Page 323 of Lars

“First off, I’ll understand if you say no,” I said. “What I’m going to ask you is probably not entirely legal. It’s certainly not something that upper management would look on favorably.”

He smiled. “Are we talking blackmail, or smuggling heroin, or…?”

“I’m serious, Alistair. I… I don’t have any right to ask you what I’m about to ask you.”

He smiled kindly. “Let me be the judge of that.”

“I’ve been dating someone for the last year. Lars Henriksson.”

Alistair nodded. “The Swedish fellow. If I recall correctly, we met here about a year ago.”

I immediately cringed as I remembered the whole We’re late to go have sex thing.

“Yes. Well… he’s disappeared.”

Alistair frowned. “‘Disappeared’ as in he stopped calling you, or ‘disappeared’ as in you should contact the police?”

“…I don’t know.”

“Oh,” Alistair said somberly. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Were you looking into him?” I asked. I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“You mean, was Background looking into him to see if he was a honeypot?”

“…yes,” I said and cringed a little more.

In espionage, a honeypot was an attractive covert agent who entered into a sexual relationship with a target to compromise them – either to blackmail them for information or turn them into an asset for intel.

Usually, a female agent was the honeypot, and the male was the target.

Not in this case. Lars would have been the honeypot, and I would have been the target.

“We did,” Alistair said with an apologetic smile. “He checked out. Swedish Special Forces, excellent record.”

I ignored that Alistair’s Oh, the Swedish fellow bit had been a lie. He’d known exactly who I had been talking about.

However, I was more focused on the fact that Background – a division of Operations, which Alistair now headed up – had a file on Lars.

“Somehow, Lars got out of his military service a couple years early,” I said.

Alistair looked shocked. “…really.”

“Yes. He said he was working for a joint UK-Swedish military task force.”

“What UK-Swedish military task force?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

Alistair leaned back in his chair. “That’s… troubling.”

My desperation came out, and I tossed all dignity to the wind. “I know you’re not supposed to do this sort of thing, but could you please see if you can locate him?”

“Rachel…” Alistair said quietly.

“I know, I know – but this is wrecking me, Alistair. What you said back at headquarters was right – I can’t eat, I can’t sleep…”

Alistair looked at me for a long moment… then nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

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