Baulder called down from the bridge. “I’ve got nothing on the radar for miles.”
“Hold on,” Quinn said into the phone. He looked west first, toward the lights of the distant Irish coast, then did a sweep of the horizon. There were no other boats within sight. “Works for me.”
Nate and Howard took that as their cue. They lifted the first body off the deck and heaved it over the stern and into the water.
As they reached down for the next one, Quinn brought the phone back up.
“Consider the job done,” Quinn said. “That’s one.”
“One what?”
“Our deal. You’ve got two more jobs, then we’re clean. Goodbye, Peter.”
“Wait,” Peter said.
“What?”
“Was there … anything on the bodies?” Peter asked.
Quinn hesitated. He could still throw the tiny package he’d found into the ocean with everything else, and claim there was nothing. “I found an envelope,” Quinn said. “I assume that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Yes,” Peter said, relief in his voice. “Yes, definitely. That’s got to be it.”
“I’ll mail it to you when I get back.”
“I can’t wait that long. I need it now.”
“Well, you can’t have it now.”
“Where are you headed after this?” Peter asked. “Back to Los Angeles?”
Quinn remained silent.
“Okay, don’t tell me,” Peter said. “But wherever you’re going, can you at least make a connection close to me?”
Though Quinn wasn’t opposed to making life difficult for Peter, the envelope was obviously important enough for people to get killed over. The sooner he got rid of it, the better. “Atlanta work for you?”
“When?”
“I’ll email you,” Quinn said, then paused for a moment. “If your contact in Atlanta doesn’t show up on time, I’m not waiting around.”
He hung up.
The wind was beginning to pick up. It was brisk, bone chilling. As Quinn watched Nate and Howard toss the last of the bodies into the sea, he slipped his hands into his jacket pockets. The fingers of his right hand brushed up against the all-important manila envelope.
Whatever was inside had resulted in the deaths of four men. Quinn would be happy when it was no longer in his possession. But there was something that tickled at the back of his mind, that little internal warning signal he’d had since birth. This time it was telling him that getting rid of the package might not be the end of things.
He hated that feeling.
CHAPTER
5
ONE WEEK LATER
ROOM 531 OF THE GEIST HOTEL IN WASHINGTON, D.C. The only light was the blue-white glow emanating from ten wide-screen monitors. But for the three men standing together in front of the displays, that was more than enough. Peter, head of the Office, was more or less the host. It was his assistant who had arranged for the room, his techs who’d set up the equipment, and his agent standing guard near the suite’s exit. But it was really the other two men who were running the show. They were his clients, after all.
His two guests stood together, separating themselves from Peter as much as possible in the small space available. Except for their age difference, and the fact that the younger one appeared to be of Asian descent, they were almost like twins. Dark tailored suits, white shirts, and expensive Italian shoes. Even their hair was cut the same, close cropped with hardly enough left on top to run a comb through. The man closest to Peter was named Robert Chercover. Older than his associate by at least three decades, he was the one ultimately in charge. His title was purposely vague: Special Assistant to the Director of National Intelligence. But Peter knew very well what it meant. Chercover was in charge of handling problems no one else could be trusted with.
The man with him had been introduced as Kevin Furuta. Peter had never dealt with the man before, but he immediately knew he didn’t like him. At most, he was in his mid-thirties, yet he carried himself like he was Peter’s superior. The son of a bitch probably didn’t even have a quarter of the experience Peter had amassed. But Peter had to admit Furuta was in better shape, something the asshole didn’t seem to have a problem emphasizing. Any time he would talk, he would turn with his whole body toward Peter with his chest puffed out, and his arms held out to the side like his muscles were too big for his limbs to lie flat against his body. He appeared to enjoy the fact that at about six feet tall, he towered a good half foot over Peter. Peter took comfort in the knowledge that despite Furuta’s larger size, he would have no problem taking the bigger man in a fight. No problem at all.
In essence, the hotel room had been set up as a mobile strategic operations center. The furniture had been pushed to the side, making way for several long, portable tables. These had been arranged in a loose U shape. The ten monitors were set up on two sides of the U. On the third side were several pieces of equipment: receivers and computer-controlled hard drives both feeding and recording the images being shown.
All the screens were active. Those along the left displayed images from inside the hotel itself: the front and rear entrances, the main lobby, and the hallway on the fifth floor outside room 531. The images on the four monitors along the bottom of the U were murkier, and from a location nowhere near the Geist Hotel. These monitors had been numbered one through four right-to-left, the numbers superimposed in the lower right corner like
