Lexi Blake - Dungeon Royale

But Taggart wouldn’t always be there to watch his back. Perhaps if Taggart and his crew were around, she would feel better. But they would be back in America and Damon would be on his own. Still, she nodded, not wanting to spend the next few hours crying.

“Ladies, the tea should be here in a moment.” Simon smiled at her, seeming to forget the fact that he’d railed at being left to babysit. “Chelsea, how many headphones do you have?”

Chelsea’s eyes came up warily, as if Simon was a tiger who would attack at any moment. “Two or three, but only two that have communication capability. If you want to sit in front of that monitor, you can talk to them through these.”

She held out a pair of state-of-the-art headphones that would be connected to the communication devices each member of the team had placed in their ears before they left. Simon reached out, his hands brushing hers as he took the headphones from her. Their fingers touched, lingering slightly before Chelsea pulled away and her shell came snapping back down.

“Thank you,” Simon said in his smoothest tones.

Chelsea frowned. “Don’t screw up my system.”

Charlotte groaned, shaking her head. “You really know how to make a moment special, sis.”

“That’s not my job.” She touched something on her computer and then she wasn’t talking to the people in the room anymore. “I’ve taken over the few CCTVs here. Apparently this is a country that doesn’t like being watched. Something about the former USSR and occupation and crap. Get over it, people. How can I watch you if you don’t have cameras everywhere? Get me back to England.”

“What coverage do you have?” Penelope asked, not wanting to debate the long history of abuse of power that had plagued Germans from World War II until the Berlin Wall had come down.

“Well, it’s shit. It’s mostly from private shop owners but I can get some coverage. Satan, I have you in my sights. I can see Jesse. I’ve lost Damon and the big guy. No. I have them. And they’re gone.” Chelsea groaned her frustration.

Simon put the headphones on, chuckling lightly. “Thank you so much for leaving me here, Tag. I’ll pay you back somehow. No. We’re not going to be able to see the meet. There’s no camera there. We can’t see anything but the area around the memorial.”

Chelsea stiffened suddenly. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Penny asked.

Chelsea shook her head. “Probably nothing.”

Simon frowned her way, pulling his headphones off. “What is it, Chelsea?”

She bit her bottom lip, her hands flying across the keys of her laptop. “I couldn’t monitor all the sites I would normally monitor while I was on the boat. I was stuck with their crappy Internet and downloading the proper browser onto their systems would have outed me.”

“They don’t use Google?” Penny asked.

Chelsea snorted slightly. “Google is a search engine, hon. I’m talking about a browser and not the kind a normal person uses.”

“I thought you gave up brokering information.” Simon stood up, looking perfectly ready to discipline her.

Charlotte held a hand up. “Whoa, boy. Ian asked her to monitor some of the old sites. He wants to have an ear to the ground.”

“But it’s not the ground she’s monitoring,” Simon argued. “She’s on the Deep Web. He’s got her out there with terrorists and traffickers.”

“And intelligence agencies,” Chelsea pointed out. “I can handle myself, Weston. But unfortunately Walter Bennett can’t. Mother flying fucker. Someone’s been talking.” She closed her eyes briefly before touching the button that connected her to the team. “Damon, you might have a problem. I can’t promise anything, but the Agency and MI6 aren’t the only interested parties anymore. And there have been hits on your information and Tag’s. Sixteen in the last twenty-four hours. And I’m finding chatter about the boat and Berlin.”

Penny’s stomach dropped. If the word was out, there would likely be several governments and organizations who would love to have the information Walter Bennett was offering.

There was a knock on the door. Candice seemed lost in her computer. Charlotte was staring at the monitors. It looked like she got to play hostess. Simon and Chelsea were talking about all the ramifications of trying to get Bennett out of the country if other agencies were after him as well.

She clenched her fists. It was hard to be the only one without a task. Well, she was British and they damn well knew how to handle a crisis. Tea. There was nothing she could do except make sure everyone remained calm, and tea would help.

Penny stepped out of the main room of the suite and answered the door. She ushered in the room service men.

They pushed a cart along. A cart they needed to push into the suite, and then there might be questions about why they had an army of computers set up. No one had thought of that. Yes, thank you, Super Spies. She gave the two men her best smile.

“I’ll handle it. Sorry, I’m afraid my husband isn’t completely dressed, if you know what I mean.” Better to let them think she was having an orgy than spying. She initialed the bill and left them a decent tip, hoping they wouldn’t walk away talking about the crazy Brits and their sex party. The last thing she needed now was a curious staff.

“Of course, Miss Cash,” the larger of the two men said in heavily accented German as he turned and left. She locked the door behind them.

She pushed the cart through the marbled foyer and into the main room. Everything smelled delightful but she doubted she could eat a thing.

Candice looked up, closing the top of her computer. “I’ll help you.”

“Who do we think is interested?” Simon was asking. He had his headset on so she couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation. She imagined Damon was using a lot of curse words.

“Definitely the Germans. God, I can’t even pronounce that,” Chelsea complained.

“ Bundesnachrichtendienst ,” Penny said, looking at the screen. Chelsea had pulled up what looked like a series of messages written in German.

Chelsea sighed. “Oh, I forgot. Penny, please come work with us. It would take me forever to run that through damn translation software, and half the time it comes out as gobbledygook. I’ll print it out so you can see it more easily.”

Thank god, something she could do. “All right.” She could already hear the small printer starting to spit out paper. “I speak most of the Northern European languages. I’m starting to learn Mandarin and Pashtun. I’m not excellent at either but I can likely pull enough information out.”

Candice set a cup of tea in front of Simon, who immediately took a long sip. She passed out the rest, pouring it with the expert hand of a woman who had served more than a few times.

Charlotte shook her head. “I’d rather have the coffee. I know. I’m a horrible American. I’ll get it.”

Candice shook her head. “I don’t mind. I can’t do much else. Cream and sugar?”

Penny pulled the printout into her hands and immediately started working. She walked out toward the balcony. The rest of the group was talking and she needed some silence.

Warm sun stroked her skin as she looked down at the words, her mind making sense of the puzzle.

What Chelsea had found was the discussion between two operatives about something they had heard from informants. One of Walter’s colleagues had been talking. A woman. She sighed. Walter had kept in contact with a German woman from his lab, and she’d reached out to the authorities with what he’d told her.

Damn it. She also knew he would be in Berlin today. She was going to have to call Nigel and likely get more than just SIS involved. This could become an international incident.