Chapter Twelve
Only a few hours earlier, Quinn and James sat hand in hand on a bluff above the beach. In that moment, she had felt like her life was on the verge of being perfect. Between then and the present, her life had taken a surreal turn. Now, she sat on a couch in a cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains at three o’clock in the morning with a handsome undercover CIA officer.
“I’m sorry about the rather deplorable snackage,” James said as Quinn took a Ritz cracker from the package he’d set out on the coffee table and picked up a can of Easy Cheese. “There’s not much to choose from. The cupboards are pretty bare.”
She shook the can, poised it upside down over the cracker, and depressed the nozzle with a finger. As the unnaturally bright orange viscous cheeselike substance was extruded, Quinn swirled a glob onto the cracker. “That’s okay. It’s not like you could call ahead to make sure there would be trays of appetizers ready for when we arrived.” She tossed the cheese-laden cracker in her mouth and crunched. The familiar cheesy tang transported her back to her undergrad days when she and her roommates would binge on it—and a variety of other less-than-healthy foods—during midterms, or when they had boyfriend problems, or when UCLA lost in football, or it was Thursday. “Besides, you had an unconscious librarian to deal with.”
“That’s true,” James said. “I considered stopping off at a convenience store on the way to pick up a few things, but I didn’t want to leave you alone in the car.”
“Alone and unconscious,” she finished for him with a slight dig.
He moved a shoulder and said, “Yeah. That.”
“Don’t worry,” she said as she squirted another blob of cheese on a cracker. “I don’t have a particularly finicky palate. I’m sure whatever we find to eat around here will be fine.” She popped it in her mouth and washed it down with the last of the water from the bottle James had opened for her earlier. “I have loads of questions, James, but maybe you should just start at the beginning. Hopefully a lot of them will get answered.”
“Okay. Feel free to interrupt and ask me anything.”
“Good, because I was going to anyway.”
James went quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “This all started when I was in Moscow a few months ago,” he began in a soft voice. “I was reading a newspaper and saw a short article about the widow of a Soviet general who had just sold her deceased husband’s art collection to a wealthy British businessman.”
“Mysterious Art Collector Guy,” Quinn said.
James nodded. “His name is Roderick Fitzhugh.”
“Ah,” Quinn said, finding it satisfying to finally know. “A wealthy guy buying art doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy.”
“It wasn’t. That’s why it was such a short article. The general, Yevgeni Dobrynin, has been dead for about fifteen years. He was killed in a car accident.” When James said the last two words, he flexed two fingers on each hand to make air quotes.
“So, not a car accident.”
“We don’t think so.” He waved a dismissive hand. “How he died isn’t the issue. The fact that he amassed a fortune by selling Soviet weapons he took control of during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early nineties and the political crises that followed is.”
“‘Took control’ sounds like a euphemism for ‘stole.’”
“Basically, yeah. He was an arms dealer.”
Quinn wondered if the CIA had anything to do with Dobrynin’s “accident.” She wasn’t about to ask.
“Fast forward fifteen years after his death,” James said, plowing forward with the story. “His widow and children are strapped for cash—”
“—and a lot of Dobrynin’s wealth is tied up in his art collection, so the family decides to sell.”
“Exactly. They sold the entire lot to Roderick Fitzhugh for fifteen million pounds.”
Quinn blew out a low whistle. “That’s some serious dough.” She cocked her head and squinted at him. “I still don’t get why the CIA would be interested. The general is dead and not a threat. If his wife and kids are strapped for cash, they haven’t continued in the ‘family business.’ Otherwise, they’d have plenty of money.”
“You’re right. We don’t think the Dobrynin family has anything to do with this. The thing is, Fitzhugh is a weapons dealer, too.”
“Did they know each other? Friend or enemy?” She sat up straighter and exclaimed, “Oh, I know! Dobrynin screwed Fitzhugh over in some arms deal, so Fitzhugh had him offed. All these years later Fitzhugh’s able to exact his final revenge by buying Dobrynin’s cherished art collection.”
James grinned. “Excellent theory, Ms. Ellington. It’s wrong, but excellent.”
“What do you mean it’s wrong?” She huffed. “It makes complete sense.”
“It does if the two men knew each other. There’s no evidence they ever did business together or even met, for that matter.” His smile remained in place as he looked at her expectantly. “Care to come up with another hypothesis?”
She kept her face neutral. “I get the feeling I’ll never guess, so I think I’ll pass.”
“Fair enough.” He downed several gulps of water from his bottle before starting again. “I immediately recognized Fitzhugh’s name. He’s been on our radar for a while. It seemed really odd to me that one arms dealer would buy the art collection of another, so I did a little more digging on the dearly departed Yevgeni. I found out there’s a long-standing rumor he’d hidden away major weapons somewhere. The intel on what it is exactly is pretty murky. It might be a huge stash of conventional guns, suitcase nukes, or a biological or chemical weapon of some sort.” He blew out a breath and shook his head in frustration. “We have no idea what, and as far as we know no one else does either.”
She found herself leaning forward as if straining to hear the last bit of information that would make all of these seemingly random pieces fit together.
“The rumor also says Dobrynin put the whereabouts of these weapons, whatever they are, into some kind of code and hid them in his art collection.”
The “Hallelujah Chorus” played in her head when the final piece fell into place. “Fitzhugh heard the same rumor and bought the collection on the chance it was true,” she said.
“That was my feeling, too. I forwarded all the intel and the connections I’d made about it to my boss. He and a roomful of analysts concluded it was credible and to move on it. Since I was the one who brought it to them, they let me plan the op.”
Her head felt like it was about to explode as she began to comprehend it all. “You came up with a way to examine the collection and figure out the code before Fitzhugh could by going undercover as an employee of an insurance company.”
“The entire company is a CIA front,” he said, nodding. “Ben is my partner on the op. He’s undercover in England doing the same thing.”
“That’s why we spent so much time on pieces with writing and designs. You thought those might be the codes.” Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. “The first thing you brought in was the brooch with the runic writing. And that explains why Ben wanted more research on the words of that Schoenberg opera. That’s brilliant. The entire setup is brilliant.”
He smiled at the compliment, but it was short-lived. “Not brilliant enough, since obviously something went sideways. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be holed up in a safe house right now.”
“Do you think Ben’s cover’s been blown, too?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to contact him, but he’s not answering his phone. The last I heard from him was last night at your apartment.”
“So it wasn’t your sister who texted you. It was Ben,” she said, remembering the moment. “If you were concerned, you should have blown me off.”
He pulled a face. “I wasn’t going to blow you off. If I seemed a little put off by the text it was because of the time he sent it, not what it said.”
“What did it say?”
“It said, ‘Good luck.’” He peered sheepishly at her. “He knew I was taking you out to dinner.”
She tried not to read too much into it, but if Ben wished him luck on their date, James must have confided it had some level of importance. “Oh,” she said softly.
In the quiet that hung between them, Quinn heard snow tapping against the window. And while it was cold and blustery outside, the fire James had built earlier now fully engulfed the logs and chased the chill in the room away. She gazed into the fire and watched it lick up from the wood. It was all quite cozy and comfortable.
“And then while we were at dinner, my apartment gets broken into.” She tore her eyes away from the flickering flames and looked at James. “You assumed the two guys who broke into my apartment were connected to your op somehow and not your run-of-the-mill burglars. That’s why you didn’t want me to call the police.”
“When you told me one of them tried to take off with your laptop, I figured they wanted to find out what we knew. It was all too much of a coincidence.”
“But why trash the place? It was like they were looking for something besides my computer.”
James rubbed the back of his neck. “They might have been looking for the letter we found in the clock. It might contain the codes, so I took it to examine more closely.”
“And if Paul works for Fitzhugh and is looking for them just like you are, he might have had the same thought. When he saw it was gone, he assumed it was you.” She pursed her lips. “But why not just call and ask if you took it?”
“My guess is my cover had been blown by then. Maybe he already suspected me.” He closed his eyes, sagged against the couch, and dragged a hand over his face. When he opened them again, Quinn could see him struggling to focus. He looked absolutely exhausted. “I don’t know. There’re still gaps in all of this we need filled. I need to talk to Ben.”
When he reached for his phone, she admonished him with a gentle “No, you need to let your buddies in Langley talk to Ben. You need to get some sleep.”
Her words seemed to rouse him. “Langley? You believe me?”
“Yeah, I do. It’s so unbelievably crazy, it has to be true.”
“I still want you to video chat with the director.”
“James, that’s not necessary.”
“I don’t want you to have any doubts.”
“I really don’t have any, but if you insist, we’ll talk to him after we both get some sleep.”
He nodded in agreement.
She flung the blanket off her legs and tossed it toward James. “I’m not going to be a martyr, though,” she said with a hint of teasing. “I’m taking the bed. You get the couch.”
“I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
With a smile, she said, “Good night, James. Today was an adventure.”
“That it was,” he replied. His return smile was as soft as hers. “Good night.”
She walked to the bedroom and closed the door behind her. She turned around, leaned against the door, and tipped her head back. It was good to get some distance between herself and James and the fire and the blanket and, well, everything.
Now in the bedroom, she noticed the drastic change in temperature. The heat of the fire hadn’t traveled beyond the sitting room. She wasn’t at all opposed to the idea of simply crawling under the covers in what she wore to stay warm. She wondered what James had packed for her to sleep in, though, so she unzipped the top of her bag and pulled it open.
Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the copy of Down the Spider Hole from her nightstand resting on top of the clothes. In what had to have been an insanely tense situation, James had done something incredibly thoughtful. She swallowed at the unexpected thickness in her throat and with a watery chuckle, chalked up her spurt of emotion to exhaustion.
There were no pajamas, but she certainly didn’t take the omission as a salacious hint on James’s part. She felt she knew him well enough to know he either didn’t want to rummage through her pajama drawer or didn’t have time. What she did find was a pair of sweatpants and her navy blue UCLA hoodie. It was like discovering a chocolate doughnut buried in a basket of gluten-free bran muffins.
In less than a minute, she stripped off her jeans and sweater, pulled on her sweats and dove under the covers. She let out a quiet yelp when the cold from the frigid sheets seeped through her socks. She jerked the hood up over her head and pulled the drawstring tight so that only her nose had to brave the cold. Knees drawn up, she curled into a ball to conserve body heat. Once the burst of shivers subsided, she reached out and switched off the lamp.
Now alone and in the dark, she prepared for the onslaught of fear and anger and betrayal and doubt and the myriad other negative thoughts and emotions that would keep her awake the rest of the night. To her great surprise, however, the attack never came. Instead, she found she was filled with a strange mixture of exhilaration and peace. And despite the rather dangerous circumstances she was in, she felt a sense of security. Lulled by the unexpected sensation of well-being, she drifted off to sleep.