She smiled at him and said, “Get in cousin Johann.”
He threw his pack in the back seat and settled into the leather front seat. Without saying a word, she pulled the car away from the curb and sped off. She drove for a few blocks in silence and then pulled over in the parking lot of a small park on the edge of town, shutting down the engine.
“I hoped you still worked here,” Jake said.
She didn’t look at him. “I was sorry to hear about Anna. I went to her funeral.”
“For work?”
“For both work and to pay my respects,” Alexandra said. “We worked together a few times in the past couple of years. I’m sure she didn’t mention it.”
“She couldn’t,” Jake said. He’d called Alexandra a couple of times in the last year or so, hoping to keep the relationship going, never knowing when they could help each other.
“We had to make sure her death had nothing to do with Germany,” she explained.
They sat for a moment in silence. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from her, other than a friendly face. Perhaps her guidance.
She turned to him now and said, “You look great. A little tired.”
“You look well rested and hot as ever.”
Putting her hand onto his, she simply smiled. After a long silence, where she seemed to be considering her words carefully, she finally said, “I stopped by the hospital to see you after the funeral, but you had just gotten out of surgery. I wish I could have stayed until you woke.”
He squeezed down on her hand. “That was nice of you. It was a hard, long stay in the hospital. Probably harder than anything I’ve ever had to endure.”
“I know what Anna meant to you.”
Neither of them mentioned that he and Anna would get married in the near future, but Jake felt that she knew.
“Now,” she said, “what brings you to Pullach?”
“I needed to see a friendly face,” he said seriously.
“No doubt. Considering all those trying to kill you.”
Jake’s brows rose. “So you know.”
“Of course. Since I was tagged as an associate of yours, our internal investigations unit has questioned me. Which is why you have become Cousin Johann.”
“You have a Cousin Johann,” Jake said. “Gunter Schecht’s youngest. But he’s only thirty-two. And I hear he’s gay.”
She laughed. “He’s married with two children. A book editor in Berlin.”
“I knew that,” Jake lied.
They stared at each other, Jake studying her stunning beauty. She had almost no make-up on and needed none at all. Her hair was now a different shade, almost a dark auburn, whereas it had been much more blonde the last time he saw her. He had known Alexandra longer than Anna, having worked with her when Jake was with the Agency in Germany for many years. There had always been sexual tension between them, but neither of them had been unencumbered. Until now.
“You think your own agency might have your phone tapped?” Jake asked her.
“I don’t trust that they don’t. I got a call this morning updating me on you. They say you killed a man in a gasthaus in St. Anton.”
“They got it part right. Two Serbs tried to kill me at the gasthaus and I shot them.”
“And then?”
He shrugged. “I took their car and then acquired some intel.”
“What did the second man tell you?”
“A lie.”
“How do you know?”
“Because when I asked him who hired him, he said it was Gunter Schecht. We both know that’s not true.”
She bit her lower lip and nodded her head. “There could be more than one Gunter Schecht. It’s not that uncommon.”
Jake had thought of that. He simply shook his head.
The two of them had never discussed how Jake had killed her uncle, but she had told him she had read the Polizei report. As far as Jake knew, she held no ill feelings toward him. But he felt now he had to say something.
“I’m sorry, Alexandra. I had no choice but to shoot Gunter. He would have killed me.”
She squeezed down on his hand. “I know. He had a hard time after leaving the Service. Got in with the wrong people.”
“Retirement has been hard for a lot of Cold Warriors,” Jake assured her. “There was always one bad guy to focus on back then — the Evil Empire. Black and white. Since then things have become shades of gray.”
“I know.” Her eyes drifted out the window beyond Jake, contemplatively. “I’ve been ordered to report any contact with you.”
Jake pulled his hand away from hers. “I guess we shouldn’t be touching then.”
She slapped his arm. “I don’t always do as I’m told.” Turning the key and starting the engine, she added, “I think I need to bring my cousin to lunch.”
He couldn’t deny her that.
After a late lunch the two of them drove back to her apartment, where Jake took a long nap on her sofa. When he woke it was dark outside. Checking his watch, it was ten p.m. He was disoriented and confused, two things he hated more than anything. Sitting up on the sofa he glanced about the gloomy room. Alexandra had only a few personal items on display here. He’d been so tired after lunch he hadn’t noticed any of those items when he first came into the room. Also not like him. He got up now and wandered to a tall table against one wall where family pictures were displayed. One showed Alexandra in a German Army uniform standing next to a Leopard 2 tank. Another was of her as a young girl in a school uniform with twenty or so classmates. Then Jake saw a familiar face. He picked up a photo of a teenaged Alexandra standing rather awkwardly next to a younger Gunter Schecht. Gunter would have been in the BND, German Intelligence, at the time. He was wearing a suit that accentuated his muscular physique. Jesus, Gunter. What happened to you?
“You’re awake,” Alexandra said, startling Jake.
He set the photo down. “Yeah, I really needed that.”
She stepped closer to him and saw the photo he’d been viewing. “He was a good man at one time,” she said.
“I know.”
“Don’t say it,” she said.
“I was just going to mention how cute you looked in that school outfit.” He smiled broadly at her.
She rose her brows seductively. “I think I still have that in my closet.”
“You’ve grown, though.”
Her eyes shot down to his pants. “I think you have, too.”
Neither said a word for a moment, Jake unsure of the situation.
She took his hand and pulled him toward the back rooms, which Jake had not seen yet. “You need to make love to me right now. Get rid of the sexual tension between us.”
He cleared his throat and forced out, “You mean there’s sexual tension?”
“From the moment we first met years ago,” she said. “If I hadn’t been undercover at the time, I would have jumped you then. Of course you were not available at the time. And then later you ended up going in another direction with Anna. But each time we talked, each time we e-mailed, each time we saw each other in the past couple of years, I felt the tension.”
He couldn’t deny that fact either. If he’d not been with Anna, he was sure they would have done something about this much sooner.