Hunting The Kobra

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  She watched Leela, her heart singing a high aria in her mind, making it hard to think.

  Aslan kept his back to everyone, thinking. Then he raised his hand and pointed at Noah. “Take her somewhere. Get rid of her so nothing comes back.”

  Quinn’s throat squeezed shut, cutting off her cry of protest, turning it into a tiny little whistling gasp.

  “Boss, are you sure?” Mitchell said softly. “If she is CIA, then she’s not working alone. There’ll be a pit crew somewhere, ready to come in with all guns blazing if she doesn’t report in on schedule.”

  “I don’t care!” Aslan shouted, rounding on Mitchell. His face was red. “I want this cleaned up and this entire building locked down and controlled.” He pointed at Noah again. “Do I have a problem with you, too?” he asked, his voice deadly soft.

  Noah considered. “Nope.” He got to his feet.

  Quinn thought she might throw up. Or pass out. Hot and cold waves washed through her and she couldn’t think for the screaming in her mind. The need to do something was throbbing in her temples and making her arms twitch. Only, she couldn’t think what to do.

  Her horror steadily built as Noah walked over to Leela and hauled her up by one arm. He handled her as he might haul a heavy bag. He headed for the door, Leela dragging behind him, her head lolling.

  “What are you going to do to her?” Quinn cried. It burst out of her, driven by her panic.

  Aslan’s eyes narrowed. “That isn’t a question you should ask. Not now.”

  Quinn held out her hand in a placating gesture. “I’m not stupid, Aslan. I have a good idea, only…there must be another way to handle this?”

  “Not in a way which won’t take up hours of time and resources I need right here with me,” Aslan replied. “You have eaten at my table, Quinn Sawyer. You cannot now protest about the cuisine because dessert is not to your taste.”

  Quinn dug her fingernails into her other hand, until the skin broke and pain speared into her wrist. Pain was good. Pain helped her keep her mouth shut. It short circuited every instinct which screamed at her to do something. Doing anything would get her killed. She could see it in Aslan’s eyes.

  Aslan considered her. “Are you my next problem, Quinn?”

  Her vision blurring, Quinn shook her head. She sagged back until the board table smacked into her thighs. She sat, trembling, as Noah dragged Leela out of the room.

  Quinn listened to Leela’s heels whispering across the lush executive carpet as Noah dragged her down the corridor.

  Mitchell shut the doors. Quinn couldn’t take her gaze off them.

  Noah had taken Leela away to kill her. He had said Aslan didn’t trust him fully and now Aslan had set him up to prove his worth.

  Quinn saw Aslan was watching her closely. Even though his expression had not changed, she was sick with certainty he was smiling to himself.

  Now she understood the other horribly clever side of what he had done. Aslan had asked Noah to kill Leela and get rid of the body because he knew Quinn would never want to touch or speak to Noah again.

  Quinn lurched to her feet. “I need…” She swallowed and realized she was not pretending. “Washroom…” she whispered, pressing her fingers to her lips.

  Aslan sighed. “Mitchell, show her the way. Hurry. I don’t want to have to clean up after her, too.”

  Mitchell gripped her elbow and hauled her out of the boardroom and down the wide corridor. Ahead was the junction to the left where the catwalk began.

  On the other side of the intersection were two white doors with the universal symbols for men and women.

  Quinn fell against the ladies’ door and staggered inside. The washroom was empty, the three stall doors ajar. She shouldered the nearest door open, fell to her knees in front of the toilet and threw up so hard her eyes danced and her throat strained.

  She had not eaten breakfast, so there was little volume. Instead, the heaves tore at her throat and chest and belly, making everything ache.

  Every time she recalled the image of Noah dragging Leela behind him like a sack of coal, Quinn heaved once more.

  When she thought she was done, she stripped the coat from her, for she was far too hot…and also too cold. Cold was better, though.

  Quinn pulled herself over to the basins and washed her mouth. She wet some paper towels. By then, her knees were too weak to hold her up.

  She lowered herself to the floor and put her back against the cold tiles and pressed the wet paper to her face. She had to steady her hand with the other to do it.

  The washroom door swung open. Mitchell leaned against it and folded his arms. He considered her. “That sounded comprehensive,” he said, smiling.

  Quinn closed her eyes. She couldn’t joke about it. Her stomach rolled warningly.

  “First time is always a tough one,” Mitchell added.

  Quinn swallowed. “Can we…not talk about it?” she whispered, for she could not speak any louder. It hurt to try.

  “Wanna talk about the Giants?”

  She shook her head. “I want to stay here with the tiles against my ass and my back and pretend the last ten minutes didn’t happen—just until I can get up again.”

  “Well, okay,” Mitchell told her. “Only, boss man will want everyone on hand when the Russians arrive. That’s about fifteen minutes from now. Don’t piss him off, huh? Not even you, his favorite lucky charm, will get a pass today.”

  Quinn nodded, keeping her eyes closed. There were white spots dancing in front of her eyelids.

  “Got any blush in that bag next to you?” Mitchell asked.

  “I…um, yes,” she said. “Why?”

  “Put some on before you come back to the board room. You look like rotten cream cheese right now.”

  She cracked one eye open and rolled her head toward him. “Thanks for the tip.”

  He straightened. “No problem. I’m heading back. Aslan might want someone useful at hand.” He let the door swing shut on her.

  Silence, except for the slow drip of water in a cubicle and the soft hiss of the tank filling in the toilet she had used.

  The image reinserted itself in her mind, over and over.

  The worst of it was that even though Leela knew she was being carried to her execution, she still had not looked at Quinn. To the end, she had not given Quinn away.

  Quinn knocked her head back against the tiles. If only she had done something. Anything. Leela had worked right up to the end to help her, yet Quinn sat on her ass in return.

  “I can’t just sit here,” she whispered. Not and let someone die. Where would someone be taken, here, which would be private and out of sight?

  I’m his backup chemist. Noah’s voice, whispering in her mind. The day they had toured here, Noah had filled in all the chemicals Aslan had missed when explaining precursors to her.

  Where would a backup chemist work, if he was supposed to watch over all the other laboratories to make sure they weren’t playing anything fast and loose?

  She knew where the laboratories were. Noah’s work area would be somewhere close.

  Quinn pressed her hands against the cold floor, then levered herself upward, sliding her hands up the wall, until she was standing. She still shook. She was hollow inside.

  She washed her hands again. She would need to irradiate them to feel properly clean again.

  Then she checked her face in the mirror. Her mascara had smudged and the smoky effect of her eye shadow was ruined. Now she resembled models who wore so much black around their eyes they looked like unlucky boxers.

  She didn’t have all her makeup in the bag, so it would have to do.

  Her face was white. She could see the veins in her cheeks and the skin looked transparent. Around her lips, the skin took on a gray tinge.

  No blusher would compensate for that. Perhaps moving and doing something would.

  She picked up the clutch from the ground and stood swaying, holding the basin, until the dizziness passed. Then she stepped out of the
washroom. At the far end of the corridor, one boardroom door was open. She couldn’t see anyone in the open doorway. She heard the chink of glasses.

  A libation. Celebration? Or nerve soother?

  Either way, they were not waiting for her. Hopefully, Mitchell had reported to Aslan on her pallor and the special sound effects she had created, and like typical men they had turned their attention elsewhere to take their minds off anything to do with sickness.

  Quinn moved across the passageway. She didn’t hurry and she didn’t creep along. She walked as normally as she could manage, which would not draw the eye of anyone who might look out through the door opening. She stepped into the catwalk and moved between the two buildings.

  The hushed, air-controlled atmosphere of the laboratory level enclosed her as she stepped off the catwalk. She moved over to the windows of the laboratory on the right and looked in.

  There were dozens of people in white coats working with absorbed attention upon their tasks.

  Quinn knocked on the glass. It took four attempts to get someone’s attention. She could feel through her knuckles that the glass was thick.

  A man with no hair but a luxurious white goatee stepped over to the glass. He pointed to Quinn’s left.

  She looked. A wall phone was mounted on the solid panel beside the door.

  The man headed for the door himself and she understood. There would be another phone on the other side. It was a simple way of communicating with people in the room without having to dress in sterile gear and go through the door lock.

  Quinn moved down the corridor and picked up the phone, composing simple German phrases in her mind.

  The man said something in German, too fast for her to follow, as he looked at her through the glass.

  She shook her head at him. “Noah Stojanovich…where does he work? Where would he be?” It pushed at the limits of her German to speak that much. It also strained her scratched and burning throat.

  The man frowned. He answered her, still speaking too quickly, although she heard Noah’s name in the middle of it. She waved her hand at him. “Slow…slow…please,” she said in German.

  “Why do you want to speak to Herr Stojanovich?” he demanded, speaking in slow but comprehensible English.

  “Elijah Aslan is here in the boardroom. He wants Noah to report to him and sent me to collect him. Have you seen him? Where does he work?”

  The invocation of Aslan’s name was enough to make the man straighten. He didn’t ask why Aslan didn’t simply phone Noah. Such was the power of Aslan’s name and reputation. He said, instead, “Noah’s lab is the third door on the left, from here. Just keep going down.” He pointed farther down the corridor.

  Quinn thanked him and hung up. She moved down the corridor toward the floor-to-ceiling feature window at the end of the passageway, where they had stood and watched the wharf and container ships.

  The third door on the left looked as though it belonged to one of the labs on either side. There were no people in those labs. There were also doors to the far side of each lab. This door was in the middle. By leaning and looking through the windows for each lab, Quinn could see a wall running down each side of the door, separating it from the labs. A corridor laid behind the door. Clearly, a lab was located behind these two, and the passageway gave access to it.

  It had to be where Noah was.

  She examined the door and tried the handle. It didn’t budge.

  A phone hung on the wall beside the door, just as a phone hung by every door along the main passageway. Unlike the other doors, though, this was an old-fashioned intercom with press buttons and a speaker.

  When she was a small child, her father had set up an intercom like this between the house and the garage. Her mother would use it to call her father to the dinner table. He did a lot of mysterious things out in his garage. After Witsec, she had learned why he kept his activities hidden from them.

  Her heart churned. Was Noah hiding his work for the same reasons?

  She pressed the big white button on the intercom, holding it down. “Noah? Are you in there?”

  She waited. If Noah was busy doing what she suspected, then he wouldn’t have a hand to spare to use the intercom.

  Her forehead and temples grew damp. Quinn held the button down again. “Noah, if you don’t let me in, I will start screaming and keep screaming, and run through the administration building yelling about terrorists and guns and Sarin gas, until everyone can hear me. Let me in.”

  He didn’t have to press any buttons to hear her. The intercom broadcast her voice at the other end.

  Quinn pressed the button again. “Noah, I don’t care what you’re doing. I just need to speak to you. Open the door.”

  This time, she let the silence lengthen. He liked to think things through. So she gave him time.

  The intercom gave a clicking sound. “I’m busy, Quinn.” The intercom clicked off.

  “I know you think you have to demonstrate your trustworthiness to Aslan. This isn’t the way to do it. Noah, for God’s sake, let me in. Think about it. Think about what you’re doing.” She leaned her head against the wall and propped herself up against it. She was still weak.

  When the door unlocked with an electronic thud, she felt it through her hands. She straightened up, staring at the door in surprise. She had expected it would take more to convince Noah to open the door.

  She pushed on the door, before he could change his mind.

  [25]

  11 a.m.

  The door opened sluggishly, for it was heavy. The passage beyond was stark, lit by fluorescent tubes, with white paint and light gray linoleum on the floor. It was soulless.

  Quinn barely paid any attention as she rushed down the length of the corridor to the door at the other end. That door was white and had a simple handle.

  She yanked the handle open and hurried into the room beyond.

  As were the other laboratories she had seen behind the glass walls, this one was clean and sterile, with white linoleum, white walls and a ton of stainless-steel shelving and benches. Glassware littered the horizontal surfaces.

  Equipment beeped and blinked, all of them with electronic control panels which would take an advanced degree to operate.

  Noah stood in the middle of the room, his legs spread. He had taken off his suit jacket. Over the top of his shirt and pants he wore a black, gleaming apron which looked like heavy-duty plastic or rubber. He didn’t have his arms crossed as usual, because they were encased in gloves which came up to his elbows. The gloves looked as tough as the apron.

  Quinn’s pulse beat heavily in the side of her neck. Weakness threaded through her. She didn’t understand what the protective gear was for, yet her gut was screaming at her.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded of Noah. “Where is the woman?” At the last minute she remembered not to speak to Leela’s name. As far as anyone here was concerned, she was protesting out of a sense of human decency, not because she knew Leela personally.

  “Why are you here?” Noah demanded.

  “I want you to think it through. There has to be another way to do this. You don’t have to kill her.”

  Noah’s jaw worked. “What would you have me do? Give her a cup of tea and send her on her way? She has been spying on Aslan. We turn her loose, she tells everyone. Then men descend bearing guns and more.”

  “You could keep her captive. Hold her until the shipment has gone and nothing is left to be found. This place must have withstood hundreds of official inspections. Once the shipment is gone, there will be nothing for them to find. You could let her go and she could say whatever she wanted, and no one could do anything about it.”

  Quinn realized she was wringing her hands. She made herself relax and put her hands back at her side. She didn’t want to look as though she was pleading, even though it was exactly what she was doing. “I don’t believe you are like Aslan. You’re better than him.”

  Noah raised his brow in question. His face remain
ed impassive. “My, you are a shitty judge of people, aren’t you?”

  Quinn squeezed her fingers into fists. “What do you mean?” Her voice was bodiless. Her gut was still screaming at her, louder than ever.

  Noah lifted his encased hand and gestured with his fingers. “Come and see.”

  Quinn didn’t remember taking the steps necessary to cross the floor from the door to the counter where Noah stood waiting for her. She followed him to the stainless-steel counter and saw it was a monstrous sink, five-foot-long and three feet deep. It was the size of a bathtub.

  It was full to the brim with…something. Whatever it was, it bubbled and stank. The smell was so revolting, she moaned and put her elbow over her mouth and nose. She could tell it was caustic from the way it tore at the back of her throat and nose.

  Things seem to swirl within the bubble. Insanely, the swirl of pink, red, gray, and black looked like marbling to her.

  One of the more solid objects rolled over and surfaced. It was the tip of a flat leather shoe with a sensible heel.

  Quinn staggered away. She came up against another counter and propped herself upon it. She moaned and her gorge rose, only nothing was left for her to vomit. She stood with her head hanging, breathing hard.

  Movement from the corner of her eyes made her glance up, her instincts on high alert. Mitchell stood just inside the laboratory door, his arms crossed. He was grinning.

  He and Noah exchanged smiles. A wealth of unspoken commentary was in those smiles. Brothers, recognizing each other and acknowledging their common bonds.

  Quinn tottered across the floor, her legs barely holding her up. With each step, strength came back. Hysteria built inside her. She tamped it down, knowing she must keep a clear head.

  Nothing she thought she had understood was correct. She trusted no one in this place, not even slightly. She was on her own.

  She couldn’t stay here. The horrible truth overwhelmed any desire she had to find out more about how Denis died. His death looked clean and quick, in comparison to what she had learned today.