Without Options (31 page)
Authors: Trevor Scott
Tags: #Thrillers, #Technological, #Espionage, #Fiction
“Yeah,” Jake said, leaving it that way. “What did Kurt have to say?”
“Same old stuff. Good job. He’s still trying to convince you to come to work for him again full time. He said you could work special projects for him like I do.”
Jake laughed. “I don’t think so. I think this is my last little adventure. Maybe it’s time to go fishing.”
Toni half smiled at him. “Can you really stay away?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’ll have to find out.”
“Where will you go from here?”
He had no idea. He’d need a new car. Maybe a new apartment. Better yet, a house. “I think it might be time to settle down, Toni. I’ve pushed my luck too much over the last couple decades. It’s gotta run out sooner or later.”
Neither said a word as they stared at each other.
“What about you?” he asked her.
“Working special projects for the director of the CIA isn’t that bad,” she explained.
“What about your husband?”
“It’s not working out.”
“Sorry to hear that?” And he was. He wished she would find someone who made her happy. Someone who respected and loved her like. . .
Polizei officers streamed into the front entrance. Alexandra must have explained what they would find, because none of them had guns drawn.
“You take care,” she said to him, moisture forming in each eye. “Let me know where you end up.”
“I will.”
She turned and showed her credentials to the Polizei officers.
Jake wandered out the door to find Alexandra. Maybe he knew this was the way it would end up for him. He’d always thought, though, that he’d go down like Franz, instead of simply retiring to a mountain home in the Alps. With no foresight of thought, he went right to Alexandra, who was talking with the Polizei officer in charge of Berlin. As she turned to him, Jake planted a heavy kiss on her lips and she responded passionately to his gesture.
When they finally pulled away, she led Jake a few feet from the Polizei man and said, “What does this mean, Jake?”
“I don’t know. I think it means we should spend more time together. You never really took that vacation. Maybe we should go together.”
She kissed him quickly and said, “I agree.”
Jake looked back at her smashed car and then laughed and said to her, “Looks like we both need a new car.”
She wrapped her arms around him, her head against his shoulder. He held her there like that for a long time.
Central Intelligence Agency
Langley, Virginia
Toni Contardo sat back in her chair, exhausted physically and emotionally after the long trip back from Europe. For the last half hour she had briefed her boss, CIA Director Kurt Jenkins, on the basics of the mission to Berlin. He sat behind his desk in deep thought, his eyes staring at a point on the wall across the room.
“If there’s nothing else, sir,” she said, “I’d like to get home and take a shower. Maybe sleep for a couple of days.”
Jenkins shifted his gaze to her. “Do you think the Russians in Berlin acted alone?”
Truthfully, she had no idea. “These thing are almost always more complex than they first seem.” But she knew he knew this already.
“I understand. But what’s your gut tell you?”
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Opinions and supposition are for politicians.”
“A guess,” he probed.
“I don’t think much happens without the SVR in Moscow knowing about it,” she said. “Zukov was a sick bastard who probably came up with the million Euro scheme and sold the idea to Pushkin. And, of course, Pushkin had it in for Jake, thinking he’d killed his brother years ago. The others simply followed their lead.”
The CIA director’s forehead scrunched in consternation. “What was the point?”
Toni had already gone over her theory with him about Russia flexing its muscles again, trying to find some relevance in the world. But she knew that’s not what Kurt meant. “It was a test, sir. To see how we would react. I think it was just the beginning of a larger plot.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sir. First they kill a bunch of old agents from their own side, which they run up the chain to the Kremlin, who order retaliation.”
“But then why hit Jake Adams so soon?”
He had a good point, and it had bothered her on the flight back from Europe. “Like I said, that was personal on the part of Pushkin. He slipped Jake in with the others. And they only hit former officers. They knew that if they hit our current assets, they’d start a war.”
He brought his hands to his lips as if praying. “Something’s bothering you,” he said.
“This whole case bothers me,” she said. “The Russians have had some grand schemes in the past, but this seems different. Something new.”
“How far up the chain does it go?” he asked her.
That was the problem. There was no way to know for sure. But she had an idea. “If you put a gun to my head, I’d have to say to the deputy director of external counter-intelligence.”
“Tatyana Petrova?”
“General of the Army Tatyana Petrova. Yes, sir. Rumor has it she could be next in line for the director’s job. She’d be the first woman in Russia to ever rise that high.”
Kurt Jenkins grunted and swiveled in his chair. “Thanks, Toni. Now get out of here and get some sleep. Take some time off.”
She barely had enough strength to rise from her chair. She thought about her current life and how she had nowhere to go. Her marriage, such as it had been, was over now. And Jake Adams had moved on again without her. She had no one. A woman in her forties with no one was pathetic, she thought. How had her life come to this point? The job had been everything to her. Still was. But it was hollow. A forgettable life. She tiredly shuffled to the door.
“Toni,” Kurt Jenkins said.
She stopped and turned to him, her eyes just moments from tearing-up.
“Do something fun,” he said. “Something just for you.”
Nodding, she tightened her jaw against a wave of tears and left him alone in his office.
36
Gallatin River, Montana
A cool breeze drifted down from the Rockies, caught the nose of the two horses tied to a tree alongside the river, and one of them whinnied loudly.
Some twenty yards away, up to his thighs in the frigid water, Jake Adams gave a little whistle to reassure the horses, as he gracefully swished his fly rod back and forth, letting out line in a precise display and dropping the fly into a small back eddy. The fly drifted down stream a few feet until his line straightened out slightly. He lifted the tip on his nine-foot rod and lightly set the hook. The cutthroat rose out of the water and flipped viciously to release the fly from the side of its mouth. Hitting the water again, the trout shot up stream and Jake kept the line tight against its escape. Less than a minute later and the trout had lost all fight as Jake brought the fish in front of him. He reached down and, without even touching the fish, was able to pop the barbless hook from its mouth, letting the fish slowly drift back down stream to fight another day.
“If you keep letting them go, how do you expect us to eat tonight?”
Jake turned and saw Alexandra sitting on the bank, her feet in waders still in the water, and a long piece of grass in her mouth. He slowly made his way out of the river toward her.
“I was hoping you’d catch something,” Jake said. “I don’t have the heart to keep them.”
She raised her brows at him and opened her whicker creel. He sat next to her on the bank and looked inside. She had kept two nice rainbows.
“Nice work,” he said.
She threw the grass from her mouth into the river and watched it drift downstream. “I had a good teacher,” she said, closing the creel.
They had gone straight from Berlin to her home near Munich in a rental car. She was authorized two weeks of leave. Then they went to his place in Innsbruck, packed up his fishing gear and clothes, and flew out immediately on the next flight to America. That was a week ago. In that time they had fished almost every river in a hundred mile radius of Bozeman, Montana. They rode horses into the back country. He had even introduced her to a few of his old friends, something he had rarely done with other women. Not since Toni.
He set his rod and other gear onto the bank of the river and put his arm around her. They kissed for a long while and then she put her head against his shoulder as they watched the river and listened to the birds around them.
If you liked this thriller, please consider these fine Salvo Press titles:
Memory Leak
by Trevor Schmidt
Mako
by Clabe Taylor
Crown of Thorns
by Hank Luce
The Seventh Deception
by G. Dedrick Robinson
Spirit Flight
by P.F. Fittante
Codebreaker
by Katherine Myers
Dog Walker
by Heath Kizzier
Hypershot
by Trevor Scott
Also consider the next book in the Jake Adams Series:
The Stone of Archimedes
( Jake Adams #8)
Lethal Force
(Jake Adams #9)
Table of Contents
Table of Contents