Persuader

It was early afternoon on a Saturday, so the business park was quiet. It was rinsed clean by rain and it looked fresh and new. The metal buildings glowed like dull pewter under the gray of the sky. We cruised through the network of streets at maybe twenty miles an hour. Saw nobody. Quinn's building looked locked up tight. I turned my head as we drove by and studied the sign again: Xavier eXport Company. The words were professionally etched on thick stainless steel, but the oversized Xs looked like an amateur's idea of graphic design.

"Why does it say export?" Duffy asked. "He's importing stuff, surely."

"How do we get in?" Villanueva asked.

"We break in," I said. "Through the rear, I guess."

The buildings were laid out back-to-back, with neat parking lots in front of each of them. Everything else in the park was either a road or new lawn bounded by neat poured-concrete curbs. There were no fences anywhere. The building directly behind Quinn's was labeled Paul Keast amp; Chris Maden Professional Catering Services. It was closed up and deserted. I could see past it all the way to Quinn's back door, which was a plain metal rectangle painted dull red.

"Nobody around," Duffy said.

There was a window on Quinn's back wall near the red door. It was made from pebbled glass. Probably a bathroom window. It had iron bars over it.

"Security system?" Villanueva said.

"On a new place like this?" I said. "Almost certainly."

"Wired direct to the cops?"

"I doubt it," I said. "That wouldn't be smart, for a guy like Quinn. He doesn't want the cops snooping around every time some kid busts his windows."

"Private company?"

"That's my guess. Or his own people."

"So how do we do it?"

"We do it real fast. Get in and out before anybody reacts. We can risk five or ten minutes, probably."

"One at the front and two at the back?"

"You got it," I said. "You take the front."

I told him to pop the trunk and then Duffy and I slid out of the car. The air was cold and damp and the wind was blowing. I took the tire iron out from under the spare wheel and closed the trunk lid and watched the car drive away. Duffy and I walked down the side of the catering place and across the dividing lawn to Quinn's bathroom window. I put my ear against the cold metal siding and listened. Heard nothing. Then I looked at the window bars. They were made up from a shallow one-piece rectangular iron basket that was secured by eight machine screws, two on each of the four sides of the rectangle. The screws went through welded flanges the size of quarters. The screw heads themselves were the size of nickels. Duffy pulled the Glock out of her shoulder holster. I heard it scrape on the leather. I checked the Beretta in my coat pocket. Held the tire iron two-handed. Put my ear back on the siding. Heard Villanueva's car pull up at the front of the building. I could hear the beat of the engine coming through the metal. I heard his door open and close. He left the engine running. I heard his feet on the front walkway.

"Stand by," I said.

I felt Duffy move behind me. Heard Villanueva knocking loudly on the front door. I stabbed the tire iron end-on into the siding next to one of the screws. Made a shallow dent in the metal. Shoved the iron sideways into it and under the bars and hauled on it. The screw held. Clearly it went through the siding all the way into the steel framing. So I reseated the iron and jerked harder, once, twice. The screw head broke off and the bars moved a little.

I had to break six screw heads in total. Took me nearly thirty seconds. Villanueva was still knocking. Nobody was answering. When the sixth screw broke I grabbed the bars themselves and hauled them open ninety degrees like a door. The two remaining screws screeched in protest. I picked up the tire iron again and smashed the pebbled glass. Reached in with my hand and found the catch and pulled the window open. Took out the Beretta and went headfirst into the bathroom.

It was a small cubicle, maybe six-by-four. There was a toilet and a sink with a small frameless mirror. A trash can and a shelf with spare toilet rolls and paper towels on it. A bucket and a mop propped in a corner. Clean linoleum on the floor. A strong smell of disinfectant. I turned around and checked the window. There was a small alarm pad screwed to the sill. But the building was still quiet. No siren. A silent alarm. Now a phone would be ringing somewhere. Or an alert would be flashing on a computer screen.

I stepped out of the bathroom into a back hallway. Nobody there. It was dark. I faced front and backed away to the rear door. Fumbled behind me without looking and unlocked it. Pulled it open. Heard Duffy step inside.

She had probably done six weeks at Quantico during her basic training and she still remembered the moves. She held the Glock two-handed and slid past me and took up station by a door that was going to lead out of the hallway into the rest of the building. She leaned her shoulder on the jamb and crooked her elbows to pull the gun up out of my way. I stepped forward and kicked the door and went through it and dodged left and she spun after me and went to the right. We were in another hallway. It was narrow. It ran the whole length of the building, all the way to the front. There were rooms off it, left and right. Six rooms, three on either side. Six doors, all of them closed.

"Front," I whispered. "Villanueva."

We crabbed our way along, back-to-back, covering each door in turn. They stayed closed. We made it to the front door and I unlocked it and opened it up. Villanueva stepped through and closed it again behind him. He had a Glock 17 in his gnarled old hand. It looked right at home there.

"Alarm?" he whispered.

"Silent," I whispered back.

"So let's be quick."

"Room by room," I whispered.

It wasn't a good feeling. We had made so much noise that nobody in the building could have any doubt we were there. And the fact that they hadn't blundered out to confront us meant they were smart enough to sit tight with their hammers back and their sights trained chest-high at the inside of their doors. And the center hallway was only about three feet wide. It didn't give us much room to maneuver. Not a good feeling. The doors were all hinged on the left, so I put Duffy on my left facing out to cover the doors opposite. I didn't want us all facing the same way. I didn't want to get shot in the back. Then I put Villanueva on my right. His job was to kick in the doors, one by one. I took the center. My job was to go in first, room by room.

We started with the front room on the left. Villanueva kicked the door, hard. The lock broke and the frame splintered and the door crashed open. I went straight in. The room was empty. It was a ten-by-ten square with a window and a desk and a wall of file cabinets. I came straight out and we all spun around and hit the room opposite, immediately. Duffy covered our backs and Villanueva kicked the door and I went in. It was empty, too. But it was a bonus. The partition wall between it and the next room had been removed. It was ten-by-twenty. It had two doors to the hallway. There were three desks in the room. There were computers and phones. There was a coat rack in the corner with a woman's raincoat hanging on it.

We crossed the hallway to the fourth door. The third room. Villanueva kicked the door and I rolled around the jamb. Empty. Another ten-by-ten square. No window. A desk, with a big cork notice board behind it. Lists pinned to the cork. An Oriental carpet covering most of the linoleum.

Four down. Two to go. We chose the back room on the right. Villanueva hit the door. I went in. It was empty. Ten-by-ten, white paint, gray linoleum. Completely bare. Nothing in it at all. Except bloodstains. They had been cleaned up, but not well. There were brown swirls on the floor, where an overloaded mop had pushed them around. There was splatter on the walls. Some of it had been wiped. Some of it had been missed altogether. There were lacy trails up to waist height. The angles between the baseboards and the linoleum were rimed with brown and black.

"The maid," I said.

Nobody replied. We stood still for a long silent moment. Then we backed out and turned around and hit the last door, hard. I went in, gun-first. And stopped dead.

It was a prison. And it was empty.

It was ten-by-ten. It had white walls and a low ceiling. No windows. Gray linoleum on the floor. A mattress on the linoleum. Wrinkled sheets on the mattress. Dozens of Chinese food cartons all over the place. Empty plastic bottles that had held spring water.

"She was here," Duffy said.

I nodded. "Just like in the basement up at the house."

I stepped all the way inside and lifted up the mattress. The word justice was smeared on the floor, big and obvious, painted with a finger. Underneath it was today's date, six numbers, month, day, year, fading and then strengthening as she had reloaded her fingertip with something black and brown.

"She's hoping we'll track her," Villanueva said. "Day by day, place by place. Smart kid."

"Is that written in blood?" Duffy said.

I could smell stale food and stale breath, all through the room. I could smell fear and desperation. She had heard the maid die. Two thin doors wouldn't have blocked much sound.

"Hoisin sauce," I said. "I hope."

"How long since they moved her?"

I looked inside the closest cartons. "Two hours, maybe."

"Shit."

"So let's go," Villanueva said. "Let's go find her."

"Five minutes," Duffy said. "I need to get something I can give to ATF. To make this whole thing right."

"We haven't got five minutes," Villanueva said.

"Two minutes," I said. "Grab what you can and look at it later."

We backed out of the cell. Nobody looked at the charnel house opposite. Duffy led us back to the room with the Oriental carpet. Smart choice, I thought. It was probably Quinn's office. He was the kind of guy who would give himself a rug. She took a thick file marked Pending from a desk drawer and pulled all the lists off the cork board.

"Let's go," Villanueva said again.

We came out through the front door exactly four minutes after I had gone in through the bathroom window. It felt more like four hours. We piled into the gray Taurus and were back on Route One a minute after that.

"Stay north," I said. "Head for the city center."

We were quiet at first. Nobody looked at anybody. Nobody spoke. We were thinking about the maid. I was in the back and Duffy was in the front with Quinn's paperwork spread over her knees. Traffic across the bridge was slow. There were shoppers heading into the city. The roadway was slick with rain and salt spray. Duffy shuffled papers, glancing at one after another. Then she broke the silence. It was a relief.

"This all is pretty cryptic," she said. "We've got an XX and a BB."

"Xavier Export Company and Bizarre Bazaar," I said.

"BB is importing," she said. "XX is exporting. But they're obviously linked. They're like two halves of the same operation."

"I don't care," I said. "I just want Quinn."

"And Teresa," Villanueva said.

"First-quarter spreadsheet," Duffy said. "They're on track to turn over twenty-two million dollars this year. That's a lot of guns, I guess."

"Quarter-million Saturday Night Specials," I said. "Or four Abrams tanks."

"Mossberg," Duffy said. "You heard that name?"

"Why?" I said.

"XX just received a shipment from them."

"O.F. Mossberg and Sons," I said. "From New Haven, Connecticut. Shotgun manufacturer."

"What's a Persuader?"

"A shotgun," I said. "The Mossberg M500 Persuader. It's a paramilitary weapon."

"XX is sending Persuaders someplace. Two hundred of them. Total invoice value sixty thousand dollars. Basically in exchange for something BB is receiving."

"Import-export," I said. "That's how it works."

"But the prices don't add up," she said. "BB's incoming shipment is invoiced at seventy thousand. So XX is coming out ten thousand dollars ahead."

"The magic of capitalism," I said.

"No, wait, there's another item. Now it balances. Two hundred Mossberg Persuaders plus a ten-thousand-dollar bonus item to make the values match."

"What's the bonus item?" I said.

"It doesn't say. What would be worth ten grand?"

"I don't care," I said again.

She shuffled more paper.

"Keast and Maden," she said. "Where did we see those names?"

"The building behind Quinn's," I said. "The caterers."

"He hired them," she said. "They're delivering something today."

"Where?"

"Doesn't say."

"What kind of something?"

"Doesn't say. Eighteen items at fifty-five dollars each. Almost a thousand dollars' worth of something."

"Where to now?" Villanueva said.

We were off the bridge and looping north and west, with the park on our left.

"Make the second right," I said.

We pulled straight into Missionary House's underground garage. There was a rent-a-cop in a fancy uniform in a booth. He logged us in without paying a whole lot of attention. Then Villanueva showed him his DEA badge and told him to sit tight and keep quiet. Told him not to call anybody. Behind him the garage was quiet. There were maybe eighty spaces and fewer than a dozen cars in them. But one of them was the gray Grand Marquis I had seen outside Beck's warehouse that morning.

"This is where I took the photographs," Duffy said.

We drove to the back of the garage and parked in a corner. Got out and took the elevator up one floor to the lobby. There was some tired marble decor and a building directory. The Xavier Export Company shared the fourth floor with a law firm called Lewis, Strange amp; Greville. We were happy about that. It meant there would be an interior hallway up there. We wouldn't be stepping straight out of the elevator into Quinn's offices.

We got back in the elevator and pressed 4. Faced front. The doors closed and the motor whined. We stopped on four. We heard voices. The elevator bell pinged. The doors opened. The hallway was full of lawyers. There was a mahogany door on the left with a brass plate marked Lewis, Strange amp; Greville, Attorneys at Law. It was open and three people had come out through it and were standing around waiting for one of them to close it. Two men, one woman. They were in casual clothes. They were all carrying briefcases. They all looked happy. They all turned and looked at us. We stepped out of the elevator. They smiled and nodded at us, like you do with strangers in a small hallway. Or maybe they thought we had come to consult with them on a legal matter. Villanueva smiled back and nodded toward Xavier Export's door. It's not you we're looking for. It's them. The woman lawyer looked away and squeezed past us into the elevator. Her partners locked up their office and joined her. The elevator doors closed on them and we heard the car whining down.

"Witnesses," Duffy whispered. "Shit."

Villanueva pointed at Xavier Export's door. "And there's someone in there. Those lawyers didn't seem surprised that we should be up here at this time on a Saturday. So they must know there's someone in there. Maybe they thought we've got an appointment or something."

I nodded. "One of the cars in the garage was at Beck's warehouse this morning."

"Quinn?" Duffy said.

"I sincerely hope so."

"We agreed, Teresa first," Villanueva said. "Then Quinn."

"I'm changing the plan," I said. "I'm not walking away. Not if he's in there. Not if he's a target of opportunity."

"But we can't go in anyway," Duffy said. "We've been seen."

"You can't go in," I said. "I can."

"What, alone?"

"That's the way I want it. Him and me."

"We left a trail."

"So roll it up. Go back to the garage and drive away. The guard will log you out. Then call this office five minutes later. Between the garage log and the phone log it'll be on record that nothing happened while you were here."

"But what about you? It'll be on record that we left you in here."

"I doubt it," I said. "I don't think the garage guy paid that much attention. I don't think he counted heads or anything. He just wrote down the plate number."

She said nothing.

"I don't care anyway," I said. "I'm a hard person to find. And I plan to get harder."

She looked at the law firm's door. Then at Xavier Export's. Then at the elevator. Then at me.

"OK," she said. "We'll leave you to it. I really don't want to, but I really have to, you understand?"

"Completely," I said.

"Teresa might be in there with him," Villanueva whispered.

I nodded. "If she is, I'll bring her to you. Meet me at the end of the street. Ten minutes after you make the phone call."

They both hesitated and then Duffy put her finger on the elevator call button. We heard noises in the shaft as the machinery started.

"Take care," she said.

The bell pinged and the doors opened. They stepped in. Villanueva glanced out at me and hit the button for the lobby and the doors closed on them like theater curtains and they were gone. I stepped away and leaned on the wall on the far side of Quinn's door. It felt good to be alone. I put my hand around the Beretta's grip in my pocket and waited. I imagined Duffy and Villanueva stepping out of the elevator and walking to their car. Driving it out of the garage. Getting noticed by the guard. Parking around the corner and calling information. Getting Quinn's number. I turned and stared at the door. Imagined Quinn on the other side of it, at his desk, with a phone in front of him. I stared at the door like I could see him right through it.

The first time I ever saw him was on the actual day of the bust. Frasconi had done well with the Syrian. The guy was all squared away. Frasconi was very adequate in a situation like that. Give him time and a clear objective and he could deliver. The Syrian brought cash money with him from inside his embassy and we all sat down together in front of the judge advocate and counted it. There was fifty thousand dollars. We figured it was the final installment of many. We marked each bill separately. We even marked the briefcase. We put the judge advocate's initials on it with clear nail varnish, near one of the hinges. The judge advocate wrote up an affidavit for the file and Frasconi held on to the Syrian, and Kohl and I moved into position ready for the surveillance itself. Her photographer was already standing by in a second-floor window in a building across the street from the cafe and twenty yards south. The judge advocate joined us ten minutes later. We were using a utility truck parked at the curb. It had portholes with one-way glass. Kohl had borrowed it from the FBI. She had drafted three grunts to complete the illusion. They were wearing power company overalls and actually digging up the street.

We waited. There was no conversation. There wasn't much air in the truck. The weather was warm again. Frasconi released the Syrian after forty minutes. He came strolling into view from the north. He had been warned what would happen if he gave us away. Kohl had written the script and Frasconi had delivered it. They were threats we probably wouldn't have carried out. But he didn't know that. I guess they were plausible, based on what happened to people in Syria.

He sat down at a sidewalk table. He was ten feet from us. He put his briefcase on the floor, level with the side of the table. It was like a second guest. The waiter came and took his order. Came back after a minute with an espresso. The Syrian lit a cigarette. Smoked it halfway down and crushed it out in the ashtray.

"The Syrian is waiting," Kohl said, quietly. She had a tape recorder running. Her idea was to have a real-time audio record as a backup. She was wearing her dress greens, ready for the arrest. She looked real good in them.

"Check," the judge said. "The Syrian is waiting."

The Syrian finished his coffee and waved to the waiter for another. He lit another cigarette.

"Does he always smoke so much?" I asked.

"Why?" Kohl said.

"Is he warning Quinn off?"

"No, he always smokes," Kohl said.

"OK," I said. "But they're bound to have an abort sign."

"He won't use it. Frasconi really put a fright in him."

We waited. The Syrian finished his second cigarette. He put his hands flat on the table. He drummed his fingers. He looked OK. He looked like a guy waiting for another guy who was maybe a little overdue. He lit another cigarette.

"I don't like all this smoking," I said.

"Relax, he's always like this," Kohl said.

"Makes him look nervous. Quinn could pick up on it."

"It's normal. He's from the Middle East."

We waited. I watched the crowd build up. It was close to lunch time.

"Now Quinn is approaching," Kohl said.

"Check," the judge replied. "Quinn is approaching now."

I looked to the south. Saw a tidy-looking guy, neat and trim, maybe six feet one and a little under two hundred pounds. He looked a little younger than forty. He had black hair with a little gray in it in front of his ears. He was wearing a blue suit with a white shirt and a dull red tie. He looked just like everybody else in D.C. He moved fast, but he made it look slow. He was neat in his movements. Clearly fit and athletic. Almost certainly a jogger. He was carrying a Halliburton briefcase. It was the exact twin of the Syrian's. It flashed slightly gold in the sunlight.

The Syrian laid his cigarette in the ashtray and sketched a wave. He looked a little uneasy, but I guessed that was appropriate. Big-time espionage in the heart of your enemy's capital is not a game. Quinn saw him and moved toward him. The Syrian stood up and they shook hands across the table. I smiled. They had a smart system going. It was a tableau so familiar in Georgetown that it was almost invisible. An American in a suit shaking hands with a foreigner across a table loaded with coffee cups and ashtrays. They both sat down. Quinn shuffled on his chair and got comfortable and placed his briefcase tight alongside the one that was already there. At a casual glance the two cases looked like one in a larger size.

"Briefcases are adjacent," Kohl said, into the microphone.

"Check," the judge said. "The briefcases are adjacent."

The waiter came back with the Syrian's second espresso. Quinn said something to the waiter and he left again. The Syrian said something to Quinn. Quinn smiled. It was a smile of pure control. Pure satisfaction. The Syrian said something else. He was playing his part. He thought he was saving his life. Quinn craned his neck and looked for the waiter. The Syrian picked up his cigarette again and turned his head the other way and blew smoke directly at us. Then he put the cigarette out in the ashtray. The waiter came back with Quinn's drink. A large cup. Probably white coffee. The Syrian sipped his espresso. Quinn drank his coffee. They didn't talk.

"They're nervous," Kohl said.

"Excited," I said. "They're nearly through. This is the last meeting. The end is in sight. For both of them. They just want to get it done."

"Watch the briefcases," Kohl said.

"Watching them," the judge replied.

Quinn put his cup down on the saucer. Scraped his chair back. Reached forward with his right hand. Picked up the Syrian's case.

"Quinn has the Syrian's case," the judge said.

Quinn stood up. Said one last thing and turned around and walked away. There was a spring in his step. We watched him until he was out of sight. The Syrian was left with the check. He paid it and walked away north, until Frasconi stepped out of a doorway and took his arm and led him right back toward us. Kohl opened up the truck's rear door and Frasconi pushed the guy inside. We didn't have much space, with five people in the truck.

"Open the case," the judge said.

Up close the Syrian looked a lot more nervous than he had through the glass. He was sweating and he didn't smell too good. He laid the case flat on the floor and squatted in front of it. Glanced at each of us in turn and clicked the catches and lifted the lid.

The case was empty.

I heard the phone ring inside the Xavier Export Company's office. The door was thick and heavy and the sound was muffled and far away. But it was a phone, and it was ringing exactly five minutes after Duffy and Villanueva must have left the garage. It rang twice and was answered. I didn't hear any conversation. I guessed Duffy would make up some kind of a wrong-number story. I guessed she would keep it going just long enough to look significant in a phone log. I gave it a minute. Nobody keeps a bogus call going longer than sixty seconds.

I took the Beretta out of my pocket and pulled open the door. Stepped inside into a wide-open reception area. There was dark wood and carpet. An office to the left, closed up. An office to the right, closed up. A reception desk in front of me. A person at the desk, in the act of hanging up a phone. Not Quinn. It was a woman. She was maybe thirty years old. She had fair hair. Blue eyes. In front of her was an acetate plaque in a wooden holder. It said: Emily Smith. Behind her was a coat rack. There was a raincoat on it. And a black cocktail dress sheathed in dry-cleaner's plastic hanging on a wire hanger. I fumbled behind my back left-handed and locked the hallway door. Watched Emily Smith's eyes. They were staring straight at me. They didn't move. They didn't turn left or right toward either office door. So she was probably alone. And they didn't drop toward a purse or a desk drawer. So she was probably unarmed.

"You're supposed to be dead," she said.

"Am I?"

She nodded, vaguely, like she couldn't process what she was seeing.

"You're Reacher," she said. "Paulie told us he took you out."

I nodded. "OK, I'm a ghost. Don't touch the phone."

I stepped forward and looked at her desk. No weapons on it. The phone was a complicated multi-line console. It was all covered in buttons. I leaned down left-handed and ripped its cord out of its socket.

"Stand up," I said.

She stood up. Just pushed her chair back and levered herself upright.

"Let's check the other rooms," I said.

"There's nobody here," she said. There was fear in her voice, so she was probably telling me the truth.

"Let's check anyway," I said.

She came out from behind her desk. She was a foot shorter than me. She was wearing a dark skirt and a dark shirt. Smart shoes, which I figured would go equally well later with her cocktail dress. I put the Beretta's muzzle against her spine and bunched the back of her shirt collar in my left hand and moved her forward. She felt small and fragile. Her hair fell over my hand. It smelled clean. We checked the left-hand office first. She opened the door for me and I pushed her all the way inside and stepped sideways and moved out of the doorway. I didn't want to get shot in the back from across the reception area.

It was just an office. A decent-sized space. Nobody in it. There was an Oriental carpet, and a desk. There was a bathroom. Just a small cubicle with a toilet and a sink. Nobody in it. So I spun her around and moved her all the way across the reception area and into the right-hand office. Same decor. Same type of carpet, same type of desk. It was unoccupied. Nobody in it. No bathroom. I kept tight hold of her collar and pushed her back to the center of the reception area. Stopped her right next to her desk.

"Nobody here," I said.

"I told you," she said.

"So where is everybody?"

She didn't answer. And I felt her stiffen, like she was going to make a big point out of not answering.

"Specifically, where is Teresa Daniel?" I said.

No reply.

"Where's Xavier?" I said.

No reply.

"How do you know my name?"

"Beck told Xavier. He asked his permission to employ you."

"Xavier checked me out?"

"As far as he could."

"And he gave Beck his OK?"

"Obviously."

"So why did he set Paulie on me this morning?"

She stiffened again. "The situation changed."

"This morning? Why?"

"He got new information."

"What information?"

"I don't know exactly," she said. "Something about a car."

The Saab? The maid's missing notes?

"He made certain deductions," Emily Smith said. "Now he knows all about you."

"Figure of speech," I said. "Nobody knows all about me."

"He knows you were talking to ATF."

"Like I said, nobody really knows anything."

"He knows what you've been doing here."

"Does he? Do you?"

"He didn't tell me."

"Where do you fit in?"

"I'm his operations manager."

I wrapped her shirt collar tighter in my left fist and moved the Beretta's muzzle and used it to itch my cheek where the bruising was tightening the skin. I thought about Angel Doll, and John Chapman Duke, and two bodyguards whose names I didn't even know, and Paulie. I figured adding Emily Smith to the casualty list wasn't going to cost me much, in a cosmic sense. I put the gun to her head. I heard a plane in the distance, leaving from the airport. It roared through the sky, less than a mile away. I figured I could just wait for the next one and pull the trigger. Nobody would hear a thing. And she probably deserved it.

Or, maybe she didn't.

"Where is he?" I said.

"I don't know."

"You know what he did ten years ago?"

Live or die, Emily. If she knew, she would say so. For sure. Out of pride, or inclusion, or self-importance. She wouldn't be able to keep it in. And if she knew, she deserved to die. Because to know and to still work with the guy made it that way.

"No, he never told me," she said. "I didn't know him ten years ago."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

I believed her.

"You know what happened to Beck's maid?" I said.

A truthful person is perfectly capable of saying no, but generally they stop and think about it first. Maybe they come out with some questions of their own. It's human nature.

"Who?" she said. "No, what?"

I breathed out.

"OK," I said.

I put the Beretta back in my pocket and let go of her collar and turned her around and trapped both her wrists together in my left hand. Picked up the electrical cord from the phone with my right. Then I straight-armed her into the left-hand office and all the way through to the bathroom. Shoved her inside.

"The lawyers next door have gone home," I said. "There won't be anybody in the building until Monday morning. So go ahead and shout and scream all you want, but nobody will hear you."

She said nothing. I closed the door on her. Tied the phone cord tight around the knob. Opened the office door as wide as it would go and tied the other end of the cord to its handle. She could haul on the inside of the bathroom door all weekend long without getting anywhere. Nobody can break electrical wire by pulling on it lengthwise. I figured she'd give up after an hour and sit tight and drink water from the sink faucet and use the toilet and try to pass the time.

I sat down at her desk. I figured an operations manager should have some interesting paperwork. But she didn't. The best thing I found was a copy of the Keast and Maden order. The caterers. 18 @ $55. Somebody had penciled a note on the bottom. A woman's handwriting. Probably Emily Smith's own. The note said: lamb, not pork! I swiveled her chair around and looked at the wrapped dress on the coat rack. Then I swiveled it back and checked my watch. My ten minutes were up.

I rode the elevator to the garage and left by a fire exit in the rear. The rent-a-cop didn't see me. I walked around the block and came up on Duffy and Villanueva from behind. Their car was parked on the corner and they were together in the front, staring forward through the windshield. I guessed they were hoping to see two people walking down the street toward them. I opened the door and slid into the back seat and they spun around and looked disappointed. I shook my head.

"Neither of them," I said.

"Somebody answered the phone," Duffy said.

"A woman called Emily Smith," I said. "His operations manager. She wouldn't tell me anything."

"What did you do with her?"

"Locked her in the bathroom. She's out of the picture until Monday."

"You should have sweated her," Villanueva said. "You should have pulled her fingernails out."

"Not my style," I said. "But you can go right ahead, if you want. Feel free. She's still up there. She's not going anywhere."

He just shook his head and sat still.

"So what now?" Duffy asked.

"So what now?" Kohl asked.

We were still inside the utility truck. Kohl, the judge advocate, and me. Frasconi had taken the Syrian away. Kohl and I were thinking hard and the judge was in the process of washing his hands of the whole thing.

"I was only here to observe," he said. "I can't give you legal advice. It wouldn't be appropriate. And frankly I wouldn't know what to tell you anyway."

He glared at us and let himself out the rear door and just walked away. He didn't look back. I guess that was the downside of picking out a royal pain in the ass for an observer. Unintended consequences.

"I mean, what happened?" Kohl said. "What exactly did we see?"

"Only two possibilities," I said. "One, he was ripping the guy off, plain and simple. Classic confidence trick. You drip, drip, drip the unimportant stuff, and then you hold back on the final installment. Or two, he was working as a legitimate intelligence officer. On an official operation. Proving that Gorowski was leaky, proving that the Syrians were willing to pay big bucks for stuff."

"He kidnapped Gorowski's daughter," she said. "No way was that officially sanctioned."

"Worse things have happened," I said.

"He was ripping them off."

I nodded. "I agree with you. He was ripping them off."

"So what can we do about it?"

"Nothing," I said "Because if we go ahead and accuse him of scamming them for personal profit, he'll just automatically say no, I wasn't doing that, actually I was running a sting, and I invite you to try to prove otherwise. And then he'll not very politely remind us to keep our big noses out of intelligence business."

She said nothing.

"And you know what?" I said. "Even if he was ripping them off, I wouldn't know what to charge him with. Does the Uniform Code stop you taking money from foreign idiots in exchange for briefcases full of fresh air?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I."

"But whatever, the Syrians will go ape," she said. "I mean, won't they? They paid him half a million bucks. They'll have to react. Their pride is at stake. Even if he was legit, he took a hell of a big risk. Half a million big risks. They'll be coming after him. And he can't just disappear. He'll have to stay on-post. He'll be a sitting target."

I paused a beat. Looked at her. "If he's not going to disappear, why was he moving all his money?"

She said nothing. I looked at my watch. Thought: This, not that. Or, just perhaps, just for once, this and that.

"Half a million is too much money," I said.

"For what?"

"For the Syrians to pay. It's just not worth it. There'll be a prototype soon. Then there'll be a preproduction batch. There'll be a hundred finished weapons down at the quartermaster level within a matter of months. They could buy one of those for ten thousand dollars, probably. Some bent corporal would sell them one. They could even steal one for free. Then they could just reverse-engineer it."

"OK, so they're dumb businessmen," Kohl said. "But we heard Quinn on the tape. He put half a million in the bank."

I looked at my watch again. "I know. That's a definite fact."

"So?"

"It's still too much. The Syrians are no dumber than anybody else. Nobody would value a fancy lawn dart at half a million bucks."

"But we know that's what they paid. You just agreed it's a definite fact."

"No," I said. "We know Quinn's got half a million in the bank. That's the fact. It doesn't prove the Syrians paid him half a million. That part is speculation."

"What?"

"Quinn's a Middle East specialist. He's a smart guy, and he's a bad guy. I think you stopped looking too soon."

"Looking at what?"

"At him. Where he goes, who he meets. How many dubious regimes are there in the Middle East? Four or five, minimum. Suppose he's in bed with two or three of them at once? Or all of them? With each one thinking it's the only one? Suppose he's leveraging the same scam three or four times over? That would explain why he's got half a million in the bank for something that isn't worth half a million to any one individual."

"And he's ripping them all off?"

I checked my watch again.

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe he's playing for real with one of them. Maybe that's how it got started. Maybe he intended it to be for real all along, with one favored client. But he couldn't get the kind of big money he wanted from them. So he decided to multiply the yield."

"I should have watched more cafes," she said. "I shouldn't have stopped with the Syrian guy."

"He's probably got a fixed route," I said. "Lots of separate meetings, one after another. Like a damn mail carrier."

She checked her watch.

"OK," she said. "So right now he's taking the Syrian's cash home."

I nodded. "And then he's heading out again right away to meet with the next guy. So you need to get Frasconi and get some more surveillance going. Find Quinn on his way back into town. Haul in anybody he swaps a briefcase with. Maybe you'll just end up with a bunch of empty briefcases, but maybe one of them won't be empty, in which case we're back in business."

She glanced around the inside of the truck. Glanced down at her tape recorder.

"Forget it," I said. "No time for the clever stuff. It'll have to be just you and Frasconi, out there on the street."

"The warehouse," I said. "We're going to have to check it out."

"We'll need support," Duffy said. "They'll all be there."

"I hope they are."

"Too dangerous. There are only three of us."

"Actually I think they're all on their way to someplace else. It's possible they've left already."

"Where are they going?"

"Later," I said. "Let's take it one step at a time."

Villanueva moved the Taurus off the curb.

"Wait," I said. "Make the next right. Something else I want to check first."

I directed him two blocks over and one up and we came to the parking garage where I had left Angel Doll in the trunk of his car. Villanueva waited on a hydrant and I slipped out. I walked down the vehicle entrance and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. Walked on until I came to the space I had used. There was a car in it. But it wasn't Angel Doll's black Lincoln. It was a metallic green Subaru Legacy. It was the Outback version, with the roof rails and the big tires. It had a Stars and Stripes sticker in the back window. A patriotic driver. But not quite patriotic enough to buy an American automobile.

I walked the two adjacent aisles, just to make sure, although I already was. Not the Saab, but the Lincoln. Not the maid's missing notes, but Angel Doll's missing heartbeat. Now he knows all about you. I nodded to myself in the dark. Nobody knows all about anybody. But I guessed now he knew more about me than I was totally comfortable with. I walked back the way I had come. Up the entrance ramp and out into the daylight. It was cloudy and gray and dim and shadowed by tall buildings but it felt like a searchlight beam had hit me. I slid back into the Taurus and closed the door quietly.

"OK?" Duffy asked.

I didn't answer. She turned around in her seat and faced me.

"OK?" she said again.

"We need to get Eliot out of there," I said.

"Why?"

"They found Angel Doll."

"Who did?"

"Quinn's people."

"How?"

"I don't know."

"Are you sure?" she said. "It could have been the Portland PD. A suspicious vehicle, parked too long?"

I shook my head. "They'd have opened the trunk. So now they'd be treating the whole garage as a crime scene. They'd have it taped off. There'd be cops all over the place."

She said nothing.

"It's completely out of control now," I said. "So call Eliot. On his cell. Order him out of there. Tell him to take the Becks and the cook with him. In the Cadillac. Tell him to arrest them all at gunpoint if necessary. Tell him to find a different motel and hide out."

She dug in her purse for her Nokia. Hit a speed dial button. Waited. I timed it out in my head. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Four rings. Duffy glanced at me, anxious. Then Eliot answered. Duffy breathed out and gave him the instructions, loud and clear and urgent. Then she clicked off.

"OK?" I said.

She nodded. "He sounded very relieved."

I nodded back. He would be. No fun in crouching over the butt end of a machine gun, your back to the sea, staring out at the gray landscape, not knowing what's coming at you, or when.

"So let's go," I said. "To the warehouse."

Villanueva moved off the curb again. He knew the way. He had watched the warehouse twice, with Eliot. Two long days. He threaded southeast through the city and approached the port from the northwest. We all sat quiet. There was no conversation. I tried to assess the damage. It was total. A disaster. But it was also a liberation. It clarified everything. No more pretending. The scam had dissolved away to nothing. Now I was their enemy, plain and simple. And they were mine. It was a release.

Villanueva was a smart operator. He did everything right. He worked his way around the warehouse on a three-block radius. Covered all four sides. We were limited to brief glimpses down alleys and through gaps between buildings. Four passes, four glimpses. There were no cars there. The roller door was closed tight. No lights in the windows.

"Where are they all?" Duffy said. "This was supposed to be a big weekend."

"It is," I said. "I think it's very big. And I think what they're doing makes perfect sense."

"What are they doing?"

"Later," I said. "Let's go take a look at the Persuaders. And let's see what they're getting in exchange."

Villanueva parked two buildings north and east, outside a door marked Brian's Fine Imported Taxidermy. He locked the Taurus and we walked south and west and then looped around to come up on Beck's place from the blind side where there were no windows. The personnel door into the warehouse office was locked. I looked in through the back office window and saw nobody. Rounded the corner and looked in at the secretarial area. Nobody there. We arrived at the unpainted gray door and stopped. It was locked.

"How do we get in?" Villanueva asked.

"With these," I said.

I pulled out Angel Doll's keys and unlocked the door. Opened it. The burglar alarm started beeping. I stepped in and flipped through the papers on the notice board and found the code and entered it. The red light changed to green and the beeping stopped and the building went silent.

"They're not here," Duffy said. "We don't have time to explore. We need to go find Teresa."

I could already smell gun oil. It was floating right there on top of the smell of the raw wool from the rugs.

"Five minutes," I said. "And then ATF will give you a medal."

"They should give you a medal," Kohl said.

She was calling me from a pay phone on the Georgetown University campus.

"Should they?"

"We've got him. We can stick a fork in him. The guy is totally done."

"So who was it?"

"The Iraqis," she said. "Can you believe that?"

"Makes sense, I guess," I said. "They just got their asses kicked and they want to be ready for the next time."

"Talk about audacious."

"How did it go down?"

"The same as we saw before. But with Samsonites, not Halliburtons. We got empty cases from a Lebanese guy and an Iranian. Then we hit the motherlode with the Iraqi guy. The actual blueprint."

"You sure?"

"Totally certain," she said. "I called Gorowski and he authenticated it by the drafting number in the bottom corner."

"Who witnessed the transfer?"

"Both of us. Me and Frasconi. Plus some students and faculty. They did it in a university coffee shop."

"What faculty?"

"We got a law professor."

"What did he see?"

"The whole thing. But he can't swear to the actual transfer. They were real slick, like a shell game. The briefcases were identical. Is it enough?"

Questions I wish I had answered differently. It was possible Quinn could claim the Iraqi already had the blueprint, from sources unknown. Possible he could suggest the guy just liked to carry it around with him. Possible he could deny there was any exchange at all. But then I thought about the Syrian, and the Lebanese guy, and the Iranian. And all the money in Quinn's bank. The rip-off victims would be smarting. They might be willing to testify in closed session. The State Department might be able to offer them some kind of a quid pro quo. And Quinn's fingerprints would be on the briefcase in the Iraqi's possession. He wouldn't have worn gloves to the rendezvous. Too suspicious. Altogether I thought we had enough. We had a clear pattern, we had inexplicable dollars in Quinn's bank account, we had a top-secret U.S. Army blueprint in an Iraqi agent's possession, and we had two MPs and a law professor to say how it got there, and we had fingerprints on a briefcase handle.

"It's plenty," I said. "Go make the arrest."

"Where do I go?" Duffy said.

"I'll show you," I said.

I moved past her through the open area. Into the back office. Through the door into the warehouse cubicle. Angel Doll's computer was still there on the desk. His chair was still leaking its stuffing all over the place. I found the right switch and lit up the warehouse floor. I could see everything through the glass partition. The racks of carpets were still there. The forklift was still there. But in the middle of the floor were five head-high stacks of crates. They were piled into two groups. Farthest from the roller door were three piles of battered wooden boxes all stenciled with markings in unfamiliar foreign alphabets, mostly Cyrillic, overlaid with right-to-left scrawls in some kind of Arabic language. I guessed those were Bizarre Bazaar's imports. Nearer the door were two piles of new crates printed in English: Mossberg Connecticut. Those would be the Xavier Export Company's outgoing shipment. Import-export, barter at its purest. Fair exchange is no robbery, as Leon Garber might have said.

"It's not huge, is it?" Duffy said. "I mean, five stacks of boxes? A hundred and forty thousand dollars? I thought it was supposed to be a big deal."

"I think it is big," I said. "In importance, maybe, rather than quantity."

"Let's take a look," Villanueva said.

We moved out onto the warehouse floor. He and I lifted the top Mossberg crate down. It was heavy. My left arm was still a little weak. And the center of my chest still hurt. It made my smashed mouth feel like nothing at all.

Villanueva found a claw hammer on a table. Used it to pull the nails out of the crate's lid. Then he lifted the lid off and laid it on the floor. The crate was full of foam peanuts. I plunged my hands in and came out with a long gun wrapped in waxed paper. I tore the paper off. It was an M500 Persuader. It was the Cruiser model. No shoulder stock. Just a pistol grip. 12-gauge, eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel, three-inch chamber, six shot capacity, blued metal, black synthetic front grip, no sights. It was a nasty, brutal, close-up street weapon. I pumped the action, crunch crunch. It moved like silk on skin. I pulled the trigger. It clicked like a Nikon.

"See any ammunition?" I said.

"Here," Villanueva called. He had a box of Brenneke Magnum slugs in his hand. Behind him was an open carton full of dozens of identical packages. I broke open two boxes and loaded six shells and jacked one into the chamber and loaded a seventh. Then I clicked the safety, because the Brennekes were not birdshot. They were one-ounce solid copper slugs that would leave the Persuader at nearly eleven hundred miles an hour. They would punch a hole in a cinder block wall big enough to crawl through. I put the weapon on the table and unwrapped another one. Loaded it and clicked the safety and laid it next to the first one. Caught Duffy looking right at me.

"It's what they're for," I said. "An empty gun is no good to anybody."

I put the empty Brenneke boxes back in the carton and closed the lid. Villanueva was looking at Bizarre Bazaar's crates. He had paperwork in his hands.

"These look like carpets to you?" he said.

"Not a whole lot," I said.

"U.S. Customs thinks they do. Guy called Taylor signed off on them as handwoven rugs from Libya."

"That'll help," I said. "You can give this Taylor guy to ATF. They can check his bank accounts. Might make you more popular."

"So what's really in them?" Duffy said. "What do they make in Libya?"

"Nothing," I said. "They grow dates."

"This all is Russian stuff," Villanueva said. "It's been through Odessa twice. Imported to Libya, turned right around, and exported here. In exchange for two hundred Persuaders. Just because somebody wants to look tough on the streets of Tripoli."

"And they make a lot of stuff in Russia," Duffy said.

I nodded. "Let's see what, exactly."

There were nine crates in three stacks. I lifted the top crate off the nearest stack and Villanueva got busy with his claw hammer. He pulled the lid off and I saw a bunch of AK-74s nested in wood shavings. Standard Kalashnikov assault rifles, well used. Boring as hell, street value maybe two hundred bucks each, depending on where you were selling them. They weren't fashion items. I couldn't see any guys in North Face jackets trading in their beautiful matte-black H amp;Ks for them.

The second crate was smaller. It was full of wood shavings and AKSU-74 submachine guns. They're AK-74 derivatives. Efficient, but clunky. They were used too, but well maintained. Not exciting. No better than a half-dozen Western equivalents. NATO hadn't lain awake at night worrying about them.

The third crate was full of nine-millimeter Makarov pistols. Most of them were scratched and old. It's a crude and lazy design, ripped off from the ancient Walther PP. The Soviet military was never much of a handgun culture. They thought using sidearms was right down there with throwing stones.

"This is all crap," I said. "Best thing to do with this stuff would be melt it down and use it for boat anchors."

We started on the second stack, and found something much more interesting in the very first crate. It was full of VAL Silent Sniper rifles. They were secret until 1994, when the Pentagon captured one. They're all black, all metal, with a skeleton stock. They fire special heavy nine-millimeter subsonic rounds. Tests showed they penetrated any body armor you chose to wear at a range of five hundred yards. I remember a fair amount of consternation at the time. There were twelve of them. The next crate held another twelve. They were quality weapons. And they looked good. They would go really well with the North Face jackets. Especially the black ones with the silver linings.

"Are they expensive?" Villanueva asked.

I shrugged. "Hard to say. Depends on what a person is willing to pay, I guess. But an equivalent Vaime or SIG bought new in the U.S. could cost over five grand."

"Then that's the whole invoice value right there."

I nodded. "They're serious weapons. But not a lot of use in south-central LA. So their street value might be much less."

"We should go," Duffy said.

I stepped back to line up the view through the glass and out the back office window. It was mid-afternoon. Gloomy, but still light.

"Soon," I said.

Villanueva opened the last crate in the second stack.

"What the hell is this?" he said.

I stepped over. Saw a nest of wood shavings. And a slim black tube with a short wooden section to act as a shoulder rest. A bulbous missile loaded ready in the muzzle. I had to look twice before I was sure.

"It's an RPG- 7," I said. "It's an anti-tank rocket launcher. An infantry weapon, shoulder-fired."

"RPG means rocket propelled grenade," he said.

"In English," I said. "In Russian it means Reaktivniy Protivotankovyi Granatomet, rocket anti-tank grenade launcher. But it uses a missile, not a grenade."

"Like the long-rod penetrator?" Duffy said.

"Sort of," I said. "But it's explosive."

"It blows up tanks?"

"That's the plan."

"So who's going to buy it from Beck?"

"I don't know."

"Drug dealers?"

"Conceivably. It would be very effective against a house. Or an armored limousine. If your rival bought a bulletproof BMW, you'd need one of these."

"Or terrorists," she said.

I nodded. "Or militia whackos."

"This is very serious."

"They're hard to aim," I said. "The missile is big and slow. Nine times out of ten even a slight crosswind will make you miss. But that's no consolation to whoever else gets hit by mistake."

Villanueva wrenched the next lid off.

"Another one," he said. "The same."

"We need to call ATF," Duffy said. "FBI too, probably. Right now."

"Soon," I said.

Villanueva opened the last two crates. Nails squealed and wood split.

"More weird stuff," he said.

I looked. Saw thick metal tubes painted bright yellow. Electronic modules bolted underneath. I looked away.

"Grails," I said. "SA-7 Grails. Russian surface-to-air missiles."

"Heat seekers?"

"You got it."

"For shooting down planes?" Duffy said.

I nodded. "And really good against helicopters."

"What kind of range?" Villanueva asked.

"Good up to nearly ten thousand feet," I said.

"That could take down an airliner."

I nodded.

"Near an airport," I said. "Soon after takeoff. You could use it from a boat in the East River. Imagine hitting a plane coming out of La Guardia. Imagine it crashing in Manhattan. It would be September 11 all over again."

Duffy stared at the yellow tubes.

"Unbelievable," she said.

"This is not about drug dealers anymore," I said. "They've expanded their market. This is about terrorism. It has to be. This one shipment alone would equip a whole terrorist cell. They could do practically anything with it."

"We need to know who's lining up to buy it. And why they want it."

Then I heard the sound of feet on the floor in the doorway. And the snick of a round seating itself in an automatic pistol's chamber. And a voice.

"We don't ask why they want it," it said. "We never do. We just take their damn money."