Vital Force by Trevor Scott Read Free Book Online

agreement. Then she unzipped his pants and took him in her mouth.

7
    Beijing, China
    Jake walked calmly along the stone sidewalk in a back street two blocks from Tiananmen Square, the darkness broken only by distant street lights and the occasional lantern marking a bar or cafe. Although it was closing in on midnight, the streets were still full of life. Not like Paris or London or New York. But his native Portland would be nearly deserted at that time of night on a Wednesday.
    Accustomed to working at night, Jake’s eyes adjusted well to the darkness, and his other senses would heighten along with them, he knew. Time couldn’t dull training and experience.
    It was at times like this, when he had no idea why he was here at this hour, that he wished he had his normal 9mm automatic strapped under his left arm. Just in case. But, unlike Europe, he had no contacts in China who could acquire such weapons. Nor did he think, until now, that he would need one. After all, his back story indicated he was only in Beijing to accompany an American businessman, who had just that morning signed a huge fiber optics deal that would link hard lines and speedy data transfer to not only every corner of the city, but also, he hoped, to every major city in China. Jake had learned as much as he could about the man in the last few hours in case anyone cared to ask the question.
    But now Jake was on his own. He had followed the American to the airport earlier in the day and then gone back to his hotel in the Qianmen region, just six blocks from his current location. And then, as he rested in his room trying to figure out what the Agency had in store for him in the next few days before flying back to Austria, he had gotten the strange phone call. That was five hours ago. The caller, a man of indistinguishable age or ethnicity, although Jake was sure he must have been Western, had simply said to meet him behind the Museum to Chinese History if he wanted to find out about his old girlfriend, Toni Contardo. It was a ruse, he knew.
    He hadn’t heard from Toni in six months. They had been living together in a nice apartment overlooking the river in Innsbruck, he thinking their relative domestication was actually working out, and she obviously thinking the tranquility of seclusion in Austria reason enough to go back to work for the Agency. So, as far as he knew, she had done just that, having first gone through extensive Arabic language training before being assigned to...well, that was the problem. He had no idea where she was.
    So the caller would know that, he had said. Then he either had a choice to hit the sack early and take a tour of the Great Wall in the morning, or end up in a dark alley at midnight to meet someone he didn’t know for unknown reasons. Jake didn’t think for a moment that he would find out anything about Toni. But, hope was like the concept of happiness. You never knew you had found it until after it had passed.
    He turned from the relatively busy sidewalk down a narrow lane, where only a lone woman shot her eyes away from him and scurried in the opposite direction. After making it halfway down the street, Jake stopped and leaned against a wall in the shadows, glancing across the narrow street at a back gate to the museum.
    On both ends of the street was a clamor of voices and footsteps and laughter, but here the street had cleared and he was alone.
    His eyes shifted back and forth with each sound.
    Suddenly, out of the shadows of the courtyard across the street, behind the gates, there was movement. Then Jake heard the lighter flicker and watched the glow of a cigarette being lit.
    That was his sign.
    He crossed the alley and opened the gate with a slight squeak, slid inside, and moved toward the glowing cigarette.
    â€œThat’s close enough,” came a muffled voice from the shadows. It was almost a whisper. “To your left, into the darkness.”
    The cigarette dropped to the ground and the man