The Spy Wore Red

“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?”