Brett Battles - The Silenced

Wills looked around the dining room again, then glanced at Nate.

“What?” Nate asked.

“Don’t insult us,” Quinn said to Wills, knowing full well what the man was thinking.

Before the Englishman could respond, Steve arrived with his meal.

“Here you go,” he said as he set the plate in front of Wills. “Roasted chicken crepe with mango red pepper sauce.”

“Thank you,” Wills said.

“Anything else, gentlemen?”

Quinn shook his head. “Think we’re all good. Thanks.”

“Just give me a yell if you want anything.” He headed back to the counter.

“So what’s it going to be?” Quinn asked. “You going to trust us? Or do we walk?”

Wills looked at his plate and said nothing.

“Let’s go,” Quinn said to Nate. They both started to rise.

“Wait,” Wills said. “I trust you. It’s not that. It’s… it’s the terms of the job.”

Quinn scowled. “Fine. Nate, find another table.”

Nate paused, a fork full of crepe halfway to his mouth. “Sure,” he said. He picked up his plate and headed toward a table near the front of the restaurant.

“Better?” Quinn said.

Wills relaxed. “Yes. Thank you. I’m sorry I had to do that, but… well, you understand.”

After several seconds of awkward silence, Wills went on, “The project I hired you for came through a small group at MI6.”

“Wait,” Quinn said. “If you were working for MI6, why would they send someone to spy on our meeting?”

“First, like I said before, it was a miscommunication. My people in London have already straightened it out. Second, the job’s not for MI6. Occasionally there are projects that come to them from someone outside the organization that would be problematic if they got involved. When that happens, one of the people they like to call is me. MI6 makes the introduction, then steps back into the shadows.”

Quinn nodded. It was a standard tactic. “Then, who’s your client?”

Wills paused for a half second, then said, “They’re not a big player in our world. Actually, I’ve never had dealings with them before, so as far as I’m concerned, they are not a player at all.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Remember, though they would deny it, this is MI6 approved.”

“So who is this client?” Quinn asked, knowing he was crossing way over the line with the question.

“A corporation, actually. My understanding is that they help out MI6 every now and again.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the best you’re going to get.”

Quinn shrugged. It had been worth a try. “What exactly is the gig, then?”

“This corporation deals with several classified technologies that the government deems necessary to keep both secret and under British control. I’ve been told a lot of money has been spent to ensure this. Unfortunately, two months ago, someone with access downloaded some extremely sensitive blueprints and technical specs to several flash memory cards. By the time alarms went off, the person had disappeared.”

“What kind of information?” Quinn asked.

“The kind of information North Korea would want to buy.”

What North Korea needed was food and help for its people. But what it wanted was weapons and power to annoy the West.

“Nuclear,” Quinn said. It was the only real answer.

Wills nodded. “It was the design for a bomb. Portable. Lightweight. Easy to produce even with Pyongyang’s limited resources. They would have paid millions for the information.”

“Would have?” Nate said. “They didn’t get the cards?”

“No. That’s what we’ve been doing.” Wills checked again to make sure no one was near. On the table in front of him, his untouched crepe was growing cold. “The head of security-”

“Does he have a name?” Quinn asked.

Wills thought for a moment. “Call him Mr. B.”

“I assume there’s a Mr. A.”

“There is.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “Just wondering.”

“Mr. B knew that finding the cards might involve methods his corporation was not capable of performing.”

“Why not?”

“They are a publicly traded organization. Shareholders frown on wet work. Mr. B talked to one of the company’s contacts at MI6. The contact was concerned, but also smart enough to realize that knowledge of the leak needed to be kept to a small circle of people. That meant mounting an operation outside normal governmental channels.”

“You.”

“Yes, me,” Wills said. “We were told that this was to be a terminate operation from the start, and that all members of the thief’s network needed to be eliminated to prevent the potential release of the information. There was no telling which of them had copies. Our job was to isolate and eliminate. MI6 would then go in, do a search, and recover the cards and any copies that might have been made.”

“You weren’t doing the search?” Quinn asked.

“We were hired to question each target, and only search their person before removing them. MI6 would do the rest.”

It wasn’t a particularly unusual arrangement. A private group does the dirty work so that another agency can keep its hands clean. Quinn had been on similar projects in the past. The only unusual aspect was the involvement of a third organization, this corporation whose information had been stolen. Still, Quinn couldn’t help thinking that the story was almost too pat. The feeling wasn’t a strong one, just something that tickled at the back of his mind.

“Then who are these Russians?” he asked.

“We think they’re part of a Georgian group fighting to rejoin Russia. In other words, terrorists who want to get their hands on a bomb. The big problem now is that they’ve been able to take one of the targets before we could get to them. If he had one of the disks on him, the information could be anywhere by now.”

“I can’t imagine MI6 is happy about that.”

Wills paused. “MI6 doesn’t know yet.”

“You haven’t told them?”

Wills shook his head.

“Could they suspect something went wrong? Maybe that’s why they sent the watcher.”

“I told you, it was a miscommunication.” Wills’s tone was less convincing than his words.

“So what are you doing about Moody?” Quinn asked.

“I have a team trying to track the Russians down. Find them and we find Moody.”

“Donovan?”

“No. Donovan and his team have split and gone to ground. I haven’t talked to him since thirty minutes after the operation. If Moody’s found, the new team will take care of him.”

“How many more names are on the list?” Quinn asked.

“Moody was the last,” Wills said.

Quinn raised his eyebrows. “Last? Are you saying you came all the way over here to let me go? Or do you want me on standby for once they’ve taken care of Moody?”

“No,” Wills said. “There’s something else I need you to do. A related job.”

“What do you mean ‘related’?”

“Mr. B asked if we could do a special project for the corporation on the side.”

Quinn’s eyes narrowed with concern. If it was a project that involved him, it would mean someone was going to be killed. A few deaths of amoral thieves selling bomb plans to terrorists was one thing, but corporate murder? That would be going somewhere Quinn wasn’t comfortable with.

Wills seemed to sense Quinn’s reluctance. “It’s not what you think.”

“If it’s not what I think, then you don’t need a cleaner.”

“There is a body. It’s in London. Hidden in a building that’s about to be demolished.”

“Wait, what? Are you saying it’s already there?”

Wills said nothing for a moment, then nodded. “It’s been there over twenty years.”