"Oh, yeah. They're definitely doing it," Parvez said with an air of fatality, lifting the paper coffee cup to his lips.
"I don't know," Max dithered, playing with the stirrer. He was always last to know, anyway.
"They have to be," Qadir commiserated. "I mean, look at that."
"They are not! You guys are awful," Fara muttered. But she couldn't take her eyes off of them either.
The moaning from the next room was audible, even with the door shut. The floor to ceiling glass window was clean, too, allowing the four lookers-on to gawp with rapt attention at the display going on in the nearby office. Carrie was sitting on the big, utilitarian metal desktop, and Quinn was right behind her. Though a bit muffled, the heartfelt sounds coming out of her mouth could clearly be sorted into words.
"Oh, oh, oh, God, yes. Right there. No, a little to the left. Yeah, that's it. Oh, Jesus Christ."
Quinn looked dead serious but his tightly folded lips indicated he was laughing inside. He followed her directions to the letter, and worked harder to get at the exact spot that she had indicated, murmuring to her in between cycles of harder scratching, alternated with longer, sweeping strokes up and down her back.
"OK, And. How. Is. That," he said, slowing down.
"Right there. Right there….."
"Here?" Quinn said, beginning to smile.
"Oh, God. You got it! Man. This is the worst itch ever."
"Hmm. You using Army soap?"
"The compound has a store…"
Quinn taper off the back-scratching, and switched to massage. His hands moved from her lower back up to her shoulders, and began a slow, squeezy rotation, rubbing over the middle of her upper back. His huge thumbs dug in between her shoulder blades, and she got vocal again.
"Oh, oh, OH, man, not so hard. No, wait. Harder. Harder. A little lower… get right in between.. There, there, there….. Ahhhhhh…. Don't stop."
"You using that Sandal Soap?" he whispered near her ear, bending to his work. "Or whatever the Pakistani soap is? I wouldn't touch that with a stick, if I had skin like yours." He didn't bother to point out that by "skin like hers," he meant, soft, delicious, touchable, desirable. He contained himself and a certain hardening in his pants, working harder on her lower back, eliciting more instruction from her, and more moaning.
"Oh, that's good. That's good. I don't even know what it is… what do you use, Quinn? What are you now, a dermatologist?" He head was thrown straight back, hair loose and eyes closed, as he got deep into the lumbar muscles.
"Neutrogena. And no, not a dermatologist, I'm a massage therapist. Obviously."
"Obviously. Oh, Quinn. This is so goddamn unprofessionaaalllll….. ahh! I should lie down."
"No, you shouldn't. And, for your information, we have an audience," he quipped, glancing up at the office window, where four embarrassed faces turned away and pretended to be interested in other things.
Carrie shook off Quinn's hands. Walking over to the window, she dropped the blinds with a snap.
"I told you," Parvez muttered.
"Maybe they have a call. Or a meeting." Max said uncertainly.
"Hah. They just don't want anyone to see what comes next," Qadir tittered playfully.
"That's disgusting. They wouldn't," Fara said. But she no longer sounded so sure of herself.
The four dispersed to separate tasks and desks, but kept their ears open.
"What the hell do they think they're looking at?" Carrie fumed at the presumed intrusion.
Quinn wisely said nothing, and took his seat at the other desk in the shared office.
"Now," Carrie said, taking her seat as well. "Where were we?"
"You were telling me you identified the guy with the earpiece," Quinn said. "When you distracted me with your physical needs."
She shot him a look that would kill flies, and said, "Yeah, Farhad Ghazi."
"Uh-huh," Quinn said, looking circumspect.
"I was going to head over. Talk to Saul. Lay out the operation," she said.
"I like what you've done here," he said, looking around. "Good people."
She studied him, looking for hidden meaning in the statement, then decided to take it at face value.
"Yeah. Yeah they are, and you'll get to see us in action soon. The guy's on his way over."
"What guy?" Quinn said.
The door to Carrie's office opened abruptly. Max poked his head in.
"He's here. The medical student." Quinn gave her a look, stood, and left the room.
He dared anyone to say anything at all to him, greeting them only with a steely glare as he stepped into the common area and headed for the coffee pot. Qadir whistled innocently at his desk in the corner.
The twitchy young medical student arrived, stepped into Carrie's office, and was gone again in 20 minutes, with 80,000 rupees in cash stuffed into his pack, leaving only the scent of his nervous sweat and the echoing crack of a slamming door, which he closed so abruptly that blind-cords swung back and forth in the resulting shock wave.
Quinn gave Carrie a questioning look as she stepped out of the office.
"Well," she said. "It went well."
"Alright," Quinn said agreeably.
"And I need to step it up now. Make sure he's comfortable. See him again," she said.
"No."
The tone of finality in Quinn's "no" was something they didn't hear every day, and they weren't looking forward to the conflict to come. Max, Qadir, Parvez and Fara all stood and started to head for the front door.
"Please stay," Quinn indicated to Fara, who was headed out last in line. She stopped at the exit and came back in, sitting on one of the desks.
"You shouldn't do this," Quinn reasoned. "You're too close to the cause, too valuable. One, you're too close to the cause, two, you're too senior. You need to delegate. No station chief does her own footwork like this."
"I'm all ready to…"
"Nah," Quinn cut her off. "Fara's ready. If it makes you feel better, I'll prep her as well."
"But…" Carrie started. "Aayan trusts me."
"Then he'll trust anyone you send. You should give Fara a chance. She can shine, if she's given room to work."
"But she's..."
"Green?" Quinn scoffed, giving Fara a confident look. "So were you, back in the day."
Fara examined her shoes, but spared Quinn a grateful glance. Carrie and Quinn stared at each other, silently squaring off.
"Alright," Carrie conceded. "He might be more comfortable with her, anyway." Turning to Fara, she said more gently, "Develop the relationship, bring the asset close. And let me know what we can do to help."
Fara nodded. She went out in the hallway as well, leaving the door ajar behind her.
"Show's over!" Quinn called out, standing and returning to the shared office. Everyone trooped right back inside with self-conscious expressions, Qadir bringing up the rear and trailing a cloud of cigarette smoke. After everyone settled, they all got back to work.
Carrie sat in front of her open laptop, flipping through documents on Acrobat. Quinn walked over to the shared office window, and pulled the blinds cord until the window was completely open.
"What did you do that for?" she said, without looking up.
"I don't want them to get any more ideas," he said lightly, sitting back down, facing her over the top of his own Toughbook.
Carrie snorted. "Who gives a fuck what they think?"
Quinn waited a moment, saying nothing. Then he responded, perhaps a bit unadvisedly, "I wouldn't give a fuck either, if it was true."
"What?" Carrie retorted, glancing over at Quinn.
But he didn't answer or make eye contact. The only sound was the soft tapping of his fingers on the keys.
"They argue like an old married couple," Qadir observed, amused.
Parvez quoted gleefully, "Don't argue with your wife, just dicker."
The two repressed snorts of laughter. Fara shot them both the look of death, as she stood near them, next to the laser printer.
Max, ever solicitous of everyone's feelings, especially Fara's, scolded them gently. "Stop it, you two. You're making some of us uncomfortable."
"Hey, there's nothing, I was just…" Parvez objected. Qadir elbowed him sharply in the side, stopping his entreaties.
"Quiet," Qadir directed.
Presently, they all went back to surreptitiously staring at Carrie and Quinn through the office window.
It was 6:30, and the team was looking at another late night. Quinn had ordered enough Chinese food for the entire group, and stepped out again to get some when it had been delivered.
"Oooh, where is this from? Chinatown?"
"Dragon City," Quinn replied, appropriating a few containers and a set of chopsticks, placing them on an old Coca-cola tray.
Qadir pointed out the writing on the outside of the boxes. "Black Pepper Chicken, Garlic Tofu… and what is this?"
"Veggie Lo Mein, you can have some of that," Quinn said. He retrieved another entrée carton from under Parvez's questing hand.
"Hey, that's…"
"The Peking Duck. And it's for Carrie." He took a small, warm paper roll filled with thin crepes and piled that on the tray, too.
"Can't we at least have a couple of the pancakes?" Parvez objected. Max looked pained, Peking Duck was his favorite, too. Quinn helped himself to the small containers of Hoisin Sauce as well.
"Nope," Quinn said. Lifting the tray, he closeted himself with her in the office again, and shut the door behind him. He set the tray down on the desk, and moved his computer closer to Carrie. Apparently each absorbed in their own work, they munched on their selected dishes together, pushing the boxes back and forth, silently and without remark sharing the same set of chopsticks. She hadn't said thank you: in fact, she'd barely looked up.
Qadir raised a single eyebrow, but did not comment, as they all got their fill of the dishes that were left over from Quinn's very particular selection.
Max and Fara were going over movement patterns that had been observed around Ghazi and other parties of interested, and Qadir and Parvez were communicating with their support group in the states, arranging for extra surveillance gear and computers to be shipped to their new location. Through the window, they overheard the typical animated conversation, but some of the team found the viewing to be a bit more dull, as Carrie and Quinn had turned the subject to work. No more massages appeared to be in the offing.
So, only Max happened to be looking up when Quinn stood to remove the empty food containers. He then went to stand behind Carrie, ostensibly to look over her shoulder at what was on her screen. He laid his hand on the back of her chair, and when she leaned back into his hand, he brought it up off of the chair, and placed it on her shoulder. He leaned in for a moment, as if to give justification why his hand was there, and then stood back up. He then looked away from the screen, and down at the top of her head, as if willing her to turn. He seemed to study her hair and neck with passionate intensity, before deciding that he had done as much as would be allowed. He stared at his own hand for quite some time, sitting on her shoulder, close to where her shirt ended and the skin of her neck began. Then, she had completed showing him whatever it was, and so Quinn spoke, took his hand off her shoulder, and went back to his own seat. He looked flustered, tired, and pleased, all at the same time. Carrie hadn't even looked up.
Max looked at Fara to see if she'd caught the interaction, but she was intent on her work, and on finishing the vegetarian Lo Mein he'd hoarded for her. Qadir and Parvez hadn't seen anything at all.
It was more perplexing than the massage, he thought. Why had he been looking at his own hand? No matter how long he lived, he'd find something about people he didn't understand.
It was late – past 10:30, but nobody on the team showed a sign of getting ready to leave.
"Qadir, you want to head to the embassy bar?"
"You know I don't drink," Qadir stated dryly.
"You're not ready to leave?" Parvez asked.
"Not until they do," Max observed. "Besides, this is when our assets are moving."
"Yes," Fara said. "Got one of them on an ISI security cam."
They stared through the window. Inside the fishbowl office, Carrie stood and spread her hands out wide, in a "Whaddaya want?" gesture… and Quinn stood and responded with a single hand outstretched. "Help me, here," his hand motion said. He was saying something to her, but they couldn't quite make out the words.
They all sat quietly, eyeing the two over the top of computer screens, maps and newspapers, waiting for the discussion to get loud enough to overhear, as it often did.
"I know it. I know," Carrie said, standing. "You didn't want to come back here at all. I get that now."
"No," Quinn said simply.
"So, thanks for coming in spite of that. It means a lot," she said, trying to put feeling behind the words.
Quinn, standing at the desk, extended a single hand in her direction, plaintive.
"Does it?"
Carrie, bristling at the thought that she didn't appear truly grateful, rejoined, "Of course it does! Not to mention, we'd be nowhere without you."
"Then why? Why not just take my info, find the guy? Why bring me back?"
"I told you, Quinn," Carrie said, as if talking to a preschooler. "I needed you."
"Needed?" Unless she were mistaken, there were pinpricks of anger fomenting in his gaze, which was hot on her throat, her chest, her forehead.
"I need you," she said.
At that, he broke from her, turning sharply. He was done talking for the moment. Carrie assumed that her point had been made. Behind him, she settled into her seat, turning her attention back to her screen.
Walking to the window, he looked out of the 4th floor, surveying the gloom settling on the commercial district below, where vendors were rolling carts indoors and pulling down metal shopfronts. Yellow light streamed from the windows of flats above. In the window of an apartment across the street, he saw a young Pakistani national fiddling with an older-model TV set, trying to get the rabbit ears to bring in a soccer game. In the kitchen window next to him, the man's young wife held a very tiny baby on her left shoulder. As the child snoozed away, the mother stirred a pot on the stove with the wooden spoon in her right hand.
Why couldn't that be us? Quinn thought insensibly. Then, he shook his head sharply, and chased the thought away.
"No, you don't," he said finally.
"Quinn?" Carrie inquired, confused. "What do you mean?"
"Stop it, Carrie. Don't try to pacify me. You use people for certain purposes, and then you're done."
"Quinn!" Carrie said, standing again. "That's not fair!"
He rounded on her, suddenly ferociously, silently angry. She'd never seen him this angry. He was usually so controlled, so neutral. And there was a thread of something-other, under the anger. She was good at reading people, but she was so taken aback by his distress that she had trouble bringing it into focus. Frustration? Something else?
"What's not fair, Carrie? That you work people, you manipulate people, and you don't ever stop? That your family, your friends, are not exempt? That you'd do anything for an asset's buy in, anything at all? Do you think I don't know that?"
Now she was getting angry herself. He might be right about her manipulative nature, but she was always on the side of good, wasn't she?
"Fuck you, Quinn! You do the same! You'd tell anybody anything on a job! And it never throws you at all! I don't think you even havefeelings," she snarled, feeling righteous.
Just like that, his eyes went dead. "Well, Carrie. If that's what you think, then I don't belong here at all."
"What, Quinn, what?' Carrie blustered cruelly. "You need me to, what, hold your hand? Spoon feed you? Say, Oh, thank you, Peter Quinn, thank you for doing your job? Fuck!"
"'A 'Thank you' would go a long way," Quinn said, calm again, deflated. "But you're missing the point."
"Oh really, do tell. What's the fucking point?" But her anger was wearing thin, in the absence of his. He just looked so fucking sad.
Quinn looked out the office window, at the common space where their four colleagues were pretending not to hear, pretending not to watch.
"I think even they know," he said meaningfully. He stepped around the side of the desk, so there was nothing between him and Carrie but a few feet of floor space. The fluorescent light bars buzzed overhead, shedding their weird greenish light on the pair.
"Know what, Quinn," Carrie said, more softly this time. She took a step closer.
"Here it is, here it is, here we go, look, look... he's gonna..." Parvez muttered, leaning back and forth for a better view.
"No way. He doesn't have the balls." Qadir whispered.
"Shhh. Shut up, you two, they're going to hear." Fara hushed.
Max interceded in a more normal tone. "Stop staring, stop being so obvious anyway. Go out for a smoke or something."
All four of them looked at each other, and hunched lower in the desks. Nobody moved.
"They know," Quinn said mournfully. "That I'm here, even though I don't want to be here. That I followed you all around the world, and I keep doing it, even though you're still in love with another man. That I will always do anything you ask me to, Carrie."
He took a step closer. Keeping eye contact significantly, he reached out an open hand again, palm up, waiting.
"That's what they know."
"Quinn, I don't even..."
"No, you don't. You never did. It's part of your charm," Quinn said, almost smiling. "But you have to know. And I have to know, now."
She cautiously reached out, voice soft. Eyes soft and wet. Her hair had tumbled all over her shoulders, and her mouth was the slightest bit open - he could eat her up, he swore to God.
"If there's the slightest chance that you mean it when you say, 'I fucking love you,' then fucking tell me."
Carrie thought a moment, and then, over the course of about 60 seconds during which silence reigned, she smiled.
"Quinn," she said at last, taking his hand. "I'm not in love with another man. I fucking love you."
Heart thumping in his broad chest so quickly he thought his lungs might explode, he stepped forward, took her in his arms, and kissed her.
"WooooHOOOO! Woo-fucking-hoo!" Parvez cheered, jumping to his feet. All of them, even Fara who was blushing right to the roots of her hair, burst into applause and began yelling.
"I cannot fucking believe this. Do you see this? This is what I was telling you," Qadir said excitedly, passing out cigarettes. Max applauded, standing and beaming, and while he didn't shout, he did smile widely, at the friends, at Fara, at himself.
Quinn and Carrie unclinched, and came out into the office. "Alright, you fucking eavesdroppers, we're going home."
Parvez, irrepressible, was still laughing and clapping. "Going home! THey're going home! About fucking time! HahahahahAHA! Whose home? Come on, tell us!" he squawked.
"Oh, shut the fuck up," Carrie said diplomatically, laughing. "It's none of your business."
Quinn pulled her towards the door. "Like the boss lady says. We're out of here. You all go get some sleep, you freaks."
"Us? Freaks," Qadir laughed. "We're not freaks, Peter, now, come on, that's not fair."
They trailed Quinn and Carrie out into the hall, where the two fell back into each other's arms after summoning the elevator. "Goddamn voyeurs. Go on, shoo. The show's over."
And as the elevator door closed behind them, he kissed her again.
Max, emboldened, turned to Fara.
"Wow, that was... that was something."
"Never thought I'd see the day," Fara said, wrapping up in her cover.
"Want to get dinner?" The moment he said it, he regretted it. Women always said no to him, and Fara was special.
"Max, we just ate," she replied, smiling.
"Oh, um... yeah."
"How about coffee?" Fara suggested.
Max's heart soared again, and he held the door for her as they left together. "I'd love some."
On a day like today, anything could happen.