“I will have to tell him something. But I’m open to suggestions.”
Orlando looked at Quinn, perplexed. Quinn, too, wasn’t sure what the right answer was.
“When are you supposed to let him know?” Quinn asked.
“He gave me four hours. That was seventeen minutes ago.”
Good, Quinn thought. There was still more than three and a half hours left until the deadline. “We need to think this through. Can we call you back?”
“Don’t wait too long.”
CHAPTER 26
“Well?” Griffin said.
Dima was on the other end of the phone, his call coming twelve minutes ahead of the forty-five-minute deadline. “They left the city right after they stole the car.”
“You’re sure it was them.”
“Have them on a traffic camera. The Asian guy was driving. The woman was in the backseat, but I couldn’t see the other man.”
“Where were they headed?” he asked.
“Toward Arlington.”
“That opens a lot of possibilities. Tell me you were able to narrow it down more than that.”
“I was. I used our access to the Virginia Department of Transportation’s traffic-cam system, and tracked them east on I-66. When they reached I-81, they went south for a few miles before exiting. I followed them to a block away from the off-ramp, but there were no more cameras after that.”
“Where did they exit?”
“A place called Trevor Hollow.”
CHAPTER 27
As soon as the Mole hung up, Quinn called Daeng.
“We just received a call from a source,” he said. “Someone’s trying to track you down.”
“I assume the same people as before, right?”
“I’m not so sure about that. Apparently this is a single operative. I think he could be the client Witten mentioned. I’m going to do some digging and see what I can find out. The thing to worry about right now is that he might be able to figure out where you all are.”
“I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Okay. Let me know if anything happens.”
“Wait,” Daeng said before Quinn hung up. “I called you because I found something.”
“You called? I called you.”
“And I called you a few minutes ago.”
It took Quinn a second before he realized it must have been Daeng calling the first time his phone vibrated. It hadn’t been the Mole.
“What is it?”
“I was looking inside the box the microfilm was in. Under the packing foam I found several photographs.”
“Of what?” Quinn asked.
“Not what, who. Miranda, Peter’s wife. Misty says these were the ones in that other file he kept.”
“Miranda?”
“It seemed odd to me that he would keep them with the microfilm.”
It seemed odd to Quinn also.
“I asked Misty what she thought,” Daeng went on. “And, well, maybe I should let her tell you.” There was a click, then a more distant Daeng said, “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, hold on. I’m putting you on speaker here, too.”
Quinn switched over and placed his phone back on the bed as he shared with the others in the room what Daeng had found.
“Okay, Misty,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Well, I was thinking the thing Peter said he’d been poking around in might have something to do with a project his wife could have been working on.”
“She was in the business, too?” Quinn asked.
“No. She worked for the State Department.”
“In what capacity?”
“Her specialty was eastern Europe, but she was rising fast and becoming one of the go-to people for difficult negotiations, no matter who was involved. You’ve probably heard of her.”
“I told you, Peter never mentioned her.”
“Not through Peter,” Misty said. “On the news when she died. Miranda Keyes. Does that help?”
It took Quinn only a second or two to remember why the name sounded so familiar. “She was Peter’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“I had no idea.”
“Few did. They kept their marriage quiet for obvious reasons.”
Quinn nodded to himself. Peter was in the intelligence business, often spying on the very nations his wife was negotiating with. Best to keep their union private. In the end it didn’t matter. An accident had ripped them apart.
The crash had been all over the news. It had occurred in Turkey, and because it involved Miranda and three other “rising stars” of the American diplomatic corps, at first it had been speculated that it wasn’t an accident at all, but an act of terror. The news ran with that for several days, making Miranda Keyes, the lead negotiator in the group, a household name. But it was soon revealed the crash had been caused by an unexpected mechanical issue — a tire blowout, failed brakes, something like that. He couldn’t remember the exact details. Whatever the cause, the result had been the deaths of everyone in the car.
“Nate,” Orlando said. “Give me the laptop.”
Nate shot a look at Quinn, who frowned but nodded his consent.
“Do you know what she might have worked on that Peter would be looking into?”
He could almost hear Misty shaking her head across the line. “No, I’m sorry. And I might be completely wrong. It was just the first thought that came to mind.”
“All right. Thanks, Misty. We’ll touch base with you guys later.” Once the call was disconnected, he said to Orlando, “Did you find the image files?”
“You didn’t exactly hide them,” she said.
“Will you be able to decrypt them?”
“We’ll know in…”—she looked at the screen—“a tad under seven minutes.”
“Now you’re just showing off,” he said.
Though she looked tired, her eyes sparkled as she grinned at him. If it weren’t for the hospital bed and the monitoring equipment, she almost looked like her old self again.
Thirty seconds short of the seven-minute mark, she said, “Here we go.”
They crowded around the side of her bed so they could all see the laptop’s screen. Centered on it was a document, and to the side a vertical column of the other files.
“That’s not English,” Nate said.
“I believe it’s Turkish,” Quinn said. Though he didn’t speak the language, he’d seen enough of it in his travels to recognize it.
“There’s a date in the upper right,” Orlando said.
It was written European-style — day first, month second, year last — and was over a decade old.
“Miranda Keyes,” Liz said, pointing at the screen.
Typed on a line that ran the width of the paper was not only Miranda’s name but three other names — Morris Tate, Gerald Yamada, and Brenda Samson.
“It’s the accident report,” Quinn said. “Those are the people who died with Miranda. I remember the names.”
“So Peter was looking into his wife’s death?” Liz asked.
“Let’s see what else is here first.” He nodded to Orlando. “Next page.”
Documents two and three were the rest of the report, while four and five were condensed English translations. According to these last two, the four passengers had been on a break from the international conference they were attending in Bursa, and had taken a drive into the national park toward Mount Uludag. While there, on a windy mountain road, the driver — Morris Tate — lost control of their car, drove off the side, and their vehicle tumbled down a slope approximately one hundred fifteen meters long. No other cars had been involved, and the cause was determined to be a combination of high speed and brake malfunction. Pretty much like Quinn remembered.
When Orlando moved on to file six, they were all surprised to see that it looked to be a copy of the very first file — page one of the Turkish report.