The Cleaner (22 page)

He leaned over the opening and shone his light inside. The space was tiny, just enough for one person to stand comfortably. Mounted to one wall was a ladder. On the wall opposite was a door, and set into the frame next to the door was a colored light, shining red.

Quinn lowered himself through the opening and onto the ladder, then climbed down. He tried the lower door, but as he expected, it didn't open. He reached up and pulled the hatch closed. There were buttons on the inside that matched those on the outside. He pushed the red button and heard the hatch reseal. As he turned around, the red light beside the lower door turned green. If he was right, this time the door would open.

He was right.

** *

Quinn stepped through the door and found himself in a circular room. Only two objects broke up the curved walls: the air-lock shaft he'd just exited, and a door about a quarter of the way around to his left. It had to be the same door he'd seen from the outside.

As he walked toward it he stumbled over something on the floor. He brought his flashlight around to see what had caused his misstep.

It was a concrete lip about four inches high. It surrounded a large rectangular pit in the floor. As he shone his light into the hole, he realized it was a stairway leading downward into blackness.

The basement. They had constructed the sphere over its entrance.

Screw the pedestal door,
he thought. Here was a potentially better way out. There had to be some sort of exit down there. If he used the door in the pedestal, he'd be stepping into the main room of the water plant. Who knew who'd be standing there waiting for him?

He was about to start down the steps when he heard a now familiar clank. Someone was coming up the outside staircase again. Apparently they hadn't been satisfied with their previous check.

Quinn scrambled quickly downward. There was a door at the bottom made of metal, but it was old, and locked.

Quinn removed the set of lock picks from his backpack. He found what he needed and made quick work of the door. Above him he could hear men climbing below the platform, heading for the air lock to the circular room.

Quinn turned off his flashlight. He didn't know what was on the other side of this door, and he didn't need his light making him an easy target. He eased the door open, then slipped into the basement.

Quinn paused, listening carefully to make sure he was alone. Once he was convinced, he relocked the door from the inside. He returned the picks to his backpack, then turned on the flashlight again.

He was in a large space, half the length of the building above, stretching from the midpoint of the water plant to the front end. There were several metal cabinets lining the far wall. Four sturdy white plastic tables sat in the middle of the room. Under each table were large bins, also plastic. There was another hum coming from somewhere nearby. Not like the hum of the air pumps upstairs. This was deeper in tone and not as loud.

Quinn's instincts told him to check the bins and cabinets and find out what was inside. It might be information that could prove valuable. But he stopped himself. At the moment, staying alive and free was more important.

He continued his scan. At first, there didn't appear to be any other exit. It took him a second pass before he picked out a door set in the wall to his left. The door was painted the same beige color as the rest of the room, and had a latch that lay flush with the surface, making it nearly invisible. He walked over to it. There was no locking mechanism, so he pulled it open and stepped through.

Another dark room, this one noticeably colder than the one he'd just come from. He closed the door behind him and looked around. In the far corner was the faintest trace of light.

Quinn smiled. It was a window.

As he began walking toward it, he moved the flashlight from left to right. Long worktables were scattered around. To his right was what appeared to be a large refrigerating unit. It was the source of the new humming sound. He stopped and took a longer look at it.

The refrigeration unit was of the walk-in variety. It would have looked more appropriate sitting in the basement of a butcher shop than a decommissioned water facility.

Quinn knew he had to get out of the building, but he couldn't help wanting to take a look inside. This time his desire to investigate overrode his desire to flee.

He grabbed the handle on the unit's door and gave it a pull. At first it wouldn't open. Then he saw a steel pin was preventing the latch from releasing. He removed the pin, and the door opened easily.

Freezing air flowed over him. The unit hadn't been set to just cold but
damn
cold. Freezer cold.

Quinn stood in the doorway and moved the beam of his flashlight around the inside of the refrigerator. He estimated that it was about eight feet deep by five feet across. Against the walls on either side were heavy-duty storage racks. Each had four wide metal shelves. All empty. Even so, it made for a cramped space.

He was beginning to close it back up when he heard a noise coming from the other part of the basement. He glanced at the door between the rooms, almost expecting it to burst open and let in a flood of armed men. But it remained shut.

He closed the refrigerator door and replaced the pin so nothing would look suspicious. From where he stood he could see the window in the far corner of the room. It was high up on the wall, just above the outside ground level.

The freedom of the German night beckoned him. He turned and looked back at the door that separated him from the people in the other room. He couldn't chance it.

Dammit!
he thought.
This is really starting to piss me off.

Quinn jammed himself into the space between the ceiling and the top of the refrigerator, as far back against the wall as he could. In his right hand he held the SIG Sauer Orlando had picked up for him. Attached to the end of the barrel was a suppressor. The last thing he wanted to do was use the weapon, but if they found him, he wasn't going to go easily.

Half a minute later, the door to the outer room opened. It was followed immediately by the sound of several people entering. Flashlight beams darted from wall to wall, covering every inch of the space. All, that is, except the place Quinn hid.

Quinn counted footsteps. Four men. The sounds of movements stopped after a few moments.

'See?' It was Matz, the one who'd first come into the sphere looking for Quinn. 'I told you. He didn't come down here.'

'Then where is he?' a second man asked. It was the voice from the radio, in person now. Matz had referred to him as 'One.' But now that Quinn heard the voice without static, it sounded very familiar.

'Perhaps he got by the guards upstairs?' Matz suggested. 'Made it outside without anyone seeing?'

'You think that's possible?' One asked.

'I don't know. But he's obviously not down here. The basement door was still locked. If he didn't get away, then he must still be upstairs somewhere. You did say he was good.'

'I asked for professionals and Duke gives me morons.'

Quinn's lips pressed hard against each other. Duke, again.

Silence. 'What about in there?' One asked.

'The cold storage?'

'Yes.'

Their footsteps approached the refrigeration unit and stopped near the door. 'There's a safety pin that acts as a lock. It's still in place. If he was inside, he couldn't have put it back in.'

One finally said, 'Let's go.'

Quinn listened as the men left the room. He heard the door close, but he didn't move. Something wasn't right.

Finally after several minutes, he heard the shuffling of feet. Then a door opened, and the man who had been waiting behind departed.

Quinn remained still for a moment longer, his mind racing. It was the lingerer. The voice from the radio. The

person Matz had called One. The man Piper had

warned him about. A man he'd last seen in Toronto. Borko.

Chapter 21

It was nearly one in the morning by the time Quinn finally made his way out of the building. Borko had left guards, but as the Serbian himself had admitted, Duke's men were morons. Quinn had little difficulty sneaking through their surveillance.

Quinn caught the last train heading north out of the Rathaus Neukolln station, the U7. There were only a handful of other passengers aboard. For a while he just rode, his mind racing. He knew he had to get to the emergency rendezvous point, but he was having a hard time processing everything that had just gone down.

Borko had gotten the better of him, no denying that. Quinn had been lulled into believing he was in control. But it was Borko who had been in control all along. And even though Quinn had actually gotten away, Borko was still in control.

The Serbian wasn't an idiot. If they'd been able to grab Orlando and Nate, they wouldn't have killed them yet. Borko would know as long as the two of them were still breathing, they would be insurance in case he had any problems with Quinn.

Quinn got off at the Bismarck Strasse. Back at street level, he hailed a cab and took it to Ku'damm. While he sat in the back, he removed a small square of purple paper from his backpack. It was a sticker, one of a dozen he was carrying. Orlando and Nate had matching sets, only Orlando's stickers were gray and Nate's were black. Dark colors were chosen because they would draw less attention and could easily go unnoticed.

Quinn had the cab driver drop him off two blocks from the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Gedächtniskirche,
the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. During the day, it was the most popular tourist site in the city. As one of the few remaining bombed-out structures from World War II left standing, it served as a memory of what had happened and could never be allowed to happen again. But at the late hour Quinn arrived, it was all but deserted.

An indoor shopping mall sat just to the southeast of the monument. There was an outside stairway leading down from the street to the lower level of the mall. When he was sure he was not being watched, Quinn descended the steps.

If possible, the air seemed even colder the lower he went. It was worse than Colorado, he realized. More like nights in the dead of winter from his childhood near the Canadian border.

Halfway down on the right side, he attached his purple square to the edge of the handrail. He had been hoping to find squares from Orlando and Nate, but his was the first. He tried not to think about what that might mean. In the morning he'd return to check again. Surely their markers would be there then.

In the meantime, he needed a place to sleep. Returning to the Dorint or the Four Seasons was out of the question. For that matter, it was probably a good idea for the moment to avoid all hotels.

That really left him only one choice. Reluctantly, he went back up the stairs and hailed another cab.

'Pilsner, bitte,'
Quinn said, as he took an empty stool at the end of the bar inside Der Goldene Krug.

The bartender was a short, thin man with a full mustache and a three-day growth of beard. He filled a glass from the tap and put it in front of Quinn.

'Zwei euro.'

Quinn started to pull some coins out of his pocket when a voice stopped him.

'Nein,
Max.'

The bartender looked over his shoulder at a woman who had just emerged from a back room. 'It's on the house, okay?' she continued in German. Max shrugged, then moved away to help someone

else.

The woman, a brunette with an hourglass figure who looked much younger than she probably was, walked along the bar until she was standing just behind Quinn. She tapped the shoulder of the man who was sitting on the stool next to him, and motioned him to move elsewhere. The customer was about to protest until he realized who wanted his seat. Without a word, he picked up his beer and moved to a table in the corner of the room.

The woman took the abandoned stool. 'Max. The usual.' The bartender nodded. The woman turned to Quinn. 'Hello, Jonathan.'

'How are you, Sophie?'

'Still in the same place I was the last time I saw you,' she said. 'Nothing has changed. I have my regulars. They pay my bills.'

Max approached them from the other side of the bar and placed a Pink Squirrel in front of Sophie. She nodded thanks as he moved away. She took a sip, then set the glass back down on the bar. 'Business?' she asked.

'I'm sorry?'

'Business? Is that why you're here?'

'In Berlin?'

'In my bar.'

'Yes,' he said. 'To both.'

'Good. Because if you said you were here to just see me, I'd tell you to get the hell out.' Her tone was casual, almost light.

Quinn smiled slightly.

'It's been, what? Two years?' she asked.

'Something like that.'

'What are you doing here?'

He watched her as she took another drink. 'I need a place to stay.'

'Tonight?' she asked.

'Yes. Tonight.' He paused, then added, 'Maybe tomorrow, too.'

'What do you think my husband will say?'

'You're not married.'

'The hell I'm not.'

"The hell you are.'

She seemed about to say something more, then started to laugh. 'You're still an asshole, you know that?'

'Yeah,' Quinn said. 'So I've heard.'

It wasn't until after 3 a.m. when Sophie and Max were able to chase the last of the customers out. Quinn nursed his beer in the corner of the room as they cleaned up. Finally Max left for home, and Sophie led Quinn upstairs. Her apartment was a two-bedroom flat above the bar. There were two ways to get upstairs. The first was a separate entrance out front off the street, and the second was up a staircase located next to the storage room at the back of the bar.

Pausing at the upper landing, Sophie dug her keys out of her pants pocket. She unlocked the door to the apartment and led Quinn inside. As she closed the door, her hand brushed against his arm, then she leaned forward, her lips suddenly on his.

His first reaction was to pull away. This wasn't what he wanted. He just needed someplace to sleep. Someplace no one would find him.