“Have you heard anything?” Abraham had asked.
Of course Eli hadn’t, mainly because he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d poked around for any news.
There had never been any news. Not a squeak, not a peep. Nothing.
“No,” he had replied. “And I won’t. You know I won’t.”
He could hear the man’s breaths over the line, every exhale a near sigh. A dozen seconds or so of this, and then, like always, a whispered “Thank you” and a click as the call went dead.
Eli tried to refocus on his job. As an analyst for the CIA, his workload was never ending, but every time he received this particular call, his mind would wander afterward. There was guilt for not having checked like he long ago promised he would, anger that the calls had not stopped, and, as much as he hated to admit it, curiosity. Why had he been unable to learn anything? Of all the people in the world, he was one of those best placed to uncover any information he might want.
He’d known before he pushed back from his desk that he would give it another go.
Just one more time, he’d told himself. I owe him that much.
Now, forty-eight hours later, he wished he’d left it alone. The unfamiliar woman’s voice on the phone moments before had said they knew what he’d been looking into and would come after him. She said she could buy him a little time, an hour or two at most, but if he valued his life, he had to leave as soon as he could. She didn’t have to tell him who “they” were. He may not have known their names, but he knew what they were capable of. He believed the woman, and had never been so scared in his life.
The photograph he’d been looking at when she called was still on his screen. He stared at it, knowing he should purge it from his system, burn his hard drive, and dump the ashes in the Chesapeake Bay, but he couldn’t. Despite the trouble he was now in, he had made a promise.
So instead, he spent ten minutes recording a video message and then copied the pic, the message, and the other information he had discovered onto a micro disk. Once that was done, he stashed his computer in its hidey-hole, made a quick call to his office to say he wouldn’t be in that evening, and took a shuttle bus to Dulles International Airport.
There, he rented a car using a false ID and a valid but equally bogus credit card, and headed into the streets of Herndon around the airport, turning randomly left and right until he was sure no one was following him. At a convenience store just off the tollway, he purchased a disposable phone and a twenty-five-dollar phone card, then continued east to the Tyson Galleria at Tysons Corner, where he parked in a lower level of the garage, tucked the keys under the rental’s front seat, and got out.
The mall was busy but not packed, so he was able to make his way across it to the attached Ritz-Carlton Hotel without any problems. At the concierge desk, he arranged for a 2:00 p.m. cab to the airport, and then used a computer in the business center to purchase a ticket on the 3:50 p.m. flight to Tampa for Charles Young, the name on the false ID he was carrying.
With twenty minutes to wait until the cab arrived, he found a chair in a quiet corner of the lobby and nervously pulled out the new phone.
The line rang four times before—
“Hello?”
“It’s…it’s Eli.”
Nothing, not even the sound of breathing. Finally, Abraham said, “You have heard something.”
A voice in the back of Eli’s mind screamed Hang up now! but he ignored it and said, “Yes, I have.”
CHAPTER 6
Quinn, Nate, and Daeng flew from Copenhagen to London, where Quinn caught the next flight to San Francisco and his two friends headed to Dallas for their next job.
At SFO, he made his way through passport control, cleared Customs, and found Orlando waiting in his BMW at the curb outside the terminal.
“Welcome home,” she said.
He leaned across the center console and kissed her. “Remind me again why we do this?” he said when he finally pulled away.
“Because desk jobs don’t suit us.”
It was true. There was a definite rush in doing the job of a cleaner, a living on the edge that could never be reached sitting in a fourteenth-floor management meeting. But Quinn had never been in it solely for that reason, or, for that matter, the money, which was generous to say the least. He’d excelled at being a cleaner because no other profession utilized his abilities more thoroughly and filled the place inside him that kept him grounded to the world, that made him forget, if only for a little while, how out of place he often felt with the rest of humanity. Well, most of it, anyway.
Orlando understood him. Nate did, too, usually. And Daeng. And — something he never anticipated — so did his sister, Liz. There was a handful of others in the business he also got along with well, but beyond that, he felt like he never quite belonged.
“So when’s our appointment with Helen?” he asked as they headed north into the city.
“I was told she wouldn’t be able to fit us in until early next week.”
“Next week? I don’t think so.”
“Good, then we’re in sync,” she said. “I thought maybe we could just drop in.”
“Right now?”
“Why not?”
He smiled. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”
One of the things that had troubled Quinn about a potential working relationship with Helen Cho had been the fact she was based in San Francisco, the same city where Orlando and, for all intents and purposes these days, Quinn lived.
It felt too close, too accessible. His previous main employer — the now defunct Office — had been located in Washington, DC, providing a nice little three-thousand-mile buffer. Quinn had never had to worry about going out for a cup of coffee and running into Peter, the man who had run the organization. While that hadn’t happened yet in San Francisco with Helen, he suspected it was only a matter of time.
On this particular day, though, her proximity was an advantage.
The building Helen’s organization was located in was a five-story structure near the bay. It had but a single street-side entrance — a plain door easily missed by most passersby.
Quinn did the honors of pressing the intercom button.
“Yes,” a male voice answered.
“We’re here to see Helen,” Quinn said.
“I’m sorry. Helen?”
The long flight had sapped much of Quinn’s patience, so it took a good deal of effort not to bite the guy’s head off. “Tell her Quinn and Orlando are here.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but even if a Helen did work here, if you’re not on the schedule, you’re not getting in.”
“I’m going to assume you’re new, or so low ranking you haven’t learned how to get out of your own way, so do yourself a favor — pass the message on to Helen and open the damn door.”
“Sir, I would rather not have to send security out there.”
Quinn stared at the camera, the look on his face deadly serious. “Please, by all means. Send them out.”
There was no immediate response.
After two minutes, Orlando whispered, “I knew I should have stopped to pick up a coffee first.”
“Why aren’t you as angry about this as I am?”
“I am. I’m just cold.”
Another minute.
“We could try shooting out the lock,” she suggested.
“I don’t have my gun.”
“I’m sure there’s something in the trunk that’ll work.”
“We’ll give it another few minutes, then maybe.”
Thirty more seconds.
“We could call the fire department,” she said. “Say we smelled smoke coming from inside. That should get us in.”