Shadow of Betrayal

Though Quinn wasn’t opposed to making life difficult for Peter, the envelope was obviously important enough for people to get killed over. The sooner he got rid of it, the better. “Atlanta work for you?”

“When?”

“I’ll email you,” Quinn said, then paused for a moment. “If your contact in Atlanta doesn’t show up on time, I’m not waiting around.”

He hung up.

The wind was beginning to pick up. It was brisk, bone chilling. As Quinn watched Nate and Howard toss the last of the bodies into the sea, he slipped his hands into his jacket pockets. The fingers of his right hand brushed up against the all-important manila envelope.

Whatever was inside had resulted in the deaths of four men. Quinn would be happy when it was no longer in his possession. But there was something that tickled at the back of his mind, that little internal warning signal he’d had since birth. This time it was telling him that getting rid of the package might not be the end of things.

He hated that feeling.

CHAPTER

5

ONE WEEK LATER

ROOM 531 OF THE GEIST HOTEL IN WASHINGTON, D.C. The only light was the blue-white glow emanating from ten wide-screen monitors. But for the three men standing together in front of the displays, that was more than enough. Peter, head of the Office, was more or less the host. It was his assistant who had arranged for the room, his techs who’d set up the equipment, and his agent standing guard near the suite’s exit. But it was really the other two men who were running the show. They were his clients, after all.

His two guests stood together, separating themselves from Peter as much as possible in the small space available. Except for their age difference, and the fact that the younger one appeared to be of Asian descent, they were almost like twins. Dark tailored suits, white shirts, and expensive Italian shoes. Even their hair was cut the same, close cropped with hardly enough left on top to run a comb through. The man closest to Peter was named Robert Chercover. Older than his associate by at least three decades, he was the one ultimately in charge. His title was purposely vague: Special Assistant to the Director of National Intelligence. But Peter knew very well what it meant. Chercover was in charge of handling problems no one else could be trusted with.

The man with him had been introduced as Kevin Furuta. Peter had never dealt with the man before, but he immediately knew he didn’t like him. At most, he was in his mid-thirties, yet he carried himself like he was Peter’s superior. The son of a bitch probably didn’t even have a quarter of the experience Peter had amassed. But Peter had to admit Furuta was in better shape, something the asshole didn’t seem to have a problem emphasizing. Any time he would talk, he would turn with his whole body toward Peter with his chest puffed out, and his arms held out to the side like his muscles were too big for his limbs to lie flat against his body. He appeared to enjoy the fact that at about six feet tall, he towered a good half foot over Peter. Peter took comfort in the knowledge that despite Furuta’s larger size, he would have no problem taking the bigger man in a fight. No problem at all.

In essence, the hotel room had been set up as a mobile strategic operations center. The furniture had been pushed to the side, making way for several long, portable tables. These had been arranged in a loose U shape. The ten monitors were set up on two sides of the U. On the third side were several pieces of equipment: receivers and computer-controlled hard drives both feeding and recording the images being shown.

All the screens were active. Those along the left displayed images from inside the hotel itself: the front and rear entrances, the main lobby, and the hallway on the fifth floor outside room 531. The images on the four monitors along the bottom of the U were murkier, and from a location nowhere near the Geist Hotel. These monitors had been numbered one through four right-to-left, the numbers superimposed in the lower right corner like a television network ID.

Monitor one was an outside shot. It was focused on a neglected apartment building two hundred miles away in New York City. A light rain was falling over the neighborhood, clearing the streets of anyone interested in an evening stroll. Lights were on in a few of the windows in the neighboring buildings, but none shone from the one centered in the shot.

According to the information Peter had received, this particular building was abandoned, a fact reinforced by windows that were either boarded over or broken. A set of concrete steps led up to the front door, where a faded paper notice had been stuck on the surface. It was too far away to read, but he had already been informed that it was an advertisement for a local concert that had long since occurred.