"Are you sure there's nothing more we can do on our end?" Asten said into the receiver.
"Yeah," came Monahan's response, "I'm sure. You and Sam sit tight in case Quincy tries to contact you. The three of us're gonna go up there and keep a low profile. Danny's got some friends at the Sands, which is where Vandano always stays, so he's gonna keep tabs there. Brill and I are gonna cover Quincy's brother's house. If Brill's insider is right, that's where they're gonna put Quincy. And Asten, keep a low profile. My guess is that if they haven't already, the F.B.I.'s gonna put tails on both you and Sam."
"What about you three, you don't think they're tailing you?"
"Oh, they were," Monahan said smiling, "but we lost them about an hour ago on the 15."
"Be careful, Monahan, and don't--" But Asten had to swallow the lump in his throat. "Don't let anything happen to Quincy."
"Geez, Asten, if Quincy knew what a mother hen you are about him, he'd take you for everything you've got!"
Sam watched his boss' face turn red as he heard him say, "Oh...blow it out your ear, Monahan!" Asten slammed the phone down on the cradle and glared at Sam. "If he weren't such a good friend of Quincy's..."
Sam smiled slightly. "I think he's said that about you a few times since I've known him..."
Asten's eyebrows arched up, but he chose not to rise to the bait. "Well, he said we need to sit tight, keep our ears open, and be available in case Quincy tries to contact us. He also said that the F.B.I. has most likely put tails on us."
Fujiyama's smile dissipated quickly. "This whole thing gives me the creeps, Dr. Asten."
"Yeah, I know what you mean." Asten looked over the rim of his glasses at the lab assistant. "I just hope Quincy's all right..."
"You're really worried about him, aren't you?"
Asten looked down at his desk, slightly embarrassed. "You'd, uh...better get back to work, Sam. We've got a backlog as it is..."
Recognizing the director's discomfort, Sam started for the door. "Yes sir."
Asten waited until the door had securely closed before collapsing into his desk chair, holding his head in his hands.
The squad of goons, as Quincy now thought of them, escorted him up the front steps of the white colonial hotel, 25 miles east of Las Vegas. The doctor said nothing, but he had been there many times before, on fishing trips to Lake Mead with his brother. The agents ushered him without a word up the main staircase of the Boulder Dam Hotel, and down a few corridors, stopping in front of room 12. The tall agent, who had been Quincy's shadow since they had left Los Angeles knocked on the door. After a moment it opened, revealing a man the doctor had seen at the Federal Building, but hadn't been introduced to; he held the door wide.
"Come in, Dr. Quincy."
Quincy walked into the room, and stopped in front of the table, his hands folded demurely in front of him. The man who had opened the door stood in front of him and extended his hand.
"I'm Special Agent Rick Sequana, doctor," Quincy shook his hand. "And I apologize for the way all of this has been handled, but we didn't have a lot of options. Please take a seat." The man indicated a chair at the table, and the medical examiner complied. "You look a little peaked, doctor, do you need anything?"
"A glass of milk, if you have it."
If the agent thought it an odd request, he showed no sign of it. "Maxwell," he said to Quincy's tall shadow, "let's get the doctor a glass of milk."
"Yes sir."
The tall goon left the room, and Quincy let out a sigh of air, holding his stomach in pain.
Sequana frowned. "Are you not well, Dr. Quincy?"
Annoyed at the man's easy way, Quincy growled, "What did you bring me here for?"
"You mean other than reminding you of how close you and your brother were at one time?" Quincy glared at the man; the choice of hotel had been calculated. Sequana put his hand on a manilla file folder and slid it over toward Quincy. "That's your brother's file, doctor. I want you to study it, and memorize every detail of it, because tomorrow morning, you're taking over where your brother left off."
Quincy frowned. "That's ridiculous. My brother was a lawyer. I don't have the knowledge to fake my way through that."
"Don't worry about the nitty-gritty, we'll help you with that. What we need you to do is bait Anthony Vandano into doing something stupid, something impetuous, something uncalculated."
"My brother was a mob lawyer, Mr. Sequana, I am neither qualified nor willing to step into his shoes. You'll have to get yourself another boy."
Sequana stood, putting his hands in his pockets, a sickening smile lighting his lips. "I'm afraid we don't have time to find another boy, Dr. Quincy, you're it. Do I need to remind you that Dr. Asten's freedom depends upon your cooperation with us?"
The pain in Quincy's belly intensified and he grimaced slightly. "No," he answered through gritted teeth.
Sequana put a hand on the doctor's shoulder. "Dr. Quincy?"
"I'm not my brother, Sequana. How in the hell do you expect me to fool Vandano?"
"You're going to start by familiarizing yourself with your brother's file."
"That can't have very much in it; if it did, you would have taken down Vandano and my brother a long time ago."
"Dr. Quincy, it's taken years to build up any evidence against Vandano at all, and he's the one we want." Quincy glared at him, and he smiled. "Besides, your brother was an undercover agent, doctor." And Sequana knew from the look on Quincy's face that the man had no idea who his brother really was at all. "Read the file. We'll be back in a few hours. I'll tell you then what it is we're planning to do and how you fit into it."
Quincy sat, dumbfounded, as the goon squad left the room, closing the door behind them. He couldn't move; he could barely breathe. Michael, an undercover fed; it seemed impossible. He looked down at the file in his hands: there was one way to find out...
Tears streamed down Quincy's face as he read the file; he hadn't known how tough his brother's life had been, and he had shut him out, thinking the worst of him. Now Michael was dead, and it was too late to make amends. His brother had amassed a lot of circumstantial evidence on Vandano over the years, but never enough to hang a convinction on. At least, not until recently. According to the report in his hands, Vandano had finally let Michael into the inner circle, and the truly dirty end of his business in Vegas and New York. Michael had been slowly leaking information to the F.B.I. and Sequana had been amassing a stack of evidence in a case that would have put Vandano away. But Vandano found out, and according to the report, it was someone within the F.B.I. who blew the whistle on Michael. Vandano put out a hit, and Michael turned up in Quincy's morgue two days later.
But the F.B.I., and presumably the mob had both searched Michael's house, and neither turned up any of the hardcore evidence that Michael said existed. Quincy remembered the claim stub and key then, and wondered if Sequana's men had any luck on that end. A soft knock issued from his door, and momentarily it opened. Quincy quickly wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Maxwell set a small carton of milk in front of the doctor, and a straw. Without a word, Quincy opened the container, and downed the contents, hoping the smooth liquid would help calm his irritated stomach. Sequana walked in, and sat down opposite of the doctor.
"Well?"
"I had no idea," Quincy said softly, "all these years I thought my brother was working for the mob; I thought he was a terrible person..."
"And now you know the truth."
"Yes. But it's a little late."
"You can still honor his memory, doctor, by helping us complete his work."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Several things, doctor, one of which will be to set up Vandano to take a fall."
"How?"
"He put a hit out on your brother. Once you turn up, and everyone thinks you're him..."
"He'll try it again."
"The key is to get Vandano to come after you himself, and let us catch him in the act."
"In the act? Doesn't that mean that he has to kill me?"
"No, he just has to make the attempt; we'll close in before he actually has a chance to kill you, doctor."
"Why is it I don't find that to be comforting?" Quincy licked his lips nervously, then said, "Where do we start?"
Sequana set a small lockbox on the table, followed by the key Quincy had seen attached to the claim stub. "The Golden Tree is a pawn shop in Las Vegas. We thought maybe Michael had put the files and pictures he collected in here, but that's not what we found when we opened it."
"May I?"
"That's why it's here, doctor."
Quincy picked up the key, unlocked the box and peered inside: it was filled with fishing hooks, spinners and dry flies. The medical examiner looked sharply up at Sequana.
"Anything at the bottom?"
"Yeah, there was." He pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Quincy, who stared at his own first name written on it in his brother's hand. "We opened it, doctor, and I apologize for that, but under the circumstances, we had to."
Quincy said nothing as he pulled out a piece of paper from the envelope. He unfolded it, and instead of a letter from his brother, there was simply one word written on it: kantana. The doctor looked up at the agent.
"We've researched the term, and it's a variation on a Japanese sword...but that doesn't make any sense to us; does it to you?"
"Yes," Quincy answered, "yes it does."
Sequana looked at him impatiently. "Well? What in the hell does it mean?'
"I'll tell you, Sequana, but first, there are some things I want from you."
Knowing the doctor had him locked down, Sequana sighed. "I'm listening, doctor."
"First, the charge against Dr. Asten--"
"--I told you we dropped that, the moment you agreed to come with us."
"I know that. I want any trace of it removed from his record. That man has never done anything illegal; he's never even gotten so much as a parking ticket, and I'll be damned if I'm the reason he has a black mark on his permenant record with the county."
"Done."
"That's not all of it," Quincy said, a slight sneer on his face. "I want my friends protected until this is over. I want agents on them and their families."
Knowing that his men had already lost Monahan, Brill and the restaurant owner, Sequana felt the sweat begin to bead on his forehead. "Dr. Quincy, do you have any idea how much resources like that will cost the federal government?"
"Frankly, Mr. Sequana, I don't care. You're getting what you want, and it's probably gonna cost me my life, I'd say it's the least you can do."
"Now Dr. Quincy, you're being a little harsh--"
"--Look, Sequana, we both know that the chances of my coming out of this still breathing are pretty minimal. There isn't much you can do to protect me without tipping off Vandano, and we both know it."
"Dr. Quincy, we will do everything in our power to keep you alive."
"I'm sure that you will; the point is that there isn't much you can do." Sequana looked away, so Quincy continued, "The last thing I want is pretty simple. I'd like to spare my friends from the outcome of this as much as possible."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Just make up something that will be easier for them to take. I'm sure you can't tell them the truth anyway, but if you could somehow make it easier for them, that's all I'm asking. Tell them you put me into witness protection or something, anything..." He stared into Sequana's dark eyes. "I don't want them finding my body in their morgue on Monday morning with a bullet in my head, or worse, reading about it in the newspaper."
"I understand, doctor, and you have my word that I'll take care of it." He paused then said, "Now, what does kantana mean?"
"It's the name of an outboarder attached to a friend's boat."
"Where is the boat?"
"Here, at Lake Mead."
"What's the registered name?
"The Jayhawker."
Sequana turned to Maxwell. "I want it stripped from bow to stern. Get going." He looked at Quincy and frowned. "You really don't look well, doctor."
"My estranged brother, whom I cut out of my life, was killed by the mob because he was a deep cover F.B.I. agent; my friends are probably in a state of panic because they don't know what's happened to me; and I'm going to get my head blown off by some mafioso while I try and set him up for a take down. How am I supposed to look, Special Agent Sequana?"
Sequana grimaced slightly; it sounded so much worse when Quincy put voice to it.
