Shadow of Betrayal

The technician glanced at the floor. “One of the children,” he said. “One of the children is the trigger.”

Quinn heard Marion gasp, but she said nothing.

“How does it work?” Quinn asked.

“It… em … eh …”

Quinn’s hand shot out, shoving the man’s head against the wall.

“How does it work?” he repeated.

The man’s eyes were wild in fear; for a few seconds his gaze fell on Marion as if he were scared of her the most. “One of the children has the triggering device implanted in her thigh, just below the skin. It has to be activated first. A handheld device. I only saw it once, but it looked like a cell phone.”

“Who has it?”

“I don’t know. Mr. Rose or Tucker, I would guess.”

“So they activate it,” Orlando said. “Then what?”

Again he glanced momentarily at Marion. “When the trigger, the child, enters the room where the boxes are, a signal from her prompts the membrane inside to dissolve. Then thirty seconds later …”

“Jesus,” Orlando said.

“So one of the children is the trigger,” Quinn said.

Again the glance.

“Yes,” Leary said.

“Which one?”

No answer.

“Which one?”

“The new one,” Leary whispered, this time doing everything he could not to look at Marion. “The African girl.”

“Oh, God,” Marion said. “Oh, God, no.”

Quinn shot her a glance, and she grew quiet again.

“One of you was a surgeon?” Orlando asked.

“N-No,” Leary said.

A stillness filled the cabin before Orlando asked her next question. “Then who implanted the device in the girl?”

Leary dropped his chin to his chest. “Don’t make me answer that.” It was answer enough.

Quinn pushed the man’s head back up. “We need to know the target, William.”

“I told you, I have no idea,” Leary said. “I just know they needed the children to make it happen. They had to be special needs. Really, that’s all I know.”

“So you don’t know where the kids came from?”

The look on the former doctor’s face said differently. “I overheard something, maybe.”

“What?”

“Just that it was easier to obtain what they needed outside the U.S. In some other countries children like them aren’t as well cared for. They’re easier to … obtain. Tucker would bring them back in twos or threes. One time it was half a dozen. We fed them and kept them quiet.”

“By sedating them,” Orlando said.

Leary stared straight ahead, not looking at anyone.

“Door,” Quinn said.

“No!” Leary yelled as Quinn hauled him back to his feet. “I don’t know who the target is. Please, believe me.”

“I believe you,” Quinn said.

Orlando was at the door.

“Open it,” Quinn said.

“But you just said you believed me,” Leary said.

“You’re right. I did.”

The door flew open, and the noise level in the cabin once again became deafening. Leary tried to turn, but Quinn had a tight grip on his neck.

Once again, Quinn maneuvered him so Leary faced outward with Quinn’s gun against the back of the man’s head. For a second he thought he could hear Leary say, “Please, don’t.” But then an image of the gurneys parked in the storage room flashed in his mind.

Pulling the trigger of his SIG was one of the easiest things he’d done in a long time.

CHAPTER

38

“FURUTA’S DEAD,” QUINN SAID INTO THE PHONE. “Nothing I could do. They let him bleed out.”

“Oh, Christ,” Peter said.

“We’ve got a bigger problem than that.”

“What is it?”

Quinn paused for a moment. “We’re in a helicopter. Heading toward Santa Maria, California. Check the map, you’ll see what I mean.”

Nothing for a moment, then, “Okay, got it. That’s about seventy miles north of Santa Barbara. I’m not sure what you … oh, shit.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Peter had seen what Quinn already knew. A little more than another hour north of Santa Maria was the small coastal town of San Simeon. And just beyond San Simeon, Hearst Castle. Not a castle, really, but about as close to it as you got in the States. It was a colossal home built by the late newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and was the inspiration for Xanadu in the old Orson Welles film Citizen Kane. For decades now it had been run as a tourist destination by the State of California.

Usually it wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar. Nothing to draw the attention of someone like Quinn or Peter. But as Hardwick had pointed out to Quinn, Hearst Castle was playing host to a group other than tourists this week. In fact, no tourist had been allowed near the place for the last ten days. Its remote location yet luxurious setting made it the perfect place for this year’s G8 summit meeting—a meeting of the heads of state from all the “Group of Eight” nations.

The meetings had begun in the mid-seventies with only six participating nations. They grew from the need for a more global stance to the oil shortages and recession of the time, then continued to grow and expand in the following decades until it had become arguably the most important international meeting of the year.