Persuader

seem phony."
    "OK," she said. "You've got seven objectives, of which numbers one, two, and three are, take a lot of care. We can assume these are extremely dangerous people." I nodded. "We can do more than assume it. If Quinn's involved, we can absolutely guarantee it."
    "So act accordingly," she said. "Gloves off, from the start."
    "Yes," I said. I put my arm across my chest and started massaging my left shoulder with my right hand. Then I stopped myself, surprised. An army psychiatrist once told me that type of unconscious gesture represents feelings of vulnerability. It's defensive. It's about covering up and hiding. It's the first step toward curling yourself into a ball on the floor.
    Duffy must have read the same books, because she picked up on it and looked straight at me.
    "You're scared of Quinn, aren't you?" she said.
    "I'm not scared of anybody," I said. "But certainly I preferred it when he was dead."
    "We can cancel," she said.
    I shook my head. "I'd like the chance to find him, believe me."
    "What went wrong with the arrest?" I shook my head again.
    "I won't talk about that," I said.
    She was quiet for a beat. But she didn't push it. Just looked away and paused and looked back and started up with the briefing again. Quiet voice, efficient diction.
    "Objective number four is find my agent," she said. "And bring her back to me." I nodded.
    "Five, bring me solid evidence I can use to nail Beck."
    "OK," I said.
    She paused again. Just a beat. "Six, find Quinn and do whatever you need to do with him.
    And then seven, get the hell out of there." I nodded. Said nothing.
    "We won't tail you," she said. "The kid might spot us. He'll be pretty paranoid by then.
    And we won't put a homing device on the Nissan, because they'd probably find it later.
    You'll have to e-mail us your location, soon as you know it."
    "OK," I said.
    "Weaknesses?" she asked.
    I forced my mind away from Quinn.
    "Three weaknesses that I can see," I said. "Two minor and one major. First minor one is that I'm going to blow the back window out of the van but the kid will have about ten minutes to realize the broken glass is in the wrong place and there isn't a corresponding hole in the windshield."
    "So don't do it."
    "I think I really need to. I think we need to keep the panic level high."
    "OK, we'll put a bunch of boxes back there. You should have boxes anyway, if you're a delivery man. They might obscure his view. If they don't, just hope he doesn't put two and two together inside ten minutes." I nodded. "And second, old man Beck is going to call the cops down here, sometime, somehow. Maybe the newspapers, too. He's going to be looking for corroborating information."
    "We'll give the cops a script to follow. And they'll give the press something. They'll play ball for as long as they need to. What's the major weakness?"
    "The bodyguards," I said. "How long can you hold them? You can't let them get near a phone, or they'll call Beck. So you can't formally arrest them. You can't put them in the system. You'll have to hold them incommunicado, completely illegally. How long can you keep that going?" She shrugged. "Four or five days, tops. We can't protect you any longer than that. So be real fast."
    "I plan to be," I said. "How long will the battery last on my e-mail thing?"
    "About five days," she said. "You'll be out by then. We can't give you a charger. It would be too suspicious. But you can use a cell phone charger, if you can find one."
    "OK," I said.
    She just looked at me. There was nothing more to say. Then she moved close and kissed me on the cheek. It was sudden. Her lips were soft. They left a dusting of doughnut sugar on my skin.
    "Good luck," she said. "I don't think we've missed anything." But we had missed a lot of things. They were glaring errors in our thinking and they all came back to haunt me.

CHAPTER 3
    Duke the bodyguard came back to my room five minutes before seven in the evening, which was way too early for dinner. I heard his footsteps outside and a quiet click as the lock turned. I was sitting on the bed. The e-mail device was back in my shoe and my shoe was back on my foot.
    "Get a nap, asshole?" he asked.
    "Why am I locked up?" I asked back.
    "Because you're a cop-killer," he said.
    I looked away. Maybe he had been a cop himself, before he went private. Lots of ex-cops wind up in the security business, as consultants or private eyes or bodyguards. Certainly he had some kind of an agenda, which could be a problem