The Last Minute

by Jeff Abbott

“I told you we would help you find your kid.”

  “I told you I would handle it myself.”

  “Because you think you still have enemies in the Special Projects branch.”

  “Yes. Who would use my kid against me.”

  “You’re paranoid.”

  “You get to be after you get framed for treason, August.”

  He took another sip of his drink. “You’re trying to find the woman who took Daniel.”

  “No luck yet.”

  “I’m betting you’re close.”

  “August. Go home. Let me get my kid back.”

  “Have you made progress? Can we help you?”

  “I trust you. But if you tracked my kid and there’s another traitor inside the Company working for Novem Soles, then, well, maybe my kid is dead. Right now they don’t know what I’m doing and I have to keep it that way. I get him back, that’s all I care about. I’m not in the revenge business.”

  “We don’t even know what Novem Soles is,” he said. “Some of the thinkers at the CIA are arguing that Novem Soles actually stands for ‘nothing special.’ They could just have been a few guys who decided to make some cash committing corporate espionage and smuggling weapons. They got a gang of low-level thugs to tattoo themselves and talk like they were part of a big deal and maybe it’s all just a grand illusion.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think they’re big.”

  “I think you’re right. My hope is that Mila could tell me exactly what and who they are.”

  “If she knew that they’d all be dead.”

  “I’m glad Mila and I are on the same page, then. What were the two of you doing today up on the Upper West Side?”

  “Meals on Wheels.”

  August tapped a finger against the base of the martini glass. “Look, I want Daniel back for you. More than anything, Sam. But you can’t grab him back and just let these people roll on.”

  “I am going to do what’s best for my kid and me.” I gestured toward his martini. “I want out, August. I want a normal life again. They took it from me and I’m going to get it back.”

  “And, what, run a bar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sam. You did us, and the nation, a good turn here in New York.”

  “You sound like an award plaque.”

  He ignored my sarcasm. “I won’t ever forget it. But I’ve had to argue, repeatedly, not to pull you back in. I’ve protected you because we’re friends. I did it because I know you want it this way. But Novem Soles is much, much bigger than you. I’m running a task force in Special Projects on finding information about this network, what they want, who they are.” He turned the martini glass. “They’re something new. Different. I would expect a terrorist group to try to do a mass assassination. But not a criminal group. What’s the profit in it for them? Who are they? Why are they doing what they’re doing? It makes no obvious sense.”

  “Good luck.”

  “So. Let me help you. We’ll find them together.”

  I let the piano music wash over me for a moment. “A few weeks ago I saw a redacted document from a Company file. It claimed that I could be controlled through my son. Inside the Company, August, on your side of the fence. I’m not exactly looking for help.”

  He said, “Where did you get this document?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, I’ve certainly never seen it, Sam, and documents can be forged.”

  “This wasn’t. Because it’s true. I can be controlled through my son. Which is why I and I alone am going to get him back.”

  “You’re not alone. There is Mila. There’s no record of her in any government database we can find. Her name is Mila, right?”

  “So the only reason you are following me is to find her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re wasting your time. I don’t know where she is now or where she lives. I’m sorry. Would you like another martini before you go?”

  “No, thank you. I saw her, I think, in the internet café in Amsterdam, when we grabbed that Chinese hacker that was tied to Novem Soles. I showed her picture to some people in Europe who provide us with information now and then, at a cost.”

  “Well, if I wasn’t with her, I couldn’t say if you saw her or not.” I risked a smile.

  The scene was vivid in my head. I’d tried to infiltrate a criminal ring in Amsterdam, and the Chinese hacker was some poor college kid they’d used to research my forged identity and had gotten caught by August. The hacker had died in a shootout later that day where most of the ring died as well, and I’d barely escaped with my own life. Mila had been watching me from the same internet café across the canal.

  “You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel,” August said. “She does not have a nice reputation.”

  I said nothing.

  “There’s a price on her head. Did you know that?” August delivered this with the kind tone of a friend breaking bad news. “A cool million dollars for your Mila, preferably alive.”

  The words hung in the air. I distantly heard the trill of piano jazz, the clink of the crystal, a drunken bray of laughter from a guy who’d had a pint too many.

  “I mean, you can have someone killed rather cheaply these days—under ten thousand. There’s been a price deflation on hits, what with the economic downturns. But a million on her head, Sam.” August gave out an amused whistle. “That’s trouble. Some very bad people are looking for her to collect that payday. I wonder what she did that’s worth a million dollars.”

  Maybe he already knew. He had been my one true friend in the CIA, and until he proved otherwise I had to consider him an ally. One of the waitresses passed. I pointed at August’s martini and raised two fingers. August’s brain needed picking.

  “We could protect her, Sam. In exchange we’ll find out who has the contract on her and we’ll make it go away.”

  Once again I said nothing. I couldn’t negotiate on Mila’s behalf. Someone must truly, truly hate her. It did not surprise me.

  “Makes you wonder who she’s pissed off.”

  “Who put out the bounty?”

  “We picked it up on chatter online.” He leaned forward. “You’re welcome.”

  “You’re not helping me.”

  “Sam. She can tell us what we need to know. Clearly she’s connected to movers and shakers. She armed you, she financed you, she got you into the Netherlands and into the UK and into the United States with no trace of entry. She helped you get inside a major criminal ring that was planning the biggest assassination plot in American history.” He shook his head. “We want to know who she works for and what she knows about Novem Soles, Sam. Give her to me.”

  “You have a very vivid imagination. Maybe I did all that hard work.”

  “Not on your own. You didn’t have the resources, the money.”

  “You following me today is no different than when you had me living in Brooklyn, waiting to see if someone from Novem Soles tried to kill me or grab me. I don’t work for you, August. I quit the Company. So you worry about your projects and let me worry about mine.”

  “Let me talk to Mila, Sam. Please. We can help each other.”

  “I’m not going to repay any help I’ve gotten from her by handing her over to you for interrogation. If she wants to talk to you, she will.”

  The silence between us felt like one you’d find at a poker table when the cards still hold every possibility and the only measure you take is in your opponent’s face. “I don’t want to play hardball with you.”

  “August, you don’t even know where the hardball court is located. Now. You’ve learned you can’t follow me, and you’ve had your most excellent drinks.” I stood. “I have to go tend to my business.”

  “I find it fascinating that you now own a bar. Where’d you get the money?”

  “Good night, August.”

  “Who are you working for, Sam? What have you gotten yourself into, hanging with a woman who has a million-dollar bount
y on her head? You and I both know that only happens when you get down and dirty with the very worst.”

  “I’m going to find my son. No matter what it takes. Remember that.”

  He was silent, staring at his martini glass. I know he wanted to help me. He was my friend. But he couldn’t.

  “You said you wanted your life back. If that means working for Special Projects again, and it should, then have your lady friend talk to me. Tell me who’s been helping you. Give us them and get what you had back.”

  “The Company showed me zero loyalty in my hour of need, August. Let me guess: you’ll run straight to them and tell them I own this bar now. Although it’s none of their business, and I want them to leave me alone.”

  He sat silent for ten long seconds. “I don’t need to tell them your business. You may not think it, Sam, but I’ve always been your friend.” He looked more angry than hurt, and I knew he wasn’t playing me. He stared at me. “In the crazy hours, right after you were accused of killing everyone in London Special Projects, I thought—do I know him? Do I really know him, could what they say be right? You could have fooled me, could have fooled everyone else. You could have been the worst murderer and traitor in CIA history. But then I thought, no, if he killed them he wouldn’t have been so stupid about it to be there when the bomb blew. He would have vanished. Because Sam is not stupid. Sam always does a calculatedly good job.”

  I missed August. Hated to admit it, but I did. I wanted to trust him. But I couldn’t trust Special Projects, not after what they’d done to me. “A compliment. Thanks. I can encourage Mila to talk to you. But I don’t know where to find her, and that’s the truth.”

  “Getting your kid back, that’s huge to me. But I’m going to find Mila, Sam, with or without your help, and if you get in my way the friendship does not trump my duty.” He folded his heavy arms. August played college football at Minnesota, and he’s a lot bigger than me. More pure muscle. I am smaller and faster and a little less naïve.

  The worst enemy is a one-time friend. I knew that.

  “I’m not your enemy, Sam, and I won’t be, unless you choose to be mine.” His word choice made me feel like he’d read my mind. He picked up the martini, finished it with a toss.

  “It’s too warm now, it’s no good.”

  “Things don’t stay good,” he said, and I knew: something had happened. “I hope you get Daniel back, safe and sound. You know I hope that more than anything else, Sam.”

  “I know.”

  I used to fight with my brother Danny and the awkward, awful silence between us felt like the one now between me and August. A bitterness that could be sweetened with a word, but neither of us was willing to add that ingredient. He turned and he walked out, and I turned to go upstairs to pack for Las Vegas. The Round Table had a private jet I could use, and I wasn’t waiting a moment longer. I would head for Vegas tonight.

  7

  Amsterdam

  JACK AND RICKI HAD MET under less than auspicious circumstances: she appeared in a hacker’s chat room when he still was in New York City, looking to trade piracy software for counterfeit DVDs. Jack didn’t think film piracy was really very cool, he knew it was theft, but in her postings Ricki was funny and charming and she was Dutch and so he thought she was hot. No one on the hacker discussion group knew he was Jack Ming, the guy the New York police wanted to bring in for questioning.

  I got to run and hide. My parents are so uncool, he’d written.

  Come and hide in Holland, she wrote in answer.

  So he had, just on impulse, and he and Ricki had met for coffee in Delft after he arrived on a fake passport a friend back in New York helped him get. Instead of the blond Dutch girl he imagined, Ricki was half a head taller than him and an immigrant from Senegal. She was funny, smart, pretty, and tough. He was thoroughly overwhelmed and intimidated by her. He didn’t know what to say. Their dates became fewer; he figured she was disappointed in him. He was a geek on the run. And he kept too much hidden in himself for her taste. How unappealing was that?

  The hacker community tended toward what Jack thought of as a distant tightness. They stayed close online but they didn’t hang out much in real life. A person who was socially nimble behind the cocoon of a screen could be one who consistently missed normal interaction cues in a café or a pub. Ricki was one such individual. She arrived at the coffee shop thirty minutes late, stuck a wad of cash into one hand and a bag of cheap clothes into his other hand and said, “You owe me.”

  “Where’d you get the clothes? All the stores are closed.”

  She shrugged. “Old boyfriend before you left them behind, but I think they should fit. You’re about the same size.”

  He tried to ignore the stab of jealousy he felt. “I’m going to owe you more. I need a place to stay. Just for tonight.”

  “Please.” Ricki rolled her black-lined eyes. “Now you’ve decided to talk?”

  “Just one night.” He glanced in the bag; the clothes were a lot more colorful and stylish than he would have selected.

  “What kind of trouble are you in?”

  “Nothing major, I just need a place to crash.”

  “Do the police know you’ve checked yourself out of the hospital?”

  Information was currency. “Look, I’ll write a program for you, a Trojan that’ll send you back information from the infected computer. Could be valuable.”

  Ricki touched the corner of her mouth with her tongue. Please be greedy, Jack thought. Please.

  “You don’t need to bribe me to help you, Jack!” She looked wounded. “I took a huge risk to find you.”

  “Oh,” he said. “No. I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean that. I was going to give it to you as a gift. For helping me.” His voice trailed off.

  She sighed. “So smart, so clueless. Buy me a coffee with the money I brought you and we’ll go back to my place. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  “You are?”

  “Duh. No, I’ve often wished you dead. Honestly, you are dumb as a rock.” But Ricki smiled at him. A short, sweet flick of a smile and it nearly made him cry, he was so happy to see a friendly face.

  He changed clothes in the tiny bathroom of the café. He bought her a coffee to go. He wanted to put as much distance between him and the hospital as possible. He felt he’d nearly gone insane waiting for her.

  The first thing he thought when he saw her apartment was blink and wonder where she actually lived, because there was hardly space for her in the rooms. When they dated, she’d never let him come to her place. She was in Amsterdam, he lived in Delft and she came to see him. The apartment was small and too warm. One entire wall was full of bookshelves, each holding at least two dozen DVD burners. On the opposite side of the wall he saw neatly packaged DVDs, mostly of films currently playing in theaters. Hundreds of them. He started doing the math in his head.

  “It’s probably about fifty thousand dollars’ worth,” she said.

  “Wow. And you sell these on the street?” She had not really talked much about her “work.”

  “I used to. That’s how I came here from Senegal. The counterfeiters start you off selling on the streets. I sold DVDs better than anyone. I got promoted. Now I have a street team.”

  “What if you get caught?”

  “Not me,” she laughed.

  The machines whirred, all creating illicit product. Some began to beep, completing their copying, and she started to pull the finished discs from the machines.

  She tossed him a T-shirt from a freshly opened box, for a new vampire film that wasn’t out for another three months, with a still shot of the main characters at a critical moment silk-screened on its chest.

  “So. You got shot and had a vacation courtesy of the police,” she said. She glanced at the raw scar on his neck. He would, Jack thought, need a scarf. The thought of wearing the vampire shirt while having a healing neck wound nearly made him laugh.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a dangerous boy now, Jack.”
She touched the skin below his scar. “Who shot you?” Excitement brightened her dark eyes.

  “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, excuse the cliché, but in my case it’s apt.”

  “Nic was shot to death,” she said. “It was in the news.”

  “Yes.”

  “When you were shot?”

  “No. Before. He was dead before I got there.”

  “Well, that wasn’t in the papers.” Her voice rose. “Why not?”

  “Because it wasn’t.”

  “Why?” Her voice sounded accusatory.

  “Because I suppose the police were protecting me.”

  “And, what, now they’re not?”

  “Now they’re not.” He weighed his choices. He had few. “I killed a man there tonight, Ricki.”

  She laughed. Then she didn’t. She sat and stared at him.

  He fought down a surge of shivers. “Maybe some tea?” he asked.

  “Yes, but decaf. You don’t need any more stimulation. You won’t sleep at all tonight.” She got up and microwaved two cups of water and stuck a decaf English Breakfast teabag in each cup. He watched the steam curl and stayed silent while he let her process his confession. She produced a bottle of brandy from her cupboard and raised eyebrows at him and he nodded. Ricki dosed both cups.

  He thought she might keep quiet. She would never go to the police, not at all. But now he had to win her sympathy to earn her continued help. She came looking for you, he told himself. She must want to help you. At least, until she finds out how dangerous this could be.

  “The man was sent to kill me. I have to vanish for a while. I’m not so scared of the cops but the cops can’t protect me, and I’m not going to jail. They won’t let people like you and me have a computer in jail. Ever.”

  She folded her arms as though his dire prediction made her cold. She was immediately weighing her options, he could tell. She wasn’t easily given to shock.

  “Will you help me?” he asked.

  “Who wants you dead?”

  “Nic got me involved. He did work with a group called Novem Soles. Or Nine Suns?”

  She shook her head. “What, they’re Catholic computer hackers?”