His Spy at Night (Spy Games Book 3) Page 11

  Pretending to be involved with each other was one thing. They’d gone a step further, and if she had her way, they’d go further still. While sleeping with Harry wasn’t illegal, immoral, or even unethical—what she did on her own time was still her own business—Harry had brought Bernard to the attention of CSIS. He’d made no secret of the fact he didn’t care for him. There was personal history between the two men. Not to mention that she’d been warned to keep her integrity intact because there was a lot riding on this investigation—CSIS was after the Canadian Minister of Defence, and except at the discretion of the director, CSIS reported to him. Any kink in that slender chain could cause problems for John Carmichael. Harry’s integrity—and motives—might well be called into question too. Ugly things could happen behind closed office doors.

  Lies would have to be very careful that any information leading to the minister she collected from Bernard was ironclad and verifiable. She’d keep last night off the record and do her best to make sure what she and Harry did when they were alone didn’t attract any interest, because there was going to be a repeat of last night.

  He could count on it.

  She didn’t kid herself into thinking there’d be a happily ever after. They lived far different lives and bottom line, he hated hers. They’d both just come out of bad relationships and neither one of them was ready to try again. They were in this for the sex. The really great sex.

  That was it.

  With that goal firmly established she finished dressing, grabbed some bread and cheese from the kitchen, then retrieved her bicycle from the garage. She arrived at work with seconds to spare.

  Harry was already in his office, doing an unruffled impersonation of a permanent fixture. Anyone could be excused for thinking he lived here. He had papers strewn across his desk and was sipping a coffee.

  He lifted his head as she entered his field of vision on the way to her desk. “Lies, can I speak with you for a moment?”

  He couldn’t possibly be planning to tell her last night had been a mistake. Not already and not here at the office.

  “Nothing good ever comes from a conversation that starts off with those words,” she replied, although she stopped and backed up a few steps.

  The fine lines bracketing his firm mouth deepened for a breath, then smoothed into faint humor. She had a moment’s vivid recollection of the tug of his mouth on her breast, and his tongue tracking the length of her belly, and her stomach did a tight, eager dance. She had a burning desire to shake all of that office decorum. If not for the lack of curtains at the windows, she’d bet she could talk him into having sex on his desk. Of course there was always after hours with the lights out to consider.

  And she’d have to convince him that it was all his idea.

  “I’ll rephrase that,” he said, dispelling her fantasy. “I need your help with the trade delegates at the helicopter expo in Amsterdam tomorrow. I’ve lined up meetings for them and you’ll monitor their schedules to keep them on track. Add your name to the registration list.”

  She’d completely forgotten to tell Harry that Bernard expected her to be at that expo too. She might have to relax her rule about no work-talk in bed in the other rooms of her flat. If they couldn’t talk shop at the office, in public, or the bedroom, their information-exchange options became too limited and they risked more of these snafus.

  “I was invited to dinner tomorrow night at the venue’s restaurant,” she said.

  He set the coffee cup down and tugged at the sleeve of his suit, a sure sign he was annoyed and not wanting to let on. A motorcycle backfired somewhere in morning traffic outside of the embassy. “I assume your host will be picking up the tab.”

  Harry wasn’t a spendthrift by any means, but neither did he worry about the nickels and dimes of his department’s business expenditures, meaning yes, he was ticked. Since she wasn’t his personal assistant in real life, that was his problem not hers. And she couldn’t really say she cared for his tone. Even though they weren’t in a committed relationship, she slept with one man at a time. She wasn’t Alcine.

  Despite all evidence to the contrary, however, Harry was human. He’d been hurt and had issues with trust. She of all people could sympathize.

  “Is there a government policy against a staff member having dinner with an embassy client at a public function that I wasn’t made aware of?” she asked.

  Dark brown eyes studied her. She could see the wheels spinning, then the wariness settling in. “Why do you ask?”

  “I wouldn’t want to give the impression it was anything but business. If it were personal, we’d go to my flat.”

  The frown pinching his eyebrows together relaxed its tight grip. “There’s no such policy. The restaurant is a good place to network and shouldn’t interfere with embassy business,” he conceded. “Just make sure the delegates show up for their meetings in the right places at the right times.”

  Harry had handed her an excellent opportunity to find out what connections the delegates made while they were here, because gathering intelligence was like assembling a puzzle. One never knew where the pieces might fit.

  “I’ll register this morning,” she promised.

  * * *

  That was the last chance they had to speak for the remainder of the day. She wouldn’t be seeing him that evening. He was taking the trade delegation for a dinner meeting with local shipping contractors. She’d love to sit in on those meetings, but it really would look odd for his personal assistant to be with him. The Dutch contractors would see it as pretentious and Harry had to work with them.

  The evening was long and boring without Harry to distract her, so she worked on some notes for her case file. She also had a few pieces of equipment that required reassembling. She’d taken them apart to get them through customs when she’d entered the country. After that, she went to bed. She was normally a night owl but between the concert on the weekend and the late night with Harry, her internal clock had taken a beating.

  She fell asleep in a jumble of sheets that smelled of Harry’s aftershave and a night of fantastic sex, disappointed that she was alone and he hadn’t called.

  She awoke with enough time to take an unhurried shower before catching the train headed for Schiphol. The trade expo was fifteen minutes from the international airport. The day was wet and cold so she carried her umbrella. Underneath her raincoat she wore a cream-colored cotton knit turtleneck sweater and black dress pants. Her practical shoes were the ones she wore to her office in Ottawa. They were the most comfortable pair she owned and she’d be on her feet the whole day.

  From the metro station she found the bus that traveled to the venue. The registration desk was overwhelmed. Three British attendees, who’d obviously just gotten off a flight, were experiencing frustration, so Lies stepped in to help them out.

  Once registered herself, with her coat checked and her nametag and pass attached to the lanyard around her neck, she was free. She’d deliberately arrived ahead of Harry and the Canadian delegates because she wanted to wander through the exhibit areas at leisure and chat with exhibitors. Expos were goldmines for gathering intelligence.

  It was early afternoon when she spotted Harry and the trade mission delegates near the main entrance. She hurried over to join them and Harry introduced her as his personal assistant, sounding brisk and professional, giving not the slightest hint that he’d had her naked and sobbing his name only two nights before.

  And she’d thought he couldn’t act.

  The fact that he could made her uneasy. She preferred his straightforwardness. It set him apart.

  She had the delegates’ schedules programmed into her phone. The meetings and seminars were held in a different hall so she led them toward it, pushing her way through the crowd. There were three meetings that interested her, but the one that really caught her attention was between a lawyer representing a Canadian securities company and a Ukrainian helicopter original equipment manufacturer—OEM for short. The helicopter OEM bo
ught parts for repairs from manufacturers operating out of Thailand, India, and Pakistan. Her team leader, Dan, had told her that missing Canadian aircraft parts had been tracked to all three of those countries.

  The lawyer’s name was Mike Freeland. He was tall, thin, and stooped, with gray, greasy, combed-over hair. The suit he wore cost more than she earned in a month. She placed him in his late forties. His right forefinger and nailbed bore telltale yellow nicotine stains from heavy smoking. His eyes were red-rimmed. He’d either been drinking or visiting a local coffee shop—which, despite its misleading name, was a place to buy soft drugs without fear of arrest.

  “Could you grab me a coffee, sweetheart?” he asked her. “I’m too old for the Amsterdam nightlife.”

  Coffee house it was, then. Lawyers made the worst tourists. They knew exactly what they could get away with and where the line was that couldn’t be crossed.

  “Of course.” She let his condescension roll off her. She was interested in learning more about his connection to the Ukrainian OEM. Political correctness was a small price to pay in exchange. “Black, or cream and sugar?”

  “Black.”

  She brought him his coffee.

  Meanwhile, Harry had connected with a Dutch government official and the two were deep in private conversation. She wondered where he’d been last night after his meetings had ended. She felt confident in assuming he hadn’t gone to a coffee house with Freeland. He hadn’t been at her flat either.

  She shook off a niggling of doubt. It was still too soon to worry about where his conscience might be leading him.

  Shortly before five o’clock her cellphone rang, displaying Bernard’s number.

  “You look busy,” he said.

  He had no idea. It was inconceivable to her how grown men could be so lacking in time management skills. “Where are you?”

  “Behind you, three doors to your right.”

  She was facing the seminar rooms. She turned, spotted him, and waved. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll meet you at the restaurant.”

  The catering and restaurant area was busy when she arrived. People spilled beyond the ropes sectioning it off from the registration zone. Bernard was near the front of the line, his tall frame and blond head easy enough to pick out.

  He was quite impressive Lies conceded, with an air that drew people to him—an especially important personal quality to have in an environment such as this, where business representatives sought out the obvious influencers.

  The man he was speaking with looked vaguely familiar. She hung back, trying to place him, and then she had it. She didn’t know the second man personally but she’d seen his picture. He was on a CSIS watch list, suspected of domestic terrorism, but had managed to flee Canada before an alert to detain him could be posted. An international helicopter expo wasn’t the first place she would have expected to find him and it didn’t bode well.

  He and Bernard finished their conversation and he walked away. Bernard looked around and spotted her. He raised his hand above the crowd to flag her over. As she approached him she saw the Canadian lawyer, Mike Freeland, a few feet to his left. He and Bernard nodded to each other but they didn’t speak.

  “Do you know Mr. Freeland?” Lies asked when she reached Bernard’s side. The briefcase she carried instead of a purse bumped the person standing next to her and she excused herself to them. Out of habit she automatically checked the outside pocket where she kept her phone to make sure it was secure.

  “We went to law school together.”

  At McGill. Lies felt that rush of excitement which meant she’d stumbled onto a piece of the puzzle and where it might fit. “Is he one of the friends you spoke of who has family connections in other countries?”

  “He’s hardly a friend. This is the first time I’ve seen him in years.”

  That was as evasive a response as she’d ever heard. Something in Bernard’s posture said she’d made the right puzzle piece fit. He, a pot-smoking lawyer, and the Canadian Minister of National Defence had all gone to McGill at around the same time. Freeland was in the Netherlands as part of a trade mission and had arranged a last minute meeting with Ukrainians. If that was his background—and it would be easy enough to find out if it was—then she had a worthwhile piece of information to pass on to John Carmichael.

  She’d ask Harry a few questions and see what else she could find out about Freeland.

  Chapter Nine

  She and Bernard ended up at a table with three strangers.

  Since the event was about networking it was an inconvenience to no one but Lies. The one benefit she got was to see how Bernard interacted with people he didn’t know. It turned out he was very charming, despite the obvious fact that the three Germans they’d joined were of no interest to him whatsoever.

  It wasn’t long before the Germans got up to leave. Within minutes their vacated seats were claimed by Americans.

  Partway through her meal, and between the dull, professional chatter, Lies spotted Harry seated four tables over. He was with the Canadian lawyer and another delegate from the trade mission, and a group of people she didn’t recognize. The lawyer was deep in conversation with a young, sharp-faced man who looked ill-at-ease in Harry’s company. He kept shooting sidelong glances at Harry, who had the intent expression on his face that he used to disguise boredom.

  Bernard noticed where her attention continued to stray. “Are you certain you and Harry don’t have a personal interest in each other?”

  “He’s my boss,” she reminded him, flustered at having been caught staring. She was normally more circumspect. “That pretty much says it all.”

  “Ah. I see. It’s against Harry’s code of ethics.”

  Without a doubt. If she’d worked for him for real the other night would never have happened. “Never mind that I might have a few ethics myself.”

  Bernard had the audacity to laugh at her, with genuine humor that stretched to his eyes. “I don’t believe you’d allow anything to stand in your way if you were after something you really wanted.”

  His assessment of her was startling because, while it suited her purposes, it might be a little too close to the truth. Bernard was good at reading people, with a lot of experience behind him, and she’d do well to remember that she was the rookie not him.

  They were speaking to each other in Dutch because the conversation was private, but the Americans appeared to be uncomfortable with it so she switched over to English and addressed the entire table. “Women need to be cautious around men if they want to be taken seriously in the business world. Would you gentlemen agree?”

  One of the Americans, a bluff, friendly man with red cheeks and a thick Texas accent, shook his head. “It depends on what you mean by cautious. I’d like to think we’ve come a long way in the last twenty years. The women working for me were hired because they had the right mix of education and experience. They have equal footing.”

  “Would you have an office affair with one of them? Or condone any relationship between two of your employees if one was in a position of authority over another?” she pressed him. On one hand she wanted Bernard to believe that any interest she had in Harry was all about what he could do for her. And that yes, she would go after whatever she wanted if it would further her career. On the other hand, she was poking the bear. This was a male-dominated industry and the conversations she’d overheard throughout the day reflected that fact.

  “That’s how I met my first wife,” the Texan replied. The others at the table all laughed. He then turned more serious. “I’d be curious as to who was taking advantage of whom. These days nothing’s ever so simple. Most women I know would file a sexual harassment suit quick as a wink if a man tried to hold her career over her head. It would be equally possible that she’s using him to get a promotion. And that’s assuming the man is in the position of power,” he added. “My VP of finance is a woman. If she’s sleeping with one of her staff, no one’s complaining. Her husband might not care for it though. B
ut that’s between them.”

  Lies liked him. She hoped he wasn’t all talk.

  He also gave her something to think about. She freely acknowledged she might still be defensive over Dan filing that report on her regarding her relationship with Michael. Bernard’s words, however, were the ones that continued to ring in her head long after her evening had ended and he was driving her home.

  I don’t believe you’d allow anything to stand in your way if you were after something you really wanted.

  They were an accurate assessment of her. She did go after the things she wanted. It was part of what made her a good intelligence officer. But anyone who danced the fine edge of both sides of the law the way she did faced enormous temptation. She often had to decide between what her conscience could live with, what would benefit the greater good, and which was more important in any given situation.

  Sleeping with Harry wasn’t only about what she could live with. For him, she wasn’t his employee so that wasn’t his issue. It was that he didn’t like what she did for a living. He valued trust and he’d never pretended that he trusted her. She’d been wrong to dismiss his struggles with his conscience over sleeping with her as his problem, not hers. It was one they shared equally.

  Bernard pulled his car into a vacant parking spot along the side of the wide canal that fronted her flat. Aging alder, willow, and elm trees flourished, their branches drooping over the quiet water. The night was young and he didn’t shut off the engine. An elderly woman with a fat pug on a leash waddled past. The pug paused at the flowery shrubs bordering Lies’s building, which butted the street, and lifted a hind leg.