Quinn raced back to DC with his car radio on, catching up with the news.
His mother had still been awake in her armchair when Quinn had returned from the bar, sweating profusely. "Ma, you're still up?" He said.
"I don't sleep too much any more", she had replied. Quinn felt the nagging guilt.
"Listen, I just got a call, an emergency at work, some security system failed and they need me to go in. Like straight away. I'm sorry, mom, but I need to leave.".
"That's okay John, it was nice just to see you at all." Catherine smiled beatifically. Another flare of guilt, like heartburn.
"I promise I won't leave it so long next time. Don't get up." Quinn said quietly, leaning forward and kissing her forehead.
The radio stations seemed to be theorizing that Brody had done this, as a lone wolf, because he had been driven insane by his ordeal in Iraq. This echoed with what the drunk guy in the bar had obviously taken on board. Quinn wondered who had been responsible for putting this little spin on things? The theory didn't explain the fact that there was already some Al-Qaeda offshoot claiming responsibility and that Brody was one of theirs. That had been discredited by 'authorities' and 'official commentators' as opportunism, an Al-Qaeda group trying to make a name for itself in the power vacuum created by Abu Nazir's recent demise. But it didn't hold much water with Quinn. He suspected that the powers that be had decided that America, and the West, just wasn't ready to contemplate that Sergeant Brody could have been turned, that Congressman Brody could have been a wolf in sheep's clothes. How could the American electorate place trust in their politicians if they couldn't be sure that they weren't all wearing suicide vests about to detonate at any second? No. Much better to claim that this was a tragic, isolated incident caused by the horrors of war and the brutality meted out to Brody at the hands of the enemy. Just another veteran gone crazy. Not to mention how embarrassing this all was for the establishment. An attack on home soil, at the heart of the CIA, by one of our own, a guy encouraged to run for office? How incompetent did this make them look? They were hardly done crowing about having caught Abu Nazir, still holding up Vice President Walden as the saint who made his capture possible but tragically gave his life in his pursuit when Langley was hit. Walden was no saint, Quinn knew that, they were all dirty to some degree. He also knew that the truth that Brody had links with Nazir and Al Qaeda was being buried and although there would always be conspiracy theorists out there who were closer to the truth than even they realised, the majority of the American populace would be all to happy to swallow that Brody had just, both tragically and lethally, gone nuts.
"Son of a bitch!", yelled Quinn as he hit traffic, smacking his steering wheel.
Quinn knew that he had some explaining to do. Once he had finally turned his phone back on, he discovered that Dar Adal had already sent word that he wanted to see him. Tomorrow. Usual place. Presumably to account for his failure to complete his mission and take Brody out as soon as Abu Nazir had been eliminated, as planned. Quinn gulped. He had let his fool of a heart, his regard for Carrie, get in the way and cloud his judgement. He should have wiped out that motherfucker Brody while he was praying by the lake. Like he was told to. He could have prevented Langley. Arrogance was something that Quinn had been accused of frequently and he was pretty sure the word would be thrown around some more now that his intervention here, or lack of it, became common knowledge.
He guessed he was in serious trouble. The best he could hope for personally out of this was being deployed somewhere shitty, dusty and dangerous for a long, long time to pay penance. He knew he couldn't really be fired since he wasn't officially on the books anyway. Well, he hoped not anyhow because he had child support to pay. There was no concept of serious misconduct, or a disciplinary court marshal in this job. Everything he was asked to do was fucking serious misconduct, more or less. The second he had tried to do the right thing for once, it had massively backfired. Lesson learned. Quinn didn't technically exist. And he knew that his skillset, the things he was prepared to do, was hard to come by. There weren't too many Quinns in the world, but still more than anyone thought. He would need to watch his back, in any case.
There he was thinking about himself. He needed to find out who had been caught up in this. He knew that Saul had been occupied with other duties yesterday, so hopefully he was safe. Carrie? Quinn's jaw flexed. Despite himself, his normal policy of cool detachment had been eroded on this last assignment. The kooks and weirdos at Langley had gotten to him a little, endeared themselves. Carrie included. They had not got along when they first met and he didn't much care. He had been briefed about her, told that she was as brilliant as she was erratic but he had to admit that at one stage he had dismissed her as a fruit loop, a pain in the ass. But she wasn't, not completely. She gave more of herself to that job than anyone else he knew. Saul was up there too in the dedication stakes, but Carrie won hands down. She had given parts of her brain, sacrificed synapses, for god's sake, to punish herself for having been wrong in the past. When she wasn't even wrong, just lightyears ahead of anyone else. With her, a grudging respect had grown into plain old admiration. Quinn knew that if half the people at the Agency were as hardcore and intuitive as Carrie and Saul then things like Langley would not happen. He hadn't expressed this esteem to her. That would have been weird. He hoped to god that Carrie was okay. He was hit by the irony that Carrie could have been killed by the man she loved, the very man Quinn had spared just because she loved him.
Quinn was flagging slightly, so he stopped at a diner. He asked for coffee and perused the menu. He had a hankering for waffles but they now reminded him of Dar Adal, and he was putting the prospect of seeing him to the back of his mind for now. So he asked the waitress if they had any pie left, since it was the middle of the night, thinking he'd check before he got his hopes up. "You're in luck" said Renee, his waitress, with a smile. "Well about time too, I've been waiting for a break.", he flirted. An hour later, full of pie (since Renee had taken a shine to him and given him another helping as she was only going to throw it out before morning) Quinn resolved to take a couple of hours' nap in his car before continuing his journey. He sat there in the dark watching the tail lights of other cars zoom down the freeway. He called Carrie's phone. No answer. Saul. An engaged tone. The bear was probably busy yelling at somebody. That was something, at least, he thought.
Quinn had watched Carrie and Brody by the lake that time, thought long and hard about it. They looked happy. Now this. What the hell was Brody doing? Making hay while the sun shone? One last fling before he went off to paradise to meet all those virgins? Quinn smirked, Carrie was certainly no virgin. Brody's actions just before Langley didn't strike Quinn as those of a man preparing to commit something like this. Not even Brody could have been that convincing, he genuinely loved her too. She was his weak spot, surely he wouldn't hurt her? Maybe he had just resolved to take her with him, crazy bastard. He was quite the badass in the interrogation room, he remembered, until Quinn had sent Carrie in, that was. The big gun. She took him to pieces after Quinn had just picked at his seams. Even Saul had to admit that there was obviously something between that pair, no matter how much he hated the idea. Quinn shook his head, this didn't add up.
He wondered about Estes. If he was still on this earth, he would be enlisting his very own black ops man right now to exterminate Quinn for defying his orders and letting this happen, at Langley, on Estes' watch. Galvez? That son of a bitch was like a cockroach. He had defied the odds to survive the attack on the tailor shop only to limp back to work and have Carrie throw him around at gun point when his stitches had busted, yelling at him that he was Nazir's accomplice. Poor bastard. Virgil and his freaky brother Max? Quinn wouldn't have thought they'd have been invited to Langley that day, they were more like contractors than staff, kind of like himself. Quinn certainly wouldn't have invited Max, that guy had an atrocity or two in him for sure, he chuckled. If he had been present yesterday, Max's photo would go straight to the top of Quinn's pinboard.
Quinn called Saul. "Saul. Thank god. It's Peter. How...um..are you?". Saul sounded hoarse, beat up, much older than his years, on the other end of the line. "Look, I'm near Langley, are you there?". Hearing that he was, but that his voice was shaking, Quinn reassured "OK, just hang on, I'm coming in right now.".