The Last Minute sc-2

by Jeff Abbott

  ‘I am going to write a long email. Mostly about you.’ August placed his phone, his gun, his passkeys on the desk, got up and left.

  Braun watched him go. Then he let out a long, ragged breath. Worse and worse. Desperate times, extraordinary measures. August walked like a man who had no idea how close he’d come to dying. And he’d no doubt August would identify the sisters, if not the truth about them. And he’d already identified the redhead; every data search August made displayed on Braun’s own computer.

  God only knew what was in that damned notebook.

  And exposure just couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t happen. He had to shut this down, now. If Ming and Capra were dead that was the end of it.

  Like most jobs, Braun thought, if you wanted it done right you had to do it yourself. He might need to return to a more private retirement, and that million dollars for Mila would be a good cushion for a new life.

  He got up and left.

  Sam Capra owned a bar, so August had said, and Ricardo Braun felt like a drink.

  Twenty minutes later, when a pack of information arrived at Special Projects’ network via Langley, a confirmation message echoed back to Langley’s computers. Hiding inside that message was another one, and that hitchhiking bit of data dropped off along the way and snaked to its natural home. The tiny bit of computer code that allowed this action was very much like what Jack Ming had written for Nic, to spy on people. A Special Projects computer had been infected weeks ago, via a spreadsheet sent to it by one of the people in the Company later exposed as a Nine Suns operative.

  The Watcher’s phone beeped with a new text message.

  60

  The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan

  ‘Hello.’ Mila closed the door behind her. ‘I haven’t heard from you, Sam.’ She glanced at the fiberglass cast on my arm. ‘I would have sent flowers.’

  ‘Hey, Mila,’ I said. I wish Bertrand had given me warning she had arrived but he hadn’t. Leonie looked up from her dinner and stared at Mila.

  ‘Who is this?’ Leonie said.

  ‘Mila. A friend.’

  ‘And I am also his boss,’ Mila said. ‘Sam. We need to talk. Alone.’

  ‘We’re busy right now,’ Leonie said. I could read her expression. Mila was not connected to the search for our kids. Therefore, Mila was a distraction. Leonie didn’t know about the Round Table, the private vigilante group – I honestly don’t know what else to call them – that hired me to run the bars and gave them to me as cover. First to help me find my son, and with the hope that I would do work for them in the future. To be Their Man in Havana, and a few dozen other cities. To Leonie, Milaas-boss must mean she was concerned with the running of the bar. Which paled in importance to our kids.

  The realization went through my mind in a second. ‘Leonie. It’s okay. It’ll just take a minute.’

  ‘You could go downstairs and get a drink,’ Mila said helpfully. ‘Perhaps one with an umbrella in it.’

  ‘I don’t want a drink,’ Leonie said. The ice for the drink she didn’t want found its way into her voice.

  ‘A coffee, then. Although you seem anxious. The decaf here is excellent.’ Mila smiled.

  Leonie didn’t get up.

  ‘Is English a second language for her?’ Mila asked me. She looked back to Leonie. ‘I want to talk to him. Alone. Please go downstairs.’

  Now Leonie got up but not with grace. More with fury.

  I stepped between them. ‘Leonie, please.’

  ‘How is she your boss if you own the bar?’

  ‘Just give us a minute, okay?’

  ‘Actually, I need a shower. I’ll take it now and you and your charming friend can talk.’ Leonie retrieved her bag and vanished into the bedroom. She slammed the door closed.

  ‘She thinks she is so smart,’ Mila said. ‘She runs a shower, but she tries to listen. The doors are soundproofed. We added those last year after Bertrand and I beat up a man in the bathroom to get him to tell us… ’

  I didn’t need to hear about her past crimes. ‘Don’t be adversarial.’

  ‘I just enjoy it. Where have you been?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘And hanging out at this bar is so dangerous you manage to break your arm. I watch the news, Sam.’ She went to the small bar in the corner, poured herself a neat Glenfiddich. ‘Maybe this man you hunt is a huge threat to Nine Suns. Maybe I could find this man useful to me. Maybe I don’t want you to kill him because I might want to have a nice, long, whisky-soaked talk with this man myself and let him tell me all his secrets.’

  ‘You can’t have him,’ I said. ‘No.’ Leonie would be ready to kill Mila if she interfered.

  ‘Your child concerns me,’ Mila said. Her voice went low. ‘Did you think I would ever let you fight this battle alone?’

  ‘Mila, please don’t do this.’

  ‘You do not want my help.’

  ‘I have my orders.’

  ‘I am so hurt. I thought only I gave you orders.’ She took a sip of the Glenfiddich.

  ‘Mila. Let me handle this.’

  ‘And this woman, this Leonie-’ she said the name as though mispronouncing leprosy, ‘she is, what? Your new assistant? I did not approve a hiring.’

  ‘She has her reasons for assisting me.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Someone with very good reason to help me.’

  ‘Do you think you can keep a secret from me? That is so cute.’ She smiled over the whisky glass.

  ‘Mila, go. Leave.’ There. I can slam a door with the best of them.

  ‘I will leave. When you tell me who is this man you kill for your child.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The bars – which are providing you with meeting places, and staying places, and getting-your-broken-arm-set places – were given to you easily, and they can be taken from you just as easily.’

  ‘Take them, then.’ I stood.

  ‘I am not your enemy.’ She set down the whisky glass. ‘Do you think you’re the first person I’ve recruited to work for the Round Table?’

  I said nothing.

  She ran a finger along the rim of the glass.‘Often the second job shows more about the new person than the first job. You helped us break up the assassination plot. You worked hard, you made a great impression. Self-starter. Very tough. Resourceful. Slightly crazy in a good way. Now you are settled into the job, into working with me, now suddenly I see your secrets, your bad habits.’

  ‘This is not a job for you. This is my son’s life at stake. We are not negotiating.’

  ‘All I want to do is to help you.’

  ‘Sure. And if you get info on Nine Suns, then all the better… ’

  ‘What is this ransom, Sam? You owe me. You know you owe me.’

  I put an elbow down on the table; I rested my head against the heel of my hand. ‘They want me to kill an informant who is attempting to surrender to Special Projects. He has information that could gut Novem Soles. I broke up his surrender to the CIA. But someone else is hunting him; I’ve killed three assassins already who tried to get to him before I could’ – now I raised my gaze to meet hers – ‘and all three of them asked me about you.’

  ‘Me.’ Her expression was unchanged. Poker players should have bowed to it in respect.

  ‘Yes. Someone wants to collect the price on your head.’

  This silenced her.

  ‘You and I have a common enemy, Mila.’

  ‘Tell me what you’re thinking, Sam.’ She said it low, soft, the way you might to a lover lying next to you in the warm bed. The thought of Mila that way jolted me.

  ‘Sam,’ Mila said, ‘what is it Americans say? Let us kill the two birds with the one stone.’

  61

  The Last Minute’s lights were low when Braun stepped through the antique doors. He scanned the room. A dozen people at the bar, mostly corporate types in suits having a drink at the end of the day. One knot looked like financial types, another like publishing types. The financi
al suits were stiffer and all the way across the room he heard a woman bray a laughing comment about how to get kids to read. Fifteen tables, half of them occupied. An old lady sat at a piano, playing languid, soft versions of Louis Armstrong standards.

  No sign of Sam Capra. Or the woman Mila. He noticed a tall black man in an impeccable suit, behind the bar. Manager on duty, he decided. Or, considering the man’s stately authority, a partner in the business.

  He could play this two ways. Either march up and announce he was looking for Sam Capra, or sit and wait. But he had no other lead, and he had no one else in New York to send against his enemies. Sam Capra had killed them all.

  Braun sat down at the bar, in the dead zone between the two loud groups. He ordered a Harp lager. He took one sip of it, didn’t touch it again. He didn’t much like alcohol and he didn’t often drink. It was a waste; a lowering of necessary defenses.

  He could see the range of tables, the front door, if he kept his eyes to the mirror at the bar. He sat and he looked ahead, in his particular quiet. The groups on both sides laughed and talked and for an odd moment his own loneliness made him sad. It was strange to watch people with friends; their laughter, their openness filled him with unease. He had long resigned himself to his own company. He got up from the bar and retreated to a corner table. He watched the laughing women and silently hated them. Anyone you let close might have had a knife ready to slide along your throat.

  Lindsay, for instance. She’d tired of him, she’d left him. She’d run away, and after all he’d done for her. Bad, bad girl. Friends were too much trouble.

  ‘Is everything all right, sir?’ The tall black man in the suit stood at his table. He had a very slight Haitian lilt to his voice.

  Braun brought a polite smile to his face. ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘I just noticed you took one sip of your beer and then left it. Does it taste all right?’

  Awfully observant for a bar manager, he thought. ‘Yes, it’s fine. Thank you. I just got lost in thought.’

  ‘Is there anything else I may get you, sir?’

  ‘Uh, perhaps some food. Is there a menu?’

  ‘Of course, one moment.’ The tall man smiled and left him to his beer while he got a menu.

  Braun waited. He wasn’t hungry but food was good camouflage. He watched the door.

  62

  ‘Two birds,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. End both threats without jeopardizing your child.’

  I waited.

  ‘You and me, we capture the informant. We don’t kill him. We take what information he knows. Fake his death, if need be. Use that information to mount a rescue operation of your child. This seems clear to me as a superior solution.’

  ‘Leonie is very reluctant to defy them.’

  ‘That is good to know.’ Then she slapped me, hard. I took it.

  ‘You bloodied their noses before. They have no reason to give you back your child.’

  ‘If they kill Daniel I will never ever stop hunting them,’ I said. ‘I will burn them down. They know this.’

  ‘They’re not afraid of you. They respect you. But they don’t fear you.’

  ‘My problem,’ I said. ‘We will stay out of each other’s way.’

  ‘This is not the Sam Capra I know.’ She laughed and it broke something inside me. I could almost hear the snapping of my heart.

  ‘I’m not risking Daniel’s life for your agenda, Mila.’

  Mila said, ‘If you betray us, I’ll kill you.’

  Her threat made me blink. ‘What? How the hell did you get back on that track?’

  ‘You need a guarantee that your child will be delivered to you after you kill the informant. I don’t intend to be the sweetener in the deal.’

  ‘I would never betray you.’

  Now she stared at the floor, then her gaze met mine. ‘Really? Not even to save your son?’

  ‘Mila. Don’t even go there. Even if I offered them you, that is still no guarantee I get Daniel back. All I can do is what they’ve asked me to do.’

  ‘Why use you to eliminate this threat?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because I can get close to him.’

  ‘Why? Because you’re ex-CIA? Because August will let you get close? Not any more.’

  ‘Because they have my son and they want to put him to good use. I don’t know.’

  ‘And what happens next, after you dance to their tune and they still want you to dance. I told you, they will never let you go.’

  ‘I do this, that’s it.’

  ‘No. You and I must come up with a way that saves Daniel and breaks their hold on you.’

  I said nothing for fifteen seconds. I counted them out. It takes about fifteen seconds to weigh up alternatives and make a decision in a heated conversation when you decide to capitulate. Undercover work is 90 per cent acting, only 10 per cent observing. She needed me to be someone and I was going to be who she needed me to be, the man she wanted to see standing in front of her instead of the screwed-up brawler who just wanted his son back.

  ‘What’s your way?’

  She jerked her head toward the closed door. ‘First, tell me who is the charm school dropout?’

  ‘Leonie. She’s an information broker; she hides people who need to vanish. She lives under a false name because she’s hiding from a guy named Ray Brewster; he’s tied to the killers who are hunting you. She’s done false documentation for Anna’s kids, so Anna grabbed her kid to force her to help me find Jack Ming.’

  ‘So since she hides people, they thought she could find Ming.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They have both your children.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sleeping with her?’ This was asked with a very slight tilt of the head. She gave me a look best described as halfway between horrified and amused.

  Mila’s bluntness: thank God you can’t bottle it. ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Which means yes. And we have another complicating factor.’

  I so did not want to have this conversation with her. ‘We were exhausted and… upset.’

  ‘A woman would have to be.’

  I shook my head, gave a weak laugh. ‘Is this what my life is going to be like once I find my kid and I’m working for you, still? Reporting on every detail of my life? Forget that.’

  ‘I wanted to know.’

  ‘Why?’ Then I thought: wait, she can’t care what I do. Who I sleep with. She’d never shown the remotest interest in me, or in anyone else. She was all ice except when she had a target. Then she was fire.

  ‘You forget that we – my employers and I – have made a big investment in you.’

  ‘Mila, go to wherever you go when you’re not riding my ass. Go on a vacation. I’ll either call you when this is all done or, if you don’t hear from me, you’ll know I’m dead. You don’t understand our situation. What it’s like to have a loved one taken and be at risk.’

  She gave me a sad look. ‘No one could understand your unique pain.’ And something in the air shifted between us. ‘You asked me why there is a price on my head.’

  ‘I think it’s your endless charm and witty banter,’ I said.

  She nodded toward the computer. ‘I wrote it down for you. You read it. Then you decide whether or not to trust me with your child’s life.’

  PART THREE

  TU MORI

  63 Sam: This is what happened, this is how I came to be. – Mila Harp , Moldova

  (My little town was named for a harp. Do you like that? But I do not play)

  Three years ago. The children are done with their work and have escaped into the bright sunny afternoon; I mop up paint smears and bits of torn paper. The art supplies are a gift – from one of the families that runs Trans-Dniester, the sliver of Moldova that has declared itself free of the country. Aunt and Uncle say quietly at the Sunday lunch table that the whole region is ruled by crooks and outlaws. Not just crooked politicians but actual criminals – smugglers and Mafiya and drug lords who
pour poisons west into Austria and Hungary and north to Moscow, Kiev and St Petersburg.

  But let me be blunt: what do I care where the paints and papers come from? They are an extra to help my classroom. The children benefit and I don’t care if a Mafiya bought crayons to ease his conscience. The towns of northern Moldova can barely afford to heat the school in dismal winter; I won’t turn up my nose at free school supplies.

  You are making a better Moldova, darling girl, Aunt tells me, and I want to shrug. No, I’m earning a paycheck and not having to be like my sister Nelly, casting her lot out into the distant world. I am a homebody who likes quiet.

  After I gather up the scraps of supplies that can be used again, I take a rag and I dust the small TV, the old DVD player, the worn and loved books on the shelf. All again from the largesse of the criminal kings of Trans-Dniester, Uncle would say. But the machinery does not do evil and the books take no sides.

  I dust and think Nelly would do a better job. Nelly the sunny one, Nelly the smiler, Nelly the adventurer. Nelly had shown me the brochure six months ago – the employment agency, based out of Bucharest in neighboring Romania, happy women in drab uniforms making military covers on hotel beds, serving food to smiling diners, filing papers behind a spotless desk with a computer resting on it, its plastics unyellowed by age.

  ‘See, they need secretaries and waitresses and maids and nannies,’ Nelly tells me. ‘You could get a job with a computer that’s new.’

  I glanced at the marketing brochure. Moldova is the poorest country in Europe. These places all look better, sunnier, more hopeful. ‘I don’t want to move to Italy or Turkey or Israel. I don’t speak their languages.’

  ‘But your English is good. They’ll always pay extra for English.’ Nelly bites the eraser on her pencil. ‘At a hotel I might meet a traveling businessmen from the West. Maybe America. A nice guy with a good job. Americans like eastern European girls. The supermodels have done at least that for us.’

  ‘Americans don’t talk to maids,’ I say. I better spoil her dreams right away, yes? That’s what a good sister does. I hand her back the brochure. A hot beat of fear probes my chest at the thought of Nelly hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, working a job that gives her no time to come home.