Spy Another Day Box Set: Three full-length novels: I, Spy; Spy for a Spy; and Tomorrow We Spy (Spy Another Day clean romantic suspense trilogy)

by Jordan McCollum

And now we get to spend the day together. Yippee. Borya turns for Nadia’s desk by his door, but she’s not there. He rolls his eyes. “She must have confused six hours and sixteen hours on her alarm clock again.”

  Danny glances at me. “Sixteen hundred?” he mutters.

  I nod.

  Borya smiles at us. “Don’t worry; she’ll be here to take care of you in the afternoon, while I’m in my meeting.”

  Keeping his girlfriend far away from his meeting with his FSB superiors? Uh huh.

  He claps. “Let’s get started.”

  Danny agrees, and they file past me to begin the day.

  I hate how much I have to stare at Borya to be ready to translate his chatter as we make the rounds with the design team. Unfortunately, I don’t have X-ray vision, so I can’t see through him. After we’ve met half a dozen people, they delve into design details. With Borya translating, I’m left on the fringes of the group, hovering in the “hall” between cubicles. They’re not talking loudly enough to hear, but at this distance I see the way the designers treat Borya. He makes a point, and they hurry to nod. He cracks a joke, and they guffaw with gusto. He disagrees, and they backpedal. I didn’t spend much time in corporate environments as a missionary, but like Danny said, the reverence and awe these guys show Borislav is . . . unsettling. Is his affiliation with the FSB an open secret?

  Then I feel it, that familiar tingling at the base of my skull. Like I’m being watched, and not just by the FSB specter hanging over the whole building. I lean against the cubicle wall, puffing out a bored breath, and slowly scan the hall as if for some respite. When I see the man behind me, my jump is only half fake.

  Kita, the lingerer. Danny’s absorbed in a conversation and computer monitor, so I turn back to Creepita Creepyev. “Nikita, yes?” I ask.

  “Call me Nikisha.” He finishes the command to use a more intimate form of his name with a leer.

  I’d rather call him Nikikha, the derogatory form, and dismiss him.

  “And you are?” he finally asks.

  “The interpreter.”

  “Ah.” His eyes take the scenic route over my body: hair, sweater, skirt, boots, and back up, taking his time to reach my face again.

  Checking someone out isn’t rude in Russia, but inspecting me like I’m goods for sale in the rynok? Different story.

  I cross my arms to shield myself, my defenses rising. “You need something translated?”

  “No.” But Kita keeps staring. Could this guy be the FSB officer? The evidence is definitely in Borya’s favor, but Kita’s got that pinched look I’d attribute to an American Fed (though constipation may not be a side effect for all federal agents).

  The design huddle breaks, and Borya and Danny reach the “door” of the cubicle. “Oh, Kita,” Borya says. He’s suddenly closed and unreadable. “Need something?”

  “Simply getting to know our visitors.”

  Borya indicates each of us. “Lori Dolman. Danny Fluker.”

  Kita acknowledges Danny, but his gaze stays on me. (Suspicious?) He doesn’t leave, blocking Borya’s exit from the cubicle. Borya waits, but Kita doesn’t move. “Did you want to come with us to aerodinamicheskaya truba to see the skorkot?” Borya asks him at last, carefully picking each word (including the ones I can’t translate).

  My shoulders fall and my stomach follows. Whatever an “aerodynamic tunnel” is, it’s not my idea of fun. I’m guessing it’s these guys’, though.

  Kita accepts eagerly, and finally lets Borya and the other designers past. They start off without telling Danny where they’re going, but turn back like they expect him to come.

  I touch Danny’s elbow to get his attention. “Aerodynamic tunnel, to show off the skorkot.”

  He glances at my hand, and I realize this is our first physical contact today.

  That’s depressing.

  “Skorkot?” Danny asks me, pursuing Borya, Kita and the designers.

  “Not sure. Have you heard about a fast cat?”

  “Oh, I think he was telling me about this yesterday.”

  Could this be the ace up Borya’s sleeve for Shcherbakov? “What did he say about it?”

  “Three-surface aircraft — canards, wings, tailplane. Can increase your maneuverability if you do it right.”

  I slow down, dropping back from the crowd. “Borya’s secret weapon to save Shcherbakov?”

  Danny squints, thinking. “Doubt it. He told me about this in the car yesterday; didn’t mention his plan until later. Plus, this stuff hasn’t been cutting edge since the mid-eighties, at the latest.”

  Borya and company hold the elevator, and we end up with the designers between us and Borya and Kita. I regard Danny the whole way down, examining him as these people see him. Not the man I love, but a talented aerospace designer trying to broker a research collaboration. That expertise is exactly why the CIA recruited him for this mission — and exactly why I love it and hate it.

  On the ground floor, Borya leads the group out the back doors, through an icy blast in the breezeway and into a long, low building. Inside, the smell of chemical fumes, metal and grease is overpowering. Clusters of machines are scattered throughout the room. Jumpsuited workers busily spread epoxy on a miniature airplane’s wings, maybe six feet across.

  I check: the jumpsuits are gray, not the navy of the “maintenance” guy leaving our floor last night. (Proves nothing.)

  Borya calls a greeting, and one worker waves without looking up, all three concentrating on the surprisingly delicate task. “We’d like to show our visitor the Fast Cat model in the aerodynamic tunnel,” Borya tells them.

  Ah. A wind tunnel. The oversized pipe running around the edge of the room now makes sense, and I spot what must be the testing part of the tunnel, a huge gray box with a steel exoskeleton. Duh. Danny’s shown me NRC’s wind tunnels in Ottawa — all six of them — should’ve figured this out sooner.

  “Sounds like you’re seeing the mini Fast Cat in action,” I murmur to Danny.

  “Cool.” But he’s still staring at the nearest model, his eyes alight like . . . well, like an aerospace engineer in an aeronautics model shop.

  “Do we go in the wind tunnel?”

  He shrugs. “Sometimes.”

  I wait for Danny to see the problem. Finally he looks at me, and I point at my skirt (not to mention my wig).

  “Oh. Yeah, that could get awkward.”

  No more awkward than standing around the model shop alone.

  Unless this is a huge opportunity. I turn to Danny again. “Okay if I leave you for a few?”

  “You don’t want me alone with Borya, but when you feel like it, leaving me with them is okay? They’re less likely to gang up on me when it’s ten on one?”

  “Thanks for reminding me the numbers aren’t in your favor.” I fold my arms and sigh, like I’m trapped here in DeathByBoredomVille (population: me).

  “Go then. Believe it or not, I can take care of myself.”

  I choose not to acknowledge the edge of annoyance in his voice and approach Borya. “Borislav Vyacheslavovich, I need some air — the fumes are . . .” I gesture at my head and grimace.

  “I apologize; certainly.”

  Now the coup de grâce. I put on my I’m-so-innocent-you’d-give-me-your-firstborn-and-your-keys face and a tiny smile, smoothing my long copper bangs once again. “I could . . . wait in your office?”

  For a very long heartbeat, Borya scrutinizes me from the corner of his eye. Like he isn’t used to being flirted with? Or like he doesn’t trust me? I count the seconds, careful to maintain my neutral/innocent/hopeful expression.

  Three seconds. Four. Five.

  At last, he pulls a key ring from his pocket, offering me one key in particular. “You can wait for us. If you can find your way.”

  “I’ll manage, thank you.” I smile again, even if a Russian wouldn’t, but not just at his generosity.

  I have unfettered access to an FSB operati
ve’s private office. Field day for a CIA officer.

  Any FSB officer worth his salt — or harboring stolen plans — would know better than to open his office to anyone, and especially not some random American interpreter. Until just now, Borya’s never seemed the slightest bit suspicious of me.

  Always a poor strategy. I let myself in his office. Still Paper Central. Once the door’s locked behind me, I stick the first USB drive in my minicloner. While it works, I home in on the closest paper pile. Zayavka. Requisition. Dated six months ago. Nope. I flip through the stack and lift off the top couple inches of papers. Seven months ago, also a zayavka. I try two more spots in the pile. Can’t be sure, but short of checking every single paper in the stack, this method’s the best I can do. The dates move further back in time. I have to assume these papers stacked together, all the same type, are just that.

  I work in a circle, clockwise around the room, switching USB drives between each paper stack search. They all seem legit along the first wall, none of them pertinent. The office chairs hold purchase orders. The cardboard mailing tubes hold plans. I know right away they’re not Danny’s — kinda easy to tell a drone from an actual plane (no seats in a drone) — but I should take pictures anyway.

  I get my phone and set up the photo op: spread the plans by the desk, steady my elbows on the desktop, make sure I’m not casting a shadow on the papers, snap the photo. I repeat the process for each of the five cardboard tubes. One or two of them I can’t dismiss out of hand, and I try to note where they fall in the photo order — tubes three and five, pictures twelve through fourteen and sixteen through twenty.

  Once those are done, I’ve still got half a dozen USB drives to copy, but I need to tackle the pachyderm in this place: the personal computer. We cloned his hard drive, but what didn’t that cover? I hop behind his desk and wake up the computer.

  Parol′, it prompts me. Password. I glance around, as if he’d be stupid enough to — and there it is, right in front of my nose. A pink Post-It note on the monitor. His login is Зверевб, his last name and first initial, and underneath that, Динус91: Dinusya, his nickname for Nadezhda, with a netspeak 91 for the я.

  As soon as I type the password, suspicion sets in. An intelligence officer who lets an American not only have free rein in his office — but also posts his computer login and password so obviously? With survival instincts like these, it’s no surprise the FSB squirreled him away monitoring imports/exports in an aerospace company.

  Unless, of course, this is a trap.

  A risk I’ll have to take? Maybe — as long as I keep my computer activities to something I can explain away.

  My favorite spot to start is always email, but that might have to be second. I doubt his afternoon meeting has anything to do with what we want — not like he’s Skyping with Libyans from work (unless it’s actually work, but . . . why?) — but I have to go for the low-hanging fruit.

  I’m curious. Sue me.

  I check his calendar. “Tsurenko” is all it says this afternoon. Ukrainian?

  Okay, email it is. I open the email client and search for Tsurenko. A couple emails come up. I skim them. Oh. He’s a supplier, outsourcing new fiberglass something or others.

  Next tack. I open the contact list. Borya couldn’t possibly be dumb enough to keep Libyan contacts in his email program, right?

  I look at the pink Post-It note askance. Really no telling.

  Not sure I’d recognize a Libyan name. I pick out mostly Russian surnames with a couple Tatars and Armenians mixed in. A group of Georgians. Ukrainian names, could be Russians. Nothing jumps out as Arabic or African or anything interesting.

  He’s smart enough not to use his work email with his other work contacts. Could he have another email address? I pull up a browser and hunt through his bookmarks. Mail.ru, right at the top. The most popular web-based email in Russia.

  I’ve done something right, because the site automatically logs in to his inbox. I scan the emails. Only a handful of messages, mostly spam.

  The outbox, then. Most people don’t think to empty that. I scan the recipients.

  Al-Ansari? Definitely not Slavic. More like Arabic. Bingo. I click through to the message. It’s in French. French?

  Wait, don’t a few countries in Africa speak French, some strange vestige of European colonization? Yeah — Morocco, Algeria/Algiers, Burkina Faso (random fact, but I do know the country home to Ouagadougou speaks French when they spell the capital like that).

  I look back at the message to al-Ansari. L’offre n’est pas assez. The offer isn’t enough.

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. Borya’s telling his French Arabic contact the price is too low?

  Icy fingers trail down my back. What is this? I scan the sent folder for al-Ansari.

  A key jams into the office door. My heart jams into my throat. Caught.

  I race to kill the browser window. I need a cover. Russian computers have solitaire, right? Adrenaline makes my fingers fumble on the mouse.

  No, not enough — it’s too suspicious I’m on his passworded computer at all. I hit the monitor power button and the screen goes black.

  The door swings open. I spin 90° away from the computer and slap on a bored look.

  Nadezhda stands in the doorway. “What are you doing in here?” she demands in Russian.

  My pulse races faster than those jets I just photographed. I instinctively cover my phone in my pocket, but I don’t dare take my gaze off Nadezhda. “Borislav Vyacheslavovich told me I could.” I go for the respectful form of address. I’ll use any respect I can beg, borrow or steal.

  “He did?” She prowls over to the desk. I concentrate on her, careful to keep my eyes away from the monitor, on the off chance it hasn’t already occurred to her to switch it back on.

  She appraises the piles of papers, but reaches over them — reaching for the monitor. Every muscle in my body goes rigid, and my brain scrambles for a distraction. “He and Danny are in the aerodynamic tunnel.”

  “Hm.” She doesn’t stop. She doesn’t even pause. Her hand closes the last few inches and I can’t breathe.

  But she doesn’t touch the monitor. She goes for the tiny picture frame beneath the screen, flipping it face down. I barely have time to glimpse the happy couple. Borya and Nadezhda?

  “The fumes were bothering me,” I explain, as if I didn’t see her. “Borislav gave me his keys so I could wait here.” I place them on the desk.

  Nadezhda squints at them. Does she not believe me, or does recognizing her boyfriend’s keys take that much of her brain power? “It is strange to find you in his office. Alone.”

  Awesome. If I hadn’t brought attention to it, Durochka Dinochka wouldn’t have noticed.

  “Yeah, didn’t think about how boring this would be.” I try the same wide-eyed innocence that got me here in the first place (without the overtones of flirting).

  Nadezhda buys that without comment. She isn’t being overly friendly, but her standoffishness seems to be normal Russian reservation rather than real dislike or suspicion. She inspects the stacks of paper on the desktop, as if I’m dumb enough to leave out evidence.

  I’m not — and fortunately, that makes one of us.

  She finishes her search and turns back to me. “You’re very formal with Borya,” she observes, using his short name for the first time (with me). “And very informal with ‘Danny.’”

  “‘Danny’ doesn’t have any other form of his name, or a patronymic.” I stand, shrugging like that will cover up the awkwardness of her observation.

  “What about Daniil?”

  “His name is just Danny.” Wait — does that come up a lot in conversation? It was weeks before I teasingly called him Daniel and he corrected me. “He told me to call him Danny.”

  She thinks about that. I get the feeling this might take a while. “You like Danny?” she asks at last.

  “Sure.” But I don’t know if the casual tone and shrug are fooling
anybody.

  The set to Nadezhda’s features turns knowing instead of uncomprehending — as if she sees too much as she looks me up and down. “Unsolicited advice: stay away from offices that belong to other people — and men who belong to other women.”

  “Good advice,” I murmur. Because I’m Lori. Not Talia.

  And apparently I need to work harder to remember that if I’m here to protect Danny.

  Nadezhda leads me out of Borya’s office. I assume we’re going back to Danny and Borya, possibly so she can tattle. Makes the elevator ride awkward.

  At the ground floor, Nadezhda takes the same hallways we did to the wind tunnel. Maybe her “friendly advice” is opportunity’s knock. She may not be in a relationship with him by choice, but she’s likely in Borya’s confidence — and she just extended the first tentative understanding to me. Durochka Dinochka could be a major asset.

  I hurry to match her pace down the hall. “Have you worked for Borya long?”

  She startles slightly to find me next to her, surprise replacing her blank expression for half a second. “We’ve worked together for almost a year, but he only became the director in August.”

  “How’d he snag that promotion? Aren’t there more senior managers?”

  “His predecessor was poised for his own promotion. He’d made it clear he wanted Borya to replace him.”

  We round the final corner to the glass exterior doors. Danny and Borya are on approach. (No Kita. No loss.) We wait.

  My last chance for questions. How can I imply there must be another reason he got this job? (I.e. the FSB.) “Does Borya have svyazi in the company? Or . . . ?”

  “No, Fyodor was the one with svyazi. And he had to go and get himself killed.”

  The suspicion in her typical Russian bluntness is enough of an accusation that my stomach pitches like an ill-fated test plane. Before I can worry that Nadezhda will see my reaction, the doors swing open. Danny and Borya pass between us, laughing over some aerospace joke. I watch Nadezhda: her gaze tracks after Borya, and deep in those blue eyes I see the longing for the littlest recognition.

  I glance after Danny. I know how she feels.