Covert Network (A Jake Adams International Espionage Thriller Series Book 14)
Page 5
“So, was it his gun?” Jake asked.
“Apparently. Handed down from his father, who served in the second world war.”
“Daddy must be so proud of his son.”
“I doubt it. The father was from the other party. They had a strained relationship right up to his death about ten years ago.”
“All right,” Jake said. “Let me know if you find out anything else.”
“Will do. Shouldn’t you be on your way to Argentina?”
“Should be. The crew needed to rest.”
“And you needed some rum.”
Jake shook his empty glass. “Something like that. Talk soon.” Jake disconnected the call and raised his glass to a roving waiter, who stopped long enough to take Jake’s order, which included a beer for Sirena, before shuffling off.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” Sirena asked. “If so, I’m all right with that.”
“We have an early flight,” he said, “but neither of us are driving. Let’s take advantage of that.”
“What did Kurt have for you?” she asked.
Jake explained what Kurt knew about the death of the Oregon senator so far, which wasn’t much more than the news reports, without the wild-ass speculation.
“And you really think all of this is related?”
“I don’t know. When two people run into each other at a mall that’s a coincidence. When two politicians from two continents die mysteriously within a week of each other, that could be a coincidence. But it could also be something else entirely. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not my problem. You could put the lot of them on a cruise ship and blow it up in the middle of the Pacific and I wouldn’t lose much sleep.” With perhaps a few exceptions, he thought. Including a friendly congresswoman from Montana.
“Jaded much?”
“Smooth and green, Sirena.”
The waiter came with their drinks and Jake gave the man a reasonable tip—nothing too obviously ostentatious to make the guy remember him. Now he would only remember the beauty sitting next to him.
She sipped down her beer and couldn’t help staring at Jake.
“What?” Jake asked.
“I was just wondering about how you’re doing with the loss of your girlfriend.”
“About how you’d expect.”
“Drinking heavily and telling God he’s a total dick?”
“So, you know me.” Jake hesitated, trying to assess his state of mind. “I don’t blame God, Sirena. I blame myself for not protecting her properly. I got sloppy.”
“How so?”
“Too many people knew I was in Calabria. Knew about Alexandra and our child.”
“I see.” She sipped more beer. Then she said, “It’s difficult to have a normal life in our line of work. But you were nearly retired. Only working for Carlos Gomez.”
“I know. That’s why it was my fault. I could have just retired and raised my daughter.”
“You could still do that, Jake.”
He knew that also. But he needed to stay active or he would go crazy. “She’s in a much better place. At least for now. I still have too many old enemies.”
“You can’t kill them all.”
“I wish. No, I just hope to not make more. But that’s not what you really want to know.”
“It’s part of it.”
“You want to know how I could be with another woman in Iceland so soon after the death of Alexandra.”
“That crossed my mind.”
Jake sipped his rum and considered his best answer. He had asked himself this same question for the past two months. “We’re just friends. I met her almost thirty years ago. We had a brief relationship at that time. But it was more like friends with benefits. She wanted sex and I wasn’t about to say no. Then when Alexandra died, I dropped off my daughter and found a place of solitude. We had kept in touch over the years, but mostly by email. After her husband died, we were in contact more. She’s done a great job moving up the ranks in Iceland. But she’s going to retire in a year or so.”
“Will you connect up again?” Sirena asked.
“I don’t know. She doesn’t want anything permanent, and I haven’t had great luck with the women in my life. They all end up dead.”
She put her hand on Jake’s hand. “All right. Then let’s say we get trashed tonight. We can pass out on the jet ride to Argentina.”
How could he complain about that?
9
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Jake felt like crap on the flight from the Caymans to Argentina, sleeping most of the way. When he finally woke upon their final approach to the capital city, Sirena was on her phone with someone.
The flight attendant smiled and handed Jake his favorite rum, the 25-year-old stuff from Nicaragua. “Hair of the dog,” she said.
Jake accepted the drink from her and tried to smile. “Did I snore?”
Her eyes shot to Sirena and then back to Jake. “No more than her. You two must have had a wild night.”
“Just drinking,” Jake said, as far as he could remember. Now he thought back at another time in his life where he had woken like this and hated himself for doing so. That too was a dark time in his life.
“Are you sure?” the flight attendant asked, and then leaned in to whisper to Jake. “She’s hot.”
“I know, but we work together. And we’re old friends. That never works.”
“Maybe not. But it could be fun.” Then the flight attendant walked off, a special shake to her gate.
He sipped on the rum, not knowing if he should drink it or use it for mouth wash. His throat was parched and felt like he had sucked on cotton the entire flight.
Sirena got off her phone and moved back to the chair across from Jake. “That was Kurt. He tried to call you, but for some reason couldn’t get through.”
“I turned off my phone,” Jake said, and then took another sip of rum.
“Anyway,” she said. “He wanted you to know that they are officially investigating the death of that Oregon senator as a homicide. One of the neighbors caught two men on camera leaving his house around the time of the senator’s death.”
“You have a strange look on your face,” Jake said. “Like there’s much more to the story.”
Before they could speak again, the flight attendant had them secure their seat belts for landing just before they touched down.
Sirena said, “There is more.” She took out her phone and pulled something up, handing the phone across to Jake.
He put his drink in a cup holder as they taxied toward the private terminal. Then he glanced at the photos Sirena had brought up on her phone. “What the hell? How old is this girl?”
“Thirteen,” Sirena said. “Chilean. They’re trying to track her down now. She was not one of the girls reported missing. So, we have no way of knowing if she is related to our current case here in Argentina.”
Jake opened a video file and watched for just long enough to almost lose his gut. Then he handed the phone back to Sirena.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Other than the fact that the senator is hung like a toy poodle?”
She smiled. “I didn’t notice that.” She shook her head and said, “Okay, I did notice. But I meant about our current case.”
“Do we have transportation?”
“Yes. A local woman with Argentine Intel. She’s working off the books, though, since her organization has no interest in the case. She’s on medical leave for a bad back.”
“Let me guess. Her back is fine.”
“She’s recovering from a serious case of a new tattoo.”
“That could be terminal.”
They got off the jet and a woman in her early forties met them near customs, checking their passports. Jake was using his Austria passport and Sirena had one from Spain. This woman introduced herself only as Antonia. She got them past customs without a check, which allowed them to carry their handguns and ammo into Argentina. This woman said n
othing until they got out front and into her car, an older black Toyota sedan. They put their small bags in the trunk. Then Sirena got into the front passenger seat and Jake went to the back. When the officer from Argentine Intel sat down behind the wheel, she winced in pain from the tattoo.
“I hope it was a good tattoo,” Jake said in English, but with a distinct German accent.
The Argentine woman glanced at Jake in the rearview mirror and said, “It’s a large image of Jesus sipping a glass of wine.” Her English was quite good.
Okay. Not exactly a tramp stamp, Jake thought.
“What have you found out about the Spanish women missing?” Sirena asked, getting right to the point.
She pulled away from the curb without answering. After driving a couple of blocks, she finally said, “Our police are investigating the case. So far there is no way to verify that the Spanish intelligence officer was kidnapped. For all they know, she is off with a man somewhere in Buenos Aires.”
“That’s bullshit,” Sirena said. “Just before her phone went dead, she sent me a text asking for help. She was concerned. Perhaps even scared. And my friend doesn’t scare easily.”
“I understand,” the Argentine said. “I am only relaying what the local police have told me.”
“Have you checked out where she was staying?” Sirena asked.
“We don’t have that location. She was not staying in a hotel.”
Good, Jake thought. They would be the first in to her place.
“Where are you taking us?” Sirena asked.
Antonia turned to Sirena as she stopped at a light. “You tell me. I’m waiting for a location. Do you want to check in to a hotel?”
“No,” Sirena said. “We’ll first go to where my friend was staying.”
“You have that location?” the driver asked.
“Of course.” Sirena gave the woman the address.
“I know that area. It’s not far from the youth hostel where the young Spanish college students were staying. It’s about a ten-minute drive.”
Jake watched the scene as they drove through some not so nice neighborhoods. He had been to Buenos Aires a number of times, but most of those were just pass through opportunities on his way to fishing in Patagonia. He did know that more than a quarter of the population were of Italian heritage. There was also a heavy European influence from the Germans and the British and French.
The Argentine woman broke the silence by asking, “You know enough about me to know I’ve had a tattoo recently, but I know nothing about you.” She glanced at Sirena and said, “You must work for Spanish Intelligence. But we didn’t get an official request for assistance from them. So, I’m guessing you are working this on your own like me.”
Sirena said nothing.
The Argentine continued, peering at Jake in the rearview mirror. “You, on the other hand, are a riddle Mister Jacob Konrad. I am not sure why Austria has sent an officer to investigate the disappearance of two Spanish girls.”
“Just call me Jake,” he said. “And be assured that not everything is as it seems in this world. I’m sure you’re aware of that, considering your line of work.”
She looked at him critically again. “Yes, sir. But I like to know who I am working with. And, quite frankly, you scare the shit out of me. Normally I would think CIA, but you are too much of a badass for them. Perhaps a contractor with them.” She was fishing.
Jake said, “I am a private citizen. I was hired when certain people didn’t get the answers they wanted from the authorities in charge.” There, that was vague and misleading enough. Also, reasonably true.
Moments later and the Argentine woman pulled down a narrow street with four-story apartment buildings on each side, parking behind an old Ford sedan with dents and a bent bumper.
She shut down the engine and turned to Jake. “I think I can trust her, since she is looking for her friend. But I am not sure about you. I still think you are a dangerous man.”
Sirena interjected. “You can trust him with your life. He has saved my life in the past. Trust me.”
Antonia pointed at Jake and said, “I will be watching you carefully.”
The three of them got out and stepped down the sidewalk toward the apartment on the second floor where the Spanish intel officer had been staying while she investigated the disappearance of the two young girls. Darkness was starting to settle across the city, but the street lights had not come on yet. Jake scanned the street for anything out of the ordinary, inadvertently feeling the butt of his gun under his left arm, covered only by a bulky thin jacket. Since it was the middle of summer in Argentina, the weather was too warm for most of his normal leather jackets. He had just a thin leather coat with him, having left most of his clothes in Iceland. And it wasn’t like he still had a lot of clothes, since almost everything he owned went up in flames at his seaside home on the Calabrian Coast of Italy two months ago.
They went into the apartment building and climbed to the second level. When they got to the apartment door, Jake put his head against the door and listened for anyone inside. Nothing.
He tested the door handle, but it was locked.
“Pick or kick?” Jake whispered to the women.
“Let’s try not to break the door,” Antonia said. She pulled out a small kit and found a couple of tools. It took her less than thirty seconds to pick the crappy lock.
Jake could have kicked it in in less than two seconds, he guessed. But no need to scare the crap out of the neighbors.
The three of them slipped inside and turned on the lights. Sirena had said this was a place owned by Spanish Intel. It had been confiscated from a drug dealer shipping product to Rota, Spain. Spoils of the drug war, Jake thought.
But Jake immediately saw a problem. The place was as clean as the best hotel in Buenos Aires. The Spaniards had put up some generic photos of random people, probably actors, around Madrid.
Sirena went directly to the only bedroom in the place, while Jake and Antonia scoured the rest of the apartment for any clues to her disappearance.
Jake looked everywhere he could think about, from under drawers and inside couch cushions to inside the refrigerator and stove. There was nothing here.
Then Sirena came out with a smile on her face.
“Did you find something?” Antonia asked.
Sirena raised a very small jump drive and then said, “She used to save her work on these all the time.”
“But it will be encrypted, no?” Antonia asked.
“Yes.”
“What about her laptop?” Jake asked.
“We have that,” Antonia said. “It was in the trunk of her rental car, which she left behind near the bar in Puerto Madero.”
Jake’s eyes scanned the main room one more time. They wouldn’t find anything else here. They were lucky to find anything at all.
“Let’s go,” Jake said.
They turned off the lights and locked the door behind them and then wandered back toward the staircase. Once they got to the street, Jake noticed something out of place. The cars that had been parked out front had changed, with one addition. It was a newer dark Ford sedan nearly a block up the street. But that wasn’t the biggest problem. Just as they had exited the building, he caught movement in the driver’s seat. Now that seat was empty. Someone had ducked down.
Jake stopped the two women before getting in their car. “You said you know this area,” Jake said to Antonia.
“Yes, of course,” the Argentine intel officer said. “Why?”
“Because we’re being followed,” Jake said.
Sirena smiled. “The black Ford.”
“You noticed.”
“I didn’t,” Antonia said. “You think this is a problem?”
“Let’s find out.” Jake started walking toward the Ford. When he got within a few yards of the car, two men suddenly appeared from a narrow passage between two buildings. Jake surprised them and they immediately moved faster toward him.
Now Jake ha
d three choices. Turn and head back to his car, pull his gun and confront the two men, or see where this would go. He settled on the latter, keeping his eyes open for their hands moving toward weapons. But these two were obviously overconfident. They moved in on Jake like two bullies in a school yard—arms flailing in what could only be described as inexperienced fighting technique. Jake almost felt sorry under these circumstances. He could nearly see the moves before they made them. Each strike they attempted, Jake parried and counter with punches and back fist blows to soft targets on their bodies. Two on one was never a fun prospect, but in this case Jake didn’t even break a sweat. He finally kicked the legs out from one and stomped the poor bastard in the jaw, knocking him out. While this man took a sidewalk nap, the second tried a more determined approach by charging Jake like a bull. With a smooth twist of the man’s head and arm simultaneously, the second man crashed hard to the sidewalk with a groan. In major pain, the man started to reach inside his jacket, but Jake took this threat as a reason to plant his foot into the guy’s chest, knocking him down again, the wind out of him and leaving him in agony on his side.
Jake reached inside the man’s jacket and found what the guy was looking for—a leather folder with an ID on one side and a badge on the other. Shit! He had just beaten the crap out of two Buenos Aires Police detectives.
When the car started and pulled away from the curb suddenly, Jake turned to see the tail of the Ford heading toward Sirena and Antonia. He threw the ID back at the cop and ran back to their car, where the two women simply stared at Jake.
“What?” Jake asked. “Let’s go. Let’s follow that car.”
“No need,” Antonia said, her keys in her hands. “I know who it is.”
Jake looked back to the men he had just fought and said, “All right. But those two aren’t going to be happy when they wake up. Let’s move.”