Without Options (27 page)

Alexandra came from the bathroom naked. She turned her back to Jake and grasped her right butt cheek. “Is my ass starting to sag?”

“God no,” he said.

She slapped herself and turned to Jake. “Are you sure? I haven’t worked out in a while.”

He was rising just looking at her. How could she even ask him a question like that? He grasped himself through his pants. “See what you do to me?”

Smiling, she came to him and replaced his hand with hers. “We’ll have to take care of this. Any thoughts?”

“Well, you wanted a work out,” he explained. “Maybe you should do all the work. I’ll just lay here and take it like a man.” He flattened himself onto his back and smiled broadly.

“That’s what I get for opening my mouth,” she said.

Jake smiled. “You could do that too.”

She followed orders precisely, stripping his pants off him, taking him in her mouth for a while, and then impaling herself with him.

A while later, when they were both done, they lay together in bed, her head against his chest.

“Why’d you do it, Jake?”

“I think you did it to me.”

“No. I mean last night. Why’d you give me the sleeping pills?”

He didn’t try to deny it, knowing she would probably know the side-effects of having been drugged the night before. “I needed to go somewhere and I didn’t want you insisting on coming along.”

She raised her eyes to his. “That sounded like the truth, Jake.”

“It was.”

“Why not just tell me last night? You must be open with me. I can take it.”

Now he felt like crap. Of course she could. “But if you’d said that to me last night, I would have followed you. I assumed you’d do the same.”

She laughed under her breath. “You’re right. I probably would have followed you. Are you going to tell me what you found out?”

He explained to her his relationship with the station chief and how Jake wanted to make sure the Agency wouldn’t get involved at this point. He left out some of the irrelevant information, like how he’d actually broken into the man’s house. It was nice to keep a little mystery in whatever relationship they had at this point.

“Oh. I thought it might be a woman.”

“No. I can only handle one at a time. Although two has always sounded kind of interesting.”

“I agree,” she said smiling. “But where would we find the other man?”

“Wow. A German with a sense of humor. I can die now.”

“You’re Scottish, but also part German. Am I right? You forget about that part?”

“Not at all. I struggle every day to keep order in my life. I can be as precise as a diamond cutter. The other part of me forces me to be late for appointments once in a while, to forget birthdays, or to run naked through the streets.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“First let’s go check out the meet site during the daylight.”

“Agreed.”

They got dressed and left.

30

Nearing midnight, Jake sat in the passenger seat of Alexandra’s car as she drove along Muhlenstrasse in Berlin’s southeast industrial area, the Spree River to the west and major railroad tracks to the east. Earlier in the day the place looked like a bad idea to walk alone. At night Jake guessed it was a rat-infested hell-hole, with every lowlife in the city tagging trains with anarchist symbols and gang graffiti. It was literally the south-central of the city. Jake was glad he carried both of his Beretta handguns in .40 caliber, with multiple extra magazines, and the Glock he had gotten from Franz.

“What you thinking?” she asked him.

They’d spent most of the day hanging low. Resting up. With Jake’s image from Baden-Baden still streaming across computers and TV broadcasts, he didn’t want to get picked up by the Polizei at this point. He was too close to finding out the truth about Anna, and about why someone wanted damn near every former intelligence officer from the Cold War whacked.

“Thinking this would be a nice place to build some high-end condos. Plant some trees. Maybe a garden here or there.”

“Really? I was thinking a good firebombing would help.”

“Think that already happened.” He checked his watch. They were fifteen minutes early. He guessed his contact would be fifteen minutes late, but would be watching him get out of the car from somewhere close by.

She slowed the car as they approached the drop point. “Are you sure you want to do this alone?”

Her Service was expecting her to set up a meeting for tomorrow, coordinated with the BND office in Berlin. But she’d put them off, saying the meeting was changed.

He didn’t have a choice. “They’ll be watching me get out. Let’s just stick with the plan.”

Stopping along the deserted street, Jake started to open the door but she grabbed his arm and stopped him. Pulling him back to her, she planted a long kiss on his lips. “You be careful, Jake.”

He nodded and got out, closing the door behind him.

Alexandra pulled away slowly and soon had wound around a corner, still following the river.

The air was cold and damp as Jake walked toward the river along the concrete. The area had once been used to offload barges with something, probably coal, and hadn’t seen the revitalization money from the reunification of Germany in the 90s.

He could hear and smell the river ahead, the lights from more affluent areas across the river shone on the surface, his only light source. As he approached his contact point, he tried to remember everything he’d noticed earlier in the day. There was almost no place for anyone to hide here. It was the perfect meeting place from their point of view. For Jake it couldn’t have been less favorable. He was out in the open. Cornered against the river. No cover from the shooter. It was places just like this throughout the city where bodies had been found, shot to death from close range. That was Jake’s only optimistic point. At least the shooter killed from close in and not with a high-powered rifle. He hoped they wouldn’t change their pattern now, because he needed to talk with this guy. Unlike the men who’d come for him in Austria, this guy would know something about something.

Exposed and isolated, Jake stuffed his hands into his pockets for warmth.

Suddenly a soft shuffling shook his attention toward the Spree. Moving just his eyes, he caught the shape of a large rat about the size of a cat scurry along the edge of the water wall. Jesus he hated rats.

He was near shivering a half hour later when he heard the sputtering car come off the main road a hundred meters away and angle toward him. The guy knew it was cold and wanted Jake’s muscles to be stiff and non-reactive. Exactly what he would have done.

The car caught Jake in its headlights and came right toward him before squealing to a halt just ten feet in front of him, cutting the lights so those passing by on the road, which were few, wouldn’t see them there. The tired engine shut down, and Jake thought it might never start again.

With the lights out, Jake could see the car better. It was an older dark BMW. Probably charcoal or black. He could also see the silhouette of the driver and perhaps nobody else in the car, unless they were crouching down.

The driver’s door opened but no overhead light came on. A tall man stepped out and stamped the last of a cigarette into the concrete. The door remained open, the man behind it. He looked too young to be at this meeting.

“Throw your gun into the river,” the man said, his accent clearly Russian.

“Screw you!”

“You want your money, you do as I say.”

Crap. Jake guessed it might come to this. Did he have a choice? Yeah, he had a choice. He could just continue to tell this guy to go screw himself and head back to Innsbruck. But then more men would continue to come. How many could he kill? Would he finally slip up?

“This is an expensive gun,” Jake said.

“A million Euros could buy a lot more,” the Russian declared.

“Yeah, but this one has sentimental value.” All of his guns had been like friends to him.

The Russian started to get back into the car.

“All right,” Jake yelled. “I thought Russians had patience.” He reached to his right side and removed the Glock from his hip holster. With one reluctant back throw, he sent that gun into the dark water of the Spree.

“Now the other one,” the Russian demanded.

If he got rid of that one, he could be in trouble. He’d only have one left. “First you show me the money.” Jake took a couple steps toward the Russian.

The man pulled a gun from behind the door and aimed it at Jake. “I said to get rid of your other gun.”

“I do that and you shoot me,” Jake reasoned.

“You don’t do it and I shoot you. A conundrum.”

Running possible scenarios through his mind, Jake stalled for time. “Just like you killed the others?”

“You have no clue, Mister Adams.”

So he knew his real name and not just his code name, Remus. “That’s what my fifth grade teacher used to tell me. Yet, he ended up dying a poor public servant. That won’t be me.”

“The gun.”

This guy was starting to piss him off. Yet, Jake knew he was only a messenger at best and a shooter at worst. He needed to work his way farther up the food chain.

“All right,” Jake agreed. He reached into his leather jacket and started to pull the gun out.

“Very slowly,” the Russian demanded.

Cocked and ready to fire, Jake did just the opposite. He started to move his hand slowly, but then shifted his body swiftly to his right, aimed and fired in one motion and then rolled to the concrete.

Jake’s first rounds smashed through the door window, shocking the man, and at least one bullet hitting him and dropping him to the ground.

Now, both men on the ground, the Russian returned fire at Jake. But Jake rolled more and fired a couple times, trying his best not to kill the guy.

Vectored favorably now, Jake took aim and fired twice, striking the Russian in the left leg. The man grasped hold of the wound, his gun dropping to the concrete.

Jake didn’t hesitate. He jumped to his feet and ran at the guy, his gun leading the way and ready to fire. But Jake didn’t want to and didn’t have to fire again. He simply picked up the man’s gun and flung it into the river. Then Jake checked the man for more weapons, finding a knife strapped to his right leg, which he pulled out and thought about throwing. Instead, he held it tightly in his left hand, his right hand holding the gun aimed at the man.

“Now,” Jake started. “You’re going to tell me about my one million Euros.”

The man was in obvious pain, with one hand holding the wound on his left thigh and the other on a hole in his gut. There was no way he would survive, Jake knew. He’d hit the man’s femoral artery. Just like Anna had been shot.

“Screw your mother,” the Russian said in his native tongue.

“My mother’s dead,” Jake lied, surprising the man. “You have about ten minutes before you bleed out from that leg wound. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes. Take away the pain.”

The Russian grit his teeth from the pain. “There is no money.”

“No shit. But you’re going to tell me who set this whole scheme up. And why.”

“Why? If I’m already dead.”

He had a point. Jake threw the knife into the river and then checked the man over and found his passport. He looked at the name and address and then rubbed the passport in the man’s blood, waved it dry, before folding it and shoving it in his back pocket.

“You have anyone you want me to give your last words to?” Jake asked him sincerely.

Without thinking, the Russian said a woman’s name. His sister. “Tell her I love her.”

“I will,” Jake promised. “Just before I kill her. Or maybe after.”

“Screw your mother.”

“Have we not determined that impossibility? Five minutes, my friend. You tell me what I need to know and I tell your sister all kinds of nice things about you.”

The Russian tightened his jaw.

“A name and location.”

Finally, the Russian forced out, “Viktor Pushkin.”

Something clicked in Jake’s mind. He knew a Russian named Pushkin. “Any relation to Colonel Yuri Pushkin?”

The man’s breathing became labored. “What do you think?”

Crap. Jake knew Yuri had a couple brothers and at least one sister. “Who does Viktor work for?”

“Take a guess?”

“No. I want to hear it from you.”

But the man’s eyes started to close. Jake kicked him in the good leg. “Wake up.”

“What do you want?”

“Who does he work for and how do I find him?”

The Russian mumbled and Jake got closer to hear him.

“Say again,” Jake demanded.

The Russian said what Jake thought he would. The SVR. He also muttered a location, but Jake wasn’t sure if that was correct. Then the Russian drifted off, his muscles relaxing completely, and the only sound that of blood moving about the man’s torso.

●

Anton Zukov pulled his eyes away from the night vision scope and set the butt of the sniper rifle onto the ground. Positioned on the higher ground two hundred meters away, he could have easily taken out Jake Adams at any time. But he had his orders and he was nothing if not reliably obedient. Still, he had to muster every bit of strength in his body to not squeeze off a round and blow that American’s head off his shoulders.

As he packed up his rifle and hauled it to the trunk of his Audi, he thought about their young man Nikolai. He should have never been allowed to meet with Adams. The American was far too experienced for Nikolai. Yet, he could never bring that up with Viktor. Nikolai’s tactics were not completely flawed, but his reactions were slow. He should have anticipated the American would not throw away his last weapon. In fact, Jake Adams probably still had a third gun somewhere on his body. Maybe at his ankle.

He got into his car and thought for a moment, his hand shifting his watch cap into a more favorable position on his head. Maybe Viktor would give him the job now. He’d tried calling his boss to get the shoot order after Nikolai had been shot, but for some reason Viktor wasn’t picking up. He started his car and reluctantly took off.

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