The Aggrieved Read online

  “Does this place have a name?” Quinn asked.

  “XA014,” he replied.

  Quinn glanced at Orlando. From the look on her face, he knew she had never heard of it or anything like it, either. It was disturbing to uncover an unknown layer of the secret world, especially right in their own country.

  “And you’re sure she’s there?”

  “As…of 1:12 p.m. Eastern time…yes.”

  Less than ten minutes ago.

  “Do you have more on this place?”

  “You are…going there?”

  Neither Quinn nor Orlando said anything.

  “I have…everything you will…need. Blueprints…schematics…access routes. That does not…mean it will be…easy.”

  “We’ll take it all,” Orlando said.

  “It’s…waiting for you in your…inbox now.”

  “We appreciate the help,” Quinn said.

  “There is one…more…thing.”

  “And that is?”

  “The Hyena.

  “You found something?”

  “Maybe but…it may be nothing. There was…a job four months…ago. The name ‘the Hyena’ appears…in the project…summary report.”

  “Just a summary? What about the full report?” Quinn asked.

  “Buried in a…Mossad server.” Mossad was Israeli intelligence. “I can…attempt to extract…but I believe there…is an…easier way to obtain…a copy.”

  “And that is?”

  “The job was an…information…gathering job…in Moscow. It was…outsourced to PSF…who hired Reiko Klassen…to run the actual operation.”

  “Is that so?”

  Klassen was a decent enough ops man, but a piss-poor human being. Quinn had had the non-pleasure of dealing with him on half a dozen occasions. As head of the job, however, Klassen would likely have a copy of the report. “Do you know where Reiko might be right at this moment?”

  “I do.”

  QUINN AND ORLANDO spent an hour going over the documents the Mole had sent them.

  “I think the smart move here is to have Nate deal with Reiko while we pay Dima a visit,” Quinn said.

  “You mean break into the secret facility that, according to the Mole’s notes—and correct me if I’m wrong—is likely to get us killed?”

  “Likely. Not for sure.”

  The corner of her mouth ticked up.

  IT WASN’T A dream so much as it was a memory.

  The Warroad ice rink. Hockey season. So many years ago.

  Quinn, known then as Jake Oliver, hadn’t wanted to play. But hockey was what boys did in Warroad, Minnesota. After all, the small town was the home of the Christian brothers—1960 Winter Olympic champions and world renown hockey-stick makers. Hockey Town, USA—it was printed right on the side of the metal building that served as their manufacturing facility.

  When Quinn hesitated in joining the others, his mom had said, “You’ll do fine.”

  His stepfather had been more succinct. “Get on the goddamn ice.”

  Quinn hoped the coach would leave him on the bench, but no, two minutes into the second period, the man announced, “Jake, you’re on the next shift.”

  It’s not that Quinn was a bad skater, or couldn’t play the game as well as the others. If he wanted to, he could be one of the best on the ice. But hockey was Harold Oliver’s love, and any activity Quinn’s stepdad liked, Quinn despised.

  The shift change came and out Quinn went, planning to just stay out of the way. But hockey is not the kind of sport where one could hide, and before long the puck slid straight at him. Wanting it as far away from him as possible, he yanked his stick back as far as he could and slapped the puck across the ice with all his strength.

  The small crowd of parents jumped up and cheered when the rubber disc miraculously sailed past the goalie into the net. Even Quinn’s stepfather joined in. But one voice stood out above the din.

  “You did it, Jakey! You did it! You did it!”

  Liz, her smile as wide as the Lake of the Woods, her hands pressed against the Plexiglas partition that separated the rink from the spectators.

  “You did it! You did it! You…”

  Quinn’s eyes parted as he sensed a change in the plane’s altitude. The seat-belt sign was on, and one of the attendants was working his way through the business class cabin, checking seat backs and tray tables.

  “Nice nap?” Orlando asked.

  “Not really.”

  They had been able to catch an early afternoon flight to the East Coast, grabbing two of the five remaining business-class seats. But unlike transcontinental trips or those Quinn and Orlando often took on private jets, the seats on the coast-to-coast trip did not convert to lie-flat beds. And while he had plenty of experience sleeping in a sitting position, Quinn never liked it.

  The dream/memory hadn’t helped, either.

  They touched down at Raleigh-Durham International at ten p.m. local time, and were soon headed west in their rental all-terrain SUV. Quinn drove while Orlando worked her laptop, squeezing out every last drop of info from the Mole’s documents.

  They reached Greensboro by eleven and, with Orlando navigating, made their way to a safe house on a quiet street just north of the UNC Greensboro campus. They stored the vehicle in the garage at the back of the property, grabbed their suitcases, and used the code they’d been given on the digital lock at the back entrance to the house.

  The items Orlando had requested were waiting for them in the living room: cold-weather clothing, boots, snowshoes, surveillance gear, climbing ropes, lock picks, binoculars with night vision, snow chains for the SUV, and weapons—SIG SAUER P226 for Quinn, Glock 17 for Orlando—with the associated extra mags and suppressors.

  After checking the equipment, they stored everything but the tire chains in the mission backpacks they’d brought along, and turned in for a few hours of sleep.

  By four a.m., they were on the road again.

  A light snow began falling when they were still a good hour from their destination. It continued on and off all the way into the Appalachian Mountains.

  “Left turn in three hundred and ten yards,” Orlando announced. There was a route that would put them a lot closer to XA014, but they knew it would be heavily monitored so they were taking the more circuitous one Orlando had worked out.

  Quinn eased back on the accelerator. The early hour meant traffic was at a minimum, and when they finally came to the turnoff, no one was around to see them leave the highway.

  Though the meat of the storm wasn’t due until that evening, the snowfall increased, hampering visibility as they wound higher into the mountains.

  “In one-point-two-five miles, take a right.”

  Right on schedule, the new road appeared. Quinn took the turn, and saw that the blacktop was covered with a thin layer of snow. From the lack of other tracks, Quinn knew they were the only ones to have gone this way since the storm started.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Orlando said a few minutes later. “The next turn’s on the left. It’s…” She looked up and pointed at a gap between the trees about twenty-five meters ahead. “There.”

  Quinn stopped in the middle of the street, a few yards shy of the spot she’d indicated. While there did appear to be a road between the trees, it was covered by considerably more snow.

  They hopped out and put on the snow chains, neither seeing nor hearing another vehicle the entire time.

  Quinn then drove them onto the snow-covered road, and stopped again just inside the trees.

  Orlando started to open her door, but Quinn said, “I got this.”

  “Fine by me.”

  He climbed out again and hurried back to the turnoff, where he obscured their tire tracks all the way to where he’d parked. His subterfuge wouldn’t stand up to a close examination, but anyone passing by wouldn’t notice a thing.

  Keeping to a crawl, Quinn guided the SUV deeper into the forest. According to satellite imagery, there were no homes in the area, only a
couple of small lakes probably used for fishing in the summer. What mattered most was that the road passed within one mile of XA014.

  They’d been driving for fifteen minutes when Orlando looked up from her computer. “This is about as close as we’re going to get.”

  Using the next wide spot they came to, Quinn turned the SUV around and parked it in the middle of the road, at the point Orlando had indicated.

  “Should be through those trees and over a ridge,” she said, pointing out the passenger-side window.

  They opened the back of the SUV and donned their cold-weather gear. After they shouldered their backpacks, they helped each other put on snowshoes and headed out.

  It took a few minutes to get used to walking with the attachments under their boots, but they soon achieved a nice, brisk pace through the woods. When they reached the ridge, they climbed to just short of the top, where Quinn removed the gooseneck mini-camera from Orlando’s pack and snaked it over the crest.

  “How’s that?” he whispered.

  “Up another two inches, and angle the lens down fifteen degrees.”

  He did as instructed. “Now?”

  Orlando studied the camera feed on her phone. “Pan it. Slow. Left to right.”

  He twisted the gooseneck to move the camera per her request.

  “Stop,” she said.

  He leaned sideways to get a better view of the screen. The feed showed a shallow valley on the other side of the ridge that, at a glance, looked like it was filled with trees. But that was an illusion. A large area in the middle of the valley had been cleared of growth, and now played host to a complex of six buildings and a helipad. Strung above the clearing was a camouflaged net, designed to disguise the view from satellites.

  “Is that a fence?” Quinn asked, pointing at a dark line in a small clearing between them and the buildings.

  “Looks like it.”

  The Mole’s blueprints had shown the immediate grounds only, and had not extended all the way to the edge of the man-made meadow.

  “I don’t see any guard posts,” Quinn said.

  Orlando studied the feed. “Me, neither. Must be covered by cameras.”

  Quinn looked up at the sky. The snow was hardly falling at all now. “Latest forecast?”

  Orlando checked her phone. “Supposed to be light for the rest of the day, with the main front coming tonight. The heaviest should be between ten p.m. and five a.m.”

  “Heavy enough to hide us from the cameras?”

  “Perhaps, but I wouldn’t count on it. It should allow us to jam a few of the cameras without anyone getting suspicious, though.”

  As much as Quinn wanted to try to find Dima and talk to her now, utilizing the heavier storm and the cover of night would give them a much better chance at success.

  Like it or not, waiting was the smart choice.

  Chapter Seven

  COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

  REIKO KLASSEN WAS annoyed.

  He didn’t like meet-and-greets. They were a waste of time. Unfortunately, his potential client—a Mr. Tate—had been insistent.

  “I need to know that there will be no problems working together,” Tate had told him.

  “What problems? It’ll be fine. It always is.”

  “My representative will be in Copenhagen in the morning,” making it clear if Klassen didn’t take the meeting, someone else would earn the handsome pay day that went with the job.

  Since Tate had come highly recommended through a reliable source, Klassen had reluctantly given in.

  “Good,” Tate said. “I’ve taken the liberty of selecting a meeting point. I will send you the information.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Klassen said, barely holding back the sarcasm.

  Now it was meeting time, or close enough, and not only was he irritated that he’d had to rearrange his day around the appointment, unexpected traffic was making him run a few minutes late. Knowing his luck, the guy would be gone when Klassen got there, and the trip to the city center would have been for naught.

  The chosen location was the Resso Espressobar inside the Arnold Busck bookstore on Købmagergade. According to the text message, the representative would be sitting in front of a southeast-facing window, wearing a black jacket.

  But when Klassen entered the coffee shop, he realized there were several windows on the southeast side, and most of the stools were already taken, three by men wearing black jackets.

  Wonderful, he thought, frowning.

  He’d been given a recognition phrase to use, but what was he supposed to do? Say it to all three of them at the same time and see who jumped? If it weren’t for the generous amount of cash being offered, he would have turned around and left.

  Begrudgingly, he admitted to himself he was being unreasonable. He had just decided to start with the guy on the left when the one at the opposite end made eye contact and subtly nodded at the open seat beside him. Klassen breathed a sigh of relief and walked over.

  “Do you mind if I use this seat? I won’t be long,” Klassen said, reciting the code in English as instructed.

  “Take as long as you’d like.” It was the appropriate reply.

  “You’re with Tate?” Klassen whispered as he sat.

  “Are you taking more than one meeting?”

  “Don’t be cute. A simple yes is fine.”

  “Then yes.”

  “Good,” Klassen grumbled.

  The man took a sip of his coffee and smiled. “Would you like something to drink? My treat.”

  “I’d prefer to get down to business. You’re not the only thing on my schedule today.”

  “Then you do have other meetings.”

  “You wanted to meet me in person? I’m here. Let’s get this over with, huh?”

  The man smiled, removed an envelope from his pocket, and scooted it on the counter over to Klassen.

  “What’s this?” Klassen asked, not picking it up.

  “You were listening when I said the drink was my treat, weren’t you?”

  Still suspicious, Klassen picked up the envelope and looked inside. There were five US one-hundred-dollar bills and a single Danish two-hundred-krone note, the latter more than enough to pay for a cup of coffee, and something to eat if he wanted.

  “Mr. Tate realizes that this meeting was short notice, and that there might have been some inconvenience on your part. Consider that compensation for your time today.”

  Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Klassen pulled the kroner out and stuffed the envelope in his jacket pocket. “Save my seat.”

  THE MOMENT KLASSEN headed to the counter, Nate pulled out his phone and sent the text he’d already written.

  SCARVES WRAPPED AROUND their faces and sunglasses covering their eyes, Daeng and Jar had been watching when Reiko Klassen left his flat and jumped into a waiting Uber car.

  As soon as he was gone, they moved across the street and let themselves into his building. They took the stairs to the top floor, where he lived. Before getting to work, they removed their cold-weather gloves, exposing the rubber ones they had on underneath. Jar then wanded the door, disabling the alarm and security cameras with the same device she’d used on Sheng’s building in Singapore. Daeng followed up by picking the lock, careful not to leave any scratches.

  Klassen’s place was a memorial to an era of hedonism more at home in the 1960s than now. Paintings of nude women in provocative poses covered most of the walls. In one corner was an old wooden chest filled with restraints and whips and clips and candles.

  Jar wondered if they’d find a woman locked in one of the rooms. A small part of her hoped they would, so they could hang around and make sure Klassen never bothered anyone again.

  “We’re going to want to take long, hot showers after this,” Daeng said.

  “Yes, we will,” she said. She never understood why people always insisted on stating the obvious, but it happened all the time. For the most part, she’d given up fighting it.

  When they fini
shed with the living room, Daeng said, “Which do you want? The kitchen or the bedrooms?”

  “The bedrooms.” It was a stupid question. No one ever hid a computer in the kitchen, not in her experience.

  There were three bedrooms—two conventional rooms and one loft. Of the two rooms, one was used solely for storage, while the other contained a bed but little else. The loft was obviously where Klassen slept, so that’s where Jar concentrated her efforts. She searched the cabinets, under the bed, in the walk-in closet, and in the attached master bathroom, but found nothing. It wasn’t possible this guy operated without a computer, and he certainly didn’t have one on him when he’d left. So where was it?

  “Jar,” Daeng called.

  She walked over to the edge of the loft and looked down but couldn’t see him. “What is it?”

  “I found a safe.”

  She hurried down the spiral staircase, but still didn’t see Daeng. “Where are you?”

  “Back here.”

  She found him in the bathroom that separated the two other bedrooms. He was kneeling between a large tub and a stand-alone shower stall. A meter-square section of the wall in front of him was hanging open like a cabinet door, revealing a safe inside. She noted her mistake of earlier dismissing the room as insignificant. She would not do that again.

  “Can you open it?” he asked.

  She crouched down and studied the metal box. She estimated it at eighty centimeters square, the inset door maybe seventy-five. There was no manufacturer name, only a handle and digital touchpad.

  “Unsure.”

  “Can you try?”

  “Yes. But it may take a few minutes.”

  “We have time. I’ll see if there’s anything else of interest.”

  Using her phone, Jar accessed an area of the darknet where information about safes could be found. Klassen’s was model number S530N, made by a small Eastern European firm called RejDawn Systems.

  The digital display on the front was a fingerprint reader that required three fingers from an authorized user placed against it to open.