Enemy Agents by Shaun Tennant Read Free Book Online Page B

in black tights passed a guard on the third floor, a completely different girl in a red sweater and blue jeans walked down the Bahnhofstrasse listening to her iPod.
    The Bahnhofstrasse is the expensive street in Europe. Immaculate and lined with young trees, it was home to every prestigious retail store in Europe. Jessica didn’t notice the beauty of Zurich’s buildings or expensive shops on the way back to her hotel. She was too busy thinking back on her own mistakes, and wondering what would happen if anyone ever really had her cornered. Scratching a dumbass guard’s arm was one thing, but in her business things would only get worse. Someday, somehow, someone would get the drop on her and she’d have to fight for her life, and Jessica’s hands shook as she wondered if she’d even be capable of defending herself. She silently swore that she’d be better than she had been today, that she’d never be caught; always slip in and out without confrontation. She had to be the best, or she’d be dead.
    The hotel had a bar in the lobby and she lingered, looking in, tempted. Her hands clenched and she walked away.
    In her room she ran a scalding bath, stripped out of her clothes and scratched out the third-floor escape plan on her blueprints. With the water still steaming she climbed into the tub, kneeled down, dunked her head under painfully hot water, and screamed until she was out of breath.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    6
    Chris Quarrel was sitting in an empty office in a government building on the other side of Ottawa. The walls were recently patched but not painted, so several spots of white putty blotted the pale violet walls. The desk was cheap chipboard and peeling veneer, and the filing cabinet had two locked drawers nobody could find the keys for. Not that it mattered. This wasn’t Quarrel’s office. It was more like a waiting room. Or a jail cell.
    With his entire office dead, Quarrel had become both a witness and a liability. He had spent the Tuesday and Wednesday in interrogation rooms, being asked the same questions by a series of men and women. He had very little to tell them. There was a strange letter. “Have you noticed the Letter Six yet?” A report classified level seven, that Quarrel had never opened. Correspondence from several foreign employees, who Quarrel did not know by name. A copy of Jekyll and Hyde that Quarrel guessed was part of a book cipher. That was all he knew. The detail of whom the letter was addressed to—T. Takahashi—Chris kept to himself. Carol had been damned worried about that little detail and Chris wasn’t about to break the last promise he had made to her.
    With every new person who came to ask questions, Quarrel became more convinced that they all wished someone more important had survived. Someone who had real answers. Every few hours, for the entire week, someone new had come along to ask questions and left disappointed. The one thing everyone knew for sure was that a lowly functionary like Chris probably didn’t have any clue about any information that would be worth blowing up a building to destroy. Most of these interrogations/interviews/grief counselling sessions included a middle-aged man with greying red hair named Mr. Thompson. Thompson was a clearance level 4, and as such he was a nice buffer between lowly Chris Quarrel and the higher-ups who answered to the politicians.
    Nevertheless, the mere fact of surviving was enough to draw suspicion. Chris was neither a helpful witness nor a very likely bomber, but there were people in the service who saw him as both. Thompson was nice enough, and Quarrel was glad to see that Thompson at least seemed to believe Quarrel’s eyewitness account was helpful. Because of this, instead of sitting him in the interrogation room each day, Quarrel was given this half-renovated office to sit in and while away his days whenever he wasn’t being questioned. He was given freedom to leave at night (under surveillance