The pouting Cupid’s bow of Cindy Wei’s mouth was tinged with flecks of bright red lipstick and formed a smudged arrow that pointed upward to desperate eyes.
“Sorry,” she said. “I am too sick to help you right now.” She took the cards, mistaking Quinn’s smile as a proposition for her services. She shot a quick look back down the alley to Deuben’s door, then to the main street beyond Thibodaux as if looking for a way to escape. He completely dwarfed the tiny thing and she had to crane her body to see around him.
“You misunderstand me,” Quinn said, trying to set the flighty girl’s mind at ease. “The doctor is my friend. We’re going to see her too.”
Cindy Wei’s eyes brightened, filling with tears. “Grigor!” She spat as if the name tasted bitter. “They call him The Mongol. He is up there with her now. He and his men…” She shook her head. “I must go. I have to find some medicine.”
She tried to shuffle away, but Quinn grabbed her arm, a little rougher than he should have. He couldn’t let her go without more information.
“The Mongol?” He gave a puzzled Thibodaux a quick thumbnail in English to bring him up to speed, then looked Cindy Wei in the eye. “Who is Grigor and what does he want with Dr. Deuben?”
“He is a cancer,” Cindy Wei said, apparently accustomed to being grabbed by rough men. “A mixed-blood gangster. His father was Russian. He runs the Black Hotel racket from here to Urumqi.” She used the euphemism “Black Hotel” to mean extortion or protection. “Everyone — the Chinese, the Uyghurs — they are all afraid of him. Even the army looks the other way. He is untouchable.”
“And you saw Grigor with the doctor just now?” Quinn felt the white heat of anticipation rush to his core as his body prepared for a fight.
Cindy Wei shook her head, wincing at some memory. “One of the men that works for him. But Grigor was at the Chini Bagh Hotel last night. I accidentally knocked on his door. I never would have gone near the place if I had known The Mongol was in town. He’s a filthy thing, worse than an animal.” She pulled her collar away to show a necklace of purple bruises. “I hope he catches the drips from me!”
Quinn had known more than his fair share of prostitutes over the course of his career, but the way this sad young woman spoke so bluntly about the diseases of her trade sent a chill up his spine.
“So you didn’t actually see him, but you think Grigor is here at the clinic now?” Quinn asked, trying to nudge Cindy Wei back on subject.
She nodded. “One of his men came to the door. I said I needed to see the doctor, but he didn’t care. He told me she was busy and said to get lost. Grigor never goes anywhere without his men — and they never go anywhere without him. He is in there, probably making Doctor Deuben pay him money for his black hotel.” Cindy Wei’s face twisted into a squirming grimace. Quinn couldn’t help but notice that she was just a few inches taller than his seven-year-old daughter and was maybe in her late teens.
“How many men did you see?” Quinn asked.
“I saw two,” she said. “But he always travels with three.” She held up her fingers, thumb folded in. She squirmed again. “I really have to pee.”
“Go,” Quinn said. “I’ll tell Dr. Deuben to call you.”
“Grigor will kill you,” she said over her shoulder as she waddled away.
“We’ll be fine,” Quinn said.
“Four bad guys?” Thibodaux mused as Cindy Wei rounded the corner to the main street. “Against a United States Marine and one Air Force pogue… I reckon you’re lucky to have me along, l’ami.”
“According to Cindy Wei, this Grigor is supposed to be a stone-cold killer,” Quinn said.
“I much prefer dealin’ with killers,” Thibodaux said as they trotted down the alley toward the clinic door. “It narrows down my strategy.”
Chapter 8
CIA protective officer Adam Knight clung to the last two things that made any sense in his upside-down life — the Director’s Detail identification pass that would get him onto the White House campus and a fervent desire to see the Vice President dead. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes and this would all be over. Best-case scenario, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison. Worst case, a bunch of his best friends would blow his head off.
In an agency that fed on secrets and innuendo like a mosquito sucked blood, it was a miracle that he’d been able to keep his downward spiral under wraps. Tall and fit, with the hint of a Boston accent, he’d risen through the ranks of the CIA’s protective division to become the lead officer on the Fable detail, the code name given to Virginia Ross, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Some said he’d peaked early at only thirty-seven, but he’d been at the top of his game, doing what he loved for someone he genuinely admired. And then the director had been arrested on trumped-up charges by members of the Internal Defense Task Force — the administration’s newly formed goon squad.
From the moment Knight had watched his boss — a woman he regarded as he would a favorite aunt — carted off like some sort of axe murderer, he’d heard nothing but rumors. She’d been taken to an undisclosed black site, he figured that, but he could find nothing concrete about what had happened to her. Some self-proclaimed “patriot” sites on the Internet said she’d been rescued after enduring terrible torture at the hands of the IDTF. According to them, she was now in hiding. If she was, she was doing it right, cutting off all contact with anyone in her former life. Knight hoped that was the case. Other sites reported that she was still locked away somewhere or even dead. He’d sworn to protect her with his life — and she had vanished under his watch. If half the stories floating around about the IDTF were true, she was as good as dead.
Every day another politician, reporter, or military officer who opposed the new administration in even the most trivial matters found themselves harassed or taken into custody by the Task Force. The assassinations of both the President and Vice President on the heels of so many recent terrorist attacks had many in the country swallowing whatever the government told them if they thought it might offer them a shred more safety.
Seething inside, Knight kept quiet and unnoticed in an agency that already prided itself on anonymity. He kept up the pretense of nose-to-the-grindstone devotion in his work and then assaulted his liver each night sharing drinks with acquaintances from every alphabet-soup agency he could think of. He kept the conversations light, noting every word but refusing to join in even the most innocuous criticisms of the present administration. After each meeting, he’d return to his apartment and write a detailed description of any new intelligence he’d gained. He spent hours on the Internet, browsing through a proxy server to find any trends that might shed more light on what was going on in the country. He was single, so no one was around to chide him for living on seven Red Bulls and two hours of sleep a day — or to witness his death spiral.
A law-and-order man to the core, it took Knight very little time at all to realize Vice President McKeon was the man behind the curtain — but two full weeks to get his head wrapped around the fact that someone had to kill him. It wasn’t much of a leap for the protective agent to realize that he was one of the handful of people who had the access, opportunity, and skill set to get that job done. Once he’d made the decision to go ahead, implementation was fairly straightforward.
Knight parked off G Street in a lot next to the World Bank building, passing through security first at the OEOB — the Old Executive Office Building — where the Vice President had ceremonial offices and staff. Knight knew McKeon would not be there. President Drake was a buffoon who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Someone had to run the country and it was common knowledge that that someone was the crazy-eyed Skeletor Vice President.