Brett Battles - Shadow of Betrayal

“What is this?” he asked.

Orlando hit the back arrow on her browser. A newspaper article appeared: The Daily Telegraph , from London, England. The photo was there, too, only smaller.

U.N. SEEKS LOCAL HELP KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE

“‘Community leaders pose in front of a new children activities facility in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire, with UN workers,’” Orlando read. “This article says Marion Dupuis is part of the UN mission in Côte d’Ivoire. That explains where she got all those.” Orlando nodded at the stack of papers.

They had already established that the papers were printouts from a UN database. Before diving into them, Orlando wanted to see if she could establish what Marion Dupuis’ connection to them might be. Turned out it didn’t take her very long.

“I have contacts in New York who work there. I can verify her position fairly easily.”

“Do it.”

While Orlando composed an email to her contacts, Quinn stood up and walked over to the door and peeked through the eyehole. The fish-eye magnifier on the other end gave him a near 180-degree view of the hallway beyond, though only for a distance of about fifteen to twenty feet. The area he could see was empty.

Where the hell is Nate? he thought.

He had expected his apprentice to be waiting for them when they returned. But instead, they were the first to arrive.

Quinn wanted to call him, but that wasn’t procedure.

“Maybe he got tired of waiting for us and went to get something to eat,” Orlando said, sensing, as she always did, what he was thinking.

Quinn grunted a response, then walked over to the TV and looked around for the remote.

“Please don’t turn that on,” she said.

“Just thought I’d check the news.”

She looked up from her computer and stared at him for a moment. “Even if something has happened to him, you’re not going to find anything local right now. And I doubt he’s made CNN yet.”

“I know,” he said. “I just wanted to see if there was anything new about the Deputy Director’s death.”

But his lie was a thin one, and she saw right through it. “Just leave it off.”

He sat down on the chair next to the built-in desk, listening to Orlando’s fingers tapping on her keyboard. He pulled a brochure about Montreal out of the desk drawer and tried to read through it, but got halfway before he realized he couldn’t remember anything he’d just read.

A glance at his watch told him more than twenty minutes had passed since they had arrived. If it reached thirty, he was going to call Nate, to hell with procedure.

Quinn’s phone rang at minute twenty-seven, Nate’s name glowing on the touch screen.

“Don’t be angry with him,” Orlando said as he was about to press Accept.

“Fine,” he muttered, then connected the call.

“Quinn?” Nate’s voice was hushed.

Whatever Quinn had been feeling disappeared as he kicked into operation mode. “What’s going on?”

“We weren’t the only ones interested in the woman,” Nate said.

Quinn wanted to ask what happened, but suppressed the urge and said, “Do you need help?”

“I think I might need you to pick me up. I dumped the car and have been on foot for the last thirty minutes. Think I might have lost them, but I’m not sure. Heading into the metro now. I’ll grab the first train and take it toward the end of the line … Hold on.” Quinn could hear the phone moving away from Nate’s ear, and rubbing against something. “Okay. I’ll be on the Orange line, heading toward Henri-Bourassa. I’ll plan on getting off a few stops ahead. Say … Sauvé.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “Do a check along the way.”

“I will,” Nate said. “See you in a bit.”

“What is it?” Orlando asked as Quinn slipped the phone back in his pocket.

“Someone else was looking for Marion. When they spotted Nate, looks like they tried to find out who he was.”

“You’re going to bring him in?”

Quinn nodded.

“You need me to come with you?”

“No. We’ll be fine. You see if you can figure out what she was running from.”

They’d dumped the Lincoln several blocks from the Comfort Inn when they returned, thinking they wouldn’t need it anymore. Quinn considered using it again, but he wanted something less flashy.

He hiked ten minutes and found another motel with a large anonymous parking lot where he appropriated a three-year-old Toyota Camry for the night.

Soon he was back over the bridge into Montreal. He followed the Orange line aboveground as best he could until he reached Sauvé station.

There were two entrances, one on either side of Rue Sauvé, neither larger than a three-car garage. Each looked grimy and gray in the artificial illumination from the surrounding lighting. Quinn imagined they didn’t look much better during the day.

He drove by, keeping a few miles an hour below the speed limit, his eyes on guard for someone emerging out of the shadows, but there was no one. He looped around the small grass-covered island in the middle of the block and headed in the opposite direction, taking him by the larger of the two structures.

He was almost past the end of the building when someone ran out toward him. His first instinct was to hit the gas, but he slowed to a stop when he saw the man’s face. It was Nate.

Quinn reached across and opened the passenger door just as his apprentice arrived.

Before he even had the door closed, Nate said, “I’m fine. Go.”

Quinn pressed down hard on the accelerator. “Is someone back there?”

“I don’t think so,” Nate said, breathing hard. “But I heard another train pull in, so you never know. They could still be looking for me.”

Quinn spent several minutes driving randomly until he was sure they weren’t being followed, then settled on a direction that would take them back toward their motel.

“Tell me,” he said.

Nate took a few more deep breaths. “I was heading back to the motel. You know, like you told me to do. But after a few minutes I realized there was someone behind me. I made a few turns, normal stuff, nothing too fast, just to see if I was right. The guy stayed with me.”

“Did you recognize him from earlier?” Quinn asked, trying to put the pieces together.

“No. Like I said, I didn’t pay attention when I was following the woman.”

“Her name’s Marion.”

“What?”

“The woman in the Saab. Marion Dupuis,” Quinn said.

“Right,” Nate said.

“So you were being followed,” Quinn said, trying to get Nate back on track.

“Yeah. Once I knew for sure, I played it cool for a while, letting him get relaxed. Then, when I thought he was comfortable, I made a break for it. It worked great. I was able to get a little distance, enough that I could dump the car and head out on foot without them catching me.”

“Them?”

Nate nodded. “There were two. Both guys, strong looking. One a little older, but I didn’t get much of a look at either of them. I tried, I swear. But that’s all I got.”

“What happened next?”

“One of them got out of the car and chased me. But by then I had them beat. Lost them a few minutes later, then made my way to a metro station. That’s when I called you.”

Quinn thought for a moment. “Maybe they weren’t following the girl. Maybe they were just interested in giving you a hard time.”

“I guess,” Nate said, his tone indicating he didn’t believe it.

Quinn didn’t believe it, either. It would have been too much of a coincidence. And Quinn just didn’t believe in them. The easier answer, the more logical one, would be that they must have had some interest in Marion Dupuis. They had to have been staking out the Dupuis’ house from farther down the street. But did that mean they had seen Quinn and Orlando go inside? What if there were more of them than just those in the car? Could they have followed Quinn and Orlando back to the Comfort Inn?