[Quinn 01] - The Cleaner

As he drove, he worked out his plan for Brussels. No way Quinn could approach Burroughs directly. Though they'd worked on the same team in South America, Burroughs had made his contempt for freelancers clear. He was an arrogant asshole who seemed to think his position with the government made him somehow better than the 'barely necessary scum' he was forced to associate with.

Then there was the whole Peter issue. If he'd gone bad, Quinn could be walking into another trap. So simply calling Burroughs ahead to set up a meeting was out.

But that was fine. There were ways around the problem.

After midnight, Quinn left the car in a parking garage in downtown Frankfurt. He hailed a taxi and had it take him to a hotel near the airport. Prior to going to his room, he used the twenty-four-hour business center on the hotel's first floor to check his e-mail.

Quinn accessed his primary e-mail account. There was only one message in the in-box. There were two files attached, both jpegs. He clicked to open the first one.

His eyes narrowed, and his jaw tensed.

It was a picture of Nate. He was sitting in a metal chair, tied in place. His face was battered, his eyes half open. Propped up on his lap was a copy of the International Herald. It was that morning's edition. An old technique, but still effective. It was proof of life, conveying that, as of that morning, Nate was still alive.

Afraid of what the second file might reveal, but knowing he had to look, he opened it. It was a picture of Garrett. But unlike Nate, the boy appeared unharmed. The image was a profile shot of Garrett sitting on a carpeted floor, eyes glued to a cartoon playing on a large TV. The room he was in was not familiar to Quinn. It was definitely not taken in one of the rooms at Orlando's apartment. In fact, it didn't look like Vietnam at all.

Beyond Garrett was a window, its curtain pulled open. Through it, Quinn could see another building not far away. The roof of the neighboring building was covered with snow. And then there was the sky. Heavy, gray, and cloudy. If Quinn were to venture a guess, a particularly German sky.

But maybe that's what the sender wanted him to think. Faking a picture these days was easy. Give a halfway decent computer artist a copy of Photoshop and he could have put Garrett almost anywhere.

Of course it wasn't really the setting that mattered. It was the message that both the picture of Garrett and the one of Nate represented: 'Don't fuck with us.'

Still, if the picture hadn't been faked, there was always the possibility someone could narrow down the location. The chances were slim, but it was worth checking. Quinn opened a new message, attached the picture, then wrote:

yes, this is another request Need location in photo.

JQ

He sent it to the Mole, then downloaded each picture to his memory stick.

He caught an 8:00 a.m. flight to Brussels. That was the easy part. Getting to Burroughs was still the challenge. What Quinn needed was a conduit. Someone Burroughs could trust, or if not trust, at least not suspect of doing something out of the ordinary. Quinn knew just the man to help him out.

Finding Kenneth Murray's flat was not difficult. A simple hack job using a computer at an Internet cafe to break into the NATO personnel records and obtain Murray's home address was all it took.

Quinn located the flat, then found a quiet cafe and enjoyed a leisurely lunch. Having left his gun in Berlin, he spent an hour in the afternoon securing a firearm from one of his local contacts. Once he was rearmed, there was nothing else to do. So he took a cab to Murray's apartment and let himself in.

It appeared as though Murray were living alone again. His second wife, a Flemish woman named Ingeborg, had left him several years before. Soon after, a Turkish secretary who worked at NATO had moved in. But there was no sign of her presence now.

The flat had a definite male feel.The living room was dominated by a large television. Murray liked sports, that much Quinn remembered. American sports, football and baseball mainly. Along the other walls were shelves and bookcases. Souvenirs of Murray's many postings shared space with rows of books, few of which Murray had probably read. The great philosophers section. The historical section. The sensitive man section. Each designed to impress, whether it be a coworker, a boss, or a date.

Quinn moved into the kitchen. It was neat and organized. Not surprisingly, the refrigerator was all but empty. A bottle of chardonnay, cream for coffee. No food. Murray was one of those types who ate every meal out.

Down the hallway, on the other side of the living room, were two bedrooms. The larger contained a double bed, a black lacquer dresser, and an elaborate stereo cabinet that housed a top-of-the-line audio system.