“You have,” Wolfgang said. “Maybe I just need a little more of each.”
Wolfgang thought back to Edric’s recruitment speech three years before, when he talked with animation about the mysterious company he worked for. SPIRE: a private espionage service specializing in subterfuge, procurement, infiltration, retaliation, and entrapment. At the time, Wolfgang was eighteen, and it all sounded very thrilling, but dumping a laxative in a business executive’s coffee felt more junior high than espionage elite, regardless of how effective the strategy was.
“A little more of each,” Edric repeated, his voice trailing. “Drugs or no drugs, you have to admit, that’s something an addict would say.”
Wolfgang didn’t dispute the accusation. Excitement was its own form of drug, and like any high, everything dulled after a while. “I don’t know, Edric. Just give me another op. Something tropical. I need a tan.”
Seconds ticked into minutes while Edric continued to stare, then he seemed to reach a decision. “Does the name ‘Charlie Team’ mean anything to you?”
Wolfgang shook his head. “Video game?”
“No, it’s one of SPIRE’s elite team units.”
Wolfgang frowned. “What do you mean, team units? SPIRE only hires individual operators.”
Edric shrugged. “For petty corporate ops like the Hawthorn job, sure. But sometimes those operators turn out to be exemplary. And sometimes a job is too big for one man.”
“What are you telling me?”
“In addition to being your handler, I’m the operation commander of Charlie Team. We execute covert operations on behalf of SPIRE around the world. Next-level stuff. Stuff with a lot more risk and a lot more reward.”
Wolfgang remained relaxed, trying to disguise the twitch he felt in his stomach.
Edric held his gaze, then picked up the coffee and took a long sip. “Charlie Team is fully operational, with five members—myself, a techie, and three ground-level operators. Three weeks ago, we conducted an operation in Damascus and things went sideways. One of my guys was killed, and I was thrown off a building. Hence the cast.”
Wolfgang sat forward involuntarily. He could tell where this conversation was headed, and he was already sold.
“I received a call from the director this morning. He’s got a special job that he wants Charlie Team to take. I can lead from behind, given the cast, but I can’t get by without three operators on the ground. I need somebody new. Somebody . . . exemplary.”
Wolfgang flipped a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and pinned it beneath his water.
“Lucky you. I’m free this weekend.”
2
The setting sun gleamed against The Gateway Arch as Wolfgang stepped out of the cab and passed the driver a fifty. The driver fumbled for change, and Wolfgang waved him off, taking a moment to admire the old monument. A haze of pollution clouded it, and shabby buildings blocked part of his view, but it was still something worth admiring.
Wolfgang had never been to Saint Louis before. He wasn’t sure if this was SPIRE’s headquarters or if Edric simply deemed it to be the most convenient location for Charlie Team’s next rendezvous. The cryptic, encoded text message from the previous night directed him to fly into Saint Louis and meet on the fourteenth floor of the Bank of America Plaza at seven p.m. It was now barely five-thirty, but Wolfgang believed in arriving early. It gave him an advantage over whatever kind of initiation awaited him.
He had the cab drop him off six blocks north of Eighth and Market Street, choosing to walk the final stretch to acclimate himself to the city. There wasn’t much to see on a Saturday afternoon—apparently, most of the Saint Louis downtown action orbited around business, not tourism. Only a few people bustled past him on the dirty sidewalks, although he counted at least thirty panhandlers, along with two distant gunshots.
Saint Louis—not exactly a family town.
Wolfgang arrived at the Bank of America Plaza without breaking a sweat, but still appreciated the air conditioning inside. His shoes clicked against marble floors, echoing inside an empty lobby as he moved toward the elevator. There was a security guard at the front desk watching Netflix on an iPad, and he made no effort to stop or question Wolfgang before the elevator door closed.
Wolfgang pressed the button for the sixteenth floor and stuck his hands into his pockets, contemplating all the things that could happen. Prior to the previous day, he really had no idea that SPIRE operated multi-person units, but it shouldn’t have surprised him. His three-year tenure with the peculiar, independent espionage service had led him all over North America, mostly conducting petty sabotage and intellectual theft jobs against corporations, not governments. The prior day’s operation was a prime example—somebody didn’t want the Hawthorn and Company deal to close, and they were willing to pay handsomely to have it sabotaged. So they hired SPIRE, and SPIRE deployed Wolfgang, and Wolfgang got creative and made it happen. Boring, really.
When Edric recruited Wolfgang to work for SPIRE just months prior to his eighteenth birthday, Wolfgang had dreamed of fast jets, flying bullets, and exotic locales. So far, his average mission was more likely to land him in Cleveland than Bangladesh. Hardly the stuff of James Bond movies.
The elevator dinged to a stop on the sixteenth floor, and Wolfgang stepped into the lobby. Offices for a construction firm lay to his right, and more elevators to his left. The entire floor was dark and silent, fast asleep after a busy week.
He stepped out of the elevator and slipped his hand into his coat, feeling for the Beretta 92X Compact handgun held in a shoulder holster beneath his left armpit. Wolfgang kept his hand on the gun as he stepped to the stairwell and eased the door open, listening for any sounds from two floors beneath him.
As he expected, all was silent. He really didn’t foresee any games from Edric; he wasn’t the game-playing type. But then again, twenty-four hours before, Wolfgang hadn’t expected to be recruited to an unknown team, either. He wasn’t about to walk
