[Quinn 04] - The Silenced

“If I felt it was necessary.”

Quinn smiled, as if amused. “How did you know I’d be here?”

“We only thought that you had been here. We waited on the chance you’d come back.”

“Why would you think it was me?”

“We … we had a picture of you we could show around,” she said. “A drawing.” She started to reach into her pocket.

“No, no, no,” Orlando said, raising her gun a few inches and reminding the Russian she was still in the line of fire. Petra put her hands back into her lap.

Orlando moved around the bed and reached into the woman’s pocket. She pulled out a piece of paper, then unfolded it.

“This was never my favorite picture of you,” she said, holding it up so Quinn could see.

It was the police sketch that had run in all the New York papers earlier that summer. First reports had said that the man in the drawing was a suspected killer, something that was later retracted and forgotten.

Mostly forgotten, Quinn thought.

“You lied to me before, didn’t you? You do work for Palavin,” he said.

He’d wanted to provoke a response, perhaps a little tic, or a look in her eye that would either confirm or deny what they had learned from Stepka. What he got instead was a volcano.

Petra’s face scrunched up in a snarl as her cheeks and forehead turned red. Her fingers seemed to dig into the arms of the chair, and she leaned forward like she was going to jump up. Mikhail, too, had become tense and angry. He said something to Petra in Russian that dripped with disgust.

“I told you, we do not work for Palavin,” Petra said, barely able to get the words out through her clenched teeth.

“You are connected to him somehow.”

Mikhail again said something in Russian.

“That’s not working for us,” Orlando said. “English only.”

“Or what?” Mikhail asked.

“Or we kill you,” Quinn said.

Mikhail glared in defiance, but said nothing more.

“We don’t work for him,” Petra spat. “We are trying to find him.”

“Why?” Quinn asked.

“He must answer for what’s he’s done.”

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re here to kill him.”

“No,” she said. “We will take him home and put him on trial.”

“I was told you are terrorists. Are you telling me you work for the Russian government?”

“I said nothing about our government.”

“So you are terrorists?”

“No!” she yelled. “The only one who caused any terror is Palavin.”

The room was silent for a moment, then Orlando said, “A private trial, then.”

Petra bowed her head a fraction of an inch, but said nothing.

“And after you’ll kill him,” Quinn said.

“Why not?” Mikhail said. “He is responsible for so much—” He stopped himself.

“He’s responsible for so much what?” Quinn asked. “Why do you want him?”

“Why don’t you tell us why you are working for Palavin?” Petra said, looking directly at Quinn.

“Who said I was?”

“It appeared that way to me in Los Angeles. Apparently you were in Maine, too, though I was a little too busy to see you. You were working for Palavin both those times.”

“I was working for David Wills. Emphasis on was. Once he was dead, I was out.”

“Semantics,” Petra said. “Wills was obviously hired by Palavin. So in effect you were working for him.”

“Why obvious?”

“Because the Ghost knew we were trying to track him down, and hired Wills to systematically kill all the people who would have led us to him. Ironic that Wills would also become the last victim.”

“The Ghost. That’s your pet name for Palavin, isn’t it?”

She said nothing.

“You know for a fact Wills was killed by Palavin?”

She hesitated. “I told you, it’s obvious.”

Quinn said nothing. He suspected she was right, but wasn’t going to accept it only on her word.

“Show him the picture,” Mikhail urged her.

Petra nodded, then started to lift one side of her jacket.

“Careful,” Orlando told her.

“I’m only taking a photograph out of my pocket,” Petra explained.

She pulled the picture out of her pocket. It was large, maybe eight by ten, and folded in half. She opened it and set it on the bed.

“Sit back,” Quinn told her once she was done.

As soon as she was leaning back, he picked up the photo.

It was a color picture faded in a way that made it seem several decades old. By the hair and clothing styles of the fourteen people captured in the image, Quinn guessed it had probably been taken in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

Those photographed were scattered around what looked like a small restaurant, either sitting at one of the two tables, or standing along the bar at the back. With the exception of a middle-aged man off to the side, the rest appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties.

“What is this?” he asked.

“May I show you?” Petra started to push herself up out of the chair.

“Stay,” Quinn told her. He held his gun out to Orlando. As soon as she took it, he knelt by Petra’s chair and held the photo out so they both could see it.

“In Los Angeles, what was the name of the man whose body you took out of the warehouse?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Ryan Winters, correct?” She pointed at the photo. “There. Ryan Winters.”