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“Have you asked yourself why Polax wants Lenova on this mission? Or maybe a better question is, why does he want his cotton-candy queen left behind? He seemed awfully taken with his bedroom assassin. Maybe he’s got something going with her.”
“He’s not her type,” Bjorn said, then wished he hadn’t spoken so freely. “Uh, he’s too short, don’t you think?”
Merrick raised a gray eyebrow. “Short? What does that have to do with it?”
“You’re right, it doesn’t.”
“If Polax isn’t screwing her, he wants to.”
“We can’t fault him if he’s got a sweet tooth,” Bjorn said, using Polax’s own words.
“Someone else who has a sweet tooth is Holic Reznik. I can’t imagine Holic walking away from the candy queen. Q is definitely a better choice bait-wise.”
Bjorn couldn’t argue with that. Holic would be drooling. What man wouldn’t be? To deny that their night in Vienna haunted him would be a lie. And that’s why sharing a mission with the woman responsible for the picture-album of memories he’d been carrying around for five years would be crazy.
Emotional baggage had no place on a field mission. It was the quickest way he knew of to get your ass fried. And once it was fried, the mission usually ended up in the toilet being flushed, along with the agent assigned to it.
Being fried and flushed held no appeal. He had gotten used to certain things in his life—hot food, clean air to breathe and a bed of his own. The vital three is what he called them.
No room for error. Nadja was out and Pasha Lenova was in.
He needed a kick-ass partner with an ugly attitude, not a ball-handler with velvet-soft hands. A natural blonde, no less, with amazing breasts and hug-me-tight thoroughbred legs.
There was also that lie he had told in Vienna that needed to be skirted. He’d told her he was the owner of a shipping company in Denmark.
Not a complete lie. He had worked on the docks as a boy, and he had lived in Denmark. But as far as owning anything… He hadn’t owned more than the clothes on his back for the first eighteen years of his life.
As Merrick turned left and headed for the conclave, Bjorn turned right and started back to the Quest commander’s office. Over his shoulder, he said, “Tell Polax that Lenova better be everything he claims she is. Tell him I want her at the airport at midnight. And tell Agent Stefn, Bjorn Odell thanks her for the peep show. It was a pleasure.”
Bjorn was in Polax’s office staring at monitor C, wondering why the chair that Nadja had occupied minutes ago was now empty, when the door swung open. He turned, expecting to see one of Polax’s flunkies enter, but it was Nadja.
He’d just sat down, and now he eased back up and stood as she kicked the door closed and locked it. She had her Springfield in her hand and it was aimed at his chest.
He said, “This is a surprise.”
“Somehow I find that hard to believe, Agent Odell. Bjorn… Hmm… I never really thought you looked like a Lars.” She glanced at the wall monitors that could disappear into the wall at the flick of a switch. “Surveillance cameras in the elevator. I should have suspected as much.”
“With sound and zoom. If you’re curious, even in diffused elevator lighting your ass is still beautiful ten times its natural size.”
She digested his words, and Bjorn could tell she was going over in her mind her recent ride into the bowels of the Vysehrad. She had put on quite a show, and she knew it. “I’m not the enemy, Nadja. Put the gun away.”
“Why Pasha Lenova?”
She had heard him in the hall. That didn’t explain why she was there, but it did explain her question. “Polax says she’s top-notch.”
“And I’m…?”
“Not an endurance player. Polax’s words. He says he handpicks your missions.”
“So it’s all about endurance with you, then. Are you saying I lack stamina? Did I lag behind in Vienna…at any time?”
She never blinked—not a single eyelash fluttered—even though she knew that her question would require two separate answers.
He glanced back at monitor three. Merrick and Polax had joined the other two women, and Polax was asking Casmir Balasi where Q was.
Her answer was, out getting coffee.
Bjorn turned back to face her.
“It looks like you forgot the coffee.” He wondered how much of his conversation with Merrick she’d overheard.
“I heard enough,” she said, as if she had telepathic capabilities to go along with her long legs, sweet ass and memorable treasure chest.
“You’re a liar, Agent Odell. Either that, or you sold your shipping company in Denmark for more excitement playing spy games. Somehow I doubt that, though.”
“You would be right.”
“How long have you been working for Onyxx?”
“Long enough. You? How long with EURO-Quest?”
“Long enough to know that if you’re with Merrick you’re a rat fighter. A real tough guy, da?”
Her tone, as well as her quick on-and-off smile, mocked him. Speaking of tough, Bjorn thought, she had developed a crust of her own. And more curves.
She had to be close to thirty now, but the years had only made her more beautiful.
“Do you have an interest in this mission, or did you draw the short straw, Agent Odell?”
“I agreed to the mission.”
“So there was a choice? Which means you have a personal stake?”
Bjorn didn’t answer.
“Who’s the lucky pigeon?”
“The target is Holic Reznik.”
She offered no expression on hearing the name. “I read the transcript that came in on his capture in Greece. Were you there?”
“I was there,” Bjorn admitted, seeing no reason to elaborate on the subject, or the part he played in Holic’s capture.
“So now you’re hunting my fellow countryman again.”
Bjorn’s ears perked up. “Countryman. I thought you were born in Switzerland, not Austria.”
“I was, but I moved to Austria to live with my grandfather at the age of eight. At the time Kovar’s home was in Langenfeld. Do you know where Langenfeld is in relation to Holic’s home in Otz?”
“Yes.”
“That’s where Holic Reznik was born.”
“Holic is listed as an orphan. His birthplace has never been confirmed.”
She shrugged. “He knows much about Otz.”
“We know he lived there for a time.”
“Do you know where exactly?”
That was the question every agency hunting Holic wanted to find out, but no one knew the exact location of Holic’s hideout in the Otzal Alpine.
“I’ll take your silence as a no. That’s too bad. I could find that cabin in the dark, drunk.”
Bjorn studied her face, then her stance. He saw nothing alarming. Nothing to make him think she wasn’t telling the truth. Still, he asked, “What kind of game are you playing, Nadja? If you know so much about Holic, why isn’t that listed in your file?”
“Because no one’s ever requested the information.”
“I’ll ask again. What’s your game?”
“My game is simple. I want to be on that plane bound for Austria. What do you say? Why not grant me my heart’s desire, Lars…uh, Bjorn? Let’s say…for old times’ sake.”
She wanted to go with him. To be his partner. Why? What wasn’t she telling him?
“I’ve already made my choice.”
“The wrong choice.”
“Whether you think so or not. It’s my call.”
“In the end it will be your call. To your commander to tell him you’ve changed your mind.”
“But I haven’t.”
“Only a fool would leave behind the map to Holic Reznik’s mountain hideout, and I have it.” She tapped the side of her head. “It’s in here. Let’s see…he’s been on the run for two days. That should place him very close to his destination. He’s no doubt made a phone call already and asked to be picked up.”
“Holic trusts no one.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. He trusts someone, and that someone will see to it that he’s tucked into a warm bed very soon. He’ll be waited on, hand-fed, and within a week he’ll be back to his old self.”
“Not likely. His hand was seriously injured in Cupata. If Quest has information that can advance this mission, then Polax should forfeit it.”
“He can’t give up what he doesn’t know he has. Like I said, I’ve never shared this with anyone, until now.”
“But you’d share more with me if I chose you for the mission?”
“Grateful is what I would be, and grateful people can be generous.”
“And will you be?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you want on the mission so badly?”
“I’ve got a small personal matter in Innsbruck that I need to take care of. It won’t take long—a few hours is all.”
“Personal shit has no business on a mission.”
“I agree, but this can’t be helped. It won’t interfere with my work.”
“Back to Holic, how well do you know him? The truth.”
“He spent time at Groffen.”
“Groffen?”
“My grandfather’s ski lodge. You must not be much of a skier if you haven’t heard of Groffen. It’s powder paradise. Everyone dreams of skiing Groffen.”
“And Holic was there skiing? When?”
“He spent two winters at the lodge out of the four missing in his file.”
Bjorn went over the data on Holic that he’d stored in his memory bank. The assassin was an orphan, believed to have lived, at least for a time, in the Otzal Alpine. His file was full of holes, however, and if he remembered correctly—which he always did—the amount of time Nadja said he was missing fit.
“I suppose you’ve kept abreast of Holic’s exploits?”
“Of course. He’s listed on the top ten most wanted in the spy world. A legend to some, the devil’s son to many.”
“And to his wife,” Bjorn mused out loud. “I wonder how she feels about his murdering ways.”
“I don’t know. You would have to ask her.”
“And while I’m at it, I should ask her how she feels about her husband’s appetite for variety in the bedroom.”
She was too cool when she said, “Whatever you think relevant.”
“What kind of woman marries a man with no remorse or morals?”
“One who loves him, I suppose.”
“Or perhaps one who has been kept in the dark all these years. But then that would make her unbelievably stupid or very smart. Holic is a wealthy man. His debauchery affords her an excessive lifestyle.”
“She is neither stupid nor a woman who sanctions debauchery.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, that’s so.”
