SIXTEEN
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They decided to leave Paris the following day. An Agency jet would ship them to Venice, landing at the Venice Marco Polo airport before shuttling into the city center by boat. Quinn had never visited Venice before, which thrilled her immensely.
There are no skeletons in my closet, here. I'm free!
Paris haunted her with memories. She'd been a confused, young woman — one who hadn't found a solid footing in her own identity until Hypatia had basically raised her. She had them to thank, glueing together the broken pieces from her subpar childhood. Otherwise, she would've been lost in a word of 'La Lettre R', succumbing to booze and drugs. It was not a nice place, though it displayed itself as a semi-classy burlesque club, it offered more .. private dances.
Quinn did not want to go back. She'd untangled herself from that web seconds before it was too late, only moments from becoming one of the girls employed in the dark net of prostitution.
Don't look back, Quinn. You're at the Agency now. You're Quinn O'Reilly.
And now, Quinn O'Reilly was in Venice. They'd chauffeured themselves to the Charles-de-Gaulle airport, and the jet had flown them to Venice. Quinn spent the plane ride eagerly draining a large cup of black coffee, eyes shifting over thousands and thousands of words from the Venice Files.
She knew it was an economical trace. They'd found suspicious transactions, ones Jaeger had attempted tracking. She'd one a bloody good job, better than Quinn would've done, but all of the pieces were not entirely put together. Not yet.
Whatever we're looking for, it's in Venice.
They could track down the actual banks, and force the identities of the account holders. In an ideal world, they would do that online, but most crooks made accounts upon accounts upon accounts to keep the money within reach but out of sight — everything to protect their names. No one wanted to be traced back to dirty money, after all.
Quinn was busy finding out how to trace someone from dirty money, but had come up empty as of yet. As they landed, she relayed that information to Gavin.
"We're going to the banks, then."
"Yeah. You speak Italian?"
"Davidson does," Gavin noted. He tilted his head Scott's way, and the other Special Agent had shoved his hands in his pockets, a gruff look on his face, "Don't mind his expression. He's had some bad experiences in Venice."
"On a mission?"
Locke's grin was brief, but blinding, "No. On dates."
Quinn blinked, eyes darting to Scott. She slowed unconsciously, studying the buff agent who looked splendid in a leather jacket and low-slung jeans.
A hand on her lower back nudged her, pushing her forward alongside Gavin again. His jaw was tensed as he spoke, throat bobbing:
"So, what're these banks?"
Quinn rattled off the names of a few, in what was probably a very bad version of Italian. She'd tried reading up on the language, had caught the basics, but wouldn't dare insult any Italians by attempting to stretch her abilities any further.
"Most of them are just shell banks, connected in a large web of fake-front accounts and institutions to keep the money moving at all times." Quinn continued, keeping pace with Locke with quick strides, " — this usually means they're operated by one main guy, so it's a low chance you'll find anything at their listed addresses."
Gavin rubbed his jaw, turned right toward the airport's exit,"You're saying we still need to go there, to make sure."
"We'll split up, make it easier for everyone." Quinn smiled.
"Split up? As in, we're going on our own?"
Quinn met Locke's insistent look.
"It's the quickest way to get them all done."
"You're a civilian." Locke frowned, scowl returning.
"I'm an Agency-employed intelligence analyst with excellent aim," Quinn replied, rummaging through her bag for a pair of shades, " — besides, most of the addresses are just ghost fronts. There will be nothing there."
"If it is? How can you be sure there's not an entire criminal syndicate there?" Locke remained scowling, " — do you know how much bloody hell Chief Tibble will put me through if you've even breathed the same air as an actual criminal?"
Quinn slid her shades on, rolled her eyes at Gavin as soon as they covered the better part of her face.
"I'm sure Adina will agree with me on this. We'll go during the day, and most of the addresses are close to the city center."
And I'm sure Tibble will skin me alive if you're shot, but I guess that's irrelevant.
"Listen to me, Gavin —" Quinn heaved a breath, without noticing her slip, " — I'm quite sure this will be the easiest way to deal with it. The quicker we get through this list, the quicker we'll find someone who can actually give us real information."
"You can't do that from a distance? With a computer, locked in a car?"
Quinn tilted her face his way, frowning. Even from behind her shades, Gavin could see she was shooting him a dirty look.
Bloody hell, Tibble will kill me.
"No, I can't. I'm no Liza Jaeger. What I can do is follow these leads, and save us a ton of bloody time in chasing after people that may or may not exist." Quinn gave him a wry look, unusually pointed.
Gavin couldn't find another way of objecting, so he refrained, settling to scowl at the back of Quinn's head as they headed out of the airport. A car awaited them, one Quinn reached first. She slid into the driver's seat, challenging Gavin to disagree with a pointed look.
Why do I feel the need to hold my hands in the air, palms up?
The Agency did not, apparently, have a proper safe house in Venice. Whatever properties they'd owned had been pawned off, or handed off to Interpol or the likes of it. Instead, the Agency had reached out through its vast network of slightly dubious contacts, finding the manager of a rather esteemed Venetian hotel.
Quinn easily chauffeured the trio to the outskirts of the car-free city, parking the car in one of the allotted garages. They strolled into the city, the sun already beating down hard on the backs of their heads. Though it was spring, Venice wasted no time in gleaming in the sunlight. Old, water-ravaged buildings retained inches of their former splendour, even while the old flecks of paint peeled off their facades. It didn't matter.
One could still easily imagine the grandeur of the buildings when they'd been new, housing extravagant balls for large families and their servants. Quinn could almost see the ease with which the gondoliers cut through the canal water with their paddles, cutting through other canal traffic.
It didn't take long before she saw them in person. The gondoliers looked rather uncomfortable, though, stuffed into fancy costumes in the middle of a bright, sunny day. The tourists they were paddling around with wasted no time in snapping photos of, well, everything surrounding them. Quinn didn't blame them.
"We'll take a taxi to the hotel," said Locke, eyeing a nearby stand for water taxis. Davidson was the one who sauntered over, snapping in Italian at whoever poor sod managed the stall itself.
"He really had a terrible experience here, didn't he?" Quinn mumbled, soft and just loud enough for Locke to hear her. His eyes shifted her way, a mischievous grin at the corner of his mouth as his usual scowl dropped.
"Yeah. It's probably why he's hung up on Sarraf, now." Locke shook his head at his friend, right as Davidson turned to wave them over, " — not that he'll have more luck in that department."
Quinn didn't say anything, instead choosing to compare the image of the smooth, unruffled Imani Sarraf to the comical Scott Davidson.
Comical. You're calling a trained killer comical?
Oh, Quinn had brushed up on his case files alright. What she found certainly wasn't comical, in any way shape or form. The Agency liked to be certain their kills were ... recorded, and so a large database of victims and their corpse mugshots existed on its servers. Quinn avoided it whenever she could, but sometimes she erred and had to detour past the grim database.
Whenever she did, whatever whiskey she had at home was drained before morning the next day.
"There's a free cab right over there," Davidson recounted the number given to them, waving at the driver standing on solid ground, right beside the gupping boat, " — let's go, team."
His voice was bitter. Locke shook his head once more, keeping pace with Davidson. Quinn let her eyes rest on their surroundings for only mere moments, before hurrying after the others. They seated themselves quickly in the water taxi, and the driver climbed in moments after. Davidson bowed his head by the front, describing their destination.
Quinn was busy plastering her eyes on the canal surrounding them. Sure it was green, murky and not very photogenic, but in all honesty she was all of those three attributes on any given 'bad' day. So she stared, settling for the visual impact of cruising through a town rich with history, history she'd only read about but never visited in person.
Too bad she wasn't allowed to stare for very long.
"How are we splitting the banks? O'Reilly?" Davidson's voice was curt, bordering on snappy, " — you drawn up a list?"
Quinn nodded, "I'll forward it as we get to the hotel. We're splitting it between the three of us, so there are roughly five banks each."
"And we're doing what, exactly, when we visit them?" Davidson leaned back, slipped his sunglasses over his eyes.
"We're asking for the bank details of their transactions to a specific set of accounts. What we're really doing is looking for a way to identify the account owner in person, but as they're most likely a crook there are a ton of fake accounts in place for their money to move around, constantly." Quinn rattled off the information, " — most of the listed addresses for these places are, probably, ghost fronts. We'll have to find whatever actual institution is behind these accounts, and who runs the money-front on behalf of the actual account holder."
"Why haven't the police noticed it?"
Quinn shrugged, eyes returning to the billowing waters of the canal.
"Some of these places pay protection money to the mafia, which keeps the law out of the way. Some just operate low-key enough for people to not notice. We're digging very specifically, and most of it is thanks to Lorber and Jaeger."
Davidson nodded, eyes softening, "Yeah. Lorber was a bloody good agent. She'll be missed."
Gavin bowed his head. Quinn studied the waves outside the boat, the constant forces shifting around the hectic waterways.
They reached the hotel rather quick. Scott paid the cab driver, thanking him in Italian, while Locke and Quinn stepped off the boat and onto a red carpet, rolled out from a grand entryway.
"Good going, Agency," murmured Scott as he returned to stand by their side, looking at the exquisite facade. It was a luxurious hotel, no doubt, judging by solely the décor smattered along the building's exterior. Well, that, and the five million footmen by the door. They murmured greetings in a soft-spoken choir as the trio passed them, stepping into the lobby.
Arched ceilings glimmered beyond the lights of chandeliers, the lamps casting light across the religious depictions curving over the roof's surface. The floor was a matte, shiny black — the red carpet continued inside, growing in size as it ended in a large circle by the lobby.
"I'll, uh, check us in," Scott said, moving toward the lobby, " — make sure this is actually the right place."
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a/n: and now we're all caught up :) how are we feeling? happy december by the way, hope you've had a great start to the month.
xo. cleo