Quinn held passports in many names. Louis Hayden was the one he'd chosen for this trip, it having the benefit of being an identity he'd never used previously. Nate was traveling under the name Raymond James. 'Credit card,' he said, removing from his wallet one of the several he had with the Hayden alias on it.
After he paid, the woman busied herself at her computer arranging their tickets. Quinn casually scanned the terminal again. It didn't take him long to identify two suspicious types near the front entrance. They were big guys, both dressed in dark gray business suits. They seemed to be paying particularly close attention to the people coming into the building. Surprisingly, Nate seemed to have noticed them, too. He looked at Quinn, trying but failing to hide his concern. Quinn shrugged and gave him a quick smile.
'Here you are,' the agent said. She set the tickets and passports on the top of the counter. 'Any luggage?'
Quinn shook his head. 'Just our carry-ons.' She smiled in approval, no doubt guessing they were seasoned travelers. 'Enjoy your flight.' 'Thank you,' he said. 'We will.'
Quinn eased his chair back, then glanced out the window at the Pacific Ocean, thirty thousand feet below. It was the first time in nearly twelve hours he wasn't doing anything. Physically, he was exhausted.
Nate was across the cabin, three rows back. Quinn had offered him a sleeping pill before they boarded, and apparently it had worked quickly. Nate's head lolled to the side, his eyes closed.
Quinn let his mind drift, trying not to think of anything at all. He needed to unwind and relax. More than anything, he knew he needed to sleep. But his mind kept replaying the events of the last twelve hours: Gibson on his porch, Peter on the phone, Nate on the floor, and
A flight attendant touched him on the shoulder. 'Pad Thai or chicken curry with rice?' she asked.
Quinn glanced at his watch and was surprised to find several hours had already passed. Sometime during his mental storm he must have actually dozed off. 'Pad Thai,' he said.
'And to drink?'
'Just water.'
As he ate his food he forced himself to concentrate on trying to figure out who Gibson might have been working for, and why they had targeted Quinn.
He had searched Gibson's body thoroughly before turning it over to the local disposal guy. He hadn't expected to discover anything useful, and he'd been right. Other than the tools of the trade in his bag, the only thing Gibson had on him was three hundred dollars in cash.
It was a pretty fair guess that whoever had hired him had deep pockets, enough to fund a small-scale, one- night war on the Office. How many agents had they gone after? Five? Six? A dozen? More? Whatever the number, from the sound of things, Quinn getting the upper hand on Gibson appeared to be the exception. Others, apparently, hadn't been so lucky.
That someone had attempted to pull one off was hard to believe. Yet it looked like it had happened. And, more surprisingly, it seemed to have been successful.
It was mind-blowing, really. A disruption almost
Apparently, someone hadn't been paying attention when that lesson had been taught.
Once his tray had been removed, Quinn leaned his chair back as far as it would go. His thoughts were taking him nowhere, and his lack of sleep wasn't helping. He closed his eyes, hoping his mind would settle down and allow him the rest he needed. But his thoughts took one final turn back to the core question.
Why him? He wasn't a member of the Office. He was only a freelancer. He should have been exempt, right?
As sleep began to take hold of him, an answer started drifting toward the surface. Nothing fully formed. More of a hunch, really.
Somewhere between Los Angeles, a brief stop in Osaka, and landing in Bangkok, they lost Sunday. Travel to Asia from the States was always painful that way, the international date line exacting its toll for daring to travel nearly halfway around the world.
Quinn and Nate were only in Thailand a few hours before they caught a connecting flight out of the country. Nate seemed both disappointed and confused when Quinn said their trip wasn't over. But to his credit, he kept his questions to himself. The second flight was a short trip, but it took them a million miles from everywhere else.
After the plane landed and began taxiing to the terminal, a flight attendant's voice came over the public address system. 'Thai Airways would like to welcome you to Ho Chi Minh City.'
It was midmorning in Vietnam, and the heat was rippling off the tarmac. There were a few clouds in the distance, but otherwise the sky was clear. Quinn looked around the interior of the cabin. Several people were already pulling out bags and purses from under the seats where they'd been stowed. Quinn was content to sit quietly and wait.
Before he left home, he'd cleaned out his safe, taking everything except his gun. In addition to his laptop computer, he had a dozen passports: American, Canadian, Swiss, Finnish, German, Russian – each in a different name. Plus corresponding sets of credit cards, ten thousand U.S.
dollars in cash, a two-gigabyte flash memory stick on which was stored hundreds of contacts and other information, and a notebook filled with pages and pages of visas for various countries around the world. All the sensitive material was stored in a false hard-plastic lining in his suitcase. If he was ever asked to start up his laptop at a security checkpoint, the desktop that would appear would look like that of a typical businessman. Charts and graphics and spreadsheets, all very serious-looking but none important enough to draw undue attention.
