The Deceived Read online

  Quinn couldn’t help hearing Durrie’s voice in his head. The son of a bitch’s teachings had been solid. He’d given Quinn all the knowledge needed to get a good start in the business. So it was only natural that Quinn, even all these years later, measured much of what he did against what he’d been taught.

  But Durrie himself had been a troubled man who had spiraled into a dark place he was never able to pull himself out of, a place that eventually led him into a direct confrontation with Quinn. When Quinn had been forced to kill him in Berlin the previous winter, it had silenced Durrie’s voice for a time. But the advice, both good and bad, was back now, and Quinn was oddly comforted by it.

  This particular piece of advice fell into the bad category. At least with Quinn’s current problem.

  Quinn had to find Jenny. He owed Markoff that much.

  In truth, he owed Markoff so much more.

  Finland. A decade before.

  “Are you still with us, Mr. Quinn?” It was the voice of Andrei Kranz—flat, uninterested, and speaking English with a heavy accent. The rumor was he’d been born in Warsaw, but to Quinn his accent seemed more German than Polish.

  Quinn opened his eyes and looked up at his tormentor. Kranz stood in front of him, his face only a foot away from Quinn’s own. What passed for a smile grew on Kranz’s thin-lipped mouth.

  “Good,” Kranz said. He reached over and patted Quinn on the cheek. “Have a good night, okay? We’ll see you in the morning.”

  Kranz stood up and laughed. Behind him, two other men, no more than shadows, laughed also.

  A moment later, Quinn was alone.

  For a while, he could hear them walking away through the forest. Then their steps grew faint until there was only the sound of the breeze passing through the trees, gusting above him one moment, then slowing to nothing the next.

  The post–midnight air was bone chilling. A few degrees colder and it would have been numbing. But numbing would have been a relief.

  The night sky, what he could see of it through the trees, was cloudless. The stars that packed the void seemed to be piled one on top of the other, unhindered by any interference from nearby civilization. It reminded him of the sky of his youth, where millions of stars filled the northern Minnesota night. Looking around, he also realized there was little difference between the land he’d grown up in and the Finnish countryside he would apparently die in.

  The closest real city was Helsinki, but it was over a hundred kilometers away. It could have been a thousand kilometers away or even a thousand miles for all it mattered to Quinn. He knew no help would come from that direction. And though he tried not to think about it, the truth was no help would come from any direction.

  If he had any doubt, he just needed to look down at the lifeless body of Pete Paras—Double-P to his friends. But Double-P would have a hard time answering to that nickname anymore. His head lay on a dark stain in the sand, the only remnant of the pool of blood that had flowed out of the gash in his neck.

  Kranz had made sure Quinn watched as he sliced Paras’s throat himself, having one of his men hold Quinn down while another held Quinn’s head still and eyes open.

  “I’m not doing this because I want to,” Kranz had said as he grabbed a handful of hair and pulled Paras’s unconscious head upward. “I don’t like to do this, eh?” He ran the knife just above the skin covering Paras’s throat without touching it. It was like he was deciding what would be the best line to take. “I mean, it’s not like this is something I go out of the way for. Sometimes, though, it’s part of the job.” He took another swipe, this time the blade slicing deep into the flesh.

  Kranz had to jump back to avoid getting splattered by any of the blood. As it was, his knife hand was covered with it. He walked up to Quinn and wiped the blood off on the cleaner’s T-shirt.

  The message was clear. Unless Quinn talked, his throat would be next. But he didn’t know the answers to Kranz’s questions. He’d been hired for a very specific assignment, and only knew the details he needed to know. Unfortunately, the Pole didn’t believe him. After the initial questions garnered nothing, Kranz decided to let Quinn have some alone time.

  They had left Quinn kneeling in the dirt, wearing just his T-shirt and boxer briefs. His wrists were bound together behind him by a short rope that was then tied around his ankles. It pulled his wrists backward, hog-tying him so that his outstretched fingers could almost touch his heels. If he could’ve sat back on his legs, he would’ve been able to relieve some of the pressure, but there were two additional ropes, one looped under each of his arms and tied to tree branches ten feet above him, preventing any backward movement. The ropes were rigged just long enough so that only Quinn’s knees were able to rest on the ground—any shorter and he would have been hanging in the air.

  They hadn’t killed him, but he knew that was only a temporary stay of execution. Kranz and his men would be back in the morning. If he was still alive, they’d see if a night of tenderizing had done anything to jog his memory. But when they realized they’d get nothing more out of him than they already had, he’d join Double-P on the ground.

  As the hours passed, Quinn fought the urge to shiver from the cold. Each time he did, his body would jerk against the unforgiving ropes and make it feel like his arms were about to be ripped from his shoulders and out of his skin.

  He tried to figure out a way to get free. But the more he tried to concentrate, the more his mind fogged up. Maybe if it hadn’t been so cold, he would have been able to think more clearly. That’s what he told himself, at least. That’s how he rationalized his failure.

  What did pass through his mind, giving him at least a few minutes’ respite from his hopeless situation, was the image of what he would do to Kranz if he were to somehow escape. Quinn wouldn’t make the same mistake Kranz did. Quinn would walk up to him and kill him. A single shot to the head, point-blank range. A straight-out execution. Never mind that Quinn had never done anything like that before, or that his chances of being in a position to carry it out were nonexistent. For those brief moments, he was happy.

  He heard things during the night: the wind, a small animal in the trees above him, the occasional car on the distant road. And there had been the voice of Durrie, too. His mentor talking to him in a voice so low Quinn couldn’t make out the words, but the meaning was clear.

  Disappointment. Displeasure. Disgust.

  But the worst sound came two hours before dawn, when he heard steps approaching in the distance. They could only mean the return of Kranz and his men. And that could only mean death.

  As the steps grew closer, he realized it wasn’t the group returning, but just one person. Perhaps Kranz had decided there was little he could learn from Quinn after all, so he had sent back a solo executioner to finish the job. In Quinn’s exhausted and incapacitated state, a three-year-old with a plastic hanger could have killed him, so one man would be more than enough.

  When the new arrival appeared before him, Quinn’s guess was confirmed. It was one of Kranz’s men. The one who had held Quinn’s head during Paras’s execution. A Caucasian, perhaps ten years older than Quinn. He was an inch or two below six feet, with a mop of curly dark hair that drooped over his ears and provided natural insulation from the cold.

  He knelt in front of Quinn, looked him in the eyes, then nodded at Paras’s body. “Your buddy there was a son of a bitch, you know that?” the man said, his accent American.

  Quinn tried to spit in the man’s face, but his mouth was too dry. “Fuck off,” he managed to whisper.

  The man smiled. “Attitude,” he said. “That’s a good sign.”

  The man stood back up and pulled out a large pocketknife. As he opened it, Quinn braced himself for the worst, knowing soon his head would be lying in its own puddle of blood. But instead of slashing him across the neck, the man moved around behind him, out of sight.

  Quinn waited for the blade to cut into his skin. Maybe the executioner would go for an artery, or perhaps he’
d start with the soft spot just below Quinn’s ribs. If he was really sadistic, he could even go for Quinn’s spinal cord, crippling Quinn before killing him.

  As the seconds passed, Quinn continued to tense, almost willing the knife to find its mark. Then, without warning, he was on the ground, the pressure on his wrists and shoulders gone. The ropes that had bound him in place for the last several hours lay near his feet.

  “Can you walk?” the man asked.

  Quinn opened his eyes. The man was leaning over him.

  It could still be a trick. Some game the man was playing. Not wanting to take any chances, Quinn kicked out, aiming for the man’s shin. But his muscles betrayed him, and his leg moved only a foot, then stopped, coming into contact with nothing but air.

  “If you really want to hit me,” the man said, “why don’t you save your strength and wait until we get out of here. I’ll give you a free shot when we’re safe.”

  Quinn didn’t remember many details from the next few hours. At some point, the man had gotten him to his feet. Then there had been what seemed like an endless barefoot walk along a cold and rocky path. He remembered mumbling a question to the man, but couldn’t recall what it had been or if there had been an answer.

  At some point, he found himself no longer walking, but sitting in the passenger seat of a car. The man was behind the wheel, eyes forward. Quinn looked out the window. There seemed to be trees everywhere, illuminated by the splash of the car’s headlights as they cruised down the road.

  He wanted to ask who’d planted all the trees. He wanted to know why it was so dark. And just before his body completely shut down, he wanted to ask where they were going. But the only question that he was able to ask was, “What’s your name?”

  The driver laughed for a moment good-naturedly, then said, “Call me Steven.”

  That had been the first time Quinn met Markoff.

  The CIA man had been working undercover in Andrei Kranz’s organization. Kranz had been into trafficking Soviet-era weapons—both conventional, biological, and, he claimed, nuclear—to anyone buying in the West. Double-P had been one of the man’s dealers, but had decided he should be the big boss. Without even realizing it, Quinn had stumbled into a turf war.

  Why Markoff had decided to save him, Quinn never knew for sure. Markoff said his job was done anyway, so giving Quinn a hand on the way out was no big deal. Quinn didn’t believe him. By all reports, Kranz had gotten away. If Markoff had finished the job, Kranz would have been dead.

  But whatever the reason, Quinn knew then what he still knew now—he would forever owe Markoff for his life.

  “I got two addresses,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. It was one of Quinn’s contacts, a guy named Steiner who worked out of a mailbox and shipping store on the Venice Beach boardwalk. Quinn had called him a couple of hours ago to see if he could find out where Jenny lived.

  Steiner’s main gig wasn’t information. He was a documents man who could assemble a set of IDs that would stand up to almost any inspection. Because of his talents, he also had a lot of contacts. Which made him a good person to know if you needed to find out something quick.

  “Give them to me,” Quinn said.

  “The D.C. one’s the most recent.” Steiner read off an address in Georgetown. It had a unit number, so it wasn’t a single-family residence.

  “And the other?”

  “In Houston. The information is a little old, but as far as I can tell, still valid.” He gave Quinn the Texas address.

  “Thanks,” Quinn said, then hung up.

  The back wall of his living room was all window, floor-to-ceiling. He stood in front of it and stared out into the distance. The day was one of those hazy, hot, early September ones Quinn hated. He could barely make anything out beyond Beverly Hills.

  He wished it was fall, and the air had cooled, and the winds had blown away the haze. Or even winter just after a rainstorm, when the sky was crisp and clean, and the city shone at night like a bundle of white Christmas lights. But he’d gladly take the hazy day if someone could have granted the wish that he had been out of the country working a job when Albina called about the body at the port.

  He should have just said no when Albina called him the previous day.

  But he hadn’t.

  He took a deep breath, then walked across the living room into the foyer and opened the front door. Nate was lying on the hood of his ten-year-old Accord, reading his flight instruction manual and soaking up a little sun.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Quinn said.

  Nate looked over. “We get a job?”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s the kind we don’t get paid for, isn’t it?”

  “Just get my car out of the garage and be ready to go in ten minutes.”

  “Where are we going?” Nate said as he swung his legs off the hood and stood up.

  “You’re driving me to the airport,” Quinn said.

  CHAPTER

  STEPPING OUT OF THE TERMINAL AT BUSH INTERCONtinental Airport in Houston was like walking into a wall of gelatin. The air was so thick with humidity it felt like it was pushing Quinn back, daring him to take another step forward.

  He glanced at his watch: 3:15 p.m. But that was L.A. time. Here in Texas, it was already two hours later, 5:15. End of the workday, for some anyway.

  Houston seemed as good a place as any to start looking for Jenny. It wasn’t just Congressman Guerrero’s hometown, it was hers, too. If she was on personal leave, then perhaps she had gone home.

  Quinn picked up a Lexus sedan from the rental agency, then headed toward the city. When he reached Loop 610, he took it west for a while, then south as the big looping freeway circumnavigated the metropolitan area. He got off near Memorial Park and headed west again, this time along Woodway Drive.

  He’d done a MapQuest search before he’d left Los Angeles, and had printed out directions to the address Steiner had given him.

  Not far from the freeway, he turned right and found himself in an upscale neighborhood. Quinn guessed a mix of middle class and upper middle class. No question the homes were more expensive than your typical government employee could afford. Of course, this was Texas, not L.A. Everything was cheaper here. And, as many were fond of saying, bigger. Few of the houses looked like they were less than two thousand square feet, while many looked to be more than three. Many were multilevel, with BMWs, Mercedeses, and large SUVs in the driveways.

  These were people on the rise. Future company presidents and board members who would one day be trading up to even bigger homes with larger lots and more square footage and maybe even a guesthouse in back. Some would suffer heart attacks before they reached sixty, while others would become strangers to their own families as they spent more and more time at the office, if they hadn’t fallen into that trap already.

  Quinn found the address he was looking for tucked back in an area where all the roads sounded like names of old blues songs: Lazy River Lane, Old Bayou Drive, Sweet Jasmine Street. The house was a sprawling one-story on White Magnolia Lane. Like many of the homes in the neighborhood, it was made of brick, with white wooden doors and window frames.

  An asphalt driveway curved up to the house, then back to the street again seventy feet farther up the road. There were no sidewalks, so Quinn pulled the Lexus onto the grass shoulder and parked. As he got out he heard the buzz of what sounded like an army of insects. He expected to be attacked at any second, but for the moment the bugs seemed content to keep their distance.

  As he started walking up the driveway, he realized that if this had been Jenny’s place, she wasn’t here any longer. There were bikes on the grass. Kids’ bikes, preteen size. A portable basketball hoop and backboard were set up in a wide spot of the drive near the garage. Though he hadn’t seen Jenny in at least eight months, she had been childless then. And if the toys weren’t enough to convince him a family now lived here, there was the car that was parked in the driveway. A minivan, dark green and w
ell maintained. A soccer mom car. It had the look of a vehicle that got a lot of use.

  He continued walking toward the front door. As he did he saw a young girl standing at the living room window, looking out at him. He put her age at around eight. She had blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and was dressed in jeans and a lavender T-shirt with a cartoon squirrel on the front. She stared at him for a moment, then turned and ran away.

  By the time Quinn reached the doorstep, the front door was already open. A woman stood just inside beyond the threshold, a utilitarian smile on her face. She couldn’t have been more than forty, and had the same blond hair as the girl in the window. No ponytail for Mom, though. Her hair was down, stopping an inch above her shoulders.

  “Can I help you?” she said, a trace of suspicion in her voice.

  “Probably not,” Quinn said. He smiled as if embarrassed, in an attempt to set her at ease. “I was actually looking for the woman I thought lived here. Apparently either I got my addresses mixed up or she moved.”

  The woman looked at him for a second, impassive, then her face relaxed. “Must be a mix-up. We’ve been here over ten years.”

  Wrong answer.

  Steiner had said the address might be old, but not that old.

  Quinn nodded. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said.

  “What’s her name?” she asked. “Maybe she’s one of my neighbors.”

  “Tracy,” he said, heeding the warning that flashed in his mind, and making up a name on the spot. “Tracy Jennings. Do you know her?”

  The woman’s eyes widened just enough for Quinn to notice. The name was not the one she’d been expecting. But she recovered quickly. “Sorry. I don’t know who that is.”

  “It’s all right. I shouldn’t have bothered you. Thanks for your time.”

  “No problem,” the woman said.

  Quinn turned and headed back to his car. As he walked down the driveway, he glanced at the house one final time. The girl was in the window again, waving at him, and in the shadows behind her, he could see the mother watching him leave. He waved at the girl, then turned away.