The Enraged jqt-7

by Brett Battles

  The call was answered after three rings.

  “Hey, Quinn.” Definitely not Liz’s voice.

  “Nate?”

  “Uh-huh. Hold on a sec.” Movement and a few grunts. When the younger cleaner spoke again, his voice no longer sounded quite as sleepy. “Sorry. Liz forgot her phone when she left last night.”

  Quinn tensed. “Left?”

  “Down the hall,” Nate said quickly. “I’m assuming you want to talk to her.”

  “I just want to check on Orlando.”

  “Oh, well, I can do that.” A pause. “She looks fine.”

  “You’re in her room?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What does Dr. Montero say?”

  “Haven’t seen him. I think a nurse comes in a few times an hour, but, well, I’ve kind of been sleeping, you know?”

  “Then you have no idea how she is.”

  Nate took a moment before he answered. “I know she seems to be resting peacefully. I know none of the machines she’s hooked up to are making funny noises. I know there hasn’t been any sudden rush of doctors into the room responding to some kind of crisis. I’d say she’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to be doing. Resting and getting better.”

  Quinn forced himself to take a calming breath. It was as early there in Isla de Cervantes as it was in Virginia, after all. Dr. Montero probably wasn’t even at the hospital yet. And Nate was right. If she was resting comfortably, that was a good sign.

  “How, um, how are you doing?” he asked.

  “Peachy. My back still hurts, but if I keep it stretched, I do okay.”

  “That’s good. What about Lanier, Berkeley, and Curson?”

  “They’re a bit worse off, but on the mend.”

  “Best that we can expect, I guess.”

  “Quinn, Liz said you were trying to find who gave Romero the list,” Nate said. “How’s that going?”

  Quinn felt a slight tinge of guilt for not having told Nate himself. “It’s been…interesting.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “I’ll tell you when we come back.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I’m hoping tonight. If not, then tomorrow.”

  Nate was quiet for several seconds. “I don’t want to be cut out. Whatever you’re doing, I want to be a part of it.”

  “I know. You will be. It’s just—”

  “I’m fine,” Nate said. “It’s not the first time I’ve been injured. I can do what needs to be done.”

  “I promise I’ll brief you when I get back.”

  “I’m holding you to that.”

  A big rig rattled down the interstate, its engine bellowing as the driver downshifted. “If anything changes with Orlando, call me right away.”

  “Don’t worry so much,” Nate said. “I’ll keep an eye on things here and call if there’s anything you need to know.”

  * * *

  It was another hour before the others were up and dressed. They grabbed a quick breakfast at the café next to their motel before heading back into DC.

  Even with traffic, they arrived at the John Adams building of the Library of Congress fifteen minutes before its 8:30 opening.

  “You two cover the outside,” Quinn said to Daeng and Howard. “I don’t want trouble showing up without us knowing about it.”

  Both men nodded.

  “You’re coming with me, though, right?” Misty asked Quinn.

  “I’ll be right next to you the whole time.”

  At 8:30 on the dot, they exited the car. While Daeng and Howard went to find lookout spots, Quinn accompanied Misty inside to one of the available public computer workstations.

  “You’re the driver,” he said, motioning for her to take the seat.

  Once she was situated, he leaned in behind her so he could have a better view of the monitor. She pulled the keyboard forward and extended her fingers above it, but they remained there, hovering, unmoving.

  “What’s wrong?” Quinn asked.

  “I shouldn’t be showing you this. Peter was very clear that no one but he and I could know.”

  Her loyalty to Peter was as annoying as it was admirable. “He’s not here anymore.”

  “I don’t care. I promised him. Please.”

  “Fine,” he said, rising back up. “Wave me back once you’re in.”

  Looking relieved, she said, “Thank you.”

  Quinn wandered several terminals away, and used the opportunity to scan the room in case someone had been able to bypass Daeng and Howard, but none of the library’s patrons triggered his alarm.

  When his gaze returned to Misty, she motioned that it was okay for him to return. He resumed his position behind her, and saw that the Library of Congress screen had been replaced by some sort of index.

  “This is it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How do you search?”

  “Here.” She clicked on a small circle near the top. Instantly, a text box opened, ready for input. “Should I try it?”

  “That’s what we’re here for.”

  Quinn, having taken possession of the card from Peter before they’d left the motel, pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  Misty looked around, as if what she was about to do was a crime. On the surface, it probably was. The Library certainly wouldn’t be happy to learn its servers secretly housed the archives of a former intelligence agency.

  Slowly, she typed in the first line from Peter’s note.

  Y7(29g)85KL/24

  When she hit ENTER, the cursor blinked several times, then the screen went blank.

  When it remained that way for more than ten seconds, Quinn said, “That can’t be right.”

  “That didn’t happen last time I was here,” Misty said, looking equally concerned. “What should I do?”

  “Maybe we should try closing the database and bringing it back up.”

  “How? The screen’s blank.”

  Behind them, someone said, “Is there a problem?”

  They both turned to find a woman in her early thirties, dressed in slacks and a nice blouse, standing a few feet away. Her name tag indentified her as Carole Barnes, Librarian, Interactive Media.

  “No, we’re fine,” Quinn said.

  But she was already looking past him at the monitor, her eyes narrowing. “Is the terminal frozen?”

  Misty hesitated, then said, “It seems to be.”

  “Here,” Ms. Barnes said. “Move out of the way.”

  “I’m sure it’s just running slow,” Quinn said.

  The librarian looked at him, an eyebrow raised. “And I’m sure you’re not the one in charge of the equipment. Now, please, step back.”

  Short of rendering the woman unconscious, Quinn didn’t know what else to do. So he gave Misty a subtle nod, and they moved away from the station.

  Ms. Barnes immediately took the vacated seat and reached under the desk. A second later, the computer powered down.

  “Let’s see if that does the trick,” she said without moving from the chair.

  Ten seconds passed before Quinn heard the computer fan kick back on. A moment after that, the monitor sprang back to life. Once it cycled through, they were greeted once more with the Library of Congress screen.

  “There,” Ms. Barnes said, finally relinquishing the chair. “Let me know if it acts up again.”

  Quinn and Misty thanked her as she left.

  “I’ll turn my back, but I’m not walking away this time,” Quinn said when they were alone again.

  “So turn already.”

  Once more, Misty logged in to the Office’s archive and brought up the search box.

  She retyped the characters and said, “Here goes nothing,” as she pressed ENTER.

  The result was a repeat of last time.

  “Dammit,” she said.

  Quinn frowned at the screen. “Try typing. Maybe it’ll allow you to navigate back.”

  She hit a few keys. Surprisingly, char
acters started appearing right where the text box had been.

  “Wait,” Quinn said. “Erase that and type in the message again.”

  She did what he asked. When she hit ENTER, the screen went black again, but only stayed that way for a second before a column of several short lines of type appeared. The first line contained an address — number and street only. The ones below it appeared to be a short list of cryptic directions.

  “Does the address mean anything to you?” Quinn asked.

  Misty shook her head. “No.”

  Quinn pulled out his phone and took a picture of the screen.

  “Is there another page or is this it?” he asked.

  She moved the cursor across the screen. “Nothing is linked.”

  “What if you try typing it in again?”

  As she put her fingers on the keyboard, a small box labeled TIME UNTIL LOG OFF appeared on screen, with numbers below it counting down from thirty.

  Misty went ahead and typed in the characters anyway, but none of them appeared. As the countdown clock reached fifteen, she said, “You want to take another picture, just in case?”

  Quinn checked the one he’d already taken. It was clean and readable. “We’re good,” he said.

  When the clock hit zero, the screen faded first to black, then to the home screen for the Library.

  “I guess that’s it,” Misty said, staring at the monitor. “At least we know the message was a password.”

  “Yeah, but to what?” He looked around and noticed that Ms. Barnes was heading their way again.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Worked fine,” he said. “We just finished up.”

  “Great. Well, enjoy your day.”

  Quinn and Misty rendezvoused with Daeng and Howard back at the car.

  After everyone was in the vehicle, Daeng said, “Well?”

  “It worked. Gave us an address,” Quinn said.

  “An address to where?”

  “Good question.”

  Quinn looked at the photo he’d taken, memorized the street and number, then entered them into the search box of his map app. He expected to get at least half a dozen matches across the country, but only three choices popped up. All were on the East Coast — one in Maine, another in New Hampshire, and a third only a few miles away.

  “Arlington,” he told Howard.

  CHAPTER 12

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  As was her habit, Helen Cho arrived at her office at five thirty a.m. That was a price she was happy to pay for being able to run her various organizations from the West Coast instead of back in New York or DC.

  The East Coast had hurricanes and blizzards and humidity. San Francisco had earthquakes — though not nearly as often as people living elsewhere thought — and that was about it. She didn’t mind a good ground shake anyway. She’d been born in Los Angeles and had lived through more than her share of tumblers.

  Between six and six thirty, while she was invariably on a call to someone in the CIA, NSA, FBI, or the Pentagon, her assistant David — who was not a fan of early mornings — would bring in hard copies of reports that had come in overnight, and place them on her desk. If she was on a conference call that only needed her presence but not her attention, she would begin perusing them. Otherwise she would wait until the call had ended.

  The call this morning had been an example of the latter, a one-on-one with an assistant director at Langley. After she hung up, she buzzed David to bring her a fresh cup of coffee, and began sorting through the pile.

  The first document was a status report on field operations being run directly out of her San Francisco office. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Next up was a lengthy breakdown of a mission that had finished up two days prior. There had been a couple problems on this one, but it had all worked out in the end. This was followed by reports on wiretapped conversations, shadowing operations, and asset acquisitions.

  Near the bottom was a document from O & O. The DC security agency was a recent addition to her responsibilities. For years it had been run semiautonomously, which, it seemed, turned out to be a problem. The powers that be within Homeland Security suspected the agency of flagrant abuse of both authority and budget, but they needed proof, and had installed Helen to evaluate and clean up any messes. It wasn’t a task she’d been thrilled to undertake, but she also knew no one could do it better than she. So far, her biggest problem had been getting everyone at O & O to understand she was the one in charge.

  As she read the report, her face hardened in anger. Here was another example of information coming to her long after it should have. According to the document, yesterday someone had broken into an apartment in Georgetown, and one of O & O’s agents had been shot trying to detain one of the intruders. Thankfully the wound had not been life threatening, but that didn’t matter. She should have been informed immediately.

  Her anger almost caused her to miss the most important detail, one that resonated with her both professionally and personally — the address of the break-in.

  I must be remembering incorrectly.

  She checked her private contact list, glad she had not deleted the entry she was looking for. Nope, she hadn’t remembered wrong. The apartment that had been broken into — the apartment O & O had been hired to watch, for some reason — belonged to Peter.

  Reading on, she saw that a tip had later come in that the intruders were using a Virginia safe house, but after another team had been dispatched to check, it turned out that though someone had been at the house, he or she or they were no longer there.

  She put the file aside and buzzed David. “These reports are all from this morning?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re sure none of these came in yesterday.”

  “No, ma’am. They were all from this morning.”

  “Get me Stone at O & O.” Gregory Stone was O & O’s managing director, and the biggest pain in the ass of the bunch.

  Thirty seconds later, David called. “I have Mr. Stone for you.”

  As soon as he hung up, Stone was on the line.

  “Gregory, what the hell is going on over there?” Helen asked.

  “Good morning to you, too, Helen.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to be a bit more specific.”

  “I just read the report about the apartment break-in yesterday. The one where one of your men got his fingers blown off? How come I’m just hearing about this now?”

  “Let me pull up the info,” Stone said, sounding as if he were doing her a big favor. She could hear him typing. “I have it here. The client requested temporary retention of the information.”

  This was another of O & O’s annoying business practices. Some clients had been granted right-of-retention privileges they could invoke anytime they felt it necessary. When that happened, no one but the client would receive updates for the first twelve to twenty-four hours, depending on the operation. Helen had already sent a directive rescinding the rule, but apparently Stone had ignored it.

  “I don’t care what the client requested. The retention rule is no longer valid and you know it.”

  “This is a grandfathered client. Our hands were tied.”

  She bit back a response, knowing things could spiral into a tangential conversation that would distract her from finding out more about what had happened at Peter’s place. After giving herself a moment to calm down, she opened the O & O client database and said, “Who’s the client?”

  “Is there something specific you’re trying to find out? Maybe I could—”

  “Yes. I specifically want to know who the client is.”

  “If you’re unhappy with how things are—”

  “Dammit, Gregory! Give me the code!”

  Stone read her the client code.

  Helen typed it in and the client name popped onto her screen almost instantly.

  DARVOT CONSULTING

  Is this some kind
of joke? she thought, staring at her screen.

  Darvot was as gray an organization as one could get. More than a few stories had circulated through the legitimate intelligence community about the lengths Kyle Morten, president and CEO of Darvot, and his dog Griffin would go to in helping their clients. Unfortunately, they were good at covering their tracks so it was all rumor, but Helen knew they were dirty, and Helen hated dirty.

  She’d thought she’d seen it all from O & O, but this had to be the biggest example of the organization’s incompetence. No proper agency would even answer Darvot’s phone calls, and here O & O was doing potential wet work for them.

  Dear God.

  “Helen?” Stone said. “Helen, are you still there?”

  She needed to dig into this properly so that none of it blew up in her or her superiors’ faces. She bit back the riot act she wanted to read him and said, “I’ll call you back.”

  CHAPTER 13

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  The address turned out to be for a place called Wysocki Self-Storage in a mixed-use neighborhood. The facility consisted of several two-story buildings, some with roll-up doors along the outside, and some that Quinn guessed were entered through hallways running down the middle of the structures. There was a small office located right on the corner, with a counter inside where two employees were assisting customers.

  Quinn pulled out his phone and looked at the instructions that had accompanied the address. The first two items read:

  1. Bldg 6

  2. 72591

  He took a second look at the storage place. Painted on the side of each building was a number. The one directly across from where they were parked was labeled 2, and the building next to it 3.

  “Around the corner,” he said.

  Howard pulled away from the curb. As they turned, the sides of three more buildings came into view. Number 4 was first, then 5, and finally 6.

  Quinn pointed at a spot opposite 6. “Park there.”

  Howard did as instructed.

  Like the other buildings that made up Wysocki Self-Storage, number 6 had an access door off the street, with a small square box mounted on the wall next to it.