Читать книгу The Spy Wore Red - Wendy Rosnau - Страница 7

Winter smog hung thick over the city of Prague, as well as a fresh layer of wet snow. Neither, however, could be blamed for Nadja Stefn being late. Twelve minutes, to be exact.

Red wool swirled around her as she dashed up the stone steps to the Vysehrad Museum and through the heavy mosaic front doors. Inside, she kept moving as routine and familiarity took over. She pulled off her black leather gloves, her calf-high boots clicking out a hurried tempo on the slate floor as she made a right down the corridor, then a left.

In a narrow passageway she stopped and faced a slender mirror next to an elevator. Once the retinal scanner identified her, the doors opened and she stepped inside and placed her right hand in the fingerprint recognition mold on the wall. An electronic charge tingled her fingertips. A computerized voice welcomed her by name, then the elevator took off, descending into the underworld beneath the museum.

Polax would be having a hairy cow by now, Nadja thought as she buried her gloves in the outer pocket of her slim black briefcase. He would be cursing her in ten languages for holding up his all-important morning meeting.

Today a Quest agent would be chosen to accompany an NSA Onyxx agent on a mission into Austria.

A milestone mission, Polax promised when he had called her yesterday with the news that she was one of the candidates being considered. He hadn’t offered her any particulars, and none would be shared unless she was the agent packing a bag at the end of the day and flying out of Praha Ruzyne Airport at midnight.

That’s how it worked at Quest: everything was done on a need-to-know basis.

Nadja’s technique set her apart from the other agents at Quest. She was ranked number one among sanctioned assassins—had been for the past four years. Then, too, it was hard to miss at point-blank range when you were straddling your victim.

Though she rarely did handstands to get noticed at Quest, the difference today was that she was eager to be chosen.

A week, or a month—the mission’s term didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding out what had happened to Ruger. Her last three letters had been returned unopened, and his had stopped altogether. She didn’t believe that he had left Austria. He would have told her if he had, and he certainly hadn’t changed professions. No, never. Ruger loved his work, which meant he would still be in residence at Wilten Parish in Innsbruck.

Still, something was wrong and she meant to find out what.

An uninterrupted hour with Father Ruger, that’s all she needed. A soul-searching session with her brother to assure her that all was well—that their secret was safe.

The elevator continued on its way into the underbelly of the Vysehrad Museum. That’s where EURO-Quest had been conducting its secret intelligence operations for the past ten years. Where femmes fatales such as herself were trained to their fullest potential according to their expertise.

She shrugged off her wool cape, and that’s when she saw the fat wrinkle blazing a path across the front of her thighs. How it had gotten there, she had no clue. She studied it for a moment and decided she looked like she’d slept on a bar stool all night.

She hadn’t.

She’d gone to bed on time.

Only she hadn’t fallen asleep right away. She’d gotten caught up in all the possible reasons why Ruger had stopped writing. She had succumbed to exhaustion, only to awaken hours later and realize she’d slept straight through her alarm.

Nadja slapped at the wrinkle, then swore when it sprang back into place as if it was spring-loaded. Facing the mirror that decorated one wall inside the elevator, she looked for a way to camouflage the wrinkle. If she dropped her hand just so, when she walked into the meeting room, maybe she could conceal it.

She went through the motions as she studied her white blouse and black jacket.

The blouse looked good.

Her jacket…was missing a gold button.

It suddenly occurred to her why this particular suit looked so awful. It was the one she’d intended to drop off at the cleaners.

“Shit.”

She dropped her cape to the floor, swearing three more times before pinching her briefcase between her knees to peel off her jacket. Briefcase back in hand, she draped the jacket over her arm to hide the wrinkle, then examined herself once more in the mirror.

“Better, but…”

She gathered her blond hair into one hand and pulled it back from her face. Wishing she hadn’t overslept, disgusted that she had no clip to make even a bare-bones improvement where her hair was concerned, she dropped her hand and shook out the mass.

Her hair wasn’t the worst of it. Her eyes were bloodshot. Glasses would disguise her lack of sleep and lack of makeup—there simply had been no time for eyelashes and lipstick.

Not even time to pee.

Again she pinched her briefcase between her knees in search of the reading glasses she kept in her jacket pocket. Of course they weren’t there—it was the wrong suit jacket. Angry with herself, she grabbed the briefcase unaware the metal clasp had caught on her silk stockings. When she felt the unmistakable tug, she glanced down to see a large hole circling her knee.

In a matter of minutes the elevator would stop, the doors would open and she would be greeted by two in-house agents. Kimball and Moor had squarish faces, pug noses and no sense of humor. But then, why would agent hopefuls who had fallen short be in a good mood? Ever.

The “butlers,” as Nadja called them, would flank her as she left the elevator and doggedly escort her to the conclave where Pasha Lenova and Casmir Balasi—the other two agents vying for the Austrian assignment—would already be waiting.

As stringent as Polax was about being punctual, he was twice as neurotic about professional neatness. Which meant arriving late looking like she’d been on an all-night bender would definitely get her a look, but not the job or a trip to Austria.

She would be skipped over in favor of Pasha’s promptness, or—she glanced down at the fat wrinkle tracking her thighs, then the hole that had targeted her knee—Casmir’s flair for always looking like she stepped off a Paris runway.

She dropped her briefcase to the floor, pulled off her boots and jerked her skirt high. It would take only a second to unhook her stockings from her garter belt. No one in the business could get in and out of their clothes faster than Quest’s bedroom assassin.

Nadja Stefn had the best hands in the business.

The sexy garter belt was red, the flat-screen monitors in Polax’s office recreational size.

After studying the first two Quest agents on the monitor as they entered the elevator, Bjorn Odell had slid his ass onto the corner of Polax’s desk to watch the third, and final, candidate. She was late, and Polax had pissed and moaned about that for the entire twelve minutes.

Arms crossed over his chest, Bjorn watched as the brown-eyed blond peeled off her silk stockings and dropped them to the floor next to her briefcase. He put to memory every detail of her performance. Studied every move she made, every article of clothing on the floor and left on her body.

The Italian-leather holster strapped to her thigh was also bad-girl red. Inside was the prettiest pearl-handled mini-compact .45 Springfield he’d ever seen. The Springfield was a dandy—a one-of-a-kind, just like the femme who owned it.

She had long thoroughbred legs and beautiful thighs.

Satin-smooth skin.

The sweetest ass in Prague—Bjorn would wager his own concealed 380 Beretta Cheetah on that.

“I know the deal is you get to choose from my top three operatives, but for this mission the logical choice would be Pasha Lenova. You really don’t want Stefn.”

Polax’s comment sent Bjorn’s eyes away from the monitor to where Quest’s slightly overweight, bald commander stood with his hands in his pockets.

“And why don’t I want her?”

“What I meant is that each of my agents have a specific talent. Pasha Lenova is our endurance agent. As you say in the U.S., she’s as tough as shoe leather.” Polax grinned. “She can match any man you’ve got. My personal favorite for a physical mission such as this. But if you’re set on a blonde my second choice would be Casmir Balasi. She’s our actress—slash model—but she wasn’t recruited just for her pretty face and amazing body. Her role-playing skills are flawless. As for Q, you can see—”

“Q?”

“That’s what I call Stefn because she’s Quest’s question mark.” Polax looked back to the monitor to all the clothes on the floor in the elevator. “As you can see she’s a bit scattered at times. But like cream, Q always seems to rise to the top. However, she’s not an endurance player—which is what you’ll need for this mission.”

Bjorn’s gaze returned to the monitor. Scattered was a good word for her, he thought. Polax’s “cream” had turned the elevator into her own private dressing room.

“Here at Quest we call Q our ‘candy queen,’” Polax continued. “She’s got a sweet body, and she’s not shy when it comes to sharing her sugar to disarm her target. I can assure you that every man who finds himself in Q’s bed ends up with one helluva toothache. But then, if my number was up and I had a choice, I’d elect to die high on sugar, wouldn’t you?”

With a hearty laugh, Polax pressed the zoom button on his remote and double-sized Nadja Stefn’s sweetness—making all her treats larger than life.

Without conscious thought, Bjorn fit people into three categories: the doers, the talkers and the assholes. Polax was of the asshole variety. He had an obsession for electronic gadgets, as well as super-sexy female spies.

The wall-size monitors had pulse-sonic sound and a state-of-the-art zoom feature that could find a grain of salt in a sugar bowl. And then there was Polax’s desk chair. The motorized yellow leather contraption was voice sensitive, and had been following him around the room for the past hour like a pet puppy. On the chance he felt like sitting on a second’s notice, all he had to do was plop.

He’d plopped twice since Bjorn and Merrick, his Onyxx commander, had arrived.

Bjorn glanced at his commander. Adolf Merrick was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. His attention wasn’t on Q’s ass or show-stopper legs, however; he was staring directly at Bjorn—watching him with an intensity that would have made a lesser man squirm. Bjorn didn’t squirm. He didn’t even flinch. He turned back to the monitor at the exact moment Polax zeroed in on a chocolate-colored mole on the candy queen’s inner thigh.

The commander of EURO-Quest more than enjoyed the fringe benefits of his job. Bjorn had come to that conclusion an hour ago when he and Merrick had followed Polax as he paraded through the agency corridors like a sheik with a harem. A sheik with itchy fingers—he was now fiddling with the super-sensitive sound control, tuning into Nadja’s rapid breathing as she worked quickly to strip off her naughty little red garter belt.

Bjorn raised his eyebrows just as Polax looked over his shoulder.

“What’s wrong, Agent Odell? You did ask to examine the candidates. I thought a profile expert such as yourself would accept nothing less than a head-to-toe private audit of what we offer here at Quest.”

Bjorn kept his ass on the corner of Polax’s desk as he looked on. It was true he had requested a private viewing of each candidate before they actually met them. As a profiler he didn’t base decisions on file stats alone. He considered body language and mannerisms as well as data. He listened to voice tone, verbal communication and motor response. But more importantly, the silent communications that lay hidden under the surface.

“Our goal is to impress you with our product.” Polax sent his drab green eyes over Bjorn’s broad shoulders, down his solid chest and athletic long legs. Taking his measure, noting the obvious differences in size and height, and possibly the importance of keeping the bigger man happy, he added, “Speaking of impressed, I’ve read your profile, Odell. You’re a damn hard man to kill.”

“You say that as if it’s a flaw.”

“On the contrary. I respect any man who can survive seven years in the hot seat. But then, I’m not surprised. Only the best are commandeered to join Onyxx. And only a handful of those become rat fighters. Merrick’s elite are simply the best anywhere. That’s why I feel it’s important that we select the right partner to complement your consummate skills. My agents are also quite talented. Quest trains only the top two out of every hundred that make it to the evaluation stage. Stefn…” Polax motioned to the monitor. “I interviewed her as a favor to an old friend. I never believed for a minute she’d meet my criteria.”

“Meaning?”

“Her injuries automatically made her ineligible. That’s the reason I gave her the name Q. Once I read her profile… Well, the gift she’d been given was far too remarkable to ignore.”

“Gift?”

“Stefn has an incredible tolerance for pain. Both emotional and physical. As you know, one of the obstacles agencies face in finding suitable operatives is their ability to survive whatever comes their way. A tolerance for pain goes hand-in-hand with survival. Nadja is not only our candy queen, but she’s also the queen of pain. Her pain threshold is simply the best I’ve seen in all my thirty years in the business. That kind of discipline makes her a sought-after commodity in the intelligence world.”

Bjorn picked Q’s file off the desk and opened it. “It says here that she was born in Switzerland. That she was an Olympic gold medal hopeful. You mentioned injuries. What sort of injuries?”

“A skiing accident. It’s all there in her file, every surgery. The gory details. Her grandfather was a gold medalist. Q was supposed to follow in his footsteps. At age eighteen she was expected to win gold. Instead she crashed on a slope in Zurich doing sixty miles an hour. She broke damn near every bone in her body.”

Polax walked up to the monitor—his pet chair on his heels. He angled his head as if searching for something, then ran his hand over the screen, touching Q’s right knee. Slowly he moved his hand upward over the screen, stroking her leg like a man who knew her intimately. Or a man who had lain awake nights contemplating the idea.

“She has a tattoo that is quite spectacular.” Polax turned and looked at Merrick, then Bjorn, before he sat on his pet chair. As it took off and rounded his desk, he said, “It’s located in an area I call the ‘dead zone.’”

Bjorn ignored the comment and asked, “These old injuries—do they limit her in any way?”

“Not in her percentages. But only because I’ve tailored her missions. That’s what it’s all about, you know. Finding your agent’s gift and exploiting it. Right, Merrick? Isn’t that how you became so successful with your rat fighters?”

The commander of Onyxx only nodded. Adolf Merrick wasn’t known for inane conversation, or explaining his stratagem.

“If a femme wants to work at Quest,” Polax went on, “she’s got to have something special we can market.”

“And what is that something special that Agent Lenova has?” It was the first Merrick had spoken since they had cloistered themselves in Polax’s office to examine his agent lineup.

“Pasha’s durability is extraordinary—my rain-or-shine agent. Desert heat, or arctic cold, Lenova will match you every step of the way. Q’s something special is getting on top quick in the bedroom. Since this mission will be a chilly affair, you’re going to want an endurance player.”

“It says here Stefn trained for the biathlon.” Bjorn scanned the file for more data.

“That’s true, but Lenova is the true biathlon queen. She shoots ninety-eight percent,” Polax quoted from memory. “You’re going to need that, going up against Holic Reznik.”

It had been a month since Bjorn had apprehended Holic in Santorini, Greece. He’d managed to capture the country’s most wanted assassin during a hotel fire that had sent him and Holic off a crumbling balcony into a burning ballroom full of screaming people trying to escape the chaos.

Three days ago he’d learned that Holic had successfully slipped through the National Security Agency’s fingers and escaped his well-guarded prison cell. When he’d heard the news he’d been so angry he walked out of Merrick’s office.

Normally he was a good-tempered guy. Reasonable, even during upsetting times. And smart enough to know that Merrick wouldn’t listen to him if he was shouting and throwing furniture.

He’d spent an hour walking off his rage, then he’d returned to Merrick’s office to discuss what action the Agency intended to take now that Reznik was once again a free man.

Seated in front of his commander’s desk, he’d asked, “Has the Agency issued a new objective?”

“They have, and your name was mentioned for the assignment. It’s yours, if you want it. But there are conditions, and additions.”

“I’m not a field agent any longer.”

“Reinstatement would be a simple formality. You’ve studied Holic Reznik’s habits, know him better than anyone. That makes you the most qualified for this mission. I want you on the job, Bjorn. That is, if you’ll take it.”

It was true, he and Holic had a history. Bjorn had profiled the man nicknamed ‘the butcher’ as well as faced him in the field.

He listened while Merrick detailed the situation. Holic had been seriously injured falling thirty feet off that hotel balcony at Cupata. Because of Holic’s many injuries, the Agency believed he would return to his homeland of Austria to heal and grow strong again.

They hadn’t been able to pinpoint where he would go exactly, but they felt confident it would be someplace familiar to him. Someplace remote and isolated. Someplace hard to reach.

“We know that before the Chameleon died, he contracted Reznik and hired him to eliminate a list of his enemies. He was promised millions and—”

“Eva Creon as his mistress to sweeten the deal,” Bjorn interjected. “Yes, I know.”

“Since that part of the contract fell through when Holic was captured, and then since his recent escape, we’re not sure what he intends to do with the kill-file or how many of our agents have been targeted. The truth is Holic Reznik could start picking off our operatives at any time. So you see how important this is. If you should decide to take the assignment, your mission will be to infiltrate Austria, uncover Holic’s hideout, seize the kill-file, then assassinate the assassin—with one catch.”

“One catch?”

“The Agency wants to partner you with a female operative from EURO-Quest.”

Bjorn liked the new objective, except the part about a partner. Still, Holic was the most reliable killing machine on all seven continents. He had to be stopped.

When Bjorn resurfaced from his private musing, Polax was still tossing out reasons why Pasha Lenova was his choice for the mission. He listened to the Quest commander while watching Nadja Stefn slip her tall black boots back on her pretty feet.

When Merrick cleared his throat, he glanced at his boss. “You say something?”

“I asked you which one you’ve decided on. You know Reznik better than anyone—which one of these women would be your biggest asset?”

“The one with the sweetest ass,” Bjorn said, knowing that next to his obsession with killing, Holic’s second favorite pastime was enjoying beautiful women.

“The question you’ve got to ask yourself, Bjorn, is which one of these beauties do you want to share your days and nights with for the next few weeks?” Merrick said. “I don’t care who or why, as long as she can do the job. So do you fancy the rain-or-shine brunette, the angel-faced actress or the bedroom playmate with the candy-cane legs and cotton-candy ass?”

“My recommendation—” Polax began.

“We know.” Bjorn turned his piercing blue eyes on the Quest commander. “Your choice is Lenova. You’ve made that clear. A little too clear.”

Polax climbed out of his chair and puffed out his chest. “As I said before, my job is to match the mission with the best possible agent. For this one you need an all-around sexy ball-buster who chews ice cubes in place of gum, and that would be Lenova. Quest is still working on earning its stripes in the spy world. This agency can only survive if money changes hands. For that to happen, my femmes need to shine on every mission. With Pasha Lenova at your side in Austria, a win is inevitable for both of us.”

“What you’re forgetting is, it’s not your choice,” Bjorn reminded. “It’s my call.”

He glanced back at the monitor. The elevator had stopped and Q’s skirt was no longer hiked clean to her amazing ass. He watched the doors open, watched her greet the two men waiting for her. She handed her red cape to the shorter man. Then, like a resilient cat who had just landed on her feet, she started down the corridor. Her briefcase in one hand, and her jacket draped over the other so that the missing button and the wrinkle across her thigh were hidden from view.

The only evidence that something was amiss was one lone silk stocking left on the elevator floor.