by Jeff Abbott
“Done. Check it for yourself if you like,” Zviman said.
At the word done I stood. Jack Ming still had his back to me. I moved forward, silently across the grass, weaving in between the trees, my hand on the hidden stiletto handle in the cast.
Jack brought a cell phone up from under the red notebook. He kept his right hand in his pocket. No one watching would like that. He’d apparently preset the phone’s browser to his bank account and he hit a refresh button.
I kept approaching, keeping the center of his shoulders as my axis of approach. I moved quickly and quietly across the damp grass.
“The page isn’t loading,” Jack said, a tinge of nervous frustration in his voice.
“The internet. So unreliable.”
He thumbed a button again. “Still locked up. I’m not giving you the notebook until the money’s in my balance.”
Zviman smiled with infinite patience. “That’s fair.”
I was twenty seconds away.
“You’re trying to cheat me,” Jack said. And he pulled the gun from the pocket of the windbreaker.
I was still ten feet behind him but now running at full force, no attempt at stealth. Jack jabbed the gun toward Zviman, as though counting on his target’s own flesh to muffle the sound of the shot. Zviman jumped back, wrenching Jack’s arm up, and by then I slammed my cast into the side of Jack’s neck. He staggered and I yanked him backward, away from Zviman, and he tried to aim the gun at me. I folded his elbow back toward him and he made a little mewling protest as the gun’s barrel touched his stomach. He bent and I got a hand on the trigger and the shot wasn’t as loud as it could have been. I moved the gun to the chest and pulled the trigger again and he fell to his side, two small, bright blossoms of blood on his shirt. He gave a hard, wet cough of red and then he lay still among the trees.
I pulled him back against the trunk of the tree and zipped up the Giants windbreaker to cover the blood. “Make it look like he’s sitting. He won’t draw attention that way.”
Zviman moved away from me, staring at Jack. “The stiletto. Drop it.”
“What?” I was trying to raise and settle Jack’s head so it didn’t loll and I couldn’t get the angle right.
“You didn’t need the knife. But you’re not getting armed into a car with me.”
I dropped the stiletto to the ground, kicked it behind the tree.
“Hey, hey!” A tall black man, with a birding book and binoculars, had wandered closer to us, directing his shout to a bird in a distant tree, but he seemed absorbed in his lenses. Which were aimed in the sky above our head. He could notice Jack, or us, at any moment and I heard Zviman suck in a hiss of breath.
“Go. Walk. Now. Before he sees the blood.” I used my sleeve to wipe Jack’s mouth blood away.
Zviman knelt, picked up Jack’s phone—and the red notebook. It was one of those moleskin ones, with an elastic band to keep it closed. It was smaller than I thought it would be. He started hurrying away from the body, flipping the pages.
“Don’t run,” I said to him. “Keep walking normally.”
He glanced back. The tall black man still studied the sky, then glanced at his birding book, then at the treetops again.
Zviman and I continued our steady walk.
“Where are the children?” I asked.
“Wait, we’re not clear yet.”
We cut across Bow Bridge, silent with each other, and headed down to the 72nd Street Transverse that sliced through the park. Zviman hurried to the street and raised his arm for a cab. Well-dressed guy, moneyed—a cab stopped within thirty seconds, releasing a pair of tourists clutching Beatles memorabilia who looked like they intended to go pay tribute to John Lennon over at Strawberry Fields. New York luck. We both got inside.
Zviman gave the cabbie the address of a parking garage a dozen blocks away. He raised a finger toward his lips, like I was stupid enough to speak in front of a witness. He flipped through the pages of the notebook, shaking his head. “Little bastard,” he said more than once. “Little, rotten bastard.”
We got out of the cab, he paid. We took an elevator up to the ninth floor and I followed him to a black BMW sedan.
“Where is my son?”
“I will take you to him, right now.”
“Anna told us the children would be left at a church and we could collect them. I don’t know where the hell you are taking me.”
“I am taking you to your son, Mr. Capra, and you can either get in the car or not. Your choice.”
I got into the BMW. He wheeled back toward the park, driving with confidence and not a little verve. He held on tight to the red notebook.
At the southeast edge of the park, he pulled up to the curb. Leonie stood waiting on the sidewalk. So far no distant cry of siren or ambulance.
She saw me in the passenger seat and she got into the back seat.
“Is he dead?” she asked.
“He’s dead. Practically killed himself,” Zviman said. He glanced back at Leonie, gave her a nakedly appraising look. I wanted to say: isn’t that wasted on you? But I kept my mouth shut.
He pulled away from the curb, punched a button on his phone.
“Cleopatra.” I guessed it was his code to say all was well. “Ming is dead, I have the notebook, and I’m bringing the happy parents to the nursery. Get the kids ready.” He clicked off the phone. “And then I call again in thirty minutes, with a different passcode, to let her know that you haven’t tried to hijack the car. If she gets the least bit suspicious that you’ve betrayed me en route, the kids will suffer. Guaranteed. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”
Behind me, Leonie made a noise in her throat. Zviman smiled at her in the rearview mirror.
“All right, Mr. Capra, Ms. Jones, let’s go get your children.”
81
DON’T MOVE,” the tall man said. “They could drive back by to see what’s going on.”
Jack Ming left his eyes half open. “He bought it,” he mumbled through closed mouth.
“It helped that you pulled and died by your own weapon. I think it worked, yes. He wants you dead and sometimes the eye sees mostly what it wants to see. My name is Bertrand. I’m a friend of Sam’s. We’re going to get you to safety.”
Jack stayed still. Through his half-mast eyes he could see a woman standing behind Bertrand, holding a video camera. “When it looks like you’re shooting a YouTube video, no one thinks you were actually shot,” Bertrand reminded him. The woman was a small pixie-faced type, very pretty, with big sunglasses shoved up to her dark hair.
Ten, twenty minutes passed. A couple of people strolling by gave them curious glances, but the presence of the woman shooting video answered unasked questions. “Okay, get up,” Bertrand said. “We walk. Quickly.”
The woman murmured to Bertrand, he couldn’t quite hear what, but her accent sounded Russian or something.
Bertrand said, “Good luck and be careful.”
He and Bertrand headed one way, the woman the other.
And if they’re watching us right now, if this wasn’t enough, Sam is a dead man, Jack thought, and I’ve given them back what they wanted most, and my mother died for nothing.
Bertrand hurried him through the park; they went in the opposite direction of Zviman and Sam, toward Belvedere Castle and the 79th Street Transverse.
“Wait,” Bertrand said. “Wait.” Jack thought his heart would explode, suddenly scared that their ruse had been discovered.
A Ford sedan pulled up next to them. At the wheel, August of the CIA.
And in the back seat, impossibly, Ricki.
“We thought it best to get her to safety,” Bertrand said, “but I didn’t want you distracted by knowing she was close. Sorry. We have a private jet…”
Jack hardly heard him. He was in the back seat, embracing Ricki, who kept covering his face with kisses. Safe. She was safe.
The car pulled away. Bertrand gave a quick wave and vanished back into the park.
“Thank you, th
ank you,” he said to August.
“Thank Sam and his friends,” August said.
He thought of that crazy Sam Capra, and his baby, and Jack’s heart felt heavy.
“Jack, we’re going to get you and Ricki to Langley. You’ll be safe there. And I understand you made a paper copy of the notebook…”
“Yes,” he said. “But you can’t have it. Not yet.”
The car stopped. August turned. “Are you serious?”
“Sam promised to give me to you, August,” Jack said. “Not the notebook. He needs the original notebook to get his son back. If he makes it back with his son, you get the notebook. If he doesn’t get his son back, then the copy I have is his, to do with what he wants.”
August stared.
“Think of it,” Jack said, “as the map of Sam’s revenge.”
82
Parking garage near Central Park
MILA PUT THE CAMERA in a bag in the back of the van. She pulled off the dark wig she’d worn under a stylish hat, shook her sweaty hair free, and pushed the black sunglasses back on her head.
Now. Sam had forgotten for a moment that he worked for her; he had forbidden her to come after them. Ridiculous. He could not go off with a man as evil as Zviman and expect to have an exchange go smoothly. And she did not trust Leonie. And although Sam had been clever enough to slough off her tracking chip the other night, Leonie was not. The chip went into the pocket of the light jacket Leonie wore, which Mila had lent her from the apartment over The Last Minute.
From the back of the van—the same one she and Bertrand had used to move out the corpses of the bodyguards, what felt like a thousand days before when she and Sam had pretended to be baby buyers—she pulled out a GPS device. A slight red gleam showed her Leonie’s position. She could follow, unseen, at a distance.
She heard the footsteps behind her as she shut the door. She turned and the Taser needles hit her. Shocking her. Then a tall, spare man stepped forward and closed a damp cloth over her face.
The man who sat at The Last Minute, the man Sam thought suspicious.
“You’re my million-dollar baby, Mila,” he said to her, before the darkness closed in.
Braun handcuffed Mila, all with the van doors closed. He heard the laughter of children, a family walking past the van as he worked. He made sure she was secure: he had no intention of underestimating her. He relieved her of the knife in her boot and the gun at the small of her back. He bound her feet with rope.
He examined the GPS reader. Clever. Either Lindsay or Capra were tagged, and Mila was going to follow them.
He could see that they were now off Manhattan, heading north into Westchester County. A cold tingle touched his spine. No. Surely not. Surely Zviman was not taking them there.
He took the keys from her pocket. He opened up his phone. He sent a text message to the email address where the reward had been posted. I have your Mila and I want to collect the million. Caught her trying to help your friends in the car. May I make your day and bring her to you?
83
On Highway 87 North
WE HEADED NORTH AND EAST, leaving the city well behind, cutting up past Irvington, heading on 87 North. I wondered where we were headed. Peekskill? Albany? The Catskills? A silence filled the car because Zviman said, “No talking.” Zviman put on the satellite radio and tuned it to the alternative classics of the eighties. He even sang, very softly, under his breath, barely audible. The Cars, Elvis Costello, and, God help us, Katrina and the Waves.
I did not trust this man in a good mood.
No one spoke for an hour at least, and, as we passed Newburgh I couldn’t contain myself further. “Where are our kids?” I said.
“At a safe place,” Zviman said. “I’ll take you there and then you may have this car to go where you please. Considering you killed a man in the park I wouldn’t return to New York for a while. I’m sure Ms. Jones would like to get home to Las Vegas.” He sounded so calm, so reasonable. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin.
“You’re probably thinking, Sam, that you’re surprised we struck you a deal.”
“Very.” I wasn’t thinking he wanted to let me out alive. Now I was going to have to fight my way out, I felt sure, and I didn’t know how I was going to do that while holding a baby. The obvious answer was Leonie. Have her run to safety with the kids, if at all possible, and leave me to deal with Zviman.
“I don’t think the CIA will be offering you a job again,” Zviman said. “Now that you killed their prize asset. Of course, they didn’t see you kill him, but you’ll be the prime suspect. Unless you could convince them that you weren’t trying to kill him but protect him from a danger within the CIA.”
“I should update my résumé,” I said. “And I’m not that good an actor to pull off that lie.”
“In fact, with Jack Ming dead, they’ll be hunting for you. If you gave them someone else as Ming’s killer, well, you might be in the clear with them. Nice for you, that would be, for you and your son.” His voice was like a knife.
“Why are you so concerned about what happens to me?”
“We made a deal and I intend to stick to it. What, you think I’m going to kill you?”
“I think you’re going to try.”
“That would undo all that’s been done.”
“Done?”
“To make you who you are, Sam,” Zviman said. “You’ve been a long-term project for us. You could still be of value to us. We’ve watched you for years now. We’ve been interested in you for a long time.”
I stared at him. He didn’t look at me. He almost smiled as he drove. How could I have been a long-term project for a bunch of criminals? “That… that doesn’t even make sense,” I said.
“Of course it does,” he said. “We think long term. You’ve been thinking in terms of hours, days, weeks: how do I find my wife, how do I get my son back? Small problems. We think in terms of years. You have gone from being a problem for us to becoming useful to us. We were willing to sacrifice your usefulness because you could kill Ming for us, and he was a tremendous threat. But no one can prove that you killed him. You could still serve a purpose.”
I had a sudden, weird sense that I was a piece on a chessboard, not the king, and some giant hand had flicked me around the squares. “I have no interest in being useful to you. I want nothing to do with you. I am getting my child and then we are done.”
“I never had the pleasure of meeting your wife,” he said. “But I think we all felt her loss.”
This is to make you snap, I thought. He wants to worm under your skin, get you off your game. Nothing but lies and distraction. “I’m not discussing my wife with you.”
“You’re ready to quit the battlefield.”
I stared straight ahead.
“You said, more than once, I think, when the Company kept you in their private prison and you slept on stone floors, and that the world believed that you were guilty, that all you wanted was your old life back.”
“My old life is gone.”
“No, it’s not. Not exactly,” he said. “Now be quiet. We’ll have plenty to say when we get where we’re going.”
84
Along Highway 87 North
LEONIE HAD WEDGED THE CELL PHONE in the calf-high boot she wore. She kept her eyes ahead, occasionally glancing out the window, trying not to appear as though she were listening to the awkward conversation.
To Ray Brewster she texted: north on 87, past Kingston 5 min ago.
She turned off the phone and she slid it into her boot.
The two men in the front seat, locked in their discussion, locked into their anger and mistrust, did not notice.
Braun drove aggressively and fast, and closed the distance between himself and Zviman’s car to ten miles. He glanced at the text message.
He was entirely sure of their destination. All stories, he thought, come back to their beginning, all circles must close.
85
ZVIMAN OPENED HIS PHONE,
as he had done every thirty minutes for the past two hours. He pressed a number. When Anna answered he said, “Pericles. Yes, all is well.” He clicked shut the phone.
My fist slammed against him hard, then I grabbed his head and pounded it against the steering wheel.
Leonie screamed, “What are you doing, what are you doing?”
The BMW veered across its lanes, narrowly missing a semi that laid on its horn like a stuttering war cry. It is very hard to fight a man one-handed.
“I know where we’re going,” I yelled at her. “He can be our hostage to get the kids.”
Then she understood. Leonie snaked her arm around Zviman’s throat and levered back. He gagged and spat, arching in the seat. I hit the brake with my foot and levered up the parking brake. The BMW howled and bucked but we stopped. I took my good hand and pounded five blows into his sorry face. It felt good. He finally sagged, beaten, out.
“Oh, God, oh, God,” Leonie said. Panic jagged her voice.
“Listen to me. I know where we’re going now. The company that was a front for the sisters, for the house in New Jersey. I looked them up. They owned another retreat off this highway, about five more miles up. That’s where we’re going. And now we can trade the kids for him.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Leonie said. “Oh, God. What if you’re wrong?”
I hauled the unconscious Zviman into the back seat. “Drive,” I told Leonie. I accessed the Associated Languages School website. “North about four miles, then turn onto Mountain Bridge Road.”
“If we drive up into a bunch of execs learning Spanish, I’m going to kill you, Sam.” Her voice was a ragged, broken shock.
“I’ll kill myself,” I said.
86
Associated Languages School, near the Catskill Forest Preserve, New York