“You guys are released,” Quinn said to Howard and Larson.
“Easiest gig I’ve had all year,” Howard said as they shook. “You guys be careful.”
The two men walked over to the waiting sedan, and left.
Though the plane had been in the air for several hours, they had actually landed just a few hundred miles to the northeast from where they had taken off. That, of course, was information they did not share with their captives.
To ensure that Mygatt and company didn’t figure that out, Quinn slipped one of the CDs that had come with the van into the vehicle’s old stereo, and turned up the volume in the back. Each disk was labeled with the name of a different country, and contained recorded radio broadcasts from that particular nation. The one Quinn selected was from Kazakhstan.
As soon as everyone else was in, Quinn glanced at Nate. “Let’s go.”
__________
DEWAYNE BEETNER WAS not in a good mood. Why the hell he and his cameraman, Zach Yates, were in some Romanian backwater town, hiding out in a car outside what looked like a deserted factory, he didn’t know. But the assignment had come from high-up PCN management, so here they were, before the sun was even up, waiting for…something.
“Gotta take a leak,” Yates said.
Beetner grunted his indifference as Yates climbed out of the car. It wouldn’t be long before he had to do the same thing.
This wasn’t the first time Beetner and Yates had been sent on an assignment without adequate information. Occasionally tips would come in that their bosses back in New York would deem worthy of checking out. More times than not, they turned out to be nothing more than PR stunts that were a complete waste of time.
Beetner was beginning to wonder if this was even going to reach that level. He had the distinct feeling that absolutely nothing was going to happen.
His gaze drifted up to the stars above the town. Out here, away from the big city, they glowed with an intensity he seldom had a chance to see anymore. When he’d been younger, he would have been able to pick out most of the constellations, but he’d lost that knack long ago.
At least it wasn’t raining, he thought. That would have truly sucked.
Light flickered at the bottom of his vision. He tilted his head back down. A high, solid wall ran the length of the block, broken only by the closed gate they were told to keep an eye on. On the wall next to the gate, a rusty-looking lamp had just come on.
Beetner reached across the car and opened the passenger door. “Zach!” he whispered loudly. “Get back here!”
Yates ran back and climbed in.
“What is it?” the cameraman asked.
“That light. It wasn’t on before.”
“Okay. Is this it?”
“Hell if I know, but be ready just in case.”
Yates grabbed his camera from the backseat and aimed it toward the gate.
For a full five minutes nothing happened. Beetner had all but written it off as another meaningless moment in a night full of them, when, without any warning, a small door that was built into the gate opened.
“Get this. Get this,” Beetner said, still doubting whatever was going to happen would be newsworthy.
For another several seconds, nothing more occurred.
Then a foot hesitantly stepped over the threshold.
The man it belonged to emerged a moment later. His thin frame made him look small, but in height, he was probably the same as Beetner, around five foot ten. His face was gaunt and incredibly pale.
He took several tentative steps away from the gate, and looked back. Though the door remained open, no one else emerged. He then looked both ways down the road as if he were unsure where to go.
“Is he why we’re here?” Yates asked.
“I…I don’t know.” Beetner thought for a moment. “Come on. We might as well talk to him.”
As the two men climbed out of the car, the thin man turned to look at them. For a moment he did nothing, then his eyes widened in fear. He twisted back in the other direction and started walking away at a pace Beetner guessed was as fast as he could go.
“Hold on!” Beetner yelled, hoping the man understood English. “We don’t want to hurt you. We just want to ask you a question.”
The man glanced back but kept moving.
Beetner might have given up right then, but there was something about the guy that was familiar. He started jogging, and could hear Yates grunting along behind him.
“Sir, please. We’re not going to hurt you or anything.”
This time there was no response at all.
As he passed the gate, Beetner glanced over at the open doorway. He’d assumed from the way the other man had looked back that there were others with him, but the reporter saw no one on the other side, just a starlit courtyard and a decrepit building beyond.
“Sir,” he called out. “I’m not sure if you can understand me, but we just want to talk. We’re from PCN. The news network?”
At the mention of PCN, the thin man’s steps faltered.
Beetner thought he heard the man say something, but he wasn’t sure. “Sorry. I didn’t catch that,” he said.
“Trick,” the man grunted as he kept walking.
He’d spoken English.
“No, sir. No trick.”
“Trick,” the man repeated. “Not real. Leave me. Leave me.”
Not only had he spoken English, but his accent was American.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Beetner said. He jogged the final few feet between them and put a hand on the man’s shoulder to stop him. “We just want to—”
The man jerked away, twisting as he did so that he ended up facing the PCN reporter. “Leave me! Leave me!” He stumbled backward a few steps, then whipped around and continued walking away.
Beetner stared after the man, unable to move his feet.
“Oh, shit,” Yates said from behind him.
“You saw that, right? I’m not crazy.”
“I saw,” Yates said, his tone of disbelief matching his colleague’s.
Beetner remained rooted where he was for another second. Finally, he broke free and began chasing after the biggest story he would ever have.
CHAPTER 42
QUINN CHECKED HIS watch.
They would be cutting it close, but even at eleven p.m., it had been too much to hope that they wouldn’t run into any traffic as they drove into New York City. Their timing had to be perfect, otherwise they risked getting detained and questioned themselves. Something that was out of the question.
“Seven minutes out,” Nate said.
Quinn nodded, and glanced at Daeng. “Let’s get them ready.”
Mygatt, Green, and Olsen sat on the floor of the van, tied and hooded as before. Speakers in back blasted the prerecorded radio station directly at them. Quinn lowered the volume then said, “How’s everyone doing?”
“We did what you asked,” Mygatt said. “Now let us go like you promised.”
“I think I promised to give you to people who wouldn’t necessarily kill you.”
“What does that mean?”
Quinn didn’t respond.
“You will never get away with this,” Green said. “Kidnapping a US dignitary and high-ranking officials and taking us out of the country is going to get you the death penalty, my friend. And I’m not talking from a court. I will personally see to it that you are all tracked down and killed in the most painful possible ways.”
“And you feel you’ll be in the position to do that because…?”
“Let us the fuck out of here!” Green yelled.
“Well, you’re in luck. That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Quinn said. “Now, boys, we’re going to remove your restraints for a moment, so when it’s your turn, don’t try anything stupid. If you do, we’re going to have to shoot you, and I’m sure you’d rather avoid that. Correct?”
The men uttered their agreement, though Quinn suspected Olsen and Green were thinking this might be
the chance to make their move.
They started with Olsen first, having him lie flat on the floor of the van, then cutting loose his hands and ankles. Twice the man’s muscles twitched as if he were preparing to strike out, and twice Quinn rapped the back of Olsen’s head with the barrel of his gun. They stripped him down to his underwear, replaced his clothes with a pair of bright orange coveralls, and restrained his hands and ankles again.
They repeated the procedure with Green and Mygatt, neither man attempting any kind of escape.
“Why did we need to change?” Mygatt said.
Instead of answering, Quinn turned the radio back up and returned to the front, leaving Daeng to watch over them.
“We’re close,” Nate said.
Quinn saw that they were only a few blocks from the exact position they needed to be. He called Peter.
“Almost there.”
Peter took a second before he said, “No calling it off, huh?”
“Not an option.”
“Yeah, I know. Okay, I need three minutes.”
Quinn put a hand over the phone and leaned toward Nate. “Slow down.”
__________
IT HAD BEEN a less-than-interesting news day. The presidential primaries were over, each party’s candidates all but decided. Most of the day had been spent discussing the preparations for the upcoming convention, going over the merits of each candidate, and arguing over who was going to have the best chance in the fall. In other words, the same stuff they’d been hashing over for the last week.
Something was brewing, though. Norm Geller sensed it the moment Patty Vinton, the late-shift news director, had hung up the phone and rushed out of the control room. Geller was the TD, the technical director. His job was to operate the switcher board that cut between studio shots, pretaped segments, and live location feeds, then funneled the final product up to the satellite and onto the air. He’d been doing the job for nearly a decade, so his instincts were pretty honed about these things.
Though he didn’t say anything to anyone, his money was on a political scandal. There had been far too few of them up to this point, and with the conventions not far away, wild accusations were bound to start surfacing. An affair, an illegal campaign contribution, a supporter who was not exactly on the up and up—could be any of those things.
When Patty came back into the room, he wasn’t surprised when she said, “We’re about to get a live feed. And Frank’s in Bay Seven cutting a piece we’ll want to slot in right after.”
“No problem,” Geller replied.
“What’s going on?” one of the producers in the back asked.
Patty ignored him and said to Wendy, their graphic person, “We’re going to need a lower third.”
“Sure. What’s it need to say?”
“The reporter is Dewayne Beetner. Location—‘Outside Bucharest, Romania.’ ”
That caught Geller off guard. “Romania?”
As Patty nodded, the phone rang. She picked it up, listened for a moment, then said, “We go in thirty seconds.”
__________
IT DIDN’T MATTER that it was just after eleven p.m. Times Square was packed with tourists.
As always, the neon and video screens that lined the buildings lit up the area like it was day. Excited, beaming faces moved from one bright spot to another, taking in the wonder of a city most of them had probably never been to before. The only locals were those working—in the stores, at the carts along the street, in taxis.
Several television networks had giant video boards silently carrying their feeds. One such board was owned by Prime Cable News, also known as PCN.
Nate pulled the van to a stop at the curb, seventy-five feet from the building with the PCN monitor.
“Gentlemen, we’re going to be sorry to see you go,” Quinn said.
He nodded at Daeng, who cut the ties around the men’s ankles.
Orlando started to open the door.
“Wait,” Mila said.
They all knew they only had seconds before a cop approached and told them to keep moving, but Quinn motioned for Orlando to hold on.
Mila knelt down in front of the man who’d caused her to lose the life she used to have. “I want you to remember something, Mr. Mygatt. I want you to remember that Mila Voss is responsible for everything that has happened to you and will continue to happen to you. And if I could do more, I would.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t forget you,” Mygatt said.
“Good. Because you’re going to wish you could.”
She stood up and nodded at Orlando.
“It’s on the screen,” Nate called back. “My God, it’s really there.”
The door swung open.
Quinn and Daeng grabbed Olsen and Green first, shoving them outside, then together they pulled Mygatt to his feet.
“You’re through, Mr. Mygatt,” Quinn said. “I’m sure you don’t believe that now, but in a few seconds you’ll know I’m right.”
They threw him out of the van.
Before Quinn closed the door, he looked back at the three men in their bright orange jumpsuits as they tried to pull the bags off their heads. He could also see the PCN camera crew rushing toward them from half a block away. And the large screen that could be seen from almost anywhere in the square was broadcasting a live camera feed from “Outside Bucharest, Romania” that was focused on an aged and horribly thin Thomas Gorman.
“Go,” Quinn ordered as he shut the door. “We’re done.”
CHAPTER 43
SELDOM WAS THERE a bigger story in an election year than the election itself. The Thomas Gorman scandal was going to be one of those exceptions.
His resurrection was littered with the bizarre. The facility he had been released from turned out to be an abandoned factory. PCN reporter Dewayne Beetner and his cameraman Zach Yates had searched the place themselves, finding absolutely no signs that it had been used at any point in the last decade. Wherever the prison was that Gorman said he had been held in, it wasn’t located in that building.
Strange occurrence number two happened at almost the same instant, half a world away in New York City. If a PCN crew hadn’t been assigned to do generic on-the-street interviews near the PCN monitor in Times Square, it was possible this second event would have been covered up. But the crew couldn’t help notice the three men in orange jumpsuits with black hoods on their heads being pushed out of a van. They had rushed over, and had been in time to see the men pull their hoods off moments before two SUVs screeched to a halt nearby. From inside, several men in dark suits jumped out and grabbed the three in orange. They quickly ushered them into their vehicles and drove away. But the faces of the men in jumpsuits had already been recorded, and within minutes producers at PCN identified them as former senator Mygatt, a high-ranking CIA operative named William Green, and another member of the intelligence community named Scott Olsen.
Even more interesting was that these were the same men implicated in a set of anonymously leaked documents, which included recorded phone conversations between the senator and Green that clearly showed they were responsible for Gorman’s faked death and incarceration.
Not surprisingly, before the sun had even risen the next day, both the current and former administrations publicly denounced the men, anxious to separate themselves from Mygatt and his associates’ grossly illegal actions.
__________
QUINN AND THE others drove straight from New York to a safe house outside Philadelphia.
The next day a package arrived from Peter. In it were the contents of yet another new life for Mila.
When Quinn showed it to her, she looked less than enthusiastic.
“There might still be those loyal to Mygatt or Green who would want to take out their revenge on you,” he explained.
“I know,” she said. “I just hadn’t thought this far ahead.”
“You did the right thing, Mila.”
She held up the package. “And for that, this is my punishment.�
��
“Not a punishment. An opportunity. A chance to do something you wanted to do, perhaps.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Julien would have been proud of you.”
A smile touched her lips. “He would have, wouldn’t he?”
A few hours later, a car came to take Mila to her new life. Where and what that was going to be, Quinn and the others didn’t know. It was better that way.
They all gathered at the front door to see her off.
“Thank you,” she said. “All of you, for coming after me. I would have failed on my own.”
“You would have found a way,” Nate said.
“I don’t know about that.”
“We do,” Orlando told her.
Mila gave each of them a hug, saving the longest and last for Quinn.
“I’m sorry you were shot.”
“Part of the job.”
“Hopefully you won’t have to find me again.”
“If you need us to, we will.”
__________
THE DAY WAS sunny with only a few scattered clouds moving along the southern edge of the bright blue sky. The sound of the boat’s motor hummed as its propeller churned through the river.
As soon as the familiar dock came into view, Quinn could feel the release of the tension he’d been holding on to. In an odd way, it felt like he was coming home.
The scaffolding was still erected around the temple, and while he could see some work had been done, they were not nearly as far along as he’d thought they’d be.
No matter. It would get done eventually.
The engine died as the boat pulled against the dock.
“So this is it?” Orlando said.
“Sorry you came?” Quinn asked.
She smiled. “Not at all.”
“Please tell me they have Wi-Fi here,” Garrett said.
Quinn patted Orlando’s son on the shoulder. “Sorry, buddy. No Wi-Fi.”
“PlayStation?”
“No.”
“Wii? Xbox? They at least have cable, right?”
Quinn shook his head.
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