Brett Battles - The Silenced

“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.”