It was impossible, Carrie thought.

She stood and put her hands on her lower back, and walking to the front door of the hideout, she put her eye to the peephole. It was impossible to focus on something other than Quinn's absence and danger during this operation, and with the length of time he'd been gone, she was starting to be totally preoccupied. Was he alive or dead? Captured, killed, or God only knew? She never should have let him go alone.

It was also starting to feel impossible to filter through these documents. Someone in the Russian intel organization thought she ought to die rather than see something here. But what? There was too much to go through, she thought, and it was too diverse. She'd been over more than a third of it, and still, nothing stuck out as something worth killing over. Maybe worth killing someone else, Carrie thought, but not me.

She sat back down, exhaling a long breath. Three A.M., and still no Quinn. She forced her attention back to the computer, and read over the next document on the list. Was she sorting them wrong, making it harder for herself? What was the likelihood that the very oldest documents held anything of import? She'd been with the agency a long time, now, though. The very oldest documents still covered her tenure.

No, she thought. That doesn't make sense. She had been right to start with the most recent documents, and work her way back. These were the things she would remember the best.

Quds forces. Siberian oil pipelines. Chechens fighting for Russia in the Ukraine – with other Chechens fighting on the opposite side. What a bizarre piece of work that had been. But there was nothing here about anything she'd been directly linked to. It was befuddling.

One more, and she'd make some more of that horrible coffee, she told herself. She flipped to the next document, and her eyes widened as a word jumped out at her. Oriole. God, was that ancient history! Oriole had been her code name when she'd been stationed in Baghdad, when she'd been the primary contact for Samir Khalil and others in the ministry of justice, working as Carrie Orser on one of her first assignments.

"Oriole…" she muttered, squinting at the screen. "Given Oriole's pariah status…" Pariah. What the fuck? When was this?

As it turned out, the message was recent. Samir Khalil had put up a signal flare within the last six months. The only way to get the information that should have been passed directly from Khalil to Carrie, was to call him herself.

She jumped up out of the chair, got the burner phone. Dug through her stuff for a moment before she remembered, shit. I don't even have my own computer. Where the hell am I going to get the contact information?

Ever resourceful, Carrie made another quick search of the documents Saul had given her. She turned up a phone directory and a summary of all the people that had ever worked with Carrie Orser and Allison Stevens at Baghdad Station. Ah, the memories, she thought, flipping through the names. Carrie had come into the station that summer, on one of her very first overseas assignments. Carrie smirked, remembering her father's protests as she'd started her career in the foreign service. He'd sent so many letters to George Tennant – all of which had been forwarded to Saul – that he'd got himself on a watch list. It had been no joke to Carrie at the time, but in retrospect, it was amusing. Her Dad had been a piece of work.

She found Samir's phone number on the list, a resource from the Iraqi interior ministry. She tapped the complex series of numbers that allowed her to direct dial a number in the Middle East. After a pregnant pause, the phone began to ring, a faraway-sounding soft double-tone. Finally, after eight rings, a female voice answered.

"Do you speak English?" she started. If whoever answered didn't know the language, there wouldn't be any point in proceeding. But the voice answered softly.

"A little, yes."

"I'm trying to reach Samir Khalil," Carrie said. "Is he there? The Interior Ministry gave me this number."

"He is not here," the woman said shyly. Not a girl, but young, Carrie thought.

"Is this Dunya?" she asked, plumbing her memory for the names of Samir's daughters.

"No."

"Shatha, then," Carrie said confidently.

"Yes." The young lady sounded wary, alarm bells having been set off by a stranger uttering her name.

"Shatha, my name is Carrie Orser," she said, stating the pseudonym she'd used all through her Iraq assignment. "I knew your father many years ago. We worked together trying to rebuild the justice sector in Iraq. It's really important that I speak with him."

"He is not here."

"But this is his number, right?"

There was a pause, and then, the quiet hiss of an empty line. The girl had broken the connection. Shit. But it was a start. She needed to speak to Samir. But what was she supposed to do? She had only a few numbers to work with, and being hunted here in Berlin didn't put her in the best position to call in her contacts. Who would she call, if he didn't call back? Saul? If he was out of custody, maybe. Who the fuck knew how that was going, or how long it would last? Astrid? Not unless she had to. Allison, maybe?

It would all be so much easier if she wasn't so fucking tired. Worry about Quinn had kept her awake so far, but it was already going on four AM. Oriole. Who could she ask for Samir's contact information? She blinked, and tried to focus her eyes. It had been too long since he'd left, too long since she talked to Samir. She turned her head, and laid it on her folded arms. She ought to lay on the bed, but she didn't want to encourage herself to take a long rest. She closed her eyes for what felt like a second. An hour or so later, she was awakened by the buzz of the iPhone's vibrating ring, dancing on the counter next to her head.

Blearily, Carrie focused on the screen. Unknown number. She thumbed the call open.

"Carrie! Darling! My little Oriole," a voice cried. Samir Khalil's booming baritone made the connection sound like he was across the street.

In spite of her incipient neckache from sleeping sitting up, a smile spread across Carrie's face. "How are you, Samir?" she asked. "Are you well?"

"Okay," Samir admitted.

"Just okay?"

"Well, I have the misfortune to suffer in my back. It's all those years sitting on the bench. All those years in Saddam's prison. Anyway, I haven't been anywhere near the courtroom since 2009," Khalil admitted.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Carrie said sadly. She felt genuine regret – Samir had been one of the truly fair judges in Iraq's justice system, an honest man in a corrupt hornet's nest of intrigue. He had been governed by his conscience and an innate sense of justice. In that way, they were alike. He was lucky to be alive, after all those years in the regime.

"Don't be. The rule of law is finished here," Khalil said, his voice stony.

Carrie sighed, then asked her question regarding the document. "Five months ago, you tried to contact me, Samir."

"Yes. I put up a distress rocket, but heard nothing back."

Carrie's eyebrows went up in disbelief.

"Nothing?" she insisted.

"Well, not really nothing. I had a crash visit from some comedian called Smith or Jones," Samir scoffed.

"And what did you tell him?"

"That I would only talk to you," Samir said sincerely. "I wanted you, Carrie. But from you I heard nothing, not a word."

Carrie rolled her eyes. So many assets had been left in the cold, no doubt, because of her rapid exit from the Agency. That wasn't her fault, but she felt responsible.

"Oriole was on the shelf, Samir. Oriole had flown the coop."

Samir chuckled. "Someone might have told me," he said. "Don't you think? Instead, I'm sitting here and waiting for the phone to ring."

Carrie led him back to the point. "What did you want to tell me?" she asked.

"Remember the name Ahmed Nazari, by any chance?" Samir asked.

"Yeah, of course. The lawyer," she said, drawing him out.

"The Creep of the Year, fabricator, the bribe taker and intelligence peddler," Samir finished. Carrie smiled. He was right on all counts. Then she frowned, remembering.

"He died, as I remember," she said. "In the bombing at the Ministry of Justice."

"No."

"Oh, he did, Samir. I'm fairly certain," Carrie insisted.

"Well, then he's risen from the dead," Khalil said dryly.

"What do you mean?" Carrie asked, pacing the hideout's floor in a large figure eight.

"Why I put up the rocket," Samir said patiently. "I saw him one morning, walking the neighborhood. I'd heard his father had been ill."

Carrie frowned. "You sure it was him?"

"Up so close," Khalil breathed, "that I could smell his cologne."

Samir and Carrie reiterated the details, asked about family, exchanged some pleasantries, and then hung up. Holy shit. Only a nine-minute phonecall, and the whole picture of where she was had changed. Oriole had been summoned, and this information had been deliberately hidden from her. Then, she suspected, someone had tried to have her killed to prevent her seeing it. Every one of her instincts pointed her in that direction.

She'd been out of the Agency six months ago, but still. It wasn't unheard of for Agents who were under disclosure agreements to do a soft handoff to another agent, thus keeping the relationship sound. For example, that was how Allison had tried to hand Ahmed Nazari off to her, back in Baghdad, all those years ago. She'd been new on the job, but able and willing. The handoff hadn't been a raving success, though. Something about the relationship between Nazari and Allison had been odd, off-putting. She never had been able to put her finger on it.

Now, after two years of peaceful non-existence, Nazari made one hell of a lively corpse walking around his father's old neighborhood. And someone wanted Carrie dead, rather than have her know this. How the hell was she doing to locate him, and make sure? She could ask Allison. Or maybe there was someone else?

She slumped, almost sick with exhaustion. The late night got the better of her, and she sank back into the chair. 4:30 A.M., and Quinn still wasn't back. She was beginning to feel ill with worry, but fatigue overtook her. Laying her head down on her folded arms, she told herself again that she'd just be resting her eyes. But sleep crept up on her blind side, and bagged her.

She didn't hear the key in the door lock, nor the sound of Quinn entering and locking it behind him. She had relaxed, sleeping sitting up, swaybacked in the chair. Her folded arms were going numb as she slept, her head resting on them heavily. She didn't hear him slip up, or feel his hands fall lightly on her shoulders, or his lips touch the back of her neck, a butterfly kiss.

She finally woke to Quinn's arms twining around her from behind, wrapping around her belly, lifting her right off the chair, turning her to face him. She came completely out of slumber and gave a cry of surprise as he lifted her feet off the ground. Her arms went up over his shoulders, her feet swinging below like a child's as he held her and buried his face in her neck.

"Quinn. Where the fuck were you? Jesus Christ, I was worried," she uttered. She relaxed, let him hold her up. He was so tall in comparison, she felt like she was riding a swing. He walked across the room towards the bed with her in his arms, not letting her feet touch the floor. He said nothing, just holding her, letting her legs swing like a pendulum from his strong frame, light as a feather.

Finally, he set Carrie down, and pressed her shoulders so she'd sit on the side of the bed. He sat next to her, and the two of them sank gratefully back together, arms around each other, pivoting so their heads could share the pillow.

"I'm ok," he said. "I was careful." He placed a delicate kiss on her temple, a gesture so tender that it made her eyes prickle with tears.

"You fucking well better be," she said, but with no aggressive tone at all. Her eyes were still shut, and he was stroking her hair down like a kitten.

Quinn described his operation, his success. "I forwarded the information to Dar, and got a text back. They have a team monitoring the cell now."

"So you're done?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm done with them."

"Good. So now you can help me." Quinn gave a wry smile. From one thing, right to the next. Carrie never did have a problem asking him for help, he considered, not even in their very first weeks together. In a few minutes, she'd described the "Oriole" document, her relationship with Samir Khalil, and her recent calls with him and his daughter.

They had been lying side by side on the bed. Quinn leaned upon his elbow, looking down at Carrie. He used his free hand to stroke her fair hair downward, over her shoulders, smoothing it and straightening it, feeling the silky texture. Passing his hand over the lovely swell of her breast, in doing so. He felt like he'd come home.

"So, you need to figure out if this guy's really alive, and if so, where he is."

"Yes, Quinn, I need that badly. I was thinking I'd ask Otto to hook me up with the hacktivist, the source. Via Laura Sutton."

"That blowbag. No fucking way," Quinn pronounced.

"We could do it from Otto's house. He said he'd have us," she suggested.

"He said he'd have you," Quinn said, a thread of jealousy in his tone.

Frustrated, she tried to sit up, only to feel Quinn's huge paw press her shoulder backward, maintaining her reclining position. He went back to stroking her hair. "You have a better idea?" she asked, irritated.

"Yeah. We go to Astrid first," Quinn said.

Carrie shook her head. "She doesn't like me very much, Quinn."

He looked at her, his eyes holding her glance. His hand moved to her neck, then her chin, up to her ears and then digging his fingers into her hair, stroking and soothing. She'd do it for me," he said, sounding somewhat reluctant.

"Oh, I bet she would," Carrie snarked, enjoying his mild embarrassment. "I wonder why."

Quinn smiled, catching the upturn in her mood.

"Yeah, well," he said. "That's the effect I have on women."

"Oh, really? Mind control?"

"It's a speciality of mine," he said. "Let me show you."

Tired as he was, his eyes sparkled. He bent to her neck, his lips exploring the soft landscape below her ear, down to her neckline. And his hand – oh, his hand was very warm, and suddenly very intimately placed. Carrie breathed out, finally relaxing, giving herself over to his touch.

"Yeah, show me," she sighed.