The Cleaner (20 page)

So Zeus is lying. ' Orlando nodded. 'But why?' Quinn asked. 'To create a smokescreen?' she offered. 'Provide

a way for Borko to get out of the spotlight so he

could concentrate on the bigger picture?' 'Like taking out the Office, ' Quinn said. Orlando frowned, then shook her head. 'It's weak. ' Quinn sighed in agreement. 'It would be a hell

of a lot easier if someone just claimed responsibility.' 'That'd take all the fun out of it, though, ' Orlando said.

Quinn took another drink of water, then set the bottle on the side table next to the couch. 'All right. Borko's still a suspect, but we'll remain open to other possibilities. '

'Right, ' Orlando said.

'But if it is Borko, there's something else that's missing.' 'You mean motive?' Nate asked. 'No, ' Quinn said. 'The only motive he needs is

money. It's more a question of who's paying the bills. Borko's strictly a hired gun. '

Orlando hesitated. 'I might know the answer to that.'

'Tell me, ' Quinn said.

'I've found a couple references of Borko being involved with Dahl. ' 'Dahl?' Quinn said. 'That name sounds familiar. ' 'Yeah, ' she said. 'That's what I was thinking, so

I did a little digging. Apparently he's been around since the late eighties. A fringe player. Haven't been able to talk to anyone who's worked with him, but I'm still checking. I get the impression he's now fronting a lot of Borko's work. '

'Another winner.' Quinn closed his eyes in thought. 'What a mess.'

'I could be wrong.'

Quinn let out a humorless laugh. 'Okay. We concentrate on Duke's lead first. Maybe it's Borko. Maybe it's somebody else. Maybe it's this Dahl guy. Hopefully, no matter what, it'll clear things up. If not, and Borko's not involved in this meeting, we'll go after him directly.'

Orlando nodded.

'Nate. You're with me tonight,' Quinn said.

'Okay,' Nate said.

Quinn looked at Orlando. 'You'll keep tabs on us by radio from here. I can let you know if I find anything useful.'

'Lucky me,' she said.

Chapter 19

It was a quarter after ten. Schandauer Strasse was quiet and dark. The only illumination came from a few security lamps attached to apartment buildings farther down the block. There were no streetlights.

Cars lined either side of the road, leaving no place to park, but Quinn and Nate didn't need one. A taxi had dropped them off several blocks away, near the city administrative building on Karl Marx Strasse. They were dressed warmly, in dark clothes. On Quinn's back was a black backpack. Heavy, but manageable.

'You want me to go over it again?' Quinn asked as they walked down the cobblestone sidewalk toward Schandauer Strasse.

Nate shook his head. 'I keep out of sight, watch the street, let you know if there's anything unusual. Right?'

'Not just unusual,' Quinn said. 'Anything. Got it?'

'I got it.'

A couple of hours earlier it had begun to snow. Lightly at first, but it had increased steadily until it was falling at a rate of nearly an inch an hour.

Quinn guessed by morning there probably would be over a foot on the ground.

At the corner of Schandauer Strasse, they paused to study the water plant. Like most of the rest of the buildings on the street, it was dark.

'There,' Quinn said, speaking in a low voice. 'The Ford parked near the gate.'

The Volvo that had been there that afternoon was gone. In its place was a Ford sedan. Quinn could just make out the shape of a person sitting in the driver's seat.

'I see him,' Nate said.

'Are you in yet?' Orlando's voice sounded in Quinn's ear. 'We're at the end of the street,' Quinn said. 'Tell me what you see,' Orlando said. Quinn scanned the street. 'Schandauer Strasse.

It's cobbled. Just wide enough for cars to park on both sides of the street and still have two-way traffic. Quiet. The water plant is half a block away. To the right, there's a three-story building. Looks like it's used for offices. To the left a smaller building. Brick. There's a Ford sedan with a guard in it parked where the other car had been this afternoon.'

'What about the water plant?'

'Just like I described it to you this afternoon. Only dark now.' 'Anything else?' 'Other than it's cold and wet and snowing and I should still be on Maui?'

'Yeah.'

'Nothing,' Quinn said.

* * *

204

Quinn and Nate made their way carefully along the row of parked cars until they came to the back of the Ford. They waited a moment to be sure they hadn't been noticed, then Quinn reached up and attached a small ball of a putty-like substance to the bottom corner of the rear passenger-side window. When activated by heat, it would work its way around the rubber weather strip lining the window and enter the interior of the car as an odorless gas. Within moments, whoever was inside would be knocked out for up to two hours.

Quinn waited a moment to be sure the putty was staying in place, then retrieved a small plastic packet from his coat. He carefully opened it and removed a thin, mesh fabric pad. He placed this directly over the compound on the window, careful to cover the putty completely, then took several steps back.

They watched as the ball began to reduce in size, the pad not only heating it but also directing the gas to go into the car instead of out onto the street. When it was done, Quinn looked at his watch and waited a full three minutes before nodding to Nate.

'He's out,' Nate said, after he'd peeked into the front of the car. 'That stuff's cool.'

'Are you ready?' Quinn asked, all business.

Nate nodded.

Quinn put a hand on Nate's back. 'Remember –'

'To tell you everything,' Nate finished.

'Good man.' Quinn made a final scan of the street. All was quiet. 'Okay, into position.' Nate nodded, then moved across the street to a spot they had determined prior to arriving. Quinn

checked the guard one last time. The man's head was tilted back against the seat, his mouth half open. Quinn glanced down at the sentry's chest to make sure the man was breathing. He was.

After giving Nate a quick wave, Quinn moved over to the fence. He quickly scanned the street and the water plant for signs of another sentry. There was no one.

After taking a deep breath, Quinn pulled himself over the fence and dropped down on the other side. He found himself on a short driveway that ran in front of the building and around to the south end, where the door was.

In the left-hand pocket of his jacket was the key Duke had given him and a small but powerful flashlight. Quinn removed the key but left the flashlight. For the moment there was enough residual light to see what he was doing. As he neared the door the silence that had enveloped the street was replaced by a muffled, low-level hum. It took him a second before he realized it was coming from inside the building.

He slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The lock was a little sticky, but it appeared to be old, so that wasn't surprising. After he heard the latch click, he slowly pulled the door open. There was no light coming from inside. He took a deep breath, then stepped into the building and closed the door behind him.

He was instantly enveloped by total darkness. He remained motionless for several moments, listening. Other than the loud hum, there was no other noise. He shoved the key back in his pocket, pulled out the flashlight, and turned it on. A quick sweep of the beam revealed he was alone.

'Nate, how's the street?' Quinn asked.

'Freezing,' Nate said, then added, 'all quiet.'

'You should be used to the cold by now,' Orlando said.

'I seem to remember you not being too happy when you had to stand in front of the Dorint,' Nate said.

'I was just faking it,' she said. 'Thought it might make you feel better.' 'Enough,' Quinn said. 'In case anyone's interested, I'm in.'

He aimed the light at the front of the building and began to make a more thorough investigation of his new surroundings. It didn't take long to discover why it was so dark inside. Wooden baffles had been erected over the inside of the windows and were secured firmly to the walls. As an added precaution, thick cloth strips had been affixed to where each baffle met the wall, guaranteeing no light from outside could seep in.

To the side of the door was a steel reinforced panel. The panel was mounted on tracks and could easily slide in front of the entrance, effectively sealing off the room.

He uttered aloud, 'What the hell do they need that for?'

'What're you talking about?' Orlando asked.

He described the baffled windows and the security door to her. 'Everything looks recently installed.' He noticed there was a distinct odor in the room, too. Not offensive. In fact, quite the opposite. Clean,

almost antiseptic. But not like a hospital. The antiseptic smell of a hospital was tinged with medicine and death. This smell was the clean of a room thoroughly disinfected, scrubbed from top to bottom and then wiped down with an abundance of ammonia.

'What do you think it means?' she asked after Quinn described the odor to her.

'I don't know.'

'Tell me about the rest of the room.'

He pointed the flashlight toward the ceiling. 'The room's big all right. Just like Duke said. Cavernous. Maybe seventy feet to the ceiling.'

'What's that noise?' Orlando asked.

Slowly, so he wouldn't miss anything important, he swung the flashlight around to his right.

'What the hell?' he said.

'What did you find?'

'I'm not sure,' he told her. 'Give me a few minutes.'

At first Quinn wasn't sure what he was looking at. The object took up over half the length of the room, side to side, and almost reached the ceiling. It was a giant sphere, not unlike a hot-air balloon, except it seemed to be sitting on a black pedestal. From where Quinn stood near the front door, it looked like the sphere was made of a thick white fabric. Maybe canvas. The black pedestal, a wide ring around the bottom of the sphere, looked to be about seven feet high. Unlike the sphere, it appeared to be made of something solid – metal, wood, or hard plastic. He wouldn't know for sure until he took a closer look. The whole thing made Quinn think of a giant golf ball sitting on a black tee.

He moved the flashlight across the object. A quarter of the way around to the left was a solid-looking scaffolding tower. Up one side of the tower ran a metal staircase. Quinn followed it with his light. It ended at a platform that was then connected to the sphere by a fifteen-foot-long canvas tunnel.

Interesting,
Quinn thought. As he played the flashlight over the tower again, he noticed something else. There was an elevator running up through the center of the structure. Quinn's next thought was that the whole thing was some sort of makeshift containment unit, perhaps for the transfer of hazardous materials.
Or,
unable to keep the image of the glass slide out of his mind,
something biological.
He took a few steps into the room. Whatever was making the noise was coming from deeper in the room, toward the back. He moved farther into the room to get a better angle, then shone his light past the sphere in the direction of the noise. It looked like an air pump. That made sense. Something had to keep the sphere from collapsing in on itself. He relaxed for a moment, relieved. The pump would be pushing air into the sphere, inflating it. The pressure needed to keep the sphere from collapsing had to be greater than the pressure outside, which would be an unsuitable arrangement when working with dangerous materials.To be effective that way, the pressure in the sphere would have to be less than the surrounding room, preventing the unintentional release of anything nasty, and the

structure itself would have to have something other than the air supporting it.

Without going inside, there was no telling its purpose. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the meeting. Then again, perhaps it did. Quinn would have to bug it, just in case.

'Well?' Orlando said.

'I'm still not sure,' Quinn told her.

'You've got to give me more than that.'

'Why don't I just show you?' he said.

He pulled the backpack off his shoulders and set it on the ground. From inside he took out two objects. One was tiny and black, and the other was a rectangular box about the size of a candy bar. He put them both on the ground, then set the flashlight on top of the backpack, pointing it in front of him so he could use it as a work light. That done, he picked up the smaller object, turned it over and found a small number etched into the object's base. 'Camera 17,' he told Orlando.

'You'll need to power up the signal booster,' she told him.

'Hold on.' He picked up the rectangular box, the booster, and flipped a tiny switch on its side. He felt a slight vibration as the booster came to life.

Five seconds later, Orlando said, 'I've got signal.'

Quinn set the booster on the ground next to his backpack. 'How much light do you need?'

'Is there any seeping into the room?'

'Not that I can tell.'

'Point your flashlight in the general direction of what you want to show me. That should be enough.'

The camera's night vision was top of the line.

Orlando would have setded for nothing less. Quinn turned his backpack so that the flashlight was pointing toward the sphere. He then stood up and began a sweep of the room with the camera.

'What the hell is that?' Orlando asked.

He was aiming the lens at the sphere. 'I don't know. There's a staircase and an elevator over here.' He pointed the camera toward the scaffolding. 'At the top it looks like that tunnel thing is some sort of entrance.'

'Duke didn't tell you about this?' 'He said he hadn't been in the building for several years. Probably doesn't even know it's here.'

'I'm not sure I like this,' Orlando said. 'Maybe we should call it off. See if we can find a little more information first.'

Quinn paused a moment before answering. 'No,' he said. 'I'm here. We'll do this now.' He panned the camera over the sphere, giving Orlando a longer look. 'How many cameras did you give me?' Quinn asked.