making her wet
again. She needed to be worrying about their situation, not how
quickly she could find an alcove to take him. He had to be doing this
on purpose; she could find no other reason. Even if she was
increasingly becoming turned on by what he was doing.
“When are you
going to find your connection?” she said to Rick. “We
can’t stay here all day, as much as I’d like a whole
night in that amber room. Is it someone who works here?”
“It’s
someone I had to put out a call for when I was on the computer,”
he told her. “They’re the station chief for the agency in
St. Petersburg. I don’t trust this whole trip to Archangel plan
they gave me. I want to talk to someone and find a way out of here.
I’ve never met the station chief for this city before. You
don’t usually get that opportunity unless there is some kind of
emergency.”
“I thought the
master spies all worked out of the embassy?” she asked him.
“You watch too
many movies,” he told her. “They can be just about anyone
who has good connections with the city. They can work in some import
office or a trade delegation. You want people who can move around the
city without trouble. The SVR watched the embassy to see who comes in
and out. So it would be the last place you’d want a filed agent
stationed. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s someone who
works nearby.”
The other tourists
continued to move around the exhibits. Rick was keeping a close tab
on what time it was as he searched for something. Monique asked him
what we was looking for and he told her a panel made of Jade from
nineteenth century China. It was where he was supposed to meet the
contact, but only at a set time. Five minutes in either direction
would be useless.
“So we don’t
even know who we’re looking for,” Monique said to Rick
later on.
“No,” he
told her, “but the time is getting close. I figure he or she
will be early, but you can never be sure about these things.”
“How will you
know who they are?” she asked. “You don’t know what
your contact even looks like.”
“We have a
series of conversational signs and countersigns to use,” Rick
told her. “I know it sounds so corny, but it works when you
need to meet someone in public you don’t know. I have the first
part memorized, but the final sections I received when I was on the
computer.” He turned and looked at the big clock on the top of
the arch in the hall they were in. “It’s just about time,
so we need to find the exhibit I’m supposed to meet them at.”
They wandered around
until finding a bronze Buddha from the early fourteenth century from
Japan. Rick stopped, looked at it and turned his head sideways. “This
is it,” he said. “It fits in with the description I was
given years ago. Now all we have to do is wait.”
Ten minutes later a
small pretty brunette with dark Italian features appeared and began
looking at the Buddha as well. She was fashionable dressed in heels
and wearing a white leather jacket over her outfit. She had long
black hair tucked under her cap and turned to face them while they
were standing next to the statue. Rick frowned; she looked no more
than twenty years old. Couldn’t be the person they were waiting
to see. He turned away from her.
“Did you see
the moon last night?” she asked Rick.
Stunned, Rick turned
back and said. “I wasn’t outside last night. What did it
look like?”
“It was a dark
phase,” she told him, “so we didn’t get to see it.”
“I need to get
out more often,” Rick said to her, trying to figure out if she
was really the contact, “but it’s been a bad year.”
“It’s
been a lousy year for me as well,” she replied.
“Black bear,”
he said to her.
“Night hawk,”
she replied again.
“You’re
the station chief?” he asked her. “You seem so…”
“Young?”
she said in a voice which was very soft and feminine. “I’m
thirty-five, but thanks for the compliment. People say I look