Read Online Lethal Circuit by Lars Guignard - Free Book Online Page B

keeps getting better. Now you’re telling me you were my dad’s Bond girl?”
    “I wouldn’t put it quite like that. I’m a field operative. Your father and I were teamed up on a joint intelligence project.”
    “The CIA and MI6. Working together? Back at the Academy we had a name for that kind of thing.”
    “Michael!” Kate lowered her voice. “Enough with the bullshit, alright? The CIA and MI6 have collaborated in the past and no doubt will again in the future. It was a loose affiliation. Your father and I traveled in different circles. But we met and updated each other regularly. Shared progress reports.”
    “Doesn’t explain your teeth.”
    “What about them?” Kate said, running her tongue along them for any sign of stray food.
    “They’re too good to be British.”
    “I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m half British. On my mom’s side. Born in London, raised outside of Chicago. Libertyville. They have dentists there.”
    “Where do the Cubs play?”
    “Wrigley Field.”
    “Where do you go for drinks after the game?”
    “I don’t know. Murphy’s? They card at Cubby Bear. At least they did when I was there.”
    Michael relented. He hadn’t spent much time in Chicago, but he had been to a game or two and as far as he remembered it, she was right. They did card at Cubby Bear. “Okay, suppose I bite. You’re a spy and he’s a spy. But I’m not him. What do you want with me?”
    “Pay attention,” Kate said. “This is where things get interesting.”
    •   •   •
    S EVERAL THOUSAND MILES away, across the Sea of Japan, a sleek black phone rang. A powerfully built Japanese man studied the caller display. His name was Hayakawa and he knew the call was not a good sign. Calls from China were never good news and as such, they could not be ignored. Hayakawa picked up the receiver.
    “Hayakawa,” he said gruffly.
    The person on the other end of the line took a moment to respond. When he opened his mouth Hayakawa knew it was Chen.
    “We had an unwelcome visitor today.”
    Hayakawa had expected as much. Already what had started as a pet project had gotten out of hand. He stretched out his five-foot-six frame and stared out the floor to ceiling window of the towering glass building. It was raining in Tokyo, the pedestrians lost in a sea of umbrellas on the street below. Bad tidings often accompanied the rain in Hayakawa’s experience, bad tidings and a whole lot of water. Hayakawa fingered a stray strand of his longish black hair, putting it back into place behind his ear.
    “Who?” he asked.
    “A man. A Western man. I think it was him.”
    “Where is he now?”
    “I do not know.”
    “Can you find him?”
    “I will try.”
    There was a long moment of dead air.
    “Hayakawa-san, please be patient. I will find him.”
    Hayakawa eyed his reflection in the window, straightening the jacket of his impeccably tailored suit. As he had suspected, the news was bad, worse in fact than he would have thought. But that was only part of the problem. The other part, he could hear in Chen’s voice. The man was losing confidence. He was becoming a liability Hayakawa could not afford.
    “Thank you,” Hayakawa said. “We will discuss this more thoroughly at another time.”
    Hayakawa terminated the connection without another word. He then dialed a second number he knew from memory. He let it ring once, then sat the phone back down in the cradle and waited. He only hoped that he had not already waited too long.
    •   •   •
    M ICHAEL WATCHED WITH interest as Kate pulled an iPhone out of her pocket and jacked it into an Ethernet port that hung loosely from one of the floor joists above. Her Glock was safely reholstered and she made no attempt to gather the Browning off the dirt floor. Michael couldn’t tell if she was trying to foster trust in him, or if she knew the gun wasn’t loaded. It didn’t matter. He had come this far. He was going to listen to what she had to say.
    “The head monk