The Aggrieved

by Brett Battles

  Instead of answering over the comm, her voice came from across the street. “Be happy to.”

  Still wearing her Dehler disguise, she looked even more like the killer as she strode over, but when she reached them and Quinn played a flashlight across her face, the illusion died.

  “This colleague?” Quinn asked.

  Tahir and Bilal stared at her.

  “Who-who-who is this?” Bilal said. “This is not—” He stopped, as if he thought he might have already said too much.

  “Is not who?” Quinn asked. “Katrine Dehler?”

  Bilal’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see now. You tried to trick us. You helped her to escape, didn’t you?”

  Tahir whispered something in Arabic that Quinn guessed was the equivalent of shut up.

  “Tried to trick you?” Quinn said. He shook his head in pity. “There’s so much you don’t understand. Too bad for you, I have zero interest in bringing you up to speed.”

  He raised his pistol and pointed it at Bilal. Orlando did the same with Tahir.

  “Please,” Bilal said, suddenly desperate. “We promise, we will never bother you again.”

  “Again, you’re not a very convincing liar.”

  “We have money,” Tahir said. “We can pay you whatever you want.”

  “You have money? Or does Mr. Kassab? You know what? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t touch anything from either of you. You can explain that to him, too, when he asks you why you couldn’t get out of this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll figure it out.” Quinn adjusted the aim of his gun. “Oh, one more thing. In case it isn’t clear, your lives are about to get royally screwed, but that’s not our doing. It’s all courtesy of your wives, Dima and Noor.”

  Fury rushed across the brothers’ faces, but before either could say anything, Quinn and Orlando put darts in their chests.

  As soon as the brothers joined their men on the ground, Quinn called Taplin.

  “Another pickup for you,” he said.

  “More thugs and troublemakers?”

  “And a couple of terrorist brothers I think you’ll find particularly interesting.” He gave her the address. “Better make it quick. It’s a bit public. You don’t want one of your locals stumbling across them.” He hung up, and said to his team, “Let’s finish this.”

  STEVE HOWARD MET them outside the Park Plaza hotel.

  “Still in his room?” Quinn asked.

  “Still there.”

  “What about the hired man who stayed behind?”

  “Outside the door.”

  “In the hallway?” Orlando said. “Then you weren’t able to get a bug on the door?”

  “No, but we were able to drop a bug on the balcony from above. The reception isn’t as good, but it works.”

  “Any chatter?” she asked.

  “One house call to room service to check on his food. They should be heading up in the next ten minutes. Two cell phone calls. The first three minutes long. Jar said he was talking to someone back in Pakistan about a meeting this weekend. The other went unanswered.”

  “Any chance we can usurp room service?” Quinn asked.

  “Sure, if you want to hijack the waiter.”

  Quinn frowned. The fewer outsiders involved, the better.

  “Could we at least get ahold of a uniform?” he asked.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Quinn pulled out some cash and handed it to Howard. “This is what I want you to do.”

  “HERE COMES ANOTHER one,” Devon, one of the east team members, said over the comm, reporting on yet another room-service waiter leaving the kitchen.

  The three other members of east team were stationed near the elevators. When a waiter came, one of them would get on the elevator with him or her, wait to see which floor the waiter was going to, and then get off one floor up and take the stairs back down. So far, four waiters had come through, none heading for Kassab’s floor.

  When the fifth waiter appeared, east team member Patrice followed him into the car. After the waiter made his floor selection, she pushed the button for her stop, then clicked her mic twice, paused, and clicked twice more.

  Kassab’s food was on the way.

  ONE FLOOR BELOW Kassab’s suite, Daeng pushed the call button for the up elevator. When the door opened, the car was empty, but through the shaft they could hear the one carrying the waiter, heading up.

  Daeng gave Quinn and Orlando a nod before he and Monica stepped on board, where he pushed the button for Kassab’s floor. As the doors opened after their short ride up, they saw the waiter pass through the elevator lobby, carrying a tray.

  They stepped off the car and, acting like a couple in the throes of lust, headed in the same direction the waiter had gone.

  Keeping their pace slow, Daeng watched the guard stationed at Kassab’s door take a few steps toward the waiter. The two men exchanged a few words, and the guard lifted the cover off the food. When he appeared satisfied, he returned to the door and lifted his hand to knock, but hesitated when he noticed Daeng and Monica heading his way.

  He kept an eye on them as they walked by, and didn’t remove it until Daeng and Monica reached the end of the corridor and strolled around the corner. When they halted just out of sight, they could hear the man knock.

  Daeng said, “In position.”

  QUINN CHECKED HOWARD over one last time. Even though his friend was still wearing his own dark pants, the waiter’s jacket sold the look, and the only people who might notice something was off were hotel employees.

  On the tray Howard carried sat a pot of tea, and a single cup he’d bribed someone in the kitchen to give him for an “impromptu meeting with an important client.”

  “Waiter’s leaving,” Daeng reported from the floor above.

  Orlando pressed a listening disc against one of the elevator doors. Nearly half a minute passed before she said, “Car moving up.” A pause. “Passing us and…stopping one floor up.”

  Quinn pushed the call button.

  The new car arrived as the one carrying the real waiter moved past their floor again on its way down. When all three of them were inside, Quinn pushed the button for Kassab’s floor and said into his mic, “We’re headed up.”

  During the quick ride, Orlando replaced the listening device connected to her phone with a tiny, gooseneck-mounted camera. “Ready,” she said right before the doors opened.

  Doing his best waiter impersonation, Howard walked off first. Quinn and Orlando followed, but stayed in the small lobby. Orlando slipped the camera around the corner, and on the screen she and Quinn watched Howard walk down the hall.

  He was about three-quarters of the way to Kassab’s room when the guard took a step away from the door and said, “Where you go?”

  Not stopping, Howard nodded at Kassab’s door. “Right there.”

  The man motioned to the tray. “What?”

  “Hot tea.”

  The guard walked up to him and lifted the top off the pot. “Why not come before?”

  “My colleague couldn’t carry everything himself.”

  The guard took a moment to consider this before he approached the door, knocked, and said something in Arabic. The moment the man paused, clearly waiting for a response, Daeng’s dart flew through the hallway and punctured the guard below the ribs.

  Quinn and Orlando rushed down the corridor toward Kassab’s room, while Daeng and Monica did the same from the other end. When they all reached the doorway, they pressed against the wall on either side.

  A voice from inside the room, gruff and annoyed, said something in Arabic.

  As Howard raised the tray a few inches and said, “Tea, sir,” Orlando slipped her electronic lock pick over the card reader and tapped a few buttons.

  From inside, Kassab said, “I did not—”

  Click.

  Quinn swung past Howard into the room, Orlando right behind him, their dart guns pointed at Dima’s uncle.
r />   Kassab yelled, “Youssef!”

  “Is that your guard’s name?” Quinn asked. “Good to know. Daeng, can you bring Youssef in here?”

  Daeng and Monica carried the limp body of Youssef the guard into the room, dumped him on the floor, and shut the door.

  “You have no idea what kind of trouble you’re going to be in,” Kassab said.

  Quinn laughed. When Kassab looked at him like he might be crazy, Quinn said, “I realize there’s no way you can know this, but that’s almost an exact quote of what Bilal said before we handed him and Tahir over to MI6.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Quinn glanced at Orlando. “Sweetheart?”

  Orlando pulled out her phone, searched the screen, and held it up for Kassab to see. On it was a picture of Bilal, Tahir, and two of the other men who’d been with them, all lying unconscious.

  “In case you don’t know who I am, I’m Jonathan Quinn, the guy you were paying Mr. Cooper and his associates to follow.”

  Eyes narrowing, Kassab said, “If you leave now, perhaps I will forget about this and not make you pay for your intrusion.”

  Quinn stepped right up to Kassab and poked him hard in the chest. “Fuck you, asshole. I’ve already paid more than anyone should ever have to pay to deal with you. And you know what? I don’t want you to ever forget this. I want you to think about this night for the rest of your pitiful life. I want you to think about what a crappy uncle you were to your nieces. I want you to think about the lives you’ve destroyed and were planning on destroying, none of which were yours for the taking. But most of all, I want you to know that if somehow you ever see the light of day again, I will hunt you down again, and I will put a bullet through your head without even saying hello.”

  Kassab opened his mouth, but before any words could come out, Quinn’s hand was around his neck, squeezing hard.

  “No. You don’t get to say anything else. I never want to hear your voice again.”

  Quinn placed the tranq gun against the man’s shoulder, pulled the trigger, and held Kassab in place until the terrorist passed out.

  After letting Kassab drop to the floor, Quinn walked over to the window and called Taplin. “Last pickup. Only two this time, but one of them is going to make you a rock star.”

  “Please tell me it’s Kassab,” she said.

  “You’re going to have a very good night, Annabel.”

  He hung up, took a breath, and switched his comm back to the master channel. “Kassab mission complete. Now someone tell me we know where Dehler is.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “SCHEISSE,” DEHLER HISSED.

  Since stealing the car, she’d maintained a good clip on her way out of the city, but that all changed moments ago when traffic came to a sudden stop. Ahead, all she could see were brake lights. There must be an accident or construction, she thought. Whatever it was, it was severely hampering her getaway plans.

  She consulted the map. A red line indicated the gridlock went on for nearly a kilometer.

  She growled in frustration and checked for alternate routes. More red lines covered the roads to either side of the A40, but they stretched for only a few blocks. After that, she would have clear sailing, albeit on local streets she’d have to use to get around the obstruction, because she couldn’t avoid getting back on the A40 at some point.

  Anything was better than this, though.

  She nosed her car into the left lane, provoking the ire of several other drivers, and then inched forward until she reached the next street and was able to turn off the nightmare highway.

  “SHE’S MOVING TO the left,” Dylan said.

  Nate craned his neck to see Dehler’s car. “I bet she’s going to turn. Keep on her.”

  Dylan maneuvered the taxi into the other lane.

  “Jar, you still have Dehler on camera, right?” Nate asked.

  “Of course.”

  “When she turns, we’re going to lose her, so tracking her will be on you until we can catch up again.”

  “Copy.”

  Ahead, Dehler had reached the intersection and, sure enough, she maneuvered into the turn lane. She wasn’t the only one leaving the highway, though, so the lane was even slower than those continuing down the highway.

  Nate had to fight the urge to run over to Dehler’s car and pull her out. But as satisfying as that might be, he’d be seen by dozens of people in the surrounding cars. Besides, it wasn’t as if they could speed away once he had her. All he could do was watch as she finished the turn and disappeared.

  To add to the frustration, it seemed to take a year for their taxi to reach the same corner. When they finally came around it, Nate scanned the cars ahead, certain that Dehler was long gone, but traffic wasn’t much better here than on the highway, and he spotted her on the other side of the next intersection.

  Unfortunately, the light was turning yellow, and the taxi was too far away to cross the intersection before the light went red. Traffic on Dehler’s side started moving again a good thirty seconds before Nate’s side was given the green. Now there were ten cars between them, and Dehler’s section was beginning to travel at a more normal pace.

  For the first time, Dylan turned on the taxi’s navigation map, and alternated looking between it and the road.

  “You don’t know this area?” Nate asked.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to let her shake us.” He pointed at the map. “She’s been heading west this whole time. I’ll bet everything that she’s going to work her way back to the A40 where it’s clear.”

  Nate studied the screen. “That makes sense.”

  “Glad you agree.” Dylan flicked on his blinker and edged into the center lane.

  “What are you doing?” Nate asked.

  “What you’d be paying me for, if, you know, you were paying me.”

  Nate was about to tell him to stay on Dehler when Ananke put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Trust him.”

  When they reached the next intersection, Dylan turned right.

  “Jar, she’s all yours again,” Nate said.

  “I have her.”

  Traffic moved a bit better on the new street, and the cab reached the next intersection in less than a minute. Dylan turned again. The road they were now on was not a major thoroughfare, but due to the problems on the A40, it was hosting more traffic than usual. Still, it felt like they were flying compared to their prior speed.

  “She is turning left,” Jar announced.

  “Left?” Nate said, surprised.

  “That is correct.”

  He looked at Dylan. “That’s not—”

  “Everything’s fine,” Dylan said.

  “She’s going the other way!”

  A wry smile played across Dylan’s lips. “Is she now?”

  Three seconds later, Jar said, “She is turning right.”

  Dylan’s grin grew wider.

  Nate said, “That only means she’s heading south again, not that she’s—”

  “She is turning right again,” Jar reported.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but now she’s heading west,” Dylan said. “One-way streets, they’re a pain in the ass, but if you make enough turns they’ll get you where you want to go.”

  “What if she turns again?”

  Dylan sighed. “You’re really starting to kill my mood.”

  “Dylan,” Ananke said.

  “Sorry, sorry. If she turns again it’ll only be to get around something. You say she’s trying to get out of town. The fastest way from here would be to get on the M4 or the M40. Both are to the west. It would take her twice as long at least to get anywhere else.”

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”

  Dylan glanced at him. “You’re a cleaner, right? That’s what Ananke said.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I haven’t the slightest idea how to properly get rid of a body, but I’m guessing you do without even thinking about it. Driving’s no different for me. I know what
people think when they’re behind the wheel. I know their patterns. I know what route they’ll choose depending on the situation. So relax, everything’s fine.”

  After a moment, Nate leaned back in his seat, but he couldn’t relax. Silently, he watched Dylan weave them through the city and eventually turn westbound onto a major road about half a kilometer south of the A40.

  “Jar, dear,” Dylan said. “Would you mind letting us know where Miss Dehler is at the moment?”

  “Forty meters in front of you.”

  Acting shocked, Dylan said. “Do you mean she’s on this road?”

  “That is correct. And my name is not Jardear. It is Jar.”

  “That, it is. My apologies.” He smiled at Nate.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes before a click on the comm was followed by, “Nate, it’s Quinn.”

  “Go for Nate.”

  “We are en route to your position. Jar tells us we’re about seven minutes behind you.”

  “Avoid the A40.”

  “We have. What’s your situation?”

  “We have eyes on Dehler.”

  “Good. Do you have a plan?”

  “Make our move when she stops.”

  “And when do you think that will be?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Nate said, his anger leaking out of the box he’d been trying to keep it in. “If you prefer, we can force her off the road. I’m sure that’ll make great entertainment for everyone driving by.”

  “That’s not what I—” Quinn paused. “We’ll check in when we’re closer. Quinn out.”

  “Copy,” Nate said through clenched teeth.

  “What was that all about?” Ananke asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you two having a spat?”

  “I said it was nothing.”

  “Okay, it was nothing.” She was quiet for a moment. “You do know you both sounded ridiculous.”

  Nate looked over his shoulder. “Ananke!”

  “Sorry.” She mimed zipping her mouth shut.

  DEHLER FELT ALMOST euphoric to be moving again. Granted, she now had to deal with traffic lights every few blocks, but she was certain she was making better progress than if she’d stayed on the highway.