Page 28 of Spymaster

“I’ll make sure to add it to my list. Thank you.”

Staelin smiled again and sat back down as Sloane introduced Monika to the plane’s final passenger.

“And last but not least,” she said, “we have Chase Palmer, also of Combat Applications Group, Delta Force, or whatever they’re calling themselves over the next half hour.”

“You forgot handsome,” Palmer stated, his voice identifying him as the one who had called Harvath a jackass.

He was in his early thirties and actually looked so similar to Harvath that the two could have passed for brothers.

“And what’s your background?” Jasinski asked, once Sloane Ashby had finished the introductions.

“U.S. Army, THTH,” she replied.

“THTH?”

“Too Hot To Handle,” Sloane explained. “The first soldier to ever be pulled from combat for being too damn good at her job.”

“You mean killing as many of the enemy as possible?”

“That’s what I thought I had signed up for, but being a woman in a—”

“Long story,” Harvath said, peeling Jasinski away from Sloane and steering her toward a seat near his up front. “Do you want anything before we take off?”

“Can I get a water?”

“Sure.”

Walking to the rear of the cabin, he pulled a bottle from the galley fridge, prepared another espresso, and returned as the jet began to taxi to the runway.

“Here you go,” he said as he handed the water to her.

“Thank you,” she replied.

Sitting down across from her, he placed his espresso atop the table between their seats and asked to see her cell phone.

“Why?”

“I’m going to give you a superpower of your own.”

“Smartass?” she asked, handing it over to him. “From what I hear, I’m already okay in that department.”

Removing a small piece of metal from his pocket, he popped open the cover for her SIM card and replied, “No. Invisibility.”

It only took him a couple of seconds to swap out her card and replace it with a brand new one that didn’t have a history and couldn’t be traced back to them.

“There you go,” he said, closing everything up and returning her phone.

“What about my original SIM card?”

“We’ll all swap back when we’re in the air on the way home.”

It seemed to her a pretty elaborate precaution—one that you would take only if you were doing something you shouldn’t be. “The Swedes know we’re coming, right?”

He took a moment before answering and when he did, it was his pause, not his words, that unnerved her.

CHAPTER 19

As the twin Rolls-Royce BR725 engines roared to life and the G650-ER began to race down the runway, Jasinski tried to get clarification. “Either they know, or they don’t know. Which one is it?”