“You son of a bitch,” Murray said.
“I can’t help you if I’m in jail,” Quinn said.
“You’ll never make it,” Burroughs said, his voice weak.
“Really?” Quinn asked. “You better hope I do.” He peered through the windshield. “Take that next right. Then at the next street right again.”
Murray did as Quinn ordered. As soon as they made the second turn, Quinn said, “Over to the curb. Now.”
Murray pulled to the curb and jammed on the brakes. Quinn threw open the door. “Don’t worry,” he said as he climbed out.
“Fuck you,” Murray said.
Instead of flying directly out of Brussels, he drove to Amsterdam, where he caught the 7:20 a.m. KLM flight to Hamburg. There he took a train to Berlin, getting off at the Zoologischer Garten station. He made his way down through the station to the eastbound U2 platform, where he only had to wait a few minutes for the next train. He didn’t take a direct route back. Instead he switched trains often, every time checking to make sure he wasn’t being tailed. As far as he could tell, he wasn’t.
He made it back to Neukölln by 1:30 p.m. The sidewalks on Karl Marx Strasse were filled with shoppers taking advantage of the relatively warm day. Quinn bought a couple of bratwurst sandwiches and two cans of Coke, then made his way back to the store on Karl Marx Strasse.
He almost expected Orlando to be gone, the store truly and completely abandoned. But when he opened the door and stepped inside, he could feel her standing beside him before he even saw her.
“I could have killed you,” she said.
He slowly turned to her. She was holding the Glock in her hand, pointing toward the floor at Quinn’s feet. Her eyes were red, her face drawn and ashen. Quinn wondered if she’d slept at all while he was gone.
“Where the hell have you been?” she asked.
“Brussels,” he said. “I told you that’s where I was going.”
“I thought you’d be back yesterday.” Her red eyes flashed in anger.
“It took me a little longer than I’d hoped.”
He walked past her into the other room and sat down. From the bag, he pulled out one of the sandwiches. Orlando followed him in a moment later. He held the bag out to her.
“I’ve got one for you, too.”
She walked over to him, ignoring the bag. “You should have called me.”
Quinn almost snapped back at her. But he held himself back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right, I should have called.” He raised the bag a little. “Take the sandwich.”
For a moment it looked like she was going to bat it out of his hand. Instead, she finally took the bag and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him.
As they ate, he told her about his encounter with Burroughs. Orlando made no comments, only nodding on occasion.
“There’s something else,” he said after he’d finished telling her about Brussels.
She looked at him expectantly.
“Before I got to Belgium, I received something in my e-mail.”
There was a spark in her eye. “What?”
“I’ll show you.”
He picked the portable monitor off the ground and set it in his lap. From his pocket, he removed his flash memory stick and inserted it into one of the ports on the side of the monitor. As he was doing so, Orlando moved around so she could see the screen, too. It only took him a moment to locate the pictures he’d downloaded in Frankfurt. He opened the one of Nate first.
Orlando drew in a breath at the sight of their injured colleague. “He’s alive,” she said.
“For the moment, he’s more valuable that way.”
“I saw there were two files,” she said.
Quinn nodded slowly. Not wanting to, but not knowing any way to avoid it, he closed the picture of Nate and opened the other file.
This time Orlando actually gasped. “Where is he?” she asked, grabbing at the screen.
“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “The photo might be doctored.”
She pulled the monitor close, her eyes less than a foot away from the image of her son.
“Does the picture look familiar?” Quinn asked. “I don’t mean the setting. Just Garrett’s pose.”
“I’ve never seen it before,” she said, instantly understanding where he was going.
There was the possibility that Dahl’s people had taken a photo from Orlando’s home and changed the background. If that was the case, that could mean something worse than kidnapping had happened to Garrett, and Dahl had been forced to create the illusion that Garrett was still alive. But if Orlando didn’t recognize any part of the photo, perhaps it was actually genuine.
“Where is he?” Orlando asked again. She looked at Quinn. “Where the hell is he?”
“We’ll find him,” Quinn said. “I promise you.”
She stared at Quinn, her nostrils flaring. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something, but nothing he could think of would help the situation.
Finally, she said, “I have something you need to see.”
She sat down on the floor next to him and held the monitor so they could both view the screen. She punched a few of the buttons, accessing a specific time on the disk. The screen remained black for a moment as the player located the requested spot. Then the blank screen was replaced by an image of one of the rooms in the basement, the room without the refrigeration unit.
There were four men present. On the tables were several air tanks. As Quinn and Orlando watched, one of the men started up a portable air compressor that was on the floor.
“There.” She pointed at the monitor. To one side of the room, standing alone but watching the others, was a man.
Borko.
The Serb looked nearly unchanged from when Quinn had first seen him in Toronto. The only difference now was that gray hair had started to invade his dark brown mane.
“Hold on,” Orlando said.
She pushed another button, and the action on the monitor began to accelerate. Quinn watched as the men moved from tank to tank, filling those that needed it. Once the operation was complete, they set the tanks on the floor in a row next to one of the cabinets.
“Here,” Orlando said. She punched a button, slowing the picture back to normal speed.
Just as the men were leaving, a phone rang. Borko motioned for the others to continue on, then pulled a black cell phone from his jacket pocket. He looked at the display, then answered the call.
“Borko,” he said into the phone.
He paused, listening to the person on the other end, then started speaking again. But not in Serbian or even German. In English.
“Yes. Yes,” Borko said. “On schedule. The rest will be here tonight.” He stopped to listen. “Don’t worry. We have forty-eight hours, right? It will be tight, but we will make it.” Another pause. “No, you don’t have to come out. I will come back this evening. Make sure everything has arrived. Tomorrow we put it all together. It will be fine.”
Borko smiled. “No sign of him or the woman,” the Serbian continued. “But we have our insurance cards. You sent the files?” A grin. “That should keep them in check. If they don’t give us any more trouble, we can get rid of our guests after the delivery has been made.”
Orlando pressed Pause. “There’s nothing else important,” she said. “Who do you think he was talking to? Dahl?”
Quinn nodded. “That would be my guess.”
Quinn glanced down at the frozen image on the screen. Borko was caught in the middle of moving the phone away from his ear. In the background, the door to the room had opened and a man was in the process of stepping inside.
“Press Play,” Quinn said.
Orlando looked at the screen for a moment, her brow furrowed. After a moment, she pressed a button.