Free The Cleaner by Brett Battles Page A

taking everything except his gun. In addition to his laptop computer, he had a dozen passports: American, Canadian, Swiss, Finnish, German, Russian – each in a different name. Plus corresponding sets of credit cards, ten thousand U.S.
    dollars in cash, a two-gigabyte flash memory stick on which was stored hundreds of contacts and other information, and a notebook filled with pages and pages of visas for various countries around the world. All the sensitive material was stored in a false hard-plastic lining in his suitcase. If he was ever asked to start up his laptop at a security checkpoint, the desktop that would appear would look like that of a typical businessman. Charts and graphics and spreadsheets, all very serious-looking but none important enough to draw undue attention.
    He'd inserted Vietnamese visas into both his and Nate's passports in the lavatory of their previous flight just before landing in Bangkok. He'd used a palm-sized stamping kit to apply the appropriate dates, then studied his forgeries to make sure everything looked correct.
    The ploy had worked in Bangkok, where they had to show a valid Vietnamese visa in order to pick up their tickets. But that had just been a Thai Airways employee. Now that they were in Ho Chi Minh City, they had to deal with the Vietnamese themselves.
    Quinn put his passport in his shirt pocket and pulled his bag out of the storage bin above his seat. With Nate right behind him, he joined the line of passengers making their way off the plane.
    'You've gotta be kidding me,' Nate said just loud enough for Quinn to hear as they reached the exit.
    There was no covered ramp on the other side of the door leading into the terminal. Instead, passengers disembarked the old-fashioned way, via a wheel-up staircase.
    Quinn gave his apprentice a quick, hard look.
    'Sorry,' Nate said.
    Without another word, they made their way down the ramp, then proceeded to walk across the tarmac to customs. Quinn made sure they inserted themselves into the middle of the pack of departing passengers.
    'They won't ask,' Quinn said, 'but if they do, we're here on business. Researching investment opportunities. I'll do the talking, though. You just look serious. Businesslike.'
    The terminal building reminded Quinn of a large warehouse. It was old and dingy, cavernous, with mold growing on the walls. There was none of the polish or amenities of Western airports.
    Inside, the first thing they came to was passport control. Though there were several stations set up, only two were open, and the lines were long. To be safe, Quinn chose the one with the more bored-looking official. As they neared, he slipped twenty
    U.S. dollars, a tidy sum in Vietnam, into his passport next to his visa.
    He looked over his shoulder at Nate. 'We can only go up one at a time,' he said. 'Try not to say anything. Not even hello. If there's a problem, just motion for me to come back and I'll take care of it.'
    'Okay,' Nate said, his voice less confident than Quinn would have liked.
    The woman ahead of them finished, and Quinn walked up to the desk. He placed his passport on the counter and held the cover down until the official took it from him. The man opened the passport, glanced up at Quinn, then quickly slipped the twenty into his own pocket. Grabbing a rubber stamp, he pushed it into an inkpad and stamped one of the pages in Quinn's passport. When he finished, he put the booklet back on the counter without a word. Quinn nodded politely as he retrieved it, then moved on.
    He stopped twenty feet away, pretending to search for something in one of his pockets. He looked back as Nate handed his passport to the official. The man seemed to be taking a lot more time than he had with Quinn.
    Nate glanced at his mentor, a trace of nervousness in his eyes. But a moment later, the official stamped the booklet and put it back on the counter.
    Next was customs, but that was even easier. Nate went first, taking less than a minute to get his bag