David Golemon - Primeval

"Simpson is Lynn's mother's maiden name. Collins is her real name."

Director Easterbrook bit his lower lip and then swiveled his chair to face his large window as he thought. Rosen for his part was lost as to what she was getting at.

"So?" Rosen finally asked.

Grogan shook her head and then turned and looked at the assistant director.

"She's the sister of a very dangerous man, at least he used to be. This Colonel Collins and Punchy Alexander go way back. They were joint heads of a special operations action in Canada. I can't get details on the mission, but it had something to do with recovering a project called Solar Flare. I couldn't get any more details on—,"

"He still is a dangerous man, and there is no such thing as Solar Flare," Easterbrook said, still looking out of his window away from his two assistants. "At least publicly there isn't. It was a search and rescue operation twenty-five years after it was lost. It has no bearing on the action taken in Montreal."

Nancy Grogan caught the drift and knew the subject of this Solar Flare was off limits.

"I thought the army buried Colonel Collins somewhere?" Grogan asked the back of the director's chair.

Easterbrook finally and slowly turned his chair back to face the two. He ran a hand through his completely gray head of hair, and then fixed Nancy with his stern look.

"I hear rumors, and they all say that Colonel Jack Collins is still very much in the mix" — the director picked up the phone—"and if the rumors I hear are true, he won't be very happy about us losing his little sister. Now, excuse me."

"Lynn said she and her brother don't speak that often, that they're not that close," Grogan said.

The director paused with phone in hand and looked at both of his people.

"Do you want to be the one to inform him, if we can even locate him, that is?"

Grogan lowered her eyes and then turned and started to leave.

"I don't get it, who is this Collins, and what is the big deal?" Rosen asked. "He's just a colonel for God's sake."

"From his reputation, he's not only one of the best soldiers this country has ever produced, but also just about the most dangerous man alive — at least he once was," Grogan said as she reached for the door handle.

"This stays in this office," Easterbrook said as he started punching numbers, bypassing his assistant in the outer office, standard procedure when he called the president's private line.

"I don't see the concern here. I think we have bigger problems to deal with than some army colonel," Rosen said as he looked from the director to Grogan. "Come on, he's only one guy, right?"

Grogan turned and caught the attention of the director.

"Look, Collins is a legend, at least in the field."

"I'll bet he's stuck behind a desk somewhere, out of the way, one of those break-glass-in-case-of-war guys; probably just a relic by now."

Lynn Simpson wasn't bound or gagged, and had been treated well since the savagery of the early morning. She was now locked in a small room just off the basement of a house. She even knew where she was being held, having recognized the small airfield she had been brought to just outside of McLean, Virginia. She was mere miles away from her own office at Langley, and with the fact they weren't trying to hide their safe house from her was worrisome, because they obviously had no intention of ransoming her back to the company.

Since her arrival, she had been offered lunch, which sat untouched on the small table in the corner. She had drunk the bottled water provided, simply to assist her in holding down the bile in her stomach that rose up every time she remembered the murder of her agents and those of the Canadian contingent right before her eyes.

She hadn't seen the two Russians, Sagli and Deonovich, since she had been led into the room. There were, however, several other brutes that made their presence known. As for why she was here and not dead was something she had yet to figure out.

Lynn paced to the window and stood on her toes to look through the ground-level window. The glass was reinforced with wire, so smashing through it was out of the question — her guards would be on her long before she could push through the wire. She looked around, seeing only cinderblock and concrete. Again she turned to the window and the overcast day outside.

The door suddenly opened and a large man in a tan jacket and white shirt stood looking at her. The black beard hid the fierce features somewhat, but Lynn recognized the large brute as one of the helicopters gunners that had assisted in eliminating the Canadian ground team and her own men at the chateau. He glanced from Lynn's pretty features to the window and then he smiled, as if saying, "Please try."

The man stepped aside and Sagli stepped through the door alone; Deonovich was not with him. The ponytail was gone and the Russian's dark hair hung free to fall around his shoulders. He carried a small box with him as he closed the door. The large guard took up station beside it and his eyes locked on Lynn. It was as if he really expected her to try something. The Russians must have believed CIA agents all to be James Bond types.

"Ms. Simpson, we finally get a chance to chat. After so many encounters through second, third, and fourth parties, it is truly an honor to finally meet you in person."

Lynn moved away from the wall that held the small window and looked from Sagli over to the guard. She was tempted to take a quick step toward the large man just to see if he would flinch, but decided he might not appreciate that too much. She turned and looked at Sagli, but remained silent. She needed all the information she could get before she did something as stupid as getting herself killed.

"Needless to say, you were an irritant with your constant feed of intelligence to the swine that now occupy the Kremlin. Not that it ever stopped us from conducting our business."

"You'll never leave this country alive," Lynn said as a confident matter of fact as she paced to the only chair in the room and sat down. She picked a small corner of bread from the still full plate and forced herself to eat it.

Sagli saw through her forced bravado and smiled. "We managed rather nicely to come into your country, I think we can manage getting out when the time presents itself. In the meantime, may I show you something?"

Lynn swallowed the piece of bread with as much difficulty as she could ever remember any task. She then shrugged her shoulders.

Sagli opened the small box he was carrying and then looked inside, as if never tiring of gazing at the amazing object. He held it out for Lynn to see. She saw the gleaming diamond that was as big as the largest hen's egg she had ever seen. The ten thousand cuts made on the diamond's surface were as flawless as the stone itself. She forced herself not to react to the most amazing display of geology she would ever see.

"Beautiful, is it not?"

Still she didn't say anything; instead she looked away and tore another piece of bread off and placed it in her mouth. While she did, her mind raced. If this venture into the United States was limited to diamonds, her line of investigation was so far off she almost vomited the bread she had just swallowed.

"It will be difficult to shove it up your ass when you go to prison, won't it?" she said as she swallowed the bread and then reached for the water bottle in front of her.

The Russian reached out and slapped the bottle from her fingertips. His glare was murderous.

"May I remind you, you are not in a position for such false bravado? You will assist us in our quest, or you will die, just as your Canadian colleagues did this morning."

"Just get on with it, you're boring me."