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toward the one-sided if he had all the information he wanted. “How’s Kim?”
    “Minus a leg,” Jericho said through clenched teeth. “But she’ll live. I’m pretty sure the shooter was trying to kill my daughter.”
    “Reports say an Asian female?”
    Quinn could hear computer keys clicking in the background over the car’s speaker. He didn’t believe in multitasking, but you didn’t get to Palmer’s level without being a champion at rapid transitioning back and forth between several tasks.
    “Yeah, I’m thinking Japanese,” Quinn said, glancing over his shoulder to take the right lane as his exit approached. “And that’s about all we have. Remember I told you I followed Hartman Drake to that meeting with a woman at the docks in Old Town?”
    “How could I forget?” Palmer scoffed. “You brought me a couple of severed fingers as a memento.”
    “That’s right,” Quinn said. “Japanese fingers.” Quinn had cut them off during a fight with the guards standing between him and the clandestine meeting—and broken Yawaraka-te, his ancient Japanese killing dagger, in the process. “Drake is a part of this. He has to be.”
    “Maybe.” Palmer tapped away at his computer. “I really should relieve you. You know that, don’t you, Quinn?”
    Quinn’s jaw clenched. “You’ll have to put me in prison to keep me off of this,” he said.
    “I know.” Palmer sighed. His keyboard still clicked in the background. “That’s why I’m not even trying. It would just piss us both off. Listen, I smell something bigger than a simple vendetta.”
    “Me too.” Quinn took the exit to Garden of the Gods Road, toward his hotel. “No organization is going to waste a well-placed asset like Drake on some little operation.”
    “Interesting connection,” Palmer said. “If we’re right and Drake was working with Doctor Badeeb—”
    “I’m sure of it,” Quinn said, cutting Palmer off.
    “At any rate,” Palmer went on, “PSIA says they’re catching an inordinate amount of chatter linked to several terrorist groups in Pakistan.” PSIA or kanchsa-ch— the Public Security Intelligence Agency—was one of the agencies within the Japanese government that dealt with counterespionage and threats to national security. “Not much of a leap to connect Drake to the Japanese woman to this chatter with Lashkar i Taiba and other bad actors.”
    “You get no argument from me,” Quinn said, nodding to himself as he pulled into the parking lot and turned off the ignition. “I thought I was going to have to convince you.”
    “We need to make a plan on this, Jericho,” Palmer said. “I know you’re going to talk to Drake, but let’s do it the right way.”
    “Understood.”
    “My version of the right way. Not yours.”
    Quinn ignored the counsel. “Congress is on a recess, isn’t it?”
    “It is,” Palmer said. “Drake is in Las Vegas, presumably blowing off some steam after all the budget debates. Capitol Police say he’s staying at Caesars Palace for one more night but will be back in his office tomorrow.”
    No sir, Quinn thought, taking a deep breath. He won’t.

C HAPTER 6
    Munakata, Japan
     
    S himoyama Takako sat on a flat cushion with her stockinged feet dangling near the heat lamp in the small, pit-like cutout under a low Japanese table. Her home was spacious by Japanese standards, with a full sixteen tatami mats in her living room alone—nearly five hundred square feet.
    It was here that she conducted her business, dressed in a traditional cotton yukata robe of gray and white, and seated at the traditional warming table with an embroidered quilt draped over her lap. A black Beretta pistol lay at the top corner of the table, angled just so, always within easy reach. Directly in front of her, a small notebook was held open by a delicate ivory fountain pen. Shimoyama pushed gold-framed reading glasses back on her nose, large for a Japanese woman, and pushed SEND on her cell phone.
    She was tall,