The Cold Edge (6 page)

“What's going on?” Kjersti asked. “I thought this was supposed to be a plane crash.”

“As you can see,” Jake said, “it is. I have no idea how these snowmobiles got here.” Not a total lie.

His friend at the Agency, Kurt Jenkins, had said they had sent four Soviet officers. That would be at least two snowmobiles. Must be their sleds, he guessed.

“Anna, see what you can find here,” Jake said. “I need to check out the aircraft.”

Anna nodded and started to dig around.

“We have a metal detector in the helo, if that will help,” Kjersti said.

“Sure thing.”

Once Kjersti went back to the helo, Jake came closer to Anna and said, “These have to be the KGB or GRU snowmobiles. You keep digging and you might find their bodies.”

“That's what I'm looking for,” Anna said.

“Something is wrong here,” he said. “This isn't a MiG-25. It's a MiG-31. Very similar but not the same. In ‘86 it might have had more significance. Although both aircraft never really lived up to their hype. This one had a little more range, though. Perhaps two thousand miles at ferry distance. More importantly. This was a reconnaissance version. I doubt if it would have been carrying a weapon.”

But then that didn't really explain why the Soviets had sent a crew to sanitize the place. The avionics were not that different from the MiG-25, which the U.S. had already taken apart at that time from defected aircraft. In the ‘70s the U.S. Air Force had gotten their hands on a MiG-25 when a Soviet pilot defected and landed in Japan. The Americans had taken it apart, studied it piece-by-piece, and then shipped it back to the Soviets in pieces. Talk about a slap in the face.

Kjersti came back with a metal detector. She and Anna combed the immediate area while Jake went back to the opened MiG-31 fuselage. The crash had not opened that panel. There were too many panel fasteners, and all of those were intact and had been opened with a screw driver.

Looking around in the compartment, Jake saw something that wasn't normal. There had been a cube about one foot by one foot surrounded by spray foam, which had been mostly chipped away. Whatever the Soviets had come for, they had found it and pulled it from the wreckage.

“Jake.”

He turned and saw Anna and Kjersti standing and looking down at something. He hurried over there and saw what they saw. What was left of a man. Animals had chewed away most of the man's face, ripped through his chest to get at his innards, and left only bones. They had not chewed through the rifle, the AK-47, at his side. Moreover, it was pretty easy to determine the cause of death for this men. He had a bullet hole in his forehead.

“What's going on here?” asked Kjersti.

“You suppose the polar bears did this?” Anna asked, glancing around toward the horizon and to closer snowy outcroppings.

“When's our drop-dead time to leave?” Jake asked Kjersti.

“I don't like the way you phrased that.” She thought, calculating the time against distance. “We've got a few more hours. The weather is supposed to turn bad later this evening, with heavy winds, snow, and more fog.”

“Could we stay the night?”

“Only if we're complete idiots.”

Anna laughed. “You don't know Jake very well.”

“Hey.” Jake gave her a mock cold look.

“I'm just saying. They don't call you the crazy American for nothing.”

“Who's they?”

“I promised not to tell.”

“You aren't really serious about staying the night,” Kjersti said.

“Only if we have to,” Jake said. “You two keep looking for more bodies. I'm going to scan the area.”

“You better take one of the rifles,” Kjersti said. “They're fully loaded, there's extra rounds also, and the scopes are zeroed to one hundred meters.”

“Great.” Jake took off, picked up the 30.06 and another box of 20 rounds, and then headed off to the west, toward a slight rise. Now he was up above the crash site, about two hundred yards away, with a view in all directions.

He took out the SAT phone. Once it acquired a signal, he punched in the number and waited. Nothing. The signal was suddenly lost. That's strange. He turned off the power and gazed around. What the hell had gone on here? It looked like there had been a shoot-out. Fighting over what had been in the aircraft? Must have been. Then it was only a short time before they would find all six of the bodies. Unless someone had made it out alive. Four against two. It was more likely that if anyone had survived it would have been one of the Soviets. He tried the SAT phone again, but got the same result. Damn it.

Putting the rifle to his shoulder, he scanned the horizon in all directions through the nine power scope. Something bad had happened in this pristine place, and Jake had a feeling he'd uncover what that was soon enough.

Stockholm, Sweden

Having flown from Oslo earlier that morning, Colonel Reed had wasted some time at two museums, waiting for his hotel in Central Stockholm to allow him to check in, and also waiting for his 1800 meeting with another contact. Now he sat somewhat subdued in the back of the taxi as the driver negotiated late rush hour traffic, bringing him from his hotel to Gamla Stan, the Old Town.

The clouds were so thick it looked like midnight, with the rain starting now to beat down on the taxi's windshield. He hated Stockholm. It was like a clean, cold Venice. Yet, whereas the Venetians were welcoming and boisterous, the people of Stockholm were as cold as the outside air. And the damn women were self-absorbed flaxen giants. Italian women were nicer, that was for sure, but they were too hairy. At least the Swedish women were fairly hairless. One consolation.

Finally the taxi pulled over to the curb near the stock exchange. Reed paid the guy and got out.

The little café was a block away and he was ten minutes late. Screw it. This was his meeting. He could wait.

The rain started to pick up and Reed wondered if it was snowing right now way up north on Svalbard. Had Jake Adams actually found what he had been sent to find? Or did he find more? That was the hope.

As he got to the front of the café, he didn't hesitate—just rushed in out of the rain as if he had done it a hundred times. Now he stood, taking off his coat and giving it a slight shake to release the rain, which brought stares from one of those blonde giants, the waitress with hair to her strong shoulders.

His contact would be wearing a red cap. That's all Reed knew. Glancing around the crowded room, he saw the only red in the place, and it sat atop a huge head in the corner. A perfect spot for a view of the entire joint, but not close enough to the front windows or the door to concern him. But that's about all Reed saw was the head and the red cap. His contact was a little person. A dwarf? Midget? Crap.

Reed approached the man in the corner and stopped before sitting down. “You Oberon?”

“King of the Fairies,” the guy replied, his voice a mixture of Swedish and effeminate Slavic. He gestured with his stubby fingers for Reed to sit across from him.

Reed sat and studied the little man. His skin was dark, his eyes green and narrowly set in his large skull. The crow's feet gave away his age to be around mid-fifties, but Reed already knew that, since he had read a briefing on the man earlier in the day. Oberon was really Victor Petrova, a former KGB officer who had retired nearly five years ago, and, according to intel briefs, started his own underground syndicate. He was into nearly anything he could get his stumpy little fingers on.

“I've heard a lot about you, Victor.”

The man looked annoyed. “Please. . .my name is Oberon.”

“Sorry, I thought that was just your code name,” Reed said.

The leggy waitress came around and Reed asked for a cup of coffee. She left without acknowledging.

“Let's get down to business,” Oberon said. “What the hell does the CIA want with me?”

“As I'm sure you know, the CIA is no longer the CIA,” Reed said. “Besides. I'm an independent contractor now. Just like you?”

The little man laughed, his thick chest bouncing up against the edge of the table. “Right. That's a good one, Colonel Reed. And I plan on trying out for Russian National Basketball Team.”

“Believe me or not.” Reed had heard that Petrova was a genius, a chess master, and had worked at the highest levels in the KGB's First Chief Directorate in the Disinformation Department. But why had his briefing not mentioned the man's physical description?

“So why did you hire Jake Adams to fly to Svalbard?”

Reed tried not to flinch, but he guessed he might have failed, he was so put off by this revelation.

“I'll take your silence as an affirmation,” Oberon said. “I hope you don't play chess or poker.”

“Never found the time for either,” Reed said.

The waitress finally brought his coffee and set it down on the table with a tinkling of China. The coffee had a film of foam on top and Reed hoped that wasn't spittle.

“She doesn't like you much, Colonel. Let's get down to business. You sent Jake Adams to Svalbard to find something. You think I know something about why he's there. This is a chicken and egg conundrum, Colonel. You think I know something about the MiG, so you should have asked me before you sent Jake Adams there. Does he even know what he's looking for there?”

The colonel took a sip of the coffee. It wasn't that hot, but the caffeine would help. He was having a helluva time staying awake recently.

Finally, Reed said, “I want you to buy what he finds.”

The little guy shook his enormous head, a smile on his face, revealing teeth that looked as if they had been ground to points but were just crooked and oddly spaced.

“Why would I buy something that should already be mine?” Oberon asked.

“You mean the Russian government.”

“Technically that was before the Russian government,” Oberon reminded the colonel. “Old Soviet.”

“Set a price.”

“For what?”

Silence as they stared at each other. Colonel Reed finished his coffee and gently set the coffee cup on the saucer, his eyes never leaving those green orbs.

Oberon broke first. “I need to know what I'm buying.”

“I understand you sent that MiG on the mission in the first place,” the colonel said. “So if anyone knows what was onboard, it's you.”

Silence again.

“Assuming you're correct,” the little man said, “why wouldn't I just send some of my own men to take what should be mine in the first place? Or maybe we already got what was there years ago.”

Now the colonel smiled. He had him. The colonel did play chess. Had been the Air Force Academy champion for three years. “But you haven't. Your men failed to retrieve. . .the item, back in eighty-six. The location was only known by your men back then, who failed to relay it back to you.” He was bluffing now. “And your superiors called off the mission, deciding to let it go.”

“Superiors? I had a bunch of dolts who ran the First Chief Directorate back then. Glasnost. Perestroika. What the hell was that all about?”

Colonel Reed hunched his shoulders.

Oberon continued, “What makes you think Jake Adams will find anything in that Arctic wasteland? I understand he's a drunk now.”

The colonel tightened his jaw. “He has personal reasons.”

The little man laughed. “You mean Captain Olson?”

Damn it. Did this man know everything?

“Your men killed him.” Another guess.

“Maybe he's alive,” Oberon said. “Took what was ours.”

What the hell was he talking about? Remember, he had been in charge of the disinformation department. He was playing him. If the captain had lived, he would have turned over whatever the Soviets had been up to at the time. There would have been no other reason not to do so.

“Will you buy what we find?” the colonel asked again.

The little man shifted his head to the side and said, “You find something, you give me a call. Then we'll talk. You can't sell what you don't have.” His eyes shifted toward the outside window. “Get down.”

As he said it, the colonel looked at the window as he dove toward the floor.

Bullets crashed through the glass and sprayed the wall where they had both been sitting. People screamed and scattered.

The colonel looked up over a table, but the shooter was gone. As fast as he had shown he was gone. On his knees now, Colonel Reed scanned the recovering patrons. But Oberon, Victor Petrova, was nowhere to be seen. He had vanished.

Glasgow, Scotland

After Jimmy McLean got a call from his little friend, Gary Dixon, around noon, telling him he was going to Aberdeen to meet with his contact in person, McLean had told the guy to call him as soon as he had more information. McLean had gotten a call shortly after from his people, saying Dixon was on the move—not to the north in the direction of Aberdeen, but to the west toward Glasgow.

Now, just after the supper hour, McLean pulled his Rover to the curb in a nasty little neighborhood a dozen blocks southeast of the city center. Litter was strewn about the street. Graffiti plastered upon brick walls. Among all the chaos of this rundown enclave, written in large red letters on a white background on a poster on a beat up bus stop shelter, was the phrase ‘Love Something.' Government do-gooder, McLean guessed. Hopeful thinking in this neighborhood.

He checked the address one more time to make sure it was correct. Then called his contact to verify Dixon was still there. He was. He hadn't moved.

McLean got out and walked toward the apartment building. This dwarf was starting to piss him off. They had gotten a vague confirmation of chatter similar to what Dixon was trying to sell him. Something was going down in Norway. But nobody was sure of the details.

Inside, McLean checked the mail boxes. There were only six apartments. Three down and three on the second level. Which one? Looking at the first door down the hall, he smiled. He pulled a device from his pocket and put it up to the peep hole. The reverse peep-hole viewer allowed him to look inside the apartment, which contained an older couple watching the news. The next two were empty.