For half a minute neither of them spoke. Then the man said, “My name isn’t going to tell you if the information is any good.”
“Then tell me something that will.”
Again, silence.
“I know who you are,” the man said.
“Don’t count on it.”
The man let out a small laugh. “You’re that cleaner.”
Quinn kept his eyes forward and his left hand lying across the grip of his pistol, his outward demeanor as cool as ever.
“Quinn,” Primus said. “Jonathan Quinn.”
Quinn did nothing to confirm or deny.
“You were in Singapore last September. Right?”
Quinn remained quiet.
“You had an unfortunate encounter with an assassin. I believe she killed a friend of yours.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Me?” the man said. “I’m one of the ones she worked for.”
CHAPTER
21
HOW HE KEPT FROM PULLING THE TRIGGER OF HIS SIG, Quinn never knew. He wanted to. He wanted to so much that his index finger ached from desire. He wanted to see the expression on Primus’s face as one of Quinn’s bullets shredded the man’s insides.
If he was who he said he was … if he was in charge of the assassin who had killed Quinn’s friend Steven Markoff the year before in a quest to do the same to a U.S. congressman, then he was right. The only thing keeping him alive was the information in his head.
And if he was who he said he was, it meant one other thing, too.
He was a member of the LP.
Only why would the LP be trying to work
A year before, Quinn hadn’t even heard of the group, and now here they were again. While his knowledge of the organization had grown in the last year, it was still limited. That first time he’d crossed them, Peter had told him all he knew: that the LP was a shadow organization working from both within and without the U.S. government, that they had their own agenda, a desire to use the government for their own gains, taking an active hand in ensuring that their investments would flourish. Conveniently, those investments seemed to be wrapped up in the defense and security industries. So the LP’s main tools for keeping those industries flourishing was destabilization and the occasional bout of chaos.
After his encounter with the LP in Singapore, Quinn had wanted to learn more. So with Orlando’s help, he began subtly nosing around. It wasn’t long before they both suspected the LP’s financial angle was a means, not the end, and that the desire for power, real political power, was the main objective. And to achieve this, they’d inject a bit of chaos and instability throughout the world whenever they felt it necessary.
Though Orlando couldn’t prove it with facts, she’d uncovered enough to know the LP played a large role in the Asian market crisis of the late 1990s. And that was only the beginning. It had only been a test for what both she and Quinn now suspected was a grander scheme, one that began the previous year. Soaring gas prices, an American mortgage crisis, then the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the publicly traded, federal mortgage organizations that had a hand in trillions of dollars of American home loans, both bought out mid-crisis by the U.S. government. And it didn’t end there. Financial institutions, near self-implosion, sold to other institutions for bargain-basement prices. Countrywide, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch. A consolidation of power, and chaos for the everyday man.
The only question was, what was their endgame? Because it certainly seemed like they were moving toward something. But neither Quinn nor Orlando could come up with an answer. So Quinn had turned over what they’d learned to Peter, then moved on.
According to Peter, he’d been unable to connect any more dots. He needed someone who had knowledge of the details. Someone who knew the LP, was maybe even a part of it. But no one had ever officially been identified as a member of the organization, so there had been no one to interrogate. Worse yet, most high-level government members didn’t even believe the LP existed.
DDNI Jackson had been one of the few believers. And the revelation of Primus’s connection to the LP at least cleared up in Quinn’s mind why the DDNI had been so actively involved. The DDNI would have had to proceed with caution, but here was a potential source
Quinn glanced at the man, his eyes hard and angry. “Name,” he said.
“I told you, you don’t need my name.”
Quinn adjusted the gun in his hand, making sure his movement was broad enough to draw the attention of his passenger. Since he was keeping his eyes on the road, he didn’t see the man look at the weapon, but he did feel Primus shift in his seat, his sense of superiority come down a notch.
“I will kill you,” Quinn said. “I don’t give a shit about whatever information you have. If you don’t answer my questions, I will kill you. Is that clear?”
A hesitation, then, “Your boss at the Office won’t be too happy if you did.”
