Before taking off, the woman from SUPO reached inside her jacket and took out a sealed envelope, which she handed to Karl. It was thicker than just a message, though.
“Where’d you get this?” Karl asked.
“Your people.” She put the SUV in gear and pulled out onto the slippery road.
He considered not seeing what was inside until he got to his hotel, but he might have instructions he needed to follow. Karl knew that whatever was in the envelope would not be a classified document. More likely, it would be a vaguely coded message intended for his cover persona, the Spaniard Nicolas Lobo. Then, if someone were to intercept the note, it would look like a simple message from his non-existent mother or some other long-lost relative. He opened the envelope and first pulled out a simple letter that looked like one of those old Western Union messages. It was a reiteration of the fact that his mother was sick and he needed to come home to be by her side in her time of need. Finally, it mentioned something about his mother wanting to get better so she could make her vacation to Disney World. When he was done, he folded the note and shoved it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Interesting. They wanted him to fly to Orlando. They had discussed that location as one of three potential places to meet up after he was done in Russia. After being undercover for all of these months, flying directly to D.C. would be the worst idea. Baltimore would have been the second worst. Looking back inside the envelope, he retrieved another passport, which he also placed inside his jacket after quickly verifying the document. Subsequent to his initial CIA training, he had developed multiple background legends, and not just those in Spain and Russia. There were passports on file at the Agency for him in nearly every country where he spoke fluently. These passports were produced with different photos of himself, but were all shot on the same day. He had originals of these passports stored in a safe deposit box, but the Agency also had them on file if needed in an emergency. Now he would be able to travel as Karl Konrad, from Thunder Bay, Ontario. Konrad was an homage to his father Jake, who used that persona from Austria. Finally, he removed five one-hundred dollar bills in U.S. currency, which he shoved into a different pocket inside his jacket.
“Is everything alright?” Hanna asked.
“Yes,” Karl said. “My mother is sick,” he lied, just in case her people had scanned the envelope.
“Sorry to hear that.” She looked into the rearview mirror again. This time with more concern than she had showed for the last couple of times.
Karl glanced at his side mirror and saw the lights from another vehicle closing in on them. “Tell me that’s a friend of yours.”
“Not exactly.” She touched the screen on the dash and an image of the vehicle behind them came up. Hanna hit a button and then pressed a green send button.
“Did you just capture their image?” Karl asked.
“Yes. And sent it to our office downtown.”
“Nice. You wouldn’t happen to have a spare gun.”
She shook her head. “In ten years, I have never had to use my weapon.”
Karl glanced back and saw that the vehicle, which was also an SUV, get even closer to the back of their rear end. “Well that might change tonight.” He looked forward and saw that they were getting closer to downtown Helsinki. “You need to turn and make sure they are just being tailgaters.”
Hanna nodded slightly and then tapped on her brakes and her right turn signal.
As she gently turned the wheel, trying to keep from sliding on the snowy road, Karl looked in the side mirror and saw the vehicle behind them intentionally ram their back right side bumper. The impact lurched them forward and into a spin. The SUV finally hit the far curb and flipped onto its side, smashing through a high snowbank before rolling onto its top and settling into the frozen surface.
Karl found himself upside down, only the shoulder belt holding him there. He shook his head and heard the engine still running, the tires moving above them at idle.
He pushed away the inflated airbag and glanced to his side, seeing that Hanna was unconscious. She had a few minor cuts on her face. He tried to shake her, but she wouldn’t wake up.
This was intentional, he knew. They would be coming. Reaching down with one hand, he somehow got his buckle to pop and his body dropped to the inverted roof of the SUV.
Then Karl heard men talking and he knew he needed to arm himself. Reaching inside Hanna’s jacket, he pulled out her handgun. Luckily it was a Glock. He pulled out the magazine to verify it was fully loaded and ready to fire. Then he quietly shoved the magazine in again and started crawling out through an opening.
He saw the first man seconds before the guy saw him. Karl fired once, hitting the man in the upper thigh and dropping him to the snowy ground. But the man was able to return fire a couple of times before Karl put two more rounds in the man.
A second man appeared and started firing his gun in a major salvo toward Karl. But Karl had hidden behind the crunched metal side of the SUV for protection.
As Karl peered around the opening again, he saw two men dragging a third man toward their own SUV. Then he heard the engine roar and the vehicle take off.
Now Karl turned back toward Hanna and saw that she was coming around. “Are you all right?” he asked her, and then turned off the SUV engine.
“Help me out of this belt,” she said.
He set her gun down and put his shoulder into her body to release the pressure from her seatbelt. When he pressed the button, Hanna fell into his arms.
The two of them lay on the roof top for a moment breathing hard and assessing their situation before Karl picked up her gun and crawled out of the opening to the side of the overturned SUV.
“Is that my gun?” she asked.
“Yeah, but your record is still intact. Technically, I drew and shot your gun at the bad guys.”
“Did you hit them?”
“I got one of three,” he said. “By the way, I think your gun fires a little to the left.”
“It pulls toward my dominant eye,” she confirmed. “Who were these people?”
“Russians,” Karl said.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I heard them speak before they shot at us.”
“What is going on?”
That was something he couldn’t explain to her. Not even if he wanted to.
Karl heard a phone ring and he looked at Hanna. “That’s you.”
Still dazed, Hanna found her phone in her pocket. She spoke in Finnish with someone on the other end, a language that Karl didn’t understand. Hanna nodded agreement to something said on the other end. Then she hung up and put her phone back in her pocket.
“Well?” Karl asked.
Hanna shook now, a result of the cold and shock from the recent events. “My people are sending a car. They will take care of my vehicle.”
“Did they have any information about the vehicle that rammed us?”
“A rental. But you were right. A man from St. Petersburg rented it.”
Damn Russians. Karl looked up to the sky as snow started to fall more vigorously now. He found the blood stains and the spent brass from the man he had shot. Was the man dead? Maybe. Was this related to the video he had shot with his drone in Murmansk? Definitely.
Karl handed the Glock back to Hanna. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“The use of your gun. Your driving skills.”
“Is that a joke?” she asked.
“No. I couldn’t have done any better. Especially with the road conditions. What did you tell your people?”
She shoved the gun back into its holster on her hip. “The truth. Some maniac rammed us, flipped our vehicle, and then tried to finish us off with guns.”