[Quinn 01] - The Cleaner

Ramos was a local politician who'd run afoul of a drug cartel. It was apparently in someone's interests to help him out, so the Office was hired to assassinate the head of the cartel. Quinn made a few bodies disappear when things didn't go as planned. 'What about it?' Quinn asked.

'Your contact on the operation.'

Quinn thought for a moment. 'Burroughs. Some kind of Agency or NSA guy, wasn't he?'

'Something like that.'

'So?'

'He'll have some answers for you,' Peter said.

'Where do I find him?'

'He's working out of NATO headquarters.'

That gave Quinn pause. 'In Brussels?'

'Yes,' said Peter.

'Maybe you're just trying to set me up again,'

Quinn said. 'Couldn't get me in Berlin, you're taking another shot.' 'That's up to you to decide.'

'Will you still be here when I get back?' Quinn asked.

He had returned to the abandoned store in Neukolln, stopping on the way to purchase a couple of sleeping bags, blow-up mattresses, and two lightweight folding chairs. Orlando was in the room where they'd spent the night, sitting on the floor and staring intently at the portable monitor. He told her about what the Mole had learned. He then wrote down the FTP site address and the user name on a piece of paper, in case she had the chance – or more accurately the inclination – to try her hand at getting in. Finally, he recounted his conversation with Peter.

'Will you?' he repeated.

'You're kidding, right?' she said. 'If I learn something that will help me get Garrett back, I'm not staying.'

'Even if it made more sense for us to act together?'

Her eyes turned steely. 'We're talking about my son,' she said. 'Don't you understand that? The moment there's even a hint of where he is, I'm gone.'

Quinn crouched down and put a hand on her knee. 'I do understand. I'm just saying he has a better chance if we go after him together.'

She stood up and started to walk out of the room.

'Orlando,' he said.

She stopped, but didn't turn to look at him.

'Just wait here for me.'

Her breathing became deep and angry, but she didn't say no.

He rented a car and drove southwest out of Berlin into the German countryside. The recent snowstorm had created a landscape of white, but the roads were clear and traffic was moving quickly.

As he drove, he worked out his plan for Brussels. No way Quinn could approach Burroughs directly. Though they'd worked on the same team in South America, Burroughs had made his contempt for freelancers clear. He was an arrogant asshole who seemed to think his position with the government made him somehow better than the 'barely necessary scum' he was forced to associate with.

Then there was the whole Peter issue. If he'd gone bad, Quinn could be walking into another trap. So simply calling Burroughs ahead to set up a meeting was out.

But that was fine. There were ways around the problem.

After midnight, Quinn left the car in a parking garage in downtown Frankfurt. He hailed a taxi and had it take him to a hotel near the airport. Prior to going to his room, he used the twenty-four-hour business center on the hotel's first floor to check his e-mail.

Quinn accessed his primary e-mail account. There was only one message in the in-box. There were two files attached, both jpegs. He clicked to open the first one.

His eyes narrowed, and his jaw tensed.

It was a picture of Nate. He was sitting in a metal chair, tied in place. His face was battered, his eyes half open. Propped up on his lap was a copy of the International Herald. It was that morning's edition. An old technique, but still effective. It was proof of life, conveying that, as of that morning, Nate was still alive.

Afraid of what the second file might reveal, but knowing he had to look, he opened it. It was a picture of Garrett. But unlike Nate, the boy appeared unharmed. The image was a profile shot of Garrett sitting on a carpeted floor, eyes glued to a cartoon playing on a large TV. The room he was in was not familiar to Quinn. It was definitely not taken in one of the rooms at Orlando's apartment. In fact, it didn't look like Vietnam at all.

Beyond Garrett was a window, its curtain pulled open. Through it, Quinn could see another building not far away. The roof of the neighboring building was covered with snow. And then there was the sky. Heavy, gray, and cloudy. If Quinn were to venture a guess, a particularly German sky.

But maybe that's what the sender wanted him to think. Faking a picture these days was easy. Give a halfway decent computer artist a copy of Photoshop and he could have put Garrett almost anywhere.

Of course it wasn't really the setting that mattered. It was the message that both the picture of Garrett and the one of Nate represented: 'Don't fuck with us.'