Quinn said nothing to the bank manager. Only, she knew Denis had not owned a life insurance policy of any kind. He would not submit to the cross checks and questioning involved in buying one.
Quinn floated through her days, spending more time in her head than she knew she should. It wasn’t healthy to obsess that way, but she couldn’t stop. To stop asking the questions, even if she asked only in her mind, felt as though she was giving up. She had no idea what she was giving up on, yet she didn’t want to let go. Not yet.
Quinn found an email address on the CIA website. She knew the address would be a sorting station, but it was somewhere to start. Her first email was simply a request that someone contact her who could speak to her freely about the events in Vienna. She did not expect an answer. She didn’t get one.
Two hours later, she sent a follow-up email. In it she quoted the case number which she had memorized from the documents she signed. Two hours after, Quinn sent another email, a summary of both the previous emails.
In total, she sent eighteen emails that first day.
Her days settled into a rhythm despite the lack of structure. She attended her required twice weekly meetings with Jenny. In between, she cleaned and tidied her apartment. And she sent emails.
Eventually, she received a canned response suggesting she cease and desist in her line of inquiry.
Quinn sent all her emails to that address. She added that if Stephen Price was not the man she should speak to, please provide her with an email address for the person who could answer her questions. Eventually, Stephen Price did suggest another contact—she suspected she browbeat him into it by sheer volume.
Every time she was referred to someone else, Quinn diverted all her emails to the new person. She would ask for answers, or the name of someone who could give her the answers.
Quinn recalled the passage of days since she returned to Boston, as she contemplated Jenny’s question about what sort of life she wanted.
She didn’t have a single idea. She had not once thought about the future. She had been too focused upon the past.
Jenny sat up. Quinn knew she was shifting ground. “And are you still angry with Denis?”
Straight for the gut. Jenny had some strange ideas about therapy.
“Did someone tell you what happened?” Quinn asked.
Jenny shook her head. “What happened?”
“Before I went to… Before I went away, I didn’t have the guts to open the box the police gave me. It had Denis’ personal affects in it. I just shoved it in the back corner of the closet. I forgot it was there until I found it a few days ago.”
“And you opened it,” Jenny said, her tone certain.
Quinn nodded. “As far as I was concerned, what was in there would be meaningless. It was a dead man’s personal things. A man I didn’t really know.”
“What was in there to make you change your mind?”
Quinn stroked her thumb over the arm of the chair. The armchair was covered in a faux suede which, depending on which direction she stroked it, was either lighter or darker. She could make patterns in the arm. She made stripes this time, working on keeping them straight.
“Quinn?”
Quinn smeared the stripes with her palm. She looked up. “There was all the usual stuff. His wallet, clothes.” They had been filthy and reeked of smoke.
“And what else?”
“A box,” she said. The box was small and square, covered in paper rather than blue velvet, yet still Quinn’s heart pattered to a stop when she saw it. She lifted it and turned it in her hands, afraid to open it. Only, the search for answers had defined her life in the last few weeks. Quinn knew she must open the box.
“It was an engagement ring,” she told Jenny. “Emeralds, not diamonds. I don’t like diamonds and Denis knew that.” She went back to making stripes on the arm of the chair. “I’ve spent days thinking I never knew Denis at all. Turns out, Denis was exactly what he said he was. He told me he loved me, and he really did. He was going to marry me.” Her eyes stung and the tears flowed. Quinn pressed her hand to her chest and blinked at Jenny. “Why does it bother me so much?”
“Why does what bother you so much? That you found out only now Denis did love you, that he was the man you believed he was? Or that you are not more upset about missing a lifetime with him?”
Quinn pressed her hot face against her knees. “If I’m right about Denis, then I was right about all of them. I thought I couldn’t trust my own instincts anymore. I thought I was so far wrong about everyone that I should never trust myself again. Only I was right about Noah—”
“You mean Denis, don’t you?”
“That’s what I said.”
Jenny shook her head. “You said Noah.”
Quinn closed her eyes and pressed her head against her knees once more. “It doesn’t matter. They’re both dead.”
Four days later, as Quinn walked home from the bus stop, a bright green Audi pulled up alongside her. It was the same stretch of road where Aslan stopped to pick her up in the middle of a rainstorm.
It wasn’t raining today.
Quinn bent to look into the car, to see the driver.
The glass lowered. Dima leaned closer and spoke through the open window. “Hello, Quinn. I think it’s time we talked.”
[29]
Tuesday, February 26th
The snow was so high around benches lining the paths of Boston Common that it packed beneath the dark green slats and sat higher than the benches.
The cold kept nearly everyone away from the Common, especially this time of the afternoon, when workers were heading home for supper. The lamps were already on.
Dima didn’t seem bothered by the location, the cold or the snow. She brushed the snow off the bench with her gloved hand, then settled onto it with a tired sigh.
Quinn sat beside her but didn’t relax. She perched on the edge of the seat, her arms on her knees, turned so she could watch Dima as the woman spoke.
“Why now?” Quinn said. “I’ve been asking for weeks.”
“Exactly,” Dima said. “You stopped emailing, four days ago.”
“I’m surprised anyone noticed.”
“I think you underestimate the attention people pay to you. It’s one of your more endearing qualities.” Dima said it with the pride of the mother.
Quinn shook her head. She didn’t believe it.
“You’ve been stirring things up with your email,” Dima said. “So I am here to answer your questions. I will be breaking laws and protocol with every word I speak. Only, you have been insisting on answers despite Leander telling you that you would not like any answers you got. So you shall have your answers. This is a one-time deal, Quinn. Once we are done here, there will be no more information provided. Do you understand?” Dima’s voice was low, heavy with warning.
Quinn threaded her fingers together and squeezed them. “I understand.”
Dima nodded. “Ask your questions.”
Now she was about to receive the answers she craved, Quinn hesitated. She didn’t know where to start. How long would she have? She tried to sort her questions into priority order, then jumped to the first question which rose in her mind.
“Why did Noah save me? Why did he shoot Aslan and Toni? And why did you shoot him?”
“Noah Stojanovich was known to us, although we knew very little. Even less than we knew about everyone else in Aslan’s house. He had only been there for a year. He was a high-adrenaline junkie. He was also a self-taught chemist. There were rumors he cooked methamphetamines for anyone who would pay him, until he became too hot to stay in Croatia. Not even the gangs there would protect him. So he fell in with organizations across Europe, moving from gang to group to organization. That is how Aslan met him. He was working for a Ukrainian organization, testing the quality of the cocaine they got from South America. Aslan saw his potential and recruited him.”
“It explains why he was working for Aslan. It doesn’t explain why he tried to
kill him.”
“I can only speculate about that.” Dima frowned. “Perhaps he saw an opportunity. Perhaps he was paid to do it. There were people besides us watching Aslan’s organization. Maybe one of them reached out to Noah and made an arrangement. Perhaps he was shooting at Toni all along. He and Toni were enemies of a kind. Or perhaps he did it because Aslan was threatening you. We will never know.”
Quinn shook her head. “That’s no answer.”
Dima let out a sigh. “We tried to warn you. Even the most direct answers we can give you won’t satisfy you.”
“I don’t understand how Toni came to be there at the end.”
“Toni never left Vienna.” Dima shrugged. “She wasn’t the type of woman to crawl back to Innsbruck just because Noah told her to. He angered her by interfering with the fun she was having with you. Again, we are guessing, but we know more about Toni, so our guess is more certain. We know she took up a post on top of the stack of containers on the wharf, where she could monitor the warehouse. She had a nest there which we found later. The rifle she had on her shoulder when she fell from the Ferris wheel was a Timberwolf, one of the best sniper rifles out there. Maybe she took it from the house when she left. Aslan had a small arsenal in the basement.”
“She tried to kill me because Aslan wanted to take me to a ball? That seems…” Quinn shook her head again. “She must have loved him very much.”
“We think it was Mitchell she loved. Aslan was just her ticket.”
Quinn’s lips parted. “Excuse me?”
Dima nodded grimly. “Toni and Mitchell were lovers. Of course they hid it from Aslan.”
Quinn rubbed at her temple. “I spotted Mitchell sneaking around one night in Innsbruck. It’s what started me thinking he was CIA and undercover.”
“I read the report where you mentioned it,” Dima said. “We believe Toni’s attachment to Mitchell was deeper than anyone suspected. You can imagine her reaction when she watched through the scope of her sniper rifle and saw you kill Mitchell, right there in the window.”
“She fired, right after Mitchell fell.”
“And kept firing at anyone who came close to the body, after. It was you she really wanted to kill, though. So when you and Aslan emerged at the front of the building, she followed. She scrambled on top of the roof of the Ferris wheel carriage next to yours and for half the circuit, her carriage was under yours. Then your carriage reached the top of the Ferris wheel and started down the other side. It put her carriage above yours. So she jumped.”
Quinn could still hear Toni’s feet hitting the roof of the carriage. The jolt and swing of the carriage in response.
Dima grimaced. “I witnessed that part. All I had was my Glock, unfortunately. Even Scott’s tricked-out rifle was on the other side of the park.” She smiled. “Your guess about Mitchell, what you told Aslan about him working for the Kobra, was inspired. We looked into it. It turns out, Mitchell spent five years in Russia before turning up in Eastern Europe.”
“I was right?” Quinn was astonished. “I mean, it made sense to me at the time. Only, I told Aslan what I thought would mollify him and get me off the hook for killing Mitchell.”
“It made sense to Aslan. Aslan and the Kobra go back a long way. Aslan showed no surprise that the Kobra was still keeping tabs on him. It was Aslan’s lack of surprise which made me study Mitchell closely.”
“You still don’t know who is the Kobra is?”
“Thanks to you, we are a long step closer to figuring out who the Kobra is.” Dima said it complacently. “Aslan spoke about being made by the Kobra. It implies an association from a long time ago. We’re digging into his past, unearthing the older documents and examining everything as closely as possible. The Kobra is back there, somewhere. Now we have a direction to look, we will find him.”
Quinn shifted on the seat, so the slats were not digging into the same place on her rear. “Aslan said he loved two people in his life. Denis was one. Was the Kobra the other?”
Dima’s gaze was sharp with interest. “You didn’t mention that anywhere in the debriefing.”
“Was that what those three days were? A debriefing?”
“If his other love was the Kobra, then we are even more certain to find him. Such a close association will leave traces no amount of history-scrubbing will remove.” Dima seemed speak to herself. She stirred, as if she remembered where she was. She raised her brow at Quinn, inviting another question.
“Did Leela intend to be caught by Aslan?” Quinn said.
Dima’s smile was full of warmth. “That is an astute question. What makes you ask?”
“Giorgio grew suspicious because Leela ate using her knife and fork American-style. Only, Leela is too smart to do something that stupid.”
Dima nodded. “Those things we learned first and earliest stay with us. When we relax our guard, they emerge. Leela is very smart, so smart she sometimes scares me. On this occasion, though, it was a slip. We do make mistakes. We’re human. Leela was concentrating on making sure her German was perfectly natural. She let her guard down and reverted to using her knife and fork the way she was raised to.” Dima pursed her lips for a moment. It looked as if she was about to say more but she didn’t speak again.
“And it was enough for Aslan to kill her out of hand? I mean, she didn’t die, but Aslan sent her to be executed—all because she ate the wrong way?”
“You said Aslan was hurried. That might account for it. Only I felt as you did—that Giorgio’s reaction was extreme. He was already suspicious of her when he had Leela in his office to question her. He leapt to the conclusion that she had infiltrated the factory with no basis to draw upon.”
“Then he already knew,” Quinn said. “He just needed an excuse and because he was watching Leela so closely, he found it.”
“That is our conclusion, yes.”
“How did he know?” Quinn said.
Dima sighed. For a long moment she said nothing. Then, “Giorgio knew because someone in my unit told him.”
Quinn sucked in a harsh breath, staring at Dima. “You have a mole?”
“I wondered if I did,” Dima said softly. “Now I know I do. What I don’t know is if the mole is working for the Kobra, who told Giorgio. Or if they just went directly to Giorgio. It makes more sense that the Kobra placed someone inside my unit, as our sole objective is to find the Kobra.”
Quinn was appalled. “How on earth can you achieve anything, if the Kobra knows every move you are making?” Then she connected the various facts, and gasped. “It was the Kobra who killed Denis.”
Dima nodded. “What you told Aslan was correct. Denis had been seen talking to the wrong people. The Kobra knows the people in my unit. As soon as Denis was seen talking to Leela and Lochan, the Kobra made a move to eliminate the risk to him. He doesn’t want the CIA looking at him too closely. It means he is still active, still out there, and even more powerful than we believed.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“Now, I need to go mole hunting.” Dima said it was a grim smile. “And once I have found the mole, then I am going after the Kobra.”
“It’s personal, now, isn’t it?” Quinn asked.
“Four people died directly because of his manipulations. Many more, indirectly. One of my own nearly died, but for Noah’s latent streak of humanity. When we mopped up the warehouse after the raid, there were twelve bodies. Most of them were dockworkers, who had no idea what they had got mixed up in. Then there were the people who died in the bombing of the jazz club, all collateral damage the Kobra dished out in his effort to get just one man.” Dima smiled grimly. “This is so fucking personal my teeth ache with it.”
“Let me help you,” Quinn said.
Dima sat up, considering her. “Are you sure, Quinn? You can’t sleep and you have nightmares when you do. While you were down the hole, you suffered headaches and you were sick most of the time. Austria changed you and you can never go back. If you were to help me, all yo
u could look forward to would be more of the same. It is not easy work for anyone.”
“I don’t care about that. You’re right. I’ve changed. I can’t stand my life anymore. It’s so small and closed in. For years, it was all I wanted. Now…”
“Now your nature has reverted to what it should have been all along.”
Quinn shook her head. “No. Well, perhaps that is true. It isn’t why I want to help you. I want to catch the Kobra myself. Like you, my teeth ache with it. He killed Denis. He is responsible for Noah dying.” Quinn hesitated. “You haven’t said anything about me being an untrained civilian.”
Dima shrugged. “Training is something we can give you. No one can give you the fire in the belly which keeps you relentlessly working toward what you want. No one can train you into having the balls to talk your way out of a situation when a man is pointing a gun at you. People with that sort of grit are rare, and you are one of them. Are you sure, Quinn? Your life will never be the same if you say yes, so think it through.”
Quinn opened her mouth to speak.
Dima got to her feet. “Really think about how it felt, while you were in Austria. Weigh up your options. All I can offer you is interesting times and a possible early and undeserved death. Kobra will play for keeps. So must I.”
She turned and walked away.
“Are you not going to wait for my answer?” Quinn called.
Dima didn’t look back. “I’ll be in touch!” she called over her shoulder.
The pair of tickets to the Mahler concert had been stuck to the fridge for weeks before the bombing at the jazz club.
At first, Quinn had no intention of going. It was too pathetic to sit in a concert hall beside an empty chair. Besides, she was numb to music, now.
After speaking to Dima, though, Quinn spent two days going about her life and hating it. Now Dima had dangled the possibility of a different life, Quinn couldn’t stand this one.
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