At this hour the place was still fairly crowded, and that bothered him. He should have never agreed to meet here at this time. Knew better, that was for sure.
There he was in the corner booth. The little man from Aberdeen. His stubby legs swung with the traditional Scottish music a foot from the floor. Gary Dixon had been picked up by MI5 so many times, he damn near had his own coffee mug in the Edinburgh office. They had never stuck him with anything, though, because he was far more valuable on the street. He collected information like a pack rat and sold it to the highest bidder. All MI5 had was leverage to avoid prosecution, and the fear that they would throw the man into a cell with a large man wanting an ass buddy.
Removing his coat, he hung it from a hook at the end of the booth before taking a seat across from his contact.
“You’re ten minutes late,” his contact said, his voice a combination of effeminate and Lilliputian.
“Don’t get short with me.”
“Hey, no need to start in with the short jokes.”
“Right. I guess you’d be a little concerned with that.” He placed heavy emphasis on the word ‘little.’
“Ha, ha.” He picked up his pint of Guinness with both stubby hands and downed the last of it, placing the glass down hard onto the thick wooden table. “Why don’t you get me another one of these.”
McLean got the attention of the pretty, slim young bartender with multiple piercings, her tight stomach exposed, showed her two fingers and got a nod in return.
“What you got for me?” McLean asked the little guy.
“Right to the damn point,” Dixon said. “Jesus, don’t they teach you guys any people skills?”
The two pints of Guinness showed up on the table and McLean handed the young woman cash and a heavy tip. She smiled and left them alone.
“I take that back,” Dixon said. “Hot girls still get your attention.” He took a sip of beer and ended up with foam on his thick mustache, which he licked off with his enormous tongue. He caught McLean staring. “It’s not the only thing big on me. And the ladies like both.”
“You were saying?” This was getting old.
“All right, all right.” The little guy tried to lean across the table toward McLean, but he couldn’t get any leverage to do so. “I was home for a week and heard of something going down across the pond.”
“America?”
He shifted his thick head and said, “Other direction.”
“Scandinavia?”
“Norway. But off the coast on some island.”
McLean thought for a moment, but didn’t know what to think. What of importance could possibly come from a Norwegian island. They had huge oil production facilities along the coast. Maybe someone was planning on hitting those. That would be a huge environmental disaster, and could shift the oil wealth equation.
“What’s going on? What have you actually heard?” McLean pressed the guy.
“All I can say is it’s something big. What’s that worth to you?”
“Without details, not a helluva lot,” McLean said. “Who told you, and under what circumstances.”
The little man’s eyes shifted around the room. “Listen, if I start giving away names at this point, my life will be shorter than my legs.”
McLean held back a snicker. “Right. But I need more details. Get me more and you get another get out of jail free card. Otherwise, we picked up this massive man recently…could have been a basketball player. I understand he’s getting lonely. Needs a friend.”
“Hey, hey,” the little man protested. “I came to you, remember. Soon as I heard something might be going down.”
“Then take me to your contact,” McLean said.
“No can do. They’ll see MI5 coming a mile away.”
McLean considered his options, taking a long drink from his beer. He didn’t have many. He shifted in his chair and reached for his jacket.
“Wait a minute,” Dixon said. “What about a little help.”
Moving back to the center of the booth, McLean said, “You want money for telling me you might have something to tell me? That’s incredible.” But he also expected the man would ask for it, so he was ready. He reached into his pants pocket and retrieved a debit card, then slid it across the table at the man, who quickly scooped it up with his stubby fingers and looked it over front and back.
“Who the hell is Amus McCloud?”
“That would be you. That’s how you get paid from now on. There’s fifty Quid on it now. You give me what I want and there’ll be much more.” He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and handed it to the man. “Sign it.”
“Fifty Quid. That isn’t much. How do you sign Amus? Let me practice a couple of times.” He scribbled on his coaster a couple times and then made it official on the debit card. Then he put the card into his wallet, which was so stuffed it was hard for him to find a spot for another card. “What if someone asks for additional I.D.?”
“Right.” McLean was also waiting for this. “Here.” He handed the man a new driver’s license. “Sign this also.”
“Where’d you get the photo? Wait a minute…that was my last booking shot.”
“Right. Well, we had to Photoshop it a little.”
Then he looked more closely. “Hey, I’m not three six. I’m three seven, maybe eight on a good day.”
“Close enough.” McLean sucked down most of his beer, slid to the end, and got out now, putting his long jacket over his shoulders. Then he leaned closer to Dixon and said, “I want a call by noon tomorrow.” He left without waiting for a protest.
Out on the sidewalk the rain had slowed to a light mist. He looked across the street at an alley no wider than three feet. Alleys like that were all over the old town area. They cut off distances, but had also been known for their underground activity across the centuries. McLean saw a dark figure slip down into the shadows, so he crossed the street and made his way to the alley.
By the time he got to the edge, he checked his watch and then slid around the corner, stepping lightly down the wet cobblestones. His only lighting came from a building around the corner ahead, giving him a distinct advantage. He could see better than anyone from that side.
A couple more steps, where the alley widened slightly, he stopped. A hand touched his arm.
“I thought you would come in,” McLean said. “Watch my back from there.”
“No, it works better this way,” came a soft woman’s voice. “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing…yet.”
Her hand moved from his arm to his crotch. “You gave him the cards?”
McLean cleared his throat. “Listen. You work for me. What do you think? Of course he has them. And you can bet your ass he’ll drain the money from it as soon as he gets a chance.”
Her hand moved from his crotch to his buttocks. She squeezed down and said, “That driver’s license is brilliant. Are you sure the embedded GPS will work?”
“As advertised. State of the art.” What the hell was she up to this time? She was an attractive woman, but not quite his type, for she was an inch shorter than his contact Gary Dixon. She had been trying to seduce him for the past six months. Ever since she had been reassigned from Vauxhall.
Without further warning, her deft little hands unzipped his pants and one hand went inside. “Let’s let the Loch Ness Monster out for some Midnight air.”
He gasped but didn’t stop her. She was at the perfect level, and his mind had actually gone to that thought a few times. In seconds he was to his full glory and her warm mouth took it in. Now he couldn’t stop her if he wanted to. And he sure as hell didn’t want her to deviate from the task at hand.
Deep within the command center, more than one hundred feet below the surface of what had been the old Andrews Air Force Base bowling alley, Kurt Jenkins swiveled in his wide chair like a starship captain, his eyes flicking from one LCD screen to the next, observing ongoing operations worldwide. He was the newly appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He had been career CIA before congress had combined the CIA, FBI, NSA, DEA, ATF, and all of the military service intelligence functions into one organization years ago. He had been the first manager of external operations, a position that controlled all covert operations away from U.S. territories, and had ascended to the top job a month ago.