Page 66 of Spymaster

“How long ago did you quit?” she asked.

“Quit?”

“Smoking.”

“How did you know?”

Sloane smiled coyly, “I can read your mind.”

“I’m in big trouble then,” Sparrman said with a grin.

“We’ll see about that. In the meantime, answer my question. How long has it been?”

“I quit a week ago. Very few Swedes actually smoke, maybe 10 percent of the country. That’s it. My mother, though, hates that I’m part of that 10 percent. I don’t much care what she thinks, but whenever I see her, she bothers me about it. I thought it would be cool, the next time I see her, to be able to say I had quit.”

Sloane continued to play coy. “You may have quit a week ago, but have you been a good boy? Or have youcheated?” She drew out the word cheated as if she was asking him if he had been sexually mischievous.

Sparrman’s grin broadened. “I may have cheated once or twice.”

“I have a secret,” she said, beckoning him closer. She playfully bit her bottom lip, as if she had been bad herself and was contemplating whether to confess. And then she did. “I quit two years ago and Istillcheat.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“When,” asked Sparrman, leaning in more closely and trying desperately to be suave, “have you cheated?”

“There’s really only two occasions when it happens. When I’m drinking,” she replied, running her finger around the lip of her beer bottle, “or if I’ve had really good sex.”

Though Sparrman tried to hide it, she could see his Adam’s apple move in a quiet gulp. Not only had she hooked him, but he had swallowed the lure. It was time to reel him in.

“You know what I would love right now?” she asked.

In his mind, the Swede was saying,Please say sex.What came out of his mouth, though, was. “I don’t know. What would you love?”

“To share just one cigarette. You and me. The way I look at it, it wouldn’t really be cheating. Not if we shared it. Does that sound like fun?”

Sparrman wasn’t an idiot. His mother be damned. He was going to have a cigarette with this woman. He could get back on the wagon tomorrow. “It sounds delicious.”

“Wonderful. Do you have any?”

“No, but I’ll be right back. Don’t move,” he said.

Getting up from the table, he quickly crossed to the bar and interrupted Jasinski and Nikolai, asking the muscular Russian for a cigarette.

The Spetsnaz operative must have known his colleague had been trying to quit smoking, because he rolled his eyes and made a half-hearted attempt at dissuading him. But as he really didn’t care what happened to Sparrman, he removed a pack from his coat pocket and handed it to him along with a cheap plastic orange disposable lighter.

“Thank you,” said Sparrman, as he tapped out a lone cigarette and handed the pack back.

“Take the whole thing,” Nikolai insisted in his heavy accent.

“I only need one.”

“You never know,” the Russian said with a conspiratorial wink. “Misha has two packs with him. Do not worry.”

“Thank you,” Sparrman said, clapping his hand on the soldier’s shoulder and then returning to Sloane.

“Ready?” he asked her, smiling, as he held up the cigarettes.

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