“A lot more.”
Andrews’s smile broadened. “We’ll be happy to accommodate you. Let’s see, a standard package for…” He looked at Quinn. “How many people are we talking about?”
“Two, at the moment, with spares.”
“So what you really want is equipment for four people.”
“Two people, with spares.”
“All right, two with spares. A standard package will run you…” He paused, thinking.
“You’ll give him the discount,” Margery said.
“I haven’t even quoted the price yet.”
“But it was going to be full price, wasn’t it?”
“I’ll give him something off.”
“Give him the discount. Quinn’s a friend. And family.”
THIS WASN’T THE first time Quinn had crossed London carrying a bag full of weapons and surveillance gear. Andrews, at Margery’s urging, had reluctantly thrown in a customized, hard-sided, rolling suitcase to transport the gear in, making Quinn look like a tourist on the way to his next Airbnb reservation.
As he unlocked their apartment, he could hear Orlando talking inside and assumed she was on the phone. But when he opened the door, he discovered she wasn’t alone.
“Nate,” he said, giving his partner a terse nod.
“Quinn,” Nate said.
Quinn wheeled the suitcase against the wall. “I thought you were in China.”
“That was a week ago. I’ve been in South Africa for the last five days.”
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said. What are you doing in London?”
“Because I emailed him before we left San Francisco, and told him to meet us here as soon as he could,” Orlando said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Quinn looked from Orlando to Nate and back. “Nothing. I, um…nothing.” He glanced back at Nate. “Glad you’re here. We could use your help.”
Brow furrowing, Nate said, “Glad I’m—”
Orlando grabbed his bicep, stopping him. To Quinn, she said, “A moment of your time, please,” and marched into their bedroom.
“The gear needs to be checked. If you have the time,” Quinn said to Nate before following Orlando.
“Shut the door,” she said as he walked into the bedroom.
“Why?”
“Shut it.”
He did.
Orlando looked about as angry as he’d ever seen her.
Trying to preempt what he thought she was about to say, he said, “Look, I—”
She held up a hand and closed her eyes, her lips jammed together like a vise. After several seconds, a wave of not-quite-calmness passed over her face. When she looked at him again, the anger wasn’t completely gone but it was no longer at the forefront.
“How many times do we have to talk about this? You can’t treat Nate that way.”
“What way?”
Her anger flared again. “Don’t do that.”
“Do wh—”
“I swear to God I will never speak to you again if you finish that sentence.” She stared at him, daring him to test her. When he remained silent, she said, “You hurt. Nate hurts. I hurt. We all hurt. And we’ve all made mistakes. If you want to find this woman, you need to get over yourself, and remember Nate is better than anyone else in this world, including me, to help you do that. He is not your enemy.”
“I never said he was.”
“You act like a total prick anytime you’re within a hundred feet of him. Listen to me. You’ve lost your sister, and he’s lost a girlfriend who he’s loved like he’s never loved anyone else. You’re both torn and broken. And yet, here you are trying to rip him apart even more! Has nothing I’ve been saying to you even gotten through?”
She paused to let him answer, but he didn’t know what to say. She was right on all counts.
Most of the time he kept Liz’s death boxed up so that it didn’t overwhelm him, but when he saw Nate, was near Nate, what happened to his sister came rushing back in vivid detail. The only way he could fight it was to build a wall between himself and his partner.
He wanted to tell Orlando this—Nate, too—but the words wouldn’t form.
“Well?” she asked.
“I’ll…be better.”
She waited for more, but when she realized that was it, she sighed. “I guess that’s…something.” She walked out of the room.
He willed himself to get a grip, and then followed.
NATE HAD KNOWN coming to London wouldn’t be easy. The weeks he and Quinn had spent searching Europe together had started out tense and grown worse. It was one of the main reasons Nate had gone back out on his own after only a day in San Francisco. The subsequent weeks away had almost made him forget the tension between them.
As he rolled the gear suitcase to a corner of the living room where he’d have space to work, he heard Orlando’s raised voice from the bedroom, but he tried not to listen. It was better that way.
He parted the clamshell suitcase, laid the two halves on the floor, and removed a top layer of black foam to reveal the treasure beneath. There were two SIG SAUER P226 pistols, two Glock 43s, suppressors for all four, eight spare mags, four boxes of ammo, one collapsible rifle with night-vision scope and mini tripod, and ten flash-bang grenades. The rest of the gear consisted of a box of combo bugs/tracking discs, four sets of binoculars, four sets of comm gear, four flashlights, and batteries for all.
He removed one of the SIGs and started disassembling it to make sure it was clean, but was interrupted by the buzz of a text arriving.
So?
Nate typed:
It’s her.
The reply came in seconds.
We’ll be there as soon as we can.
Nate sent another message.
Do you think that’s wise?
He waited, but there was no answer. He shot off a follow-up.
Daeng. We’ve got this. Just stay there and relax.
No reply.
Daeng!
Nothing.
Deep down Nate was relieved his friend was on his way. Though they’d texted often, they hadn’t seen each other since Orlando and Jar had flown Daeng back to the States, where he’d stayed for three weeks before being allowed to go home to Thailand to continue his recovery.
Daeng had told Nate he was almost back to one hundred percent, but Nate doubted that was true. Now it looked like he’d get a chance to see for himself.
The bedroom door opened and Orlando, looking slightly less pissed off than earlier, stepped out.
When she noticed Nate looking at her, she blurted, “What?”
He shook his head and turned back to his work.
He had the SIG fully apart by the time Quinn emerged.
“How’s everything look?” Quinn asked him, his tone almost normal.
“Um, all good so far.”
“Great. You…need help?”
“No. I’ve got this.”
“Okay. Good, good. Then…uh…let me know when you’re done.”
“I will.”
With a grunt, Nate picked up the barrel of the gun and began putting the weapon back together.
TO THE EAST, in a basement flat in Paddington, Katrine Dehler exercised her injured leg while watching a documentary on the last tsar of Russia—strengthening body and mind to stay sharp for when the time came for her to run again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
SAN FRANCISCO
MR. COOPER LOST the subjects in a confusion of cars and tour buses somewhere in the middle of Napa Valley. He was a patient man, though. As a professional hunter, he had to be.
Ninety minutes later, he found the sedan again, parked in the lot of the Calistoga Spa Hot Springs. As luck would have it, there was an empty space only two spots away. After parking, he looked up the spa online. Apparently, not only was it a place where you could get a massage and a mud bath, it was also a hotel. Were Quinn and his partner—girlfriend,
wife, whatever she was—there for a short visit, or had they checked in for the night?
He extracted a small, magnetized disc from his bag and got out of his car. As he was passing the back of the subjects’ Infiniti, he purposely fumbled his keys and dropped them on the ground in a way that caused them to skitter a few inches under the sedan.
Acting annoyed, he lowered onto a knee and picked up the keys. As his hand moved out from under the car, he attached the disc to the vehicle’s undercarriage.
He would have liked to immediately return to his car and get out of there, but if anyone had noted his movements, that would have looked suspicious. He headed into the hotel, where he picked up a brochure and inquired about a reservation for that summer. The charade complete, he walked back to his car, drove two blocks away, and parked again.
Mr. Smith, one of his two watchers, texted him at one p.m., wondering what he should do. The man’s shift was supposed to start in an hour, but Mr. Cooper didn’t even entertain the idea of having Mr. Smith come north to Napa. He texted him back with instructions for him to remain at their San Francisco hotel until otherwise notified.
The subjects’ trip out of San Francisco was a deviation from the normal pattern Mr. Cooper and his watchers had seen in the two weeks since they started observing the couple. Maybe something was finally going to happen. Maybe the subjects would finally lead Mr. Cooper to Dehler. That was the hope that had brought him here in first place. It had been a gamble, a big one, and if it was about to pay off, he was not going to miss it.
Twilight came and went without the Infiniti moving, making it look likely that the subjects were spending the night. After a while, the watcher stretched out in the backseat to get a little rest.
The tracker alarm on his phone went off at 12:34 a.m., letting him know the Infiniti was moving again.
Less than two minutes later, Mr. Cooper was on the road, following the other vehicle south. Because of the tracker, he didn’t need visual contact, but he briefly got close enough to verify that the two people inside matched the silhouettes he’d watched during the drive that morning.
At five minutes to one a.m., the Infiniti pulled into a gas station in St. Helena. The watcher, having filled his own tank earlier that evening, drove by, planning on finding a spot down the road to wait.
When he passed the station, he saw the Infiniti for the first time since shortly after the trip had begun. At first glance, everything looked as it should—the gray sedan parked at the pumps, and Quinn, dressed as before, inserting the nozzle into the car’s gas tank.
Only…
What the fuck?
The watcher parked a couple of stores down, grabbed his binoculars, and looked back at the man at the pump.
“Oh, shit.”
He shifted his gaze to the woman inside the car.
“Oh, shit.”
KARACHI, PAKISTAN
THE SCRAMBLED CALL initially routed through Brasilia, then sped through Osaka and Incheon and Vientiane and Tashkent, before crossing the Pakistani border and ringing at its intended destination, on a secure phone in Hammad Kassab’s compound.
Dima’s husband, Bilal, was closest to the phone so he answered. “Yes?”
“I’m calling about the house for lease. The one in Bahadurabad.”
“One moment.” Bilal switched the call to speaker so his brother, Tahir, and Dima’s uncle could listen in. “Go ahead.”
“Quinn and his woman have left the country.”
The men shared a look, and then Tahir said, “To where?”
“Their flight was to London. I have a colleague checking to make sure they’re still in the city. My team and I leave for there within the hour.”
“What do you mean, ‘still in the city’?” Dima’s uncle said. “How long have they been there?”
A pause. “Approximately fifteen hours.”
“You’ve known about this for fifteen hours and you’re just leaving now?”
“The thing to focus on is that we know where they are now.”
“Where they were,” Bilal corrected him.
“We will find them. I guarantee it,” the caller said. “I’ll let you know as soon as we have more news.”
Bilal disconnected the call. “This Quinn must know where the fixer is and is going to meet her. This is our chance.”
“Perhaps,” the uncle said. He looked at Tahir. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know if Quinn is going to see her or not, but I think we need to be ready to act quickly in case my brother is right.”
The uncle considered this, then said, “Make the preparations.”
LONDON
A WARNING MESSAGE popped onto Orlando’s screen. She clicked on the embedded link, bringing up a text box.
“They know we left,” she announced.
Quinn leaned over from beside her and looked at the computer. “That took longer than we expected.”
“No kidding, huh?”
They had assumed those keeping tabs on them in San Francisco would discover the impostors and figure out within a few hours after their plane took off that Orlando and Quinn had left for London. But Gregory and Monique had done their job way better than anticipated.
The good news was that the watchers had been delayed more than long enough for Orlando and Quinn to set up in London before the men headed to Europe.
“Any news from Greta?” Quinn asked. Their Norwegian friend was still on camera duty.
“Nothing.”
It had been almost twenty-four hours since Dehler’s last appearance onscreen. While the woman was likely hunkered down in a hidey-hole somewhere in the city, Quinn couldn’t help worrying she was already half a world away.
“We’ve checked the airports, yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” Orlando said, annoyed. “We’ve checked the airports.”
“All of them?”
She turned back to her screen. “Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, London City, Luton, Southend, Manchester. Also Orly and Charles de Gaulle, Brussels Airport, Schiphol—”
“Okay, okay.”
“Fiumicino and Ciampino, Madrid, Lisbon, Berlin, Frankfurt—”
“Sorry I asked.”
“Do you want to know about train stations, too?”
“I’ll assume those were covered also.”
“No, please. I insist. Victoria, St. Pancras—”
“Orlando, stop. I said I’m sorry.”
She looked at him again. “She’s still in the city. We’re going to get her.”
“I know.”
“You need to start thinking about what we’re going to do with her once we do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just what I said.”
What was he going to do to Dehler? He knew exactly what. The same thing she’d done to Liz.
Right?
Right?
Orlando shot him a sideways glance. “I didn’t say you needed to decide right away. Just…soon.” When he didn’t say anything, she turned fully to him and took his hands. “Never mind, for now.” She smiled. “You haven’t talked with your girlfriend at MI6 yet, have you?”
“What? Um…no.”
“Now would be a great time, don’t you think?” She looked over his shoulder at Nate. “And take him with you.”
THE FIRST TIME Quinn and Nate had met Annabel Taplin had been at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, when they’d not so politely inquired as to why she was so interested in them. Though their relationship had gotten off to a rocky start, they had, for the most part, ironed things out over time, and had even worked together on a few occasions. According to Orlando, Taplin was still posing as a consultant for Wright Bains Security, an MI6 cover agency.
Instead of entering the Wright Bains building, where they would be noted by MI6 cameras, Quinn and Nate went into the Queen Anne Pub across the street. This was the same pub Quinn and Orlando had used a few years ago to watch for Taplin to emerge from Wright Bains so they could follow he
r home.
While Nate grabbed a couple of pints, Quinn put in the call.
“Quinn?” Taplin answered, sounding surprised.
“Good afternoon.”
“How are you?”
“Some days are better than others. I was wondering if you’d like to grab a drink.”
A brief pause. “You’re in London.”
“I am.”
“I guess I could make a little time this evening. How does seven—”
“I was thinking now.”
“Now? That would be—”
“We’re at the Queen Anne.”
As he hung up, Nate arrived with the drinks.
“Thanks.”
Nate held his glass out. After a second, Quinn picked up his and tapped it against his partner’s. Nate took a healthy swig while Quinn kept his to a sip. He’d already had one beer earlier. He needed to stay sharp.
Seven minutes later, Taplin entered the pub. As usual, she was smartly dressed, on this occasion in a light gray business suit, and stylish but functional low-heeled shoes. She stopped just inside and tucked a strand of her dirty blonde hair behind her ear as she looked around. Once she spotted them, she headed over.
Quinn and Nate each greeted her with a hug.
“Can I get you something?” Nate asked.
Taplin looked at Quinn. “Am I going to need it?”
“Maybe.”
“A Newcastle, please.”
Nate headed to the bar while the other two sat.
“So…you look good,” she said.
“Thank you. You look the same.”
“Your compliment game needs some work.”
“That was a compliment. You always look good. Any change would be in the wrong direction.”
She snorted. “Now you’re overcompensating.” She glanced toward Nate at the bar, then back at Quinn. “Is it just the two of you here, or…?”
“Orlando’s with us. She’s a little busy right now and sends her regards.”
“Please return them for me.”
“I will.”
“I heard a rumor that you’re a father now.”
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