The Silenced (32 page)

Her gaze moved from one image to the other, then to Quinn’s face.

“You’re not a low-level analyst, are you?” he said.

“Why would I have lied about that?” she asked.

“Because you wanted me to think you didn’t know what was going on. You wanted me to figure out the connections myself, and leave MI6 out of it.” The pieces had fallen together for him as Petra had told her story. “You planted that picture in your briefcase. That’s why you were at the Hyatt in the first place, to somehow get me that folder. You hoped once I had it I’d try to find out who the man was. And then maybe I’d dig a little deeper to see why he was so important.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Palavin,” Quinn said. “That’s the man’s name. He’s also known as the Ghost. Or did you not know that either?”

She did know it. He could see it in her eyes.

“You were trying to push me in a direction,” he went on. “And it worked. Only better than you thought, because I also figured out what you were doing. Now, Annabel, this is what I need from you. First, I know Wills’s client was Palavin, but I want you to confirm that for me.”

A slight hesitation, then an even-slighter nod.

“Good. Second, David told me the job was passed to him through MI6. It was through your division at Wright Bains, correct?”

Another nod, this time with a sense of resignation.

“Through you directly?”

She stared at Quinn for several seconds. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Mighty important task for a low-level analyst.”

“I’m a case officer.”

“Field cases?”

She shook her head. “My department is tasked with handling defectors and other sensitive foreign nationals living in the U.K.”

“Like Palavin,” he said.

She nodded.

“Well, isn’t that interesting. Did he come to you or did you go to him?”

“It was all before my time.”

“That’s not very helpful,” he said. “I’d be happy to turn you over to my two other guests. I’m sure they’d love to get ahold of someone who worked directly with the Ghost.”

“It’s not like that!”

“Then enlighten me.”

“You don’t understand. I’m good at my job. I love doing work that helps protect my country. But this …” She paused. “This wasn’t right.”

Quinn waited for her to go on.

“When Robb contacted—”

“Robb?” Quinn asked, not recognizing the name.

“That’s what he goes by now. Trevor Robb.”

The name Petra was so desperate to know, Quinn thought. “Go on.”

“When … 
Palavin
contacted us, I had to look up his file just to know who he was. Former KGB. Arrived U.K. in 1988. According to the report, he’d already established himself as Trevor Robb, but he’d left Moscow in a hurry and had arrived with only limited funds.”

“So he came to you for money, is that it?”

“Yes. He agreed to share what he knew in exchange for enough cash to make him wealthy, and the promise that we would provide whatever protection he deemed necessary for the remainder of his life.”

“That’s a pretty steep price.”

“Apparently his information more than compensated for his demands at the time.”

“But not now,” Quinn said.

“He hasn’t been an active asset for us for many years. I understand he still tries to keep his fingers in things, but nothing we would be interested in. Then we heard from him a little over a month ago that his life was in danger, and that we were bound by our agreement to protect him. He was an inactive client I inherited from previous case officers, so it fell to me to arrange what he wanted. I talked with his representative, who laid out their plan, and instantly I knew it was something MI6 couldn’t touch. I took it to my superiors, thinking they’d instruct me to tell Mr. Robb to go to hell. But they didn’t. They agreed we shouldn’t be directly involved, but they felt it was important we stick to the deal. There are British interests at stake. It was decided that we would pass it on to one of our contractors, giving them a story that they would find plausible.”

“David Wills, and suitcase bombs for North Korea?” Quinn said.

“You’ve figured a lot out.”

Another connection surfaced in Quinn’s head. “Did you set him up with a computer information specialist, too? Someone to dig into the histories of those working for him?”

She looked away. “That … that we kept in-house. One of our top hackers was assigned to the project.”

Quinn stared at her in disbelief. “You’re telling me your little group there at MI6 is responsible for the danger my … people are facing?”

“Whatever Palavin’s done with the information is all on him,” she said quickly. “We had no idea what he wanted it for.”

“No idea?” he yelled. “That does
not
absolve you!”

“Hey, everything all right in there?” Orlando asked through the door.

“Fine,” Quinn shot back. He locked eyes with Annabel. “If anything happens to them,
anything
, then I will kill you myself. That’s not a threat, nor a promise. That’s a fact.”

She sucked in a nervous breath, but said nothing.

Quinn allowed himself a moment to calm down, then said, “Once you passed the job onto Wills, why didn’t you just let it go then?”

Her lips trembled slightly as she spoke. “This wasn’t something that was furthering national security. It was eating me up. When I found out Palavin had planted a man on Wills’s teams, I knew I had to do something.”

“Wait. Planted?”

“A man named Mercer.”

“Mercer? David said Mercer was his man.”

“Cover story. Mercer’s mission, as I later found out, was to not only make sure the targets were neutralized, but also to liquidate the strike teams after each mission. Donovan and his men, they’re all dead now. The same is true for Freeman in Los Angeles and the people he was working with.”

“What?” Quinn said, shocked. “They’re all dead?”

Annabel looked at the floor, then nodded.

Quinn was silent for several seconds as he let it all soak in. Finally, he said, “Mercer was at the park after Wills was killed. My Russian friends in there think that Palavin was responsible. Are they right?”

She nodded. “We’re almost positive. The dead woman in the park is a freelancer Palavin has been in contact with before. We think she’d been hired to tie up loose ends.”

Quinn shook his head. “Then why didn’t she wait until I showed up? I’m a loose end, too.”

“You showed up?”

“He was in the park to meet me.”

She stared at him. “We didn’t know that, and Palavin probably didn’t know that either. If he did, he would surely have had her wait.”

If Wills hadn’t told anyone who he was meeting at the park, Quinn thought, only that he was going there …

Then it hit him. Mercer.

Wills had undoubtedly used him for security. Except instead of watching Wills’s back, Mercer had let Palavin know the plan.

Then he realized something else. The body removal from the Alexander Grant Building, the job most anyone could do, now he understood why Palavin wanted him to do it. It was meant to be Quinn’s last job. Once he turned the remains over, he would be eliminated, too.

“If Palavin’s so afraid of being uncovered, why doesn’t he disappear again?”

“Disappear? You don’t understand him at all. He spent decades preparing his post–Soviet Union identity, and even more decades living it. He’s not going to give up the life he created that easily. And with the support of his agreement with British intelligence, his ego is large enough that he feels he doesn’t have to, that he can rid himself of the problem with several well-placed bullets.” She shook her head. “He’s a monster. All these people he killed in Moscow, we should have never helped him cover that up.”

“Spare me your guilt.” He paused for a moment, then said, “So I’m the only one left on the Ghost’s removal list.”

“Not after he finds out what I’ve done to help you.”

“You, Ms. Taplin, already have plenty of blood on your hands. Being on his list is the least of your problems. But if you’re interested in staying alive and seeing what karma has in store for you in the future, then I suggest you continue being helpful.”

Ten minutes later, Quinn reentered the bedroom. This time he left the door open.

He looked at Petra. “To answer your question, I’ll help under one condition.”

She looked surprised. “Anything you want.”

“This is non-negotiable.”

A hint of caution entered her voice. “What is your condition?”

“I’m in charge,” he said. “Because I’m going after him no matter what, and unless you’re with me, you’re in my way.”

“Only if you promise we take him alive.”

He frowned. “I can’t make that promise.”

Petra said nothing for several seconds. Then she nodded. “All right.”

“NOTHING CUTE,” QUINN SAID. “KEEP TO THE
script.”

He and Annabel were the only ones left in his room at the Silvain. Orlando had gone upstairs with Petra and Mikhail into one of their rooms to arrange for the extra help Quinn’s plan would need. Petra had said she knew someone who could provide the men, but Quinn didn’t trust her enough yet to make the contact on her own.

“Don’t worry,” Annabel said. “I know what to do.”

He held his phone out to her. It was attached via wire to his laptop. Orlando had started a program that would make the call look like it was coming from a cell phone inside the Wright Bains building.

She dialed a number, then held the phone up to her ear.

“Fedor? It’s Annabel Taplin. I need to speak with Trevor.… Well, where is he? … No, I can talk to you.… It’s my understanding that your project with Wills wasn’t completed.… Because it’s my job to know, that’s why.… Thirty minutes ago, while one of my agents was cleaning Wills’s office, a call came in from someone who’d been working for Wills. They transferred it to me.… Someone who was working on
your
project. He said that he got a call yesterday asking him to stay on the job, but he had no way of knowing if he could trust the caller or not.…” She glanced at Quinn and nodded. “Then, you know who I’m talking about.… Quinn. That’s right.… I convinced him that your call was legitimate. He told me he’s willing to finish the job.… Correct. Just tell your boss to call him again and everything should be fine.”

She listened for a moment longer, then hung up.

“Did he buy it?” Quinn asked.

“He had no reason not to. At least not my part of it. He may think you were feeding me a line, but I’m supposed to be on his side.”

“How long do you think before they call back?”

Taplin shrugged. “Fifteen minutes. Thirty tops.”

“Then we wait.”

Trevor Robb. That was the name of the light-haired Englishman who’d had the unfortunate luck of sharing a physical similarity to a Russian psychopath. His life had only been a placeholder for the day the Ghost would take it over. Over two decades dead, his was the body the man now using the name Trevor Robb wanted Quinn to remove.

“According to the file, the Ghost rented several offices in the basement of a building in the financial district,” Annabel had told Quinn in the bathroom before he had reemerged.

“The Alexander Grant Building,” Quinn said.

“Wills told you?”

Quinn nodded.

“Then you know it’s pretty rundown. In 1988 it wasn’t much better. After the real Robb returned to the U.K., he was instructed to go straight there. Palavin was waiting for him. He killed Robb there, then entombed the body in a small closet, walling him inside. Apparently, Palavin planned it as a temporary solution. When he came to MI6 to sell what he knew, he expected that we would remove the body for him. But my predecessors told him we wanted no part of it. They were afraid that he might kill others in the future and expect us to help again.”

“You mean like he’s doing right now?”

She squirmed uncomfortably. “At some point Palavin decided that the risk of leaving the body in the wall was less than attempting to get it out on his own. Ironically, MI6 realized that even though we had told him no, there was always a chance that if the body was found it might blow back on us. It took a couple of years, but it was finally decided to have the body removed. Only we didn’t want Palavin to know, so we made sure the closet tomb looked the same.”

“Then, the body he wants me to remove isn’t even there?” Quinn said.

“Not for almost two decades.”

The return call came twelve minutes after Annabel’s conversation with Fedor.

“Hello?” Quinn said.

“Mr. Quinn?” It was the same voice that had called him not long after Wills had been gunned down.

“Yes.”

“We spoke yesterday,” Palavin said. “I was told you would be expecting my call.”

“I appreciate you getting back to me.”

“Perhaps we should put yesterday’s conversation behind us. It was a very stressful day for everyone.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Quinn gave it a beat, then said, “Do you still need your project completed?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Can I assume you’re willing to reconsider?”

“I’ve had a conversation that leads me to believe you’re on the level. So I’ll do your job, but my fee has just gone up.”

There was a pause. “Gone up how much?”

“A hundred and twenty thousand. U.S.”

Quinn could hear the other man clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “You have me in a difficult position. And I don’t appreciate people trying to take advantage of me.”

“I’m not taking advantage. I’m just being practical. With Wills’s murder, the risks have increased.”

More silence. “I’ll give you eighty.”

“I’ll go as low as a hundred thousand, but any lower and I walk.”

“Fine, Mr. Quinn. One hundred thousand. I’m not happy about it, but I guess I can understand. I’ll wire it to you as soon as the job is done.”

“You’ll wire it to me now.”

Palavin took a deep breath. “Very well.”

Quinn gave him the account number, then said, “To confirm, you want the package removed and delivered to you, correct?”

“Correct. I will give you a place and a time where my associate will meet you once you let me know when you will be in possession of … it.”

“It’ll be tonight,” Quinn said.

“Tonight?” The Ghost sounded surprised.

“I already did the preliminary work before yesterday’s events. We’re ready to go. I anticipate having the package ready for you before midnight.”

“That’s excellent,” the Ghost said. “We will call you this evening with the drop-off location.”

“Perfect.”

Quinn disconnected the call.

“So?” Annabel asked. “Did
he
believe
you
?”

“Everyone believes in greed,” Quinn replied.