The Spy Wore Red

In a narrow passageway she stopped and faced a slender mirror next to an elevator. Once the retinal scanner identified her, the doors opened and she stepped inside and placed her right hand in the fingerprint recognition mold on the wall. An electronic charge tingled her fingertips. A computerized voice welcomed her by name, then the elevator took off, descending into the underworld beneath the museum.

Polax would be having a hairy cow by now, Nadja thought as she buried her gloves in the outer pocket of her slim black briefcase. He would be cursing her in ten languages for holding up his all-important morning meeting.

Today a Quest agent would be chosen to accompany an NSA Onyxx agent on a mission into Austria.

A milestone mission, Polax promised when he had called her yesterday with the news that she was one of the candidates being considered. He hadn’t offered her any particulars, and none would be shared unless she was the agent packing a bag at the end of the day and flying out of Praha Ruzyne Airport at midnight.

That’s how it worked at Quest: everything was done on a need-to-know basis.

Nadja’s technique set her apart from the other agents at Quest. She was ranked number one among sanctioned assassins—had been for the past four years. Then, too, it was hard to miss at point-blank range when you were straddling your victim.

Though she rarely did handstands to get noticed at Quest, the difference today was that she was eager to be chosen.

A week, or a month—the mission’s term didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding out what had happened to Ruger. Her last three letters had been returned unopened, and his had stopped altogether. She didn’t believe that he had left Austria. He would have told her if he had, and he certainly hadn’t changed professions. No, never. Ruger loved his work, which meant he would still be in residence at Wilten Parish in Innsbruck.

Still, something was wrong and she meant to find out what.

An uninterrupted hour with Father Ruger, that’s all she needed. A soul-searching session with her brother to assure her that all was well—that their secret was safe.

The elevator continued on its way into the underbelly of the Vysehrad Museum. That’s where EURO-Quest had been conducting its secret intelligence operations for the past ten years. Where femmes fatales such as herself were trained to their fullest potential according to their expertise.

She shrugged off her wool cape, and that’s when she saw the fat wrinkle blazing a path across the front of her thighs. How it had gotten there, she had no clue. She studied it for a moment and decided she looked like she’d slept on a bar stool all night.

She hadn’t.

She’d gone to bed on time.

Only she hadn’t fallen asleep right away. She’d gotten caught up in all the possible reasons why Ruger had stopped writing. She had succumbed to exhaustion, only to awaken hours later and realize she’d slept straight through her alarm.

Nadja slapped at the wrinkle, then swore when it sprang back into place as if it was spring-loaded. Facing the mirror that decorated one wall inside the elevator, she looked for a way to camouflage the wrinkle. If she dropped her hand just so, when she walked into the meeting room, maybe she could conceal it.

She went through the motions as she studied her white blouse and black jacket.

The blouse looked good.

Her jacket…was missing a gold button.

It suddenly occurred to her why this particular suit looked so awful. It was the one she’d intended to drop off at the cleaners.

“Shit.”

She dropped her cape to the floor, swearing three more times before pinching her briefcase between her knees to peel off her jacket. Briefcase back in hand, she draped the jacket over her arm to hide the wrinkle, then examined herself once more in the mirror.

“Better, but…”

She gathered her blond hair into one hand and pulled it back from her face. Wishing she hadn’t overslept, disgusted that she had no clip to make even a bare-bones improvement where her hair was concerned, she dropped her hand and shook out the mass.

Her hair wasn’t the worst of it. Her eyes were bloodshot. Glasses would disguise her lack of sleep and lack of makeup—there simply had been no time for eyelashes and lipstick.

Not even time to pee.

Again she pinched her briefcase between her knees in search of the reading glasses she kept in her jacket pocket. Of course they weren’t there—it was the wrong suit jacket. Angry with herself, she grabbed the briefcase unaware the metal clasp had caught on her silk stockings. When she felt the unmistakable tug, she glanced down to see a large hole circling her knee.

In a matter of minutes the elevator would stop, the doors would open and she would be greeted by two in-house agents. Kimball and Moor had squarish faces, pug noses and no sense of humor. But then, why would agent hopefuls who had fallen short be in a good mood? Ever.

The “butlers,” as Nadja called them, would flank her as she left the elevator and doggedly escort her to the conclave where Pasha Lenova and Casmir Balasi—the other two agents vying for the Austrian assignment—would already be waiting.

As stringent as Polax was about being punctual, he was twice as neurotic about professional neatness. Which meant arriving late looking like she’d been on an all-night bender would definitely get her a look, but not the job or a trip to Austria.

She would be skipped over in favor of Pasha’s promptness, or—she glanced down at the fat wrinkle tracking her thighs, then the hole that had targeted her knee—Casmir’s flair for always looking like she stepped off a Paris runway.

She dropped her briefcase to the floor, pulled off her boots and jerked her skirt high. It would take only a second to unhook her stockings from her garter belt. No one in the business could get in and out of their clothes faster than Quest’s bedroom assassin.

Nadja Stefn had the best hands in the business.

The sexy garter belt was red, the flat-screen monitors in Polax’s office recreational size.

After studying the first two Quest agents on the monitor as they entered the elevator, Bjorn Odell had slid his ass onto the corner of Polax’s desk to watch the third, and final, candidate. She was late, and Polax had pissed and moaned about that for the entire twelve minutes.

Arms crossed over his chest, Bjorn watched as the brown-eyed blond peeled off her silk stockings and dropped them to the floor next to her briefcase. He put to memory every detail of her performance. Studied every move she made, every article of clothing on the floor and left on her body.

The Italian-leather holster strapped to her thigh was also bad-girl red. Inside was the prettiest pearl-handled mini-compact .45 Springfield he’d ever seen. The Springfield was a dandy—a one-of-a-kind, just like the femme who owned it.

She had long thoroughbred legs and beautiful thighs.

Satin-smooth skin.

The sweetest ass in Prague—Bjorn would wager his own concealed 380 Beretta Cheetah on that.

“I know the deal is you get to choose from my top three operatives, but for this mission the logical choice would be Pasha Lenova. You really don’t want Stefn.”

Polax’s comment sent Bjorn’s eyes away from the monitor to where Quest’s slightly overweight, bald commander stood with his hands in his pockets.

“And why don’t I want her?”

“What I meant is that each of my agents have a specific talent. Pasha Lenova is our endurance agent. As you say in the U.S., she’s as tough as shoe leather.” Polax grinned. “She can match any man you’ve got. My personal favorite for a physical mission such as this. But if you’re set on a blonde my second choice would be Casmir Balasi. She’s our actress—slash model—but she wasn’t recruited just for her pretty face and amazing body. Her role-playing skills are flawless. As for Q, you can see—”

“Q?”

“That’s what I call Stefn because she’s Quest’s question mark.” Polax looked back to the monitor to all the clothes on the floor in the elevator. “As you can see she’s a bit scattered at times. But like cream, Q always seems to rise to the top. However, she’s not an endurance player—which is what you’ll need for this mission.”

Bjorn’s gaze returned to the monitor. Scattered was a good word for her, he thought. Polax’s “cream” had turned the elevator into her own private dressing room.

“Here at Quest we call Q our ‘candy queen,’” Polax continued. “She’s got a sweet body, and she’s not shy when it comes to sharing her sugar to disarm her target. I can assure you that every man who finds himself in Q’s bed ends up with one helluva toothache. But then, if my number was up and I had a choice, I’d elect to die high on sugar, wouldn’t you?”

With a hearty laugh, Polax pressed the zoom button on his remote and double-sized Nadja Stefn’s sweetness—making all her treats larger than life.

Without conscious thought, Bjorn fit people into three categories: the doers, the talkers and the assholes. Polax was of the asshole variety. He had an obsession for electronic gadgets, as well as super-sexy female spies.