapped them around his back, pulling him tighter to her. “He used me.”
“Yeah. And he did a damn good job. Just like he was trained. Now you need to tell me anything else the colonel might have told you, and what your bosses at Interpol know about this whole thing.”
She sat back onto the bed and Jake followed her down.
“Vienna knows nothing,” she started. “Just think I’m on an extended vacation. But I was required to contact Lyon after any contact with a foreign intelligence officer. You know that. They told me something was up, but they weren’t sure what at this time. Told me to keep checking in while they looked into it.”
“You trust them?”
“Of course.”
Jake thought about it. Maybe this could work to their advantage. Pull info from them and the Agency and see how far off each of them is to the truth.
“All right,” Jake said. “But from now on let’s be open with our contacts and agree on how much to feed them. We don’t give them shit unless they give us something first.”
She nodded and then kissed him.
“Let’s hit the sack. Have a feeling tomorrow will be a long day.”
3
Rain came down in a steady flow, the darkness of midnight broken by the lights of the Edinburgh Castle at the top of the hill at the end of the Royal Mile. A few blocks down from the castle in the Old Town and two blocks down a side street off the Royal Mile, a lone figure walked at a slow clip. He was dressed in dark clothes from top to bottom, no umbrella. When he came upon the pub with the photo of Robert Burns hanging out from the front entrance, he hesitated before stepping inside.
Jimmy McLean, although an officer with British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, was working undercover as an agent with the MI5 Security Service, looking into domestic terrorism.