The Cleaner

CHAPTER 34

Quinn left the store and headed southeast on Karl Marx Strasse toward Neukölln station. On the way over, he used the number Orlando had given him and called the Mole.

“I received…your payment…it was more than…expected.”

“Consider it an advance on future requests,” Quinn said. “Orlando said you have some information for me.”

“Something has actually come…to us in the last…hour…concerning the location of…Orlando’s son.”

“The picture?”

“Not…the picture…Garrett left…Vietnam the day after Orlando did…he was with a man…Caucasian…they flew to Hong Kong…but from there no more trace.”

“That’s the whole description?”

“The man…may have had an…accent…Australian.”

Tucker, Quinn thought. Of course.

“How did he get him out of the country?”

“He claimed he had…adopted Garrett…he presented all the…correct paperwork.”

“Son of a bitch,” Quinn said. Piper had planned things well.

“As for the picture,” the Mole went on. “There is nothing…to tell yet.”

“It is faked, then,” Quinn said.

“No…we don’t…believe so.”

Quinn paused, digesting the information. “But you don’t think you can place the location.”

“It is…possible…there are…some geological markers…that may help us…but I don’t think…very likely.”

Quinn couldn’t remember seeing any markers, geological or otherwise, but if there were, that was something anyway. A chance.

“This isn’t why you called me earlier, though, is it?”

“I think perhaps…you have…made a misjudgment…concerning the situation.”

“What misjudgment?”

“The bio-agent,” the Mole said.

“The IOMP convention isn’t the target, is it?”

“Then…you already know.”

“I wasn’t even sure of that,” Quinn said. “If you know more, tell me.”

There was a long silence.

“It is very…ambitious,” the Mole began. “Remember…we only had the…damaged tissue…sample to work…with…nerve tissue it…turns out…still…we could only…guess.”

“But you know what it is, don’t you?”

“We were able…to download…the documents from the…address…on the bracelet.”

“You figured out the password?” Quinn said, surprised.

There was a pause. “Yes.”

“What did you find?”

“Two files…a document…and a video clip.”

“And?”

“The document…contains a breakdown…of the virus…it helped us to…understand why it was…not easily categorized…it has been tailored.”

“Tailored?”

“The document…had a brief note from Jansen…shall I read it…to you?”

“Okay,” Quinn said, unsure he really wanted to hear.

“‘The attached breakdown is what…the people paying…the bills have…dubbed an act of…purification,’” the Mole read. “‘What they believe…their scientists have created is basically…a genocide bug…designed specifically to…affect a targeted…population…what they could not…achieve in war…they think they…can achieve with this…new form of…ethnic cleansing.’”

The world around Quinn seemed to disappear. The cars, the trucks, the people. He could hear none of them, see none of them.

“These are individuals…who…think in old ways,” the Mole said, no longer reading. “Some ancestral fights…never seem to end…particularly when the…objects of their anger…share the same land…the same water…the same air…I would say by the…identity of the virus…base…the level of hatred…is extremely harsh.”

“So you do know what the base is?”

“It was difficult to…determine that at…first because…of the alterations…but Jansen’s documents told us…what…to look for…call it…a…supervirus…resistant to treatment…including previous…inoculations…easy to spread.”

“What is it?”

“Polio,” the Mole said. “A killer…and a maimer…all in one.”

Quinn held the phone tightly against his ear. He didn’t want to breathe or speak or even think anymore. He wanted to be out, to be far, far away. But running was not an option for him. Garrett needed him.

No, he thought. Not just Garrett.

“Who’s the target?” he asked.

“Muslims.”

“Arabs,” Quinn said in disbelief.

“No…you misunderstand…Bosnianks…Bosnian Muslims…”

Sonofafuckingbitch. “Borko’s a Serb,” Quinn said.

“Yes…but an…extremist…never forget that.”

Quinn’s breath caught in his throat. What had he heard on the news? It was while he was waiting at Sophie’s, while Dr. Garber examined Nate. There was a gathering, a meeting, something. What the hell was it? “It’s not the IOMP convention,” Quinn said as the memory came back to him. “It’s the EU Friendship Conference on the Balkans. It starts—”

“Tomorrow,” the Mole said.

The world that had disappeared a moment ago came rushing back at Quinn. He suddenly felt like he was being watched, that at any second the knowledge he now possessed would get him killed.

“It is…worse than you…think.”

“What do you mean?”

“Watch…the video.”

The idea of creating a disease to kill a specific section of the population made Quinn want to vomit on the spot. It was extremism in the severest of forms. If they were successful, the act would rival what Adolf Hitler had done to the Jews during World War II.

The choice of disease was revealing, too. Polio. Millions would die. And many of those who didn’t perish early on would be crippled and eventually have the life squeezed painfully out of them. Gruesome, hideous, atrocious, immoral. No word Quinn could think of seemed strong enough.

The Mole’s revelation did clear up one thing, though. Campobello. Quinn should have seen it earlier. Taggert, or rather Jansen, had been trying to deliver the message even after he died. It was right there on his driver’s license. Not Campobello, Nevada. Campobello Island. The one off the coast of Maine, where FDR had had a summer home. The same famous home he’d been in when he learned of his own polio diagnosis.

There was a small shopping mall on Karl Marx Strasse, near the north end of Neukölln. Quinn found an American-style burger place on the second floor with a couple of public Internet stations set up in the lobby.

The first thing he did was use the password the Mole had given him to download the video and save it to his memory stick. He resisted the temptation to watch it right away. There were too many people around.

Next, he pulled up a new window. He had a hunch, and he needed to see if he was right.

Within seconds he was on the website for Grob Communications. A link on the left side of the screen led him to a list of upcoming events being serviced to some extent or another by Duke’s company. Most of the list comprised names of German organizations holding meetings and conferences. But two others stood out:

And several items below it:

Quinn clicked on the conference. There were lists of which countries had accepted the invitation to attend and who they were sending as representatives. Grob Communications was organizing several events, including the opening luncheon at the St. Martin Hotel the following day — only hours after Borko’s deadline for shipment.

All the member nations of the EU would be represented, as well as Russia, Ukraine, and Switzerland. But the stars of the show were Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Each nation was sending dozens of attendees. By the looks of the list, most were civilians, people in positions of influence. The government officials on the list seemed to be mid-level office holders, probably the people who really got the work done. Quinn noted that the largest delegation by far was from Bosnia.

He sat back, letting it all sink in. After a few moments, he clicked off the Grob Communications website. He sent a final e-mail to the Mole, then went back outside and called Peter.

“Christ, Quinn. What the hell is going on?”

“Have you figured out who your double agent is yet?” Quinn asked.

“I told you. There is no double agent.”

After what Quinn had learned in Brussels, he’d begun to suspect that himself, but he wanted to hear the whole story from Peter. “Then who fed Borko the info he needed to take you down?”

There was a pause, then Peter said, “I know you’ve talked to Burroughs. So you know Jills was working for us.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?”

“I had clients. Certain trusts that couldn’t be broken.”

“Yet you rolled over on Burroughs.”

“I gave you the name of someone you could talk to,” Peter said. “That’s all.”

Quinn shook his head. In Peter’s world, he had just been trying to save face. Even in desperation, he’d been unwilling to compromise his integrity. Not because of any moral code, but because doing so might jeopardize future work.

“What about Jills?”

“She wasn’t just a one-time hire. She’d started working for me fulltime six months ago. Not ops work. She was here with me, working on project planning. I put her on the Taggert job because I trusted her and needed it done right.”

“And you didn’t want to waste one of your top guys on such an easy gig,” Quinn guessed.

No answer at first, then, “That, too.”

“So she knew everything,” Quinn said, connecting the pieces. “And before they killed her, they made her talk.”

Neither of them spoke for several seconds.

Quinn finally broke the silence. “Listen to me. You need to do exactly what I say. If you don’t hear from me in the next twenty-four hours, shut it all down. Airports, harbors, border crossings. Everything.”

“Why?”

Quinn hung up the phone without another word.

The cab dropped Quinn off a block from Sophie’s place. He hadn’t intended to come back so soon, but when he called after he’d finished with Peter, Sophie told him Nate had woken up for a while that morning. Quinn couldn’t pass up an opportunity to talk to his apprentice and see if he might be able to tell him something that could help.

First, though, he had called Orlando and told her what he’d learned from the Mole. He wanted to leave out the part about Garrett’s abduction, but he knew that wasn’t an option. Her reaction was several moments of silence followed by a terse “What are we going to do about it?”

Quinn described the plan that he’d worked up. She hadn’t liked it, but she couldn’t suggest anything better. They went over a list of things they could need. Though some of the items were unusual, Orlando was confident she could find everything.

As Quinn walked toward Sophie’s place, he saw Dr. Garber come out the front door. Quinn jogged to catch up to him. The doctor glanced nervously over his shoulder as Quinn approached. But when he saw that it was Quinn, he slowed his pace.

“Herr Quinn,” the doctor greeted him.

“How is he?”

“As good as possible, after one night. He’ll be good as okay soon enough. Until then, he should take it very easy.”

“Thanks,” Quinn said. “I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

Quinn was about to turn around and go back to Sophie’s place, but something in the doctor’s manner made him hesitate.

“I won’t be coming back,” the doctor said.

“What? Why?”

“This is too dangerous, even for me. Everyone is looking for you. This morning I had a visitor. Someone I’ve never met before. But he seemed to know that you and I have worked together in the past. I told him I hadn’t heard from you in two years. I’m not sure he was convinced. But he did say if I saw you, I should call him.”

“He gave you a number?”

The doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. On the back someone had handwritten a telephone number. On the front, professionally printed in black ink, was the name Dahl.

“Here,” he said, handing the card to Quinn. “This way I won’t be tempted.”

Nate’s eyes were closed when Quinn entered the guest room. Sophie had barely said a word to him when she had let him in. Now she was busying herself in the kitchen.

The wooden chair was still beside the bed where Quinn had left it. As he sat down, he said, “Nate?”

Nate’s eyelids fluttered, then parted slightly.

“It’s Quinn.”

“Quinn?” Nate’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Where the hell have you been?

He smiled. “You want something to drink?”

“Water.”

There was a glass of it on the nightstand. Quinn picked it up and held it to Nate’s lips. At first Nate only took a sip. But as Quinn started to move the glass away, Nate said he wanted more. By the time he leaned back against the pillow, the glass was nearly empty.

“How’re you feeling?” Quinn asked.

“Like someone threw me under a train,” he answered. “How do I look?”

“I think that’s probably a fair assessment.”

“Great,” Nate said, his voice flat. He paused. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

“I had some time on my hands.”

Nate started to laugh, but ended up wincing in pain.

“You all right?” Quinn asked.

“Sure,” Nate said. “Never better.”

Quinn said, “Do you remember much?”

“More than I wish I did.”

Nate told Quinn he had never seen who had taken him out that night at the water plant. He had been standing in position, watching the street for over an hour, then something painful slammed into his right thigh. Needle-like, he said. The next thing he knew, he woke up in the hotel room.

“Sometimes they’d beat me up right there,” Nate said. “Sometimes they’d take me down the hall to another room. All the furniture had been cleared out. There was a rope hanging down from the ceiling. They’d string me up by my wrists. Ask me questions. Throw a few punches.”

“What did they ask?”

“Questions about you. About Orlando. What you were doing. Where you might hide out. How we were supposed to communicate with each other if the op was blown.”

“You didn’t tell them that,” Quinn said.

Nate smiled. “I told them. I just told them the wrong place.”

Quinn couldn’t help but be impressed. This wasn’t the Nate he’d come to expect. This Nate was resilient, strong-willed.

“I think when they realized I was new, and they wouldn’t get much more out of me, they stopped.”

“You did great, Nate,” Quinn said. “You kept them away from us. I couldn’t have asked for more than that.”

Quinn’s phone rang. “You need some more water?” he asked Nate.

“I’m okay.”

Quinn stood and answered his phone. “Yes?”

“There’s an…office building in Charlottenburg…on Kaiserdamm,” the Mole said, in response to Quinn’s last e-mail. He gave Quinn an address. “I am told…they will…be assembling welcome…packets there for each…of the…attendees…once they are prepared…they…will be taken to the…luncheon and placed on the tables…candied mints…are one of…the favors to be…included.”

“You’re confident about this information?” Quinn asked.

“Very,” the Mole said.

Quinn hung up. When he turned back to the bed, Nate was actually sitting up.

“Do you remember any of the people you saw?” Quinn asked him.

“There were mainly two guys.” After Nate described them, Quinn was fairly confident it was the two guards he’d locked in the closet.

“What about Borko?”

“Yes,” Nate said. “I met him one time.” There was a pause. “He’s not a nice guy.”

“What happened?”

Nate pointed toward his left shoulder, the one that had been dislocated.

“Borko did that?”

“Yeah, but not before I kicked him in the balls.”

“That might have been why he did that,” Quinn suggested.

“Yeah,” Nate said. “I thought about that later.”

“Did you meet anyone named Dahl?”

Nate hesitated. “I might have.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was pretty out of it most of the time. A lot of people seemed to come and go.”

“Can you describe any of them?”

Nate thought for a moment. “There was this one guy, a little older. The others seemed to defer to him.” Nate closed his eyes. “Sorry, that’s not very helpful, is it?”

“It’s fine,” Quinn said. “You did good.”