“Okay, we can go with that for a moment. Who did they send it to?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Quinn moved the gag toward her mouth.
“I’m telling the truth,” she said quickly. “I don’t know. I didn’t realize they’d sent it to anyone.”
Quinn pulled the photo Petra had showed him out of his pocket, unfolded it, then held it out so Annabel could see.
Her reaction was uncensored surprise.
“I take it you’ve seen this before,” he said. He then accessed the headshot of Palavin on his phone and held it up for her to see. “And I know you remember this photo. If I remember correctly, you said you were told this man might show up at the meeting I was having with Wills, but you didn’t know who he was.” He paused, but she remained silent. “That was a lie, wasn’t it? You did know him.” He paused. “He looks a hell of a lot like an older version of this kid, don’t you think?” He used the phone to point to the young Palavin in the group shot.
Her gaze moved from one image to the other, then to Quinn’s face.
“You’re not a low-level analyst, are you?” he said.
“Why would I have lied about that?” she asked.
“Because you wanted me to think you didn’t know what was going on. You wanted me to figure out the connections myself, and leave MI6 out of it.” The pieces had fallen together for him as Petra had told her story. “You planted that picture in your briefcase. That’s why you were at the Hyatt in the first place, to somehow get me that folder. You hoped once I had it I’d try to find out who the man was. And then maybe I’d dig a little deeper to see why he was so important.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Palavin,” Quinn said. “That’s the man’s name. He’s also known as the Ghost. Or did you not know that either?”
She did know it. He could see it in her eyes.
“You were trying to push me in a direction,” he went on. “And it worked. Only better than you thought, because I also figured out what you were doing. Now, Annabel, this is what I need from you. First, I know Wills’s client was Palavin, but I want you to confirm that for me.”
A slight hesitation, then an even-slighter nod.
“Good. Second, David told me the job was passed to him through MI6. It was through your division at Wright Bains, correct?”
Another nod, this time with a sense of resignation.
“Through you directly?”
She stared at Quinn for several seconds. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Mighty important task for a low-level analyst.”
“I’m a case officer.”
“Field cases?”
She shook her head. “My department is tasked with handling defectors and other sensitive foreign nationals living in the U.K.”
“Like Palavin,” he said.
She nodded.
“Well, isn’t that interesting. Did he come to you or did you go to him?”
“It was all before my time.”
“That’s not very helpful,” he said. “I’d be happy to turn you over to my two other guests. I’m sure they’d love to get ahold of someone who worked directly with the Ghost.”
“It’s not like that!”
“Then enlighten me.”
“You don’t understand. I’m good at my job. I love doing work that helps protect my country. But this …” She paused. “This wasn’t right.”
Quinn waited for her to go on.
“When Robb contacted—”
“Robb?” Quinn asked, not recognizing the name.
“That’s what he goes by now. Trevor Robb.”
The name Petra was so desperate to know, Quinn thought. “Go on.”
“When … Palavin contacted us, I had to look up his file just to know who he was. Former KGB. Arrived U.K. in 1988. According to the report, he’d already established himself as Trevor Robb, but he’d left Moscow in a hurry and had arrived with only limited funds.”
“So he came to you for money, is that it?”
“Yes. He agreed to share what he knew in exchange for enough cash to make him wealthy, and the promise that we would provide whatever protection he deemed necessary for the remainder of his life.”
“That’s a pretty steep price.”
“Apparently his information more than compensated for his demands at the time.”
“But not now,” Quinn said.
“He hasn’t been an active asset for us for many years. I understand he still tries to keep his fingers in things, but nothing we would be interested in. Then we heard from him a little over a month ago that his life was in danger, and that we were bound by our agreement to protect him. He was an inactive client I inherited from previous case officers, so it fell to me to arrange what he wanted. I talked with his representative, who laid out their plan, and instantly I knew it was something MI6 couldn’t touch. I took it to my superiors, thinking they’d instruct me to tell Mr. Robb to go to hell. But they didn’t. They agreed we shouldn’t be directly involved, but they felt it was important we stick to the deal. There are British interests at stake. It was decided that we would pass it on to one of our contractors, giving them a story that they would find plausible.”
“David Wills, and suitcase bombs for North Korea?” Quinn said.
“You’ve figured a lot out.”
Another connection surfaced in Quinn’s head. “Did you set him up with a computer information specialist, too? Someone to dig into the histories of those working for him?”
She looked away. “That … that we kept in-house. One of our top hackers was assigned to the project.”
Quinn stared at her in disbelief. “You’re telling me your little group there at MI6 is responsible for the danger my … people are facing?”
“Whatever Palavin’s done with the information is all on him,” she said quickly. “We had no idea what he wanted it for.”
“No idea?” he yelled. “That does not absolve you!”
“Hey, everything all right in there?” Orlando asked through the door.
“Fine,” Quinn shot back. He locked eyes with Annabel. “If anything happens to them, anything, then I will kill you myself. That’s not a threat, nor a promise. That’s a fact.”
She sucked in a nervous breath, but said nothing.
Quinn allowed himself a moment to calm down, then said, “Once you passed the job onto Wills, why didn’t you just let it go then?”
Her lips trembled slightly as she spoke. “This wasn’t something that was furthering national security. It was eating me up. When I found out Palavin had planted a man on Wills’s teams, I knew I had to do something.”
“Wait. Planted?”
“A man named Mercer.”
“Mercer? David said Mercer was his man.”
“Cover story. Mercer’s mission, as I later found out, was to not only make sure the targets were neutralized, but also to liquidate the strike teams after each mission. Donovan and his men, they’re all dead now. The same is true for Freeman in Los Angeles and the people he was working with.”
“What?” Quinn said, shocked. “They’re all dead?”
Annabel looked at the floor, then nodded.
Quinn was silent for several seconds as he let it all soak in. Finally, he said, “Mercer was at the park after Wills was killed. My Russian friends in there think that Palavin was responsible. Are they right?”
She nodded. “We’re almost positive. The dead woman in the park is a freelancer Palavin has been in contact with before. We think she’d been hired to tie up loose ends.”
Quinn shook his head. “Then why didn’t she wait until I showed up? I’m a loose end, too.”
“You showed up?”
“He was in the park to meet me.”
She stared at him. “We didn’t know that, and Palavin probably didn’t know that either. If he did, he would surely have had her wait.”