Shadow of Betrayal

He moved the phone away from his ear and tried to let his mind go blank for a second. He needed to clear away all the conflicting thoughts that were ramming against one another. Only then would he be able to truly assess the situation.

In the distance he could see a police helicopter circling above the Beverly Center. It wasn’t much more than a point of light, but he watched it go round and round several times before he brought the phone back up to his ear.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. You will tell me everything you know,” Quinn said. “You will send me copies of any information you have. And you’ll do it right now.”

“So you’ll stay on it?” Peter asked.

“That was our deal, wasn’t it?” Quinn said. “But you need to know moving forward, whether my team and I continue is going to be a minute-to-minute decision.”

“Okay … okay. I can live with that. I … appreciate it.”

In the distance, the helicopter had moved off in search of trouble elsewhere.

“Talk,” Quinn said.

CHAPTER 24

Peter was true to his word, and as soon as he had finished briefing Quinn on the phone, he uploaded everything he had to a secure FTP site. Quinn booted Nate off the laptop for a few moments so he could download and print out all the documents. Stack of paper in hand, he got out of Nate’s way and moved over to the kitchen counter.

Peter had done the same thing to Deputy Director Jackson that Quinn was doing to him, demanding everything the DDNI had from and about Primus. There was almost two years’ worth of material. Most was information passed on before Hardwick had revealed his LP ties. The information on the Odessa kidnapping was there, as was the tip about the arms dealer’s trip to Thailand. There were other things, too. Guerrilla cells in South America, money transfers between terrorist organizations, two potential assassination attempts.

Good stuff all, and a treasure trove that would make whoever possessed it look like a superstar. But from all Quinn could tell, the DDNI didn’t use any of his newly obtained knowledge to improve his position. Instead he acted on it, often passing tips to appropriate governments anonymously. No personal gain, just doing the job he was hired to do.

Quinn opened the refrigerator to grab a beer before diving into the stuff that was most relevant, the information concerning the group who had approached the LP.

“Can I have one of those?” Nate asked, looking up from the laptop.

“Depends. You get anything yet?” Quinn asked, already reaching for the second bottle.

“I think so,” Nate said. “At first I did all the basic searches. Public sites and that kind of stuff.”

Quinn set the bottles on the counter and popped the tops, letting Nate go over his process uninterrupted. It was the way Quinn had taught him to operate if time permitted. Quinn had said it was so that he’d be able to evaluate Nate’s progress. That had been true at first. But Quinn had come more and more to trust Nate’s abilities, so now it was just habit.

“I got a couple hits,” Nate went on. “But they were mostly about the state bird of Alabama. But I did find a Yellowhammer Lake in California.”

“That sounds promising,” Quinn said as he handed Nate a beer.

“Thanks,” Nate said. They both took a drink. “I thought so at first, too. But it’s remote. Yosemite area. You have to hike into it. So I thought I should keep digging.”

“Let me guess,” Quinn said. “Couldn’t find anything.”

“Close, but you’d be wrong. I came across a few odd entries that mentioned an actual place called Yellowhammer, and it didn’t seem like they were talking about a lake. The first was so random I thought someone must have mistyped it.”

“I’m guessing there’s a ‘but’ here.”

“Right,” Nate said. “The second one. It was on a blog that posts wartime letters. Some of them from as far back as the Revolution. I found another mention in one of the letters. It was dated near the end of World War II. Some guy writing home to his wife saying he’d been assigned to a place called Yellowhammer.” Nate turned to the computer. “I’ll read it to you.”

He clicked one of the tabs in his browser, then skimmed the text on the screen with his finger.

“‘They’re sending me to Yellowhammer until my time’s up. I finally get to go to California, I guess, but it’s so far from you. At least it’s only four months and then I’ll be home. I do wish I was there now.’ Goes on for a little while longer, but that’s the important part.”

“That could be anything,” Quinn said. “The military loves code names. Might not even be a place at all, but an operation.”

“I had the same thought.”

“Another ‘but’?”

Nate smiled. “Orlando’s been giving me tips for accessing some less public sources.”

“Skip the rundown, and tell me what you found.”

“There was a government facility, here in California, called Yellowhammer. The last mention of it was in the early sixties, a few months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was apparently decommissioned then.”

“Where exactly is it?”

“See, that’s the funny thing. I’ve found nothing on that anywhere. I found the name. I know it existed. I’m just trying to pinpoint it now.”

Quinn stared down at the laptop, not really looking at the words on the screen. A secret facility? A secret decommissioned facility? That didn’t make Quinn feel very good. But it jibed with Hardwick’s story.

“All right,” Quinn said. “Keep at it. Also send what you’ve found to Peter. Maybe he can use his resources to dig something up.”

“Yeah,” Nate said. “I was going to suggest that.”

“Were you?” Quinn said.

Nate brought up a window on the laptop that had been hidden. “I’ve got the email ready to go.”

Quinn was impressed, but kept his face blank. Once again, he had taken to underestimating Nate.

“Send it,” he said. “I’m going to go check on Orlando.” He picked up the papers from where he’d left them on the counter. “Don’t stay up all night. I have a feeling we’re going to be on the move tomorrow.” He paused as he was about to walk out. “Nate. Good work.”

Downstairs he found Orlando in the same position she’d been in when he’d watched her fall asleep. She didn’t even twitch as he sat beside her and checked her pulse. Steady and strong. By all accounts she was doing fine.

It should have made him happy, but he was pissed that she was in this condition at all. The LP had taken the leg of his apprentice the year before, and they had come within inches of paralyzing the woman he loved. Whether it was the LP behind the shootings or not didn’t really matter. They were involved, and that was enough. Those sons of bitches had screwed with Quinn too much. He only wished there was something he could do about it.

He took his beer and the papers out onto the small balcony off the back of his bedroom. There was a chair, and a table, with a light plugged in to a socket at the base of the wall. Often a gentle breeze would move through the hills, but tonight the air was still.

He took another swig of his beer, then dove in. Though there were dozens of pages, most were painfully short on details. The first half-dozen items had been email exchanges, each no more than two lines long. The final one arranged for a meeting where Primus promised to hand over tangible information. Looking at the log Peter had sent along, this meeting took place in Philadelphia three weeks before the Ireland disaster.

The tangible info turned out to be an initial tracking report on someone identified at the time simply as Alpha, but who Hardwick claimed was Leo Tucker. The document was very similar to the one Peter had passed on to