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Jake jogged along the main drag of the capital. He made his way toward the airport, his lungs sucking in the cold, damp air and feeling as if they might explode with each struggle for air. When he got to within a few blocks of the airport, he slowed his pace to a walk, his hands on his hips.
    He thought about Anna and why they were there in that isolated set of islands in the Arctic. What had Colonel Reed gotten him involved in this time? Was it just a simple case of him finding an old friend in the snowy glacier? Closure?
    Stopping alongside the road, Jake swung his fanny pack from back to front and pulled out the SAT phone. He punched in the number for his old friend Kurt Jenkins. If anyone owed Jake a favor, it was the current Agency director. Jenkins had ridden some of Jake’s successes over the years right to the top.
    Before the call went through, Jake checked the distance between himself and any possible parabolic microphone. He guessed he was beyond the range of most that would be within view. It’s why he had selected the site on the ride from the airport the day before.
    â€œWell? What ya got for me?” Jake asked.
    â€œRight to the point,” Jenkins said. “No weather report. No how’s she hanging.”
    â€œI’m on a run,” Jake said. “If you must know, it’s dark, damp and foggy. And I’ve got a flight to catch in less than two hours, assuming the helo can fly in this soup. That better?”
    â€œMuch.” He hesitated and Jake thought he had lost the signal.
    â€œYou there?”
    â€œYeah. I had to dig deep for this one, Jake. I was just a field officer like yourself in nineteen eighty-six.”
    â€œI was still an Air Force officer,” Jake corrected.
    â€œRight. Anyway, your friend Captain Steve Olson, as you know, was assigned to the Oslo embassy as a military attaché.”
    The wind swept across the open tundra and Jake shivered from the sweat he had worked up.
    â€œNo offense, Kurt, but could you cut to the chase. I’m standing out in the middle of nowhere, freezing my ass off.”
    â€œAbsolutely. Anyway, as far as we know, a Soviet MiG Twenty-five went down on Spitsbergen Island a couple of days before the Reykjavik Summit. At the time, we had no way of knowing its flight path. So, Captain Olson and John Korkala, the Oslo assistant station chief, were sent to investigate.”
    â€œWhat made the CIA so interested?”
    â€œOne of our contacts in Finland said the Soviets were sending a team to recover something from Svalbard.”
    â€œHow many?” Jake asked.
    â€œAt least four.”
    â€œThat would have gotten our attention. Send one or two and it’s a search and destroy mission. Send four and it’s a sanitation mission. What was on the plane? A nuke?”
    â€œThat’s what we thought at first. But there was no radiation release.”
    â€œChemical or biological?”
    â€œDon’t know.”
    â€œHang on.”
    A car came along the road toward him and slowed when the headlights hit Jake. He waved and the car continued toward the airport. A pretty woman, a blonde who could have been Anna’s twin, smiled at him and waved back.
    â€œEverything all right?”
    â€œYeah, just a car with a hot blonde.”
    â€œSome things never change. Christ, you have a beautiful girlfriend.”
    â€œI know. And you don’t have to deify me.”
    â€œFunny guy. Anyway, we never heard from our men and the Soviets never heard from their men. I have that on the best authority. Of course if it had happened today we would have a direct GPS position, SAT photos, you name it. But somehow the decision was made to forget about this whole affair. Reagan and Gorbachav had damn near French kissed and nobody wanted to make waves. Later, once the Soviet Union went tits up, the entire case was closed when the new Russia had admitted that one of their pilots had defected with the MiG and