Brett Battles - The Destroyed

“You can’t be serious.”

“If no room service, he must have bought some Swiss chocolate, don’t you think?”

By the time they reached the door to the stairwell, Henrik had administered the Beta-Somnol, and the five-minute clock had begun. Based on their trial runs, it would take Quinn and Julien exactly four and a half minutes to get from their current position to the subject’s door, providing them with a thirty-second cushion in case anything slowed them down.

Nothing did.

Quinn tapped the door twice, paused, then once more. He expected to see Henrik and the three men working with him standing nearby, ready to leave, when the door opened. Instead, all but the one who opened the door were still searching the room.

“Twenty seconds,” Quinn said.

“We can’t find it,” Henrik explained.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re out by the deadline or you’re moving the body yourself.”

“I realize that,” Henrik said. He pointed at the desk next to the subject’s laptop. “They should have been right there.”

“Maybe it’s on the computer.”

“No. Hard copies only. I was told they were concerned about having any of it in digital form.”

“Did anyone lay eyes on it to be sure he had it?”

“Peter confirmed the handoff occurred, but he couldn’t tell us exactly what the information was contained in,” he said. The Office was the client on this job. “Both he and I assumed it would be in an envelope or file folder.”

Quinn looked at his watch. “Five seconds. Are you staying or am I?”

Henrik frowned, then scooped the laptop off the desk and looked over at his men. “Grab his suitcase and shoulder bag. We’ll search them again off-site.”

Quinn grimaced. The bags were part of his disposal responsibility. He didn’t like having pieces floating out there that could cause problems later. “You’ll need to burn them.”

“Don’t worry. We will.”

“You do it yourself.”

“I’ll see to it personally,” Henrik assured him.

Reluctantly, Quinn nodded.

Henrik headed for the door. “Let’s go. Let’s go.”

Before the team was even out of the room, Quinn and Julien began preparing the body for transport. Soon they were also leaving, carrying an aluminum-reinforced cardboard box that contained the subject. If asked, Quinn would simply say they were carrying a replacement duct for the heating system. But they made it through the hotel without any fuss.

They put the box into the dark green van parked downstairs, then leisurely drove off. As soon as they were out of sight of the hotel, Quinn moved into the back, opened the box, and began removing the clothes and all identifying items from the body. These, like the now-dead target, would be going up in flames. He had just pulled off the guy’s undershirt and was reaching for the waistband of the pajama pants when he noticed a flesh-colored bandage on the man’s torso, just below his ribs.

He pulled it off in case there was some sort of tattoo underneath that he hadn’t been told about. No tattoo, but that didn’t suppress his surprise. There was a bump under the skin, one-centimeter square. It was red with a fresh scab at one end that looked very much like it was covering an incision.

Quinn swore to himself, and for a second considered slapping the bandage back on. This wasn’t his responsibility. The only thing he’d been hired to do was get rid of the body. Except, much to the disapproval of his old mentor Durrie, he’d never been one who focused solely on his job and ignored everything else. On this particular operation, he was fully aware that the main focus, beyond the subject’s death, was to obtain a set of documents.

He grabbed a knife out of his kit, and cut around three sides of the square, turning the skin into a flap. Underneath was exactly what he’d been worried he’d find, a small container holding a stack of microphotographs.

The documents. Had to be. Old-school spy craft at its best.

Son of a bitch.

With extreme reluctance, he called Peter.

“Don’t tell me you’ve already finished,” Peter said.

“Still in progress.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Has Henrik given you an update?”

“Yes. Very disappointing.”

“Maybe not.”

After he finished explaining what he’d found, Peter sounded almost jubilant. “Oh, thank God! Good work. Really, really good work.”

“I don’t want to hold on to this. That’s not my responsibility.”

“Of course not. Stay on the line. Let me see if I can reach Henrik and arrange a handoff.”

Henrik, it turned out, had followed protocol and gone to ground. It would be at least another twenty-four hours before he checked in again.

“Don’t worry,” Peter said. “I’ll arrange an alternative. Tell me where and when.”

Deciding that the photos were less a problem to be driving around with than the body in the back of the van, Quinn set a rendezvous time for after the disposal of his primary cargo.

Once that was done, Quinn and Julien took the van to the location Quinn had given Peter for the handoff- a darkened street a few blocks behind St. Leodegar’s Church. As Quinn had planned, they arrived fifteen minutes early to do a quick reconnaissance on foot to make sure the area was clean.

“Five minutes,” he said. “Then we’re out of here.” He’d already done more than his due diligence by reporting what he’d found and agreeing to the handoff. He wasn’t about to risk his and Julien’s lives by spending any more time in Lucerne than they had to.

Two minutes before his self-imposed deadline, they heard the whine of a scooter growing louder and louder as it neared their street, then stopping just around the corner.

The silence that descended was soon broken by the sound of footsteps echoing softly off the old stone buildings. A silhouette appeared at the end of the block, walking toward them. The person was no more than five foot three or four, and had a matching small frame. Despite the helmet, Quinn knew it was a woman. It wasn’t just her size that gave her away; it was how she walked in the confident yet natural way only a woman could achieve.

“Beautiful night for a stroll,” she said as she neared, her voice distorted somewhat by the helmet.

“Could be warmer,” Quinn replied, completing the on-the-fly recognition code Peter had come up with.

She reached up and pulled her helmet off, releasing a torrent of thick, shoulder-length hair. Even in the darkness, Quinn could make out her face well enough. His first thought was that she was probably Eastern European. She had the slightly Asiatic eyes and high cheekbones that graced the faces of many Slavic models. If it weren’t for her height, she probably could have been one, too.

“Mila,” Julien said, surprised. He smiled and threw his arms open wide.

The woman grinned and let the big Frenchman envelop her in a bear hug. When he finally pulled back, he held her in front of him, a hand on each of her shoulders as he looked her over.

“How have you been?”

“Good,” she said.

“Keeping busy?”

“Yes. Thank you for passing my name around.” Not Eastern European. American. Unless she’d worked her ass off getting rid of any trace of an accent.

Julien scoffed. “Please. It’s what we do, huh? Help each other out?”

“Not everyone thinks like you. I mean it-thank you.”

“Are you guys finished?” Quinn asked.

Julien threw an arm around the woman’s shoulder, and turned her to face Quinn.

“Have you met Mila Voss yet?” he asked.

“Uh, no. But apparently you have.”

Julien laughed more loudly than Quinn would have liked, given the supposed secrecy of their meeting.

“Of course, I know her,” Julien said. “I got her into the business.” He leaned forward, his volume dropping only a few decibels. “We were together for a while. You know-young woman, Paris, a handsome man like me. It was only natural.”