The Cleaner

CHAPTER 22

Quinn awoke four hours later. It was morning and the bedroom was lit by the weak winter sun. Beside him, Sophie lay on her side, covered by the down comforter. If her habits were the same as before, she wouldn’t stir for hours.

He found his clothes in the living room where they’d been dropped the night before. As he pulled them on, he took a look around the room. Little had changed in Sophie’s apartment during the time he’d been away. The pictures, the cracks in the walls, the overstuffed armchair, everything seemed the same as it had been that first night she’d brought him here, long ago.

He’d met Sophie between projects. His short vacation, as he had called it at first, had turned into a two-month affair. Even then, he didn’t know why he stayed. He had liked Sophie, and enjoyed her company. But there wasn’t much more. The only reason he could come up with was he’d been alone for a long time prior to her. Not one of the most stellar reasons for starting a relationship, but an all too common one for Quinn.

It was at the Saturday morning outdoor antiques market near the Tiergarten S-bahn station when he first saw her. Sophie had come there with friends, and Quinn, alone, had followed them for a while, until Sophie stopped by herself at a stall selling old books.

They’d fallen into conversation easily. He used his standard cover, claiming to be a bank consultant helping one of his international clients with a business deal in Berlin. She didn’t probe further — few people ever did. Banking was one of those professions that, unless one was in it, was an accepted enigma. Still, if he ever did stumble across somebody who did know the business, he was educated enough to talk a good game.

Within the first week, he’d moved out of his hotel and into her apartment. They had spent hours and hours making love. Many times, after their passion had been sated, she’d lead him through the dining area next to her kitchen, then out the window onto a short expanse of roof at the back of the building. She had turned the area into a makeshift patio. There was a wooden table, a few mismatched chairs, and several ceramic pots filled with tomato plants. “My farm,” she called it. For hours they’d sit in the chairs and drink wine or beer and stare at the stars, talking about nothing at all.

But after a while Durrie’s rule of romantic entanglements kicked in, and Quinn was gone, leaving one morning while she was sleeping, a short note his only goodbye.

Now, as Quinn slipped on his shoes, he couldn’t help thinking he was doing it again. He paused for a moment, listening to see if she might have woken up. But the only noise from the bedroom was the breathing of a woman fully asleep.

Quinn picked up his backpack and opened the door.

Ku’damm was already crowded by the time he returned. He moved smoothly through the mixed groups of tourists and locals, his mission urgent but his pace relaxed. When he checked the staircase handrail at the mall, though, his was still the only marker. He added a second square near the first, letting his team know he was still safe, then melded back into the crowd walking into the mall.

For the moment, his only assets were those he carried in his backpack: his phone, the SIG Sauer and three additional magazines, six remaining miniature cameras, a portable monitor to check the camera angles as he was setting them up the night before, his set of IDs, a knife, his lock picks set, a small first-aid kit, and a pair of lightweight binoculars with limited night vision. Money wouldn’t be a problem. He had plenty of accounts under names no one knew but him and were therefore untraceable.

What he didn’t have was his computer. An annoyance, but not the end of the world. No one but Quinn would ever be able to access any of the data on his hard drive. It would simply purge itself if anyone tried. Most of what the machine contained was backed up on disks in L.A. anyway. What information he did need was on the flash memory stick in his pocket. If he needed to access it, he could buy computer time at dozens of places all over the city.

His most immediate need was clothes. He found a department store and picked up enough items to last him a couple of days. He paid for his items in cash, then changed in the store’s bathroom. Once he was ready, he went in search of a pay phone.

“Could you connect me to Herr MacDonald’s room, please?”

Quinn was standing in a phone booth outside a bakery, not far from where he’d purchased his clothes. His cell phone was in his backpack. Until he bought a new charging unit, he needed to preserve the phone’s battery as long as he could.

“I’m sorry, sir,” a male voice said. “Herr MacDonald checked out this morning.”

“Danke,” Quinn said. He hung up.

He took a deep breath. MacDonald had been the name he’d used to check into the Four Seasons. Even if Orlando had ditched the room as a precaution, she wouldn’t have checked out. It only confirmed what he’d already expected. Borko had somehow traced their encrypted communications signal back to the hotel while Quinn was in the water plant. Quinn had to assume they’d taken Orlando in the process.

A call to the Dorint Hotel yielded the same results.

There was a tap on the door behind him. Quinn glanced over his shoulder. An impatient-looking teenage girl stared at him through the glass.

Quinn nodded, then opened the door and stepped out.

Finding Orlando and Nate was now his top priority. And as he walked away, he knew exactly where to start.

Duke had been operating out of Berlin for a long time. Too long, actually. And that was good because he’d done things. Stupid things. Things smart people in the business didn’t do no matter how long they lived somewhere. Duke wasn’t that smart. Just lucky.

Quinn sat in the driver’s seat of a Volvo station wagon he’d stolen a half hour earlier in Ku’damm. He was parked across the street from a nightclub on Kaiser Friedrich Strasse. It was early yet, and the club didn’t open for several hours. But there was already plenty of activity: cases of alcohol being delivered, windows being cleaned, sidewalks being swept.

It was Duke’s place. He probably thought of it as a cover, but to Quinn it was a liability. “Always keep a low profile,” Durrie had said. “Don’t be flashy. Flashy gets you killed. You can make enough money in this business that you don’t have to throw it around. Are you listening to me?”

Quinn had listened. But apparently no one had taken the time to make Duke understand. Because, as he did every morning, Duke pulled up in front of the club in the same Mercedes sedan he’d driven Quinn around in the day before.

Duke was alone. His arrogance his downfall. A “Berlin is my town, nobody can get to me here” kind of attitude. Stupid, Quinn thought.

His purpose for coming to the club this early was to check the receipts from the night before. Quinn knew this from the last time he’d worked with the man. Back then Duke had bragged about his businesses, how he liked to start each day knowing exactly what was going on. And how, specifically, he would begin with an 11 a.m. stop at La Maison du Chat — the not so subtle name for his club.

Patterns. Idiotic, thoughtless patterns.

Quinn watched the big man get out of his car and waddle into the club. Twenty minutes later, Duke reappeared at the door, smiling. He turned and said something to someone inside before lumbering back to his car.

As Duke started his Mercedes and pulled away from the curb, Quinn started the Volvo. He waited until the Mercedes was half a block away, then made a U-turn to follow.

They drove across town, stopping finally in front of a jewelry store. Again Quinn waited while Duke went inside. This errand didn’t take nearly as long. Apparently, the receipts here were less than desired. There was no smile on Duke’s face as he returned to his car.

They spent two hours going from business to business. Duke may not have been very smart when it came to the intelligence game, but he obviously knew how to diversify his interests. He seemed to have his hand in a little bit of everything: a nightclub, several jewelry stores, some restaurants, an accounting office, a promotions company, over a dozen magazine kiosks. Still, even if all were moneymakers, none would have paid him as much as brokering a single good undercover job. Of course, from Duke’s point of view, at least none of these other ventures could get him killed.

Just after 2:00 p.m., the Mercedes turned down a residential street and stopped near the end of the block in front of an apartment building. This was a new twist. Quinn had no idea if it was where Duke lived or just another source of cash, but he was getting tired of simply following the man around. And unlike any of the other stops, this one might provide an opportunity for a private conversation.

Quinn removed his gun, suppressor, knife, and set of lock picks from his backpack. He put all but the gun into the pockets of his jacket. After Duke exited his car, Quinn got out of the Volvo and slipped the gun under his waistband at the small of his back.

The building Duke had parked in front of was an old five-story structure that needed a new coat of paint. The other buildings on the street weren’t in much better shape. There was a short staircase that led up from the sidewalk to a faded blue door.

Quinn closed the gap as Duke labored up the stairs. When Duke entered the building, Quinn jogged up the steps and grabbed the door just before it closed.

He froze in position and listened carefully to make sure Duke hadn’t heard him. There were footsteps, slow and natural. Not the rushing footsteps of someone who thought he was in danger. Quinn waited until they faded, then opened the door and slipped inside.

He found himself in a dingy entrance hall. A bicycle was chained to a metal pipe running up the side of the wall and into the ceiling. To Quinn’s left were a series of battered, built-in mailboxes. In front of him was another door that led into the main part of the building. The door was propped open, a brick holding it in place. By the look of things, the door appeared to have been in that position for years. Beyond it was a staircase leading up and to the right, and a hallway that jogged around the stairs heading back toward the rear of the building.

Quinn passed through the open doorway, stopping at the base of the stairs. The air inside smelled of mold and food and urine. The place was just a few notches above uninhabitable. Duke wouldn’t have lived in this building. He had to be here for something else.

Using the staircase as cover, Quinn leaned around the banister and looked down the hall expecting to see Duke, but it was deserted. There was a faint whining sound coming from down the hallway, though. Moving cautiously to investigate, he found the cause halfway down in a small alcove.

An elevator.

A moment later the whining stopped abruptly. Duke had apparently arrived at his destination. Unfortunately, there was no indicator to show Quinn which floor he had stopped on. But the building wasn’t that high, and unlike Duke, Quinn had no problem with exercise. He returned to the stairs and mounted them in search of his former client.

Quinn found Duke on the fourth floor knocking on a door halfway down the hall. Staying in the shadows of the stairwell, Quinn waited.

The door opened, and an elderly woman stuck her head out. “Frau Russ,” Duke said. “Ich müss mit Ihnen reden.”

“Ja, Herr Reimers,” she said. “Einen Moment, bitte.”

The woman disappeared back into the room, leaving the door ajar. Quinn moved silently into the hall. As he neared Duke, he pretended to reach into his pocket as if searching for something, tilting his head down to help conceal his identity. Duke glanced at him, then returned his attention to the old woman’s apartment.

As Quinn was about to pass the fat man, he stopped. It took Duke a moment to realize that something was up. As he turned, Quinn smiled.

“Guten tag, Herr Reimers,” Quinn said.