As the man was carrying the tray to the cabinet, Quinn was able to get a glimpse inside the tins. They were empty.
The hatch on the safety cabinet was now closed. The man who had brought the tray over had returned to the boxes at the other table. The man who was at the cabinet had removed his hands from the protective sleeves that allowed him to work inside the unit.
There were several buttons across the bottom of the cabinet. The man pushed one of them, and something in the cabinet moved.
As Quinn and Orlando watched, the bottom of the cabinet slid open. The tray that had been slipped in underneath it rose up. The man put his hands back into the sleeves. On the inside wall of the cabinet was a small shelf, and on the shelf was a container holding what appeared to be dozens of penny-size white pellets. They were rounded so that the middle was thicker than the ends. Quinn knew they had to have been the same ones he’d seen the men stowing in the small refrigerators earlier. The man at the cabinet removed the pellets one by one and placed them in the tins. Each box held six.
“Mints?” Quinn said.
“What?” Orlando asked, but Quinn’s attention was fully on the monitor.
It took a while, but when all the tins were full, the man closed the tops on each box. That done, he removed his hands from the sleeves and pushed another button on the case. The tray dropped downward, and the bottom of the cabinet closed above it.
The man then pushed another button. Up from the bottom of the second cabinet came the same tray of tins. When they were securely in place, the second man turned a dial on the cabinet. The entire cabinet instantly filled with a fine mist.
“Is that…?” Orlando left the question hanging.
“Disinfectant?” Quinn asked.
She nodded.
“Something like that, probably,” Quinn said. “Only a lot stronger than what you can pick up at the market, I’d guess.”
“So the stuff inside the tins…?”
“Is hot,” Quinn finished for her.
Quinn now knew what the delivery device was going to be. An innocent tin of candy. Brilliant. The agent had either been applied to the outside of the mint, or contained inside somehow. Quinn guessed the latter was the more likely. He was also able to surmise something about the biological agent itself. If it was fast-acting, the convention would be shut down and all the participants quarantined, so it couldn’t be anything that would show up right away. It had to be something with a long incubation period. Could that have had something to do with the “tailoring” Taggert had told Burroughs about? And how did it relate to the IOMP convention? That had been Duke’s tip.
Quinn paused.
Duke.
“Son of a bitch,” Quinn said.
“What?” Orlando asked.
“I think I know how they’re planning on distributing everything.”
“How?”
“Grob Promotions,” Quinn said. “I should have seen it before.”
“What’s Grob Promotions?” she asked.
“Duke owned a company called Grob Promotions,” Quinn said. “It was one of the stops he made that morning I followed him. At the time I didn’t care what they did, because I didn’t think it mattered. But it does. When I went online to find out more information about the convention, there was something I read, only it didn’t hit me at the time.”
“What?”
“Something like ‘IOMP Berlin managed by Grob Promotions.’” Quinn began pacing the floor in thought. “If so, that means Grob is handling all the promotion and running of the convention. Including,” he said, looking at Orlando, “the preparation of gift bags.”
“Gift bags?”
“All of the registered attendees receive complimentary gift bags when they check in. It was on the website. Inside there’ll be brochures, convention information, pencils, pens, buttons, and, if I’m right, a tin of mints.”
“You said the convention doesn’t start for nearly a week,” she said. “Why would Borko’s deadline be tomorrow? It’s too soon.”
She was right, Quinn knew.
“Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe the convention isn’t ground zero,” she said. “If that’s the case, they could be targeting almost anything.”
Right again.
Quinn looked back at the screen. Work continued in the containment room, but he wasn’t really watching anymore. He had a decision to make. A decision, he quickly realized, with only one answer.
“It doesn’t matter what the target is,” he said, sounding far more sure of himself than he actually was.
“You’re going to try and stop them, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I’m going to get Garrett back,” he said. “And at the moment, the only way I can figure out how to get to Dahl…to Piper, is to steal something that’s valuable to him.”
“The mints,” she said, her face brightening as she realized his plan. “We get them, we can trade them for Garrett.”
“Something like that,” he said. It was leverage they sorely needed. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if the candy was distributed.
“We’re still going to have to do this alone,” he said. “If we call anyone in, Piper will find out and he won’t hesitate to kill Garrett.” He paused. “We’re it.”
She smiled. “Good by me.”
From outside, Quinn heard a loud truck pass by the front of the store. There were people on the sidewalk, too. Laughing, talking, arguing. Sharing just another moment in the day. People who, if Quinn did nothing, might not make it to the end of the year.
Orlando’s voice suddenly cut through the noisy silence. “The Mole called right before you came in. He wants you to call him back.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“He wouldn’t tell me,” she said, an angry tremor in her voice. “I tried but he said he’d only talk to you.”
CHAPTER 34
Quinn left the store and headed southeast on Karl Marx Strasse toward Neukölln station. On the way over, he used the number Orlando had given him and called the Mole.
“I received…your payment…it was more than…expected.”
“Consider it an advance on future requests,” Quinn said. “Orlando said you have some information for me.”
“Something has actually come…to us in the last…hour…concerning the location of…Orlando’s son.”
“The picture?”
“Not…the picture…Garrett left…Vietnam the day after Orlando did…he was with a man…Caucasian…they flew to Hong Kong…but from there no more trace.”
“That’s the whole description?”
“The man…may have had an…accent…Australian.”
Tucker, Quinn thought. Of course.
“How did he get him out of the country?”
“He claimed he had…adopted Garrett…he presented all the…correct paperwork.”
“Son of a bitch,” Quinn said. Piper had planned things well.
“As for the picture,” the Mole went on. “There is nothing…to tell yet.”
“It is faked, then,” Quinn said.
“No…we don’t…believe so.”
Quinn paused, digesting the information. “But you don’t think you can place the location.”
“It is…possible…there are…some geological markers…that may help us…but I don’t think…very likely.”
Quinn couldn’t remember seeing any markers, geological or otherwise, but if there were, that was something anyway. A chance.
“This isn’t why you called me earlier, though, is it?”
“I think perhaps…you have…made a misjudgment…concerning the situation.”
“What misjudgment?”
“The bio-agent,” the Mole said.
“The IOMP convention isn’t the target, is it?”