“True.” Helen narrowed her eyes. “There, Peter.” She pointed to a string of letters and numbers at the top of the monitor. “There’s a flight to Oslo in half an hour. It’ll be boarding any time now.”
Thorn reached out and gently turned her to face him. She didn’t pull away.
“Look, Helen. This is where it gets real. We can still find that captain and make up some excuse for missing him at customs. We’d be home by tomorrow morning.”
“There’s no time for this, Peter,” she protested softly. “I’ve made up my mind.” Shifting in his grasp slightly, she pulled him toward the counter as the line moved forward.
“What?”
Deputy Chief of Mission Randolph Clifford stared at Charlie Spiegel in disbelief.
Spiegel could only restate what he’d already said. “I saw them to the airport. I saw them board the plane.”
“Then why weren’t they on the plane when it landed in Berlin?”
The CIA officer shrugged. “I can’t answer that, sir. If the Army’s telling the truth about having somebody there to meet them, then Colonel Thorn and Special Agent Gray obviously got past him somehow.”
“Why? And where did they go?”
Spiegel grinned. “I understand Bavaria’s nice in the summer.”
Clifford was not amused. “You assume this disappearance was voluntary. What if they were abducted?”
Spiegel turned serious. “Unlikely, given their background. You saw my report on Pechenga, sir. If somebody tried to take Helen Gray or Thorn off that plane against their will, believe me, we’d have heard of it by now.”
Clifford nodded stiffly. He rubbed at his temples, evidently fighting the beginning of a world-class headache. “I can’t believe this. A senior Army officer. Hell, and a senior FBI agent! Violating travel orders, vanishing off the face of the earth …” He looked up at Spiegel in disbelief. “Have Thorn and Gray both gone crazy?”
“It doesn’t sound like they’ve got much to lose by going off on their own,” the CIA officer responded. “Have you notified the German authorities?”
“No.” The diplomat rubbed harder at his forehead. “We won’t get any help there. Thorn and Gray haven’t committed any crimes — none that matter to the Germans anyway. The most I could do was get our own embassy and military to agree to report to us if they turned up.” The frustration in Clifford’s voice was clear.
“If I’d been through what they’ve been through, I’d take some time off before going home to face the music,” Spiegel said flatly. “This may be their way of telling us all to go to hell.”
Clifford reddened. “I suggest you get back to work, Mr. Spiegel.” He nodded toward the door. “Just figure out what Thorn and Gray are doing. And why.”
Spiegel headed back to his own office suspecting that the other man wasn’t going to like the answers he would probably come up with. He’d worked long enough with Helen Gray to appreciate just how stubborn and determined she could be once she had her sights on an unsolved puzzle — or an enemy. What he couldn’t figure out was what she hoped to accomplish. Drug trafficking was a major crime, but it was so widespread that blocking one smuggling route just pushed the stuff somewhere else. Trying to stop it completely was as futile as good old King Canute ordering the tide back with a wave of his royal hand.
Besides, Helen and Peter Thorn weren’t going to be allowed back into Russia — not legally. So where were they going to pick up the trail they’d followed so disastrously to Pechenga?
The CIA officer closed the door to his office and turned toward the wall map pinned up behind his desk. His eyes fell on Norway and he nodded to himself. He’d bet that Helen and the colonel were on their way to the only link left in the chain they’d been tracing — to Bergen.
Well, Spiegel decided, he’d take some time before reporting back to Clifford. The Agency didn’t have many people on the ground in Norway — certainly not enough to waste their time and efforts looking for a couple of government employees who’d only broken a few travel regs. Besides, he thought, Helen Gray might just get lucky.
The high northern sky over Bergen glowed a deep, rich golden orange — a color that touched the steep green slopes above the city with fire.
The same golden hue danced across the waters of the harbor — softening the outlines of the oil tankers, container ships, and fishing trawlers packed along Bergen’s piers. Although it was already evening, only a few lights gleamed from the windows of the city’s red-gabled houses, shops, bars, and restaurants.
Helen Gray glanced toward the moored ships and then back along the narrow street stretching up from the harbor toward the mountains. The season was working to their advantage. This close to the start of summer, Norway’s warm eighteen-and twenty-hour days attracted streams of tourists. To the casual observer, she and Peter would be just two more vacationers eager to take in the spectacular scenery and amble through the historic sites.
She turned to Peter. “All set?”
He showed his teeth in a quick grin and tapped the Canon EOS camera he’d purchased that afternoon. “You bet.”
With Peter tagging along a couple of steps behind her, Helen walked toward the first waterfront tavern they’d located earlier in the afternoon — after arriving by train from Oslo. They’d waited until now, after the dinner hour, when the men they were looking for would be relaxing, gossiping, and griping after their day working on the docks.
The Akershus was named after the historic fortress that guarded Oslo’s harbor. This was no tourist attraction, though.
The bar’s exterior was weathered, clearly not painted since the winter’s passing, and winters in Norway could be very hard.
Aside from the sign, a small anchor and a Viking longship painted on the front window were the only decorations. Still, it looked clean, and large enough to give them a good chance of finding the witnesses they needed.
Inside, a bar ran along one wall, down the full length of the room. It was surfaced with scarred dark wood. The room was paneled in matching wood, and ten or twelve tables filled the rest of the space.
Even this early in the evening, it was already half full. Some of the men were finishing meals, others were playing cards, and a few were already into their third beers, to judge from the empties.
Helen noticed that there were no women in the room at all.
This was clearly an all-male preserve. Only two men stood at the bar, talking soberly to each other and the barkeep, a large, blond, bearded man, who only needed a horned helmet to resemble one of his Viking ancestors.
Helen and Peter drew a few long looks from the patrons when they first entered. But once they’d ordered beers and taken a table in the corner, they were ignored.
Helen sipped her beer and studied the customers over her raised glass.
A few were young — in their twenties, perhaps. The others ranged up to sixty or so. Most were solidly middleaged.
And all of them were dressed in work clothes — dark-colored overalls, often stained, or ripped and mended. Their scuffed boots and the hard hats dangling from the chairs behind them hinted that these were exactly the sort of men the two Americans were looking for.
Finally, Helen nodded to Peter and got up, approaching a man in his mid-fifties. He sat alone at a table, nursing a beer. “Excuse me, do you speak English?”
“Nei.” Well, so much for him. She turned to a younger man at the next table, scruffy, but with an alert look. “Do you speak English?”’ she repeated.
“Ja, a little.”
Helen offered her hand and flashed a smile, trying to turn on the charm without making it too obvious. “I’m Susan Anderson, with the ETS News Service.” She handed him a business card, imprinted with the false name she was using, the name of the fictional news service, a phone number, and an Internet address.
She still felt somewhat awkward about operating under a phony identity.
But years as an FBI agent had taught her the annoying truth that witnesses who often clammed up when
